Chapter 42 Alaric #2
One word, and it froze the room more than any blade.
She turned to Veyrion, voice steady. Commanding. “Give us a moment. Please.”
His stare lingered longer than I liked. He could have pressed. He didn’t.
And that restraint felt deliberate—not kind.
Now it was just her and me.
The potion’s heat was already shifting in my veins, turning from burn to pressure—an hourglass I could feel.
She looked at me then. Really looked at me. And told me everything.
The Elders. The Crescent Artifact. The truth they’d shown her.
My hands trembled. I curled them into fists, nails biting into my palms until I felt the sting of blood.
She spoke of the Tidekeepers. Her mother. The lies. The way her power had been ripped from her—by the people she’d trusted. I tried to steady myself, but something caught somewhere between guilt and fury. Was I not just like them?
She asked me why I couldn’t understand. Why I wanted her to leave Ymirskald. Why I couldn’t just let her stay.
I said what I thought was true. “Why can’t you plan aboard the Black Marrow? Nerina—take all the time you need. I’ll give you space, I’ll give you anything, just… don’t stay here. Not in this place. Not with him.”
Her shoulders squared instead of easing. The fire in her eyes made my chest ache.
“No, Alaric. This time—it’s my choice. My whole life, I’ve been told where to go, what to do, who to be. The Tidekeepers. My mother. Even you.” Her chin lifted, defiant. “But staying here? That was mine.”
She stepped closer, voice steadier than I have ever heard. “I’m not staying here for him or leaving for you. I have to do this for myself.”
Her words cut, but beneath the steel I saw the cracks—the weight pressing against her shoulders, the ache she carried alone. She was hurting.
I swallowed hard, fighting past the bitterness clawing my throat. “If you want to fight them—if you want answers, vengeance, justice—then let me help you. We’ll make a plan. Together.”
Her eyes flickered, shadows and fire warring inside them. “I don’t even know where to start,” she whispered.
I stepped closer, unable to stop myself. “Then let me help you. You don’t have to do this alone.”
I wanted her to see it—that my plea wasn’t just about Veyrion. Not just about the war festering between us. It was about her. About the way I couldn’t stand to watch her breaking.
But her jaw set. “I have to stay here, Alaric. I don’t know who I am anymore, and I won’t find out by running. Not this time.”
I stepped closer, lowering my voice until it was only for her. “Then stay,” I said. “I won’t stop you. But I won’t walk away either.”
I didn’t add the rest—that I’d rather rot on foreign shores than lose sight of her again.
Her silence pressed in until the air felt tight in my lungs. And when she finally spoke, her voice trembled against the stones. She asked about my past. I knew what Veyrion had told her. I knew what she feared. So I gave her the only thing I had left to offer.
The truth.
“I won’t stand here and pretend I’m a good man,” I said, my voice raw. “I’m not. I never claimed to be. But I’m not that man anymore.”
She just stared at me. Firelight flickered across her face—unreadable—until at last she spoke. “Tell me everything,” she said softly, but there was iron in it. “The truth. No half-truths. No more secrets.”
I’d never spoken it aloud before. Not even to myself in the dark, where silence was easier than memory. Now it spilled out like rot from a wound I’d hidden too long—ugly, festering, impossible to stop once it started.
The truth I’d buried beneath sea and shadow. The truth she deserved. Even if it ruined what little might have been left between us.
“I didn’t want eternity for myself,” I rasped, my chest tightening, body shuddering. “I wanted it for her. My mother.”
I told Nerina how every raid, every slaughter, every sacred place I desecrated had been for my mother. Not for coin. Not for glory. For her. For more time.
“My father taught me how to be a pirate before I could even hold a blade,” I said, bitterness on my tongue. “He taught me how to lie. How to cheat. How to steal.”
I dragged in a ragged breath. “And my mother’s greatest fear—the thing that kept her up at night—was that I would grow into him. That I would lose whatever light she thought she saw in me.”
I let out a hollow laugh. “And in the end, she was right.”
I remembered the Sanctuary of Milos—their songs turning to screams as I tore apart something meant to be holy. Where I spilled blood into waters so ancient and sacred the sea itself recoiled.
My hands trembled. I pressed them into my knees, trying to still them.
“I told myself it was worth it,” I whispered, voice cracking. I dragged a hand over my face, nails biting into my skin. “But it wasn’t.”
