Chapter 16
Alaric
The Black Marrow
Mermaids have always been insufferably curious creatures.
Nerina stood beside my desk, barefoot and breathless, surrounded by a sea of shattered glass and blood slicking the floorboards.
The decanter lay in ruins at her feet, dark liquid bleeding into the cracks of the wood.
The scent of iron hung heavy in the air.
She hadn’t moved. Her hand was still half-raised, frozen mid-act.
And the lantern—damn that lantern—lit her like some kind of wild, fallen star. Her skin was flushed, the curve of her collarbone kissed by gold light, hair still damp and clinging to her neck.
She looked up at me as I entered—guilt tightening her jaw, defiance flashing behind her eyes. And for a long, weightless second, neither of us spoke.
I stepped toward her slowly, glass crunching beneath my boots, arms crossed tight over my chest. She didn’t move. Just watched me with that steady, unflinching gaze—searching my face for answers, for truth I wasn’t sure I wanted to give.
Her voice cut through the silence, low and steady. “Why do you have blood in a decanter on your desk, Alaric?”
She tilted her head, eyes narrowing. “For someone so determined to ask who I am—you haven’t said much about yourself.”
I froze.
Not because I didn’t expect the question—but because she asked it so plainly.
No fear. No flinch. Just curiosity laced with something calculating.
"You wouldn’t believe me if I told you," I said finally, my voice quieter than usual.
Her eyes narrowed. "Try me."
A ghost of a smile tugged at my lips. She had fire, and I liked that about her.
I exhaled slowly, dragging a hand through my hair before resting it on the desk.
"I was human once. A long time ago. The sea has a way of changing a man, reshaping things in its image. I became something else. Cursed. A vampire"
She didn’t flinch, didn’t even blink. If she was afraid, she hid it well. "A vampire?" she asked, her tone even.
I tilted my head.
"Not in the way you think. I don’t prowl darkened alleys hunting for unsuspecting victims." I said quietly.
She motioned to the blood and glass surrounding her feet, the broken remnants of the decanter pooling at her toes. "And this?"
"A necessity." I met her gaze. "Not a pleasure."
I glanced at the blood on the floor—not ashamed, but not unbothered either.
“I take what the ocean allows. No more. No less. And it never lets me forget the cost.”
For a moment, silence stretched between us, broken only by the gentle creak of the ship settling against the waves.
"How long?" she asked, voice steadier than I expected.
"How long what?"
"How long have you been like this? Bound to this ship, hunting to survive? How long have you been a vampire?"
I exhaled, glancing toward the porthole where the dark horizon stretched endlessly. "Longer than I care to count," I said, and the weight of it sat heavy in my chest.
"Long enough that the memory of land feels like a dream I woke from centuries ago. Time does not pass here as it does on land. The sea doesn’t measure years—it counts in losses. Storms survived. In forgotten names."
She stared at me, head tilted like she was trying to solve a puzzle that wasn’t hers to touch. Then her lips parted.
“So, you’re a vampire and a pirate?” she said slowly, eyes dancing with something dangerously close to amusement.
She grinned. “You’re a vampirate.”
The word landed and she snorted, completely undignified. “Sorry, I know the curse is horrible—truly, existentially grim—but vampirate? That’s objectively hilarious.”
I didn’t even flinch. “Glad centuries of agony have been reduced to a punchline.”
She was already on a roll. “Do you sleep in a coffin below deck? Do your fangs come out when you say arrr? Plunder necks instead of treasure?”
I stared at her.
She burst out laughing—full, head-thrown-back, belly-deep laughter. The kind that made something in my chest ache a little. Not from annoyance. From the fact that I hadn’t heard a sound like that in… too long.
“I swear,” she gasped, wiping at her eyes, “if you sparkle, I’m throwing you overboard.”
I leaned closer, voice low. “Oh, I radiate, sweetheart. But only on Tuesdays. Right after moonlight meditation and blood margaritas.”
She cackled harder.
Saints help me—I almost smiled.
I realized then that I was closer to her than I meant to be. Close enough to feel the heat of her skin.
Close enough that the hunger stirred—not urgent, not violent, but awake.