The admission shattered something inside me.
“She died sick. Alone. While her foolish son scoured the seas chasing lies—too blinded by arrogance to simply stay with her—” My voice broke, and I had to swallow hard before I could finish. “—to simply hold her hand. To be there.”
A bitter laugh left me. “I never even got to say goodbye.”
I tasted blood where I’d bitten the inside of my cheek, old anger flaring beneath grief. “Meris made sure of that.” I looked away then, because if I didn’t, I might finally shatter.
“She deserved better than the son I was.” Images of her came in jagged flashes: the warmth of her hands, rough from work at the docks; her smile, tired but fierce; the way she always looked at me like I was something good.
“She believed in me,” I choked. “Even when I gave her no reason to. She welcomed me home with open arms, even when my hands were stained with blood.”
I let out a hollow laugh, dry and bitter. “She died with the memory of the boy she loved—never knowing the monster her son had become.”
My hands shook. My chest heaved. Still, I couldn’t look at her.
“It’s true,” I said at last, my voice a rasp. “Every raid, every ruin, every desecration—I did those things. The thought of losing her was unbearable. I was selfish. Foolish. Arrogant enough to believe I could bend the will of the gods to keep her alive.”
My voice faltered, rough and uneven. “I was wrong. So gods-damned wrong. And I have paid the price for my arrogance.”
I forced myself to raise my head, even though it burned—though the weight of her eyes might crush me.
Her face blurred for a moment as my vision stung. “I’ll burn before I let my foolishness cost me you the way it cost me her.”
A hollow sound escaped me—half laugh, half choke.
“The worst part?” I said, shaking my head. “I did find immortality in the end. Just not the way I’d hoped.”
I dragged a hand through my hair, bitter amusement curling at my mouth though it never reached my eyes. “Eternity to remember I was too selfish to simply stay by her side. Too arrogant to accept that death comes for us all—and that sometimes… love means letting go.”
My attention returned to Nerina, raw, unguarded.
“Nerina…” My voice was low, rough with truth. “I’d damn myself a thousand times over if it meant sparing you from even one of my sins.”
Now Nerina knew more than she ever had.
I hated that she’d heard it from Veyrion first—through carefully chosen words and twisted truths. I should have told her myself. I should have trusted her with the weight of it before anyone else could use it against me.
I did those things. Not just to mermaids. To humans. To supernatural creatures with names and families and hopes. I tore through them like obstacles, not people.
“You’re the pirate,” she said. “The one they whisper about. The one who destroyed the Sanctuary of Milos.”
Each word landed with surgical precision. My chest constricted. I tasted iron.
“The Veil,” she continued, voice calm, merciless. “It is because of you.”
Light bled through her skin, pale and unforgiving. The air thickened, pressure rolling outward in slow, crushing waves.
I’d seen magic snarl and rage. This was different. Not fury. Grief.
In that moment, I wished more than anything that love alone could undo what I’d done. But monsters don’t get redemption. Or love. Or happy endings. They get memory, pain, and silence.
I broke the quiet first.
“It’s a lot,” she said at last, voice low, carefully controlled. “Everything you’ve told me.” She paused, steadying herself like she was holding the pieces together by force alone. “I… I need time. To think. To process.”
I didn’t look away. I couldn’t. I owed her that much.
The silence that followed was heavy and ruthless. All I could think was how badly I wanted her to ask me to stay—give me something to cling to. Some sign this hadn’t shattered us beyond repair.
She held my gaze, unflinching. There was hurt there, raw and unmistakable, even as she refused to let it break her. I waited for her to recoil.
For the moment when she would finally see what I was and step back in horror.
She didn’t.
I realized then that if she stayed, I would destroy her. And if she left, I would deserve it.
She stood in the firelight, her dress glowing faintly.
I looked at her then—really looked—at the girl I’d pulled from the ocean in the middle of a storm. The woman who now held her own fate in her hands.
And I knew something I didn’t want to admit. This time, I couldn’t save her. This time, I wasn’t supposed to.
As I turned, her voice stopped me. “Alaric?”
I looked back.
“I’d like to visit,” she said at last. Softer now, but steady. “The crew. The Black Marrow."
My heart stilled. Hope flickered—fragile, trembling—but I didn’t dare reach for it.
“I know a quartermaster who would like that very much.”