Outside, the wind howled through the rigging.
Between us, silence settled again—heavier this time.
She wasn’t quick to speak. I saw it in her eyes, the way her gaze dropped to the blood drying on the floorboards, the glass glittering like shards of memory.
She was thinking. Turning everything I’d said over and over.
Weighing it against what she thought she knew about me—and about herself.
"Why did you bring me aboard?" she asked. "Why pull me from the sea?"
I hesitated. That was the question, wasn’t it? The one I’d been avoiding even in my own mind. Because answering it meant peeling back layers I’d spent years building like armor—admitting there was a reason I’d pulled her from the water, a reason I hadn’t let her go.
She had the ocean in her blood, the stars in her eyes. And some part of me—something old, instinctive, primal—recognized it before my mind did. That recognition wasn’t born of sentiment.
It was purpose.
I needed her—what she was, the freedom she might offer me. Protecting her wasn’t kindness. It was strategy.
Still, some traitorous part of me wondered if it was more than that. That terrified me more than any curse ever had—
because if I couldn’t explain why I’d chosen her, then I didn’t control it.
"Part of the curse, is to protect the sea, you are part of the sea.
" I admitted, and the words landed heavier than I intended.
Not just strange or curious—other. I could feel it, like static in the air between us.
Her chaos. Her magic. It pulsed beneath her skin, ancient and wild and not entirely her own.
The kind of power the sea would notice. The kind it would want to claim.
Her breath hitched, but she masked it quickly. She was perceptive, but something about that answer unnerved her.
"So that’s it?” she said quietly, motioning again to the blood, the ship, the weight of everything between us. “The sea took who you were and made you into this?"
I studied her for a long moment. "I’m saying the sea doesn’t give without taking something in return. Some men seek power and find themselves shackled in ways they never imagined. Others have no choice in the matter. I didn’t choose this, Nerina. And neither did my crew."
"And yet, you continue," she said, not unkindly, but probing.
"Because stopping means dying. Or worse—becoming something beyond even the sea’s reach.
Not all gifts are blessings. The ocean marks its chosen, and once it has you, there is no escaping its grasp.
It bends you, reshapes you, until you are something new—something neither alive nor dead, forever caught between the tides. "
Carefully, Nerina stepped away from the blood and glass, her bare feet cautious on the slick boards. She moved to the chair beside the desk and sank into it slowly, fingers tightening on the armrests, her mind turning over my words.
I turned to a small cabinet and pulled out another glass. Pouring a measure of dark liquid into it, I slid it across the desk toward her.
"Drink?" I offered.
She eyed it before shaking her head, then exhaled slowly. "No... actually, make it two."
I chuckled, taking a slow sip from my own glass. "Fair enough."
Outside, the storm had begun to calm—the rain now a mere whisper against the ship’s timbers—but the questions in her eyes remained.
"How did this curse come to be?" she finally asked, voice steady, eyes searching.
I exhaled, rolling my shoulders. "It’s a long story."
"We have time," she countered, leaning forward slightly. "Tell me."
Maybe it was the way she held herself—unyielding despite exhaustion—or the way the ocean seemed to stir around her, whispering secrets only she could hear. Whatever it was, something about her felt… familiar. I’d likely answer any question she asked.
And I wasn’t sure if that terrified me more than the curse itself.
I looked down at the glass in my hand, then past it to the blood smeared on the floor. Her question lingered in the space between us, heavy as the air before a squall.
The truth was, I remembered the moment it happened—the curse. The night I tried to rewrite fate. I’d made the right choice, or so I believed. I didn’t beg for power. I begged for time. And I was given eternity.
Twisted. Tethered.
I made a mistake that cost everything. My crew. My soul. My future. I didn’t speak right away.
Should I tell her? Would she look at me differently if she knew the full story—not just what I became, but how it all started? The greed. The grief. The choice I hadn’t thought was a choice at all.
Would she still be willing to help me if she knew the truth? Or would she see me for what I am—a man who damned himself, dragging everyone else down with him?
Maybe it was safer to give her a version of the truth. A half-measure. Enough to keep her close, but not enough to make her run.
I wasn’t ready to lose my shot at breaking this curse.