2. Mira
Chapter two
Mira
Witchwater
I wake to sunlight spilling through the windows, its golden warmth spreading across my face like a gentle embrace.
For a fleeting moment, I bask in it. Letting it chase away the chill of the night before.
But then my gaze drops to my wrist. The pain is sharp.
A bruise already blooms there, dark, angry, and unforgiving.
A perfect imprint of Kai Eldoris’s grip.
He hadn’t even grabbed me hard. Not really.
But the mark says otherwise, like it was his magic imprinting itself inside me.
If that was him holding back, I can’t imagine the full strength he’s capable of.
Last night, we left the pub with a few new recruits in tow, fresh blood, eager eyes, and the kind of desperation that turns men into pirates. No one died in the chaos, though I’m sure we earned a few new enemies along the way. My father’s name was whispered through the streets long after we left.
His legacy. His madness. His map. Everyone still talks about it like it’s gospel. Like it’s worth dying for. And maybe it is. But the obsession… It burns in them the same way it once burned in him. It makes my blood boil. And at the same time it leaves me hollow.
I’m sure Neressa had a hand in persuading some of the new recruits.
She always does. People bend around her like smoke, charmed, convinced, or cornered.
But still, the irritation lingers. I love her.
I do. But last night? Her actions of not telling me who could be walking through Magda.
Knowing there were rumors, it was a selfish move on her part.
Even for her. She’s always been about the business.
About survival. About stacking gold over sentiment.
And I get it. But putting me last? Choosing power over blood?
That’s not how sisters are supposed to act. Blood or not.
I push the thought aside. We have leads, faint, shifting trails pointing toward places most don’t return from. The journey ahead won’t be easy. The truth we’re chasing lives in the hands of the hidden and the haunted.
I step onto the main deck and announce our next heading.
Alek. A cursed town where witches are bred and born.
There’s one witch in particular who may hold the answers I seek.
But every answer she gives comes with a price, and she’s never been known to play a fair game.
Alek lies far to the northeast of Magda, hidden deep within the heart of Jasper’s Ocean.
We sail for three sunrises and two moon-soaked nights. The winds slow. The sea turns silent.
Then the huts begin to appear. First just shadows at the edges of the fog, crooked silhouettes that vanish if you look too hard. Then suddenly, they’re just… there. Weather-worn, bone-stitched, covered in symbols that seem to shift when you blink. None of it makes sense. But Alek never does.
The fog thickens until it breathes, stealing air right from our lungs.
It wraps around the ship like a serpent, curling over the deck, slithering between my boots.
It presses against my lungs, not choking, just claiming.
The air is wet with whispers I can’t quite hear.
The water is no longer water, it’s black glass rippling with things that never breach the surface.
The type of water you never want to fall into.
Alek feels alive. Hungry. Watching. It should because this is Taika’s domain, the most powerful witch born of salt and blood, her very name a curse. Her magic is never given, only endured. And whatever price she demands will haunt you for the rest of your life.
If you're lucky enough to leave, or live with your soul intact.
The last time we came to Alek, Taika asked my father for a baby hippocampus.
Alive. She needed one for a ritual, to harvest pieces of its soul and sell them to those who’d lost theirs.
Hippocampi are pure. Too pure. And purity, in this world, is a dangerous thing.
It rots in the wrong hands. Harming a hippocampus is a sin, one that could place bad omens upon your soul.
I was too young to understand the full horror of it then, but I remember the screams. Blood-curdling. Unnatural. The sound of something so sacred being torn apart, body and soul, deep below deck. It still haunts me. It was the moment I realized my father didn’t have a heart anymore.
I steer The Siren toward Alek, one hand gripping the wheel, the other gripping my thoughts before they spiral.
But it’s no use. My mind is a storm. All I can think about is Kai.
A gust of wind blows my curls violently, like a warning.
Looking forward, I start to see a small storm forming over the horizon.
That could only mean one thing: we're close.
The way he touched me, not tender, not kind.
With power. The kind that reaches past skin and muscle and sinks into your bones like poison or desire.
I don’t know which is worse. He moved through my mind like he owned it.
Rearranged things I didn’t give him permission to touch.
And what’s worse, my body let him. I’m supposed to hate him.
I do hate him. So why does the memory of his hand still burn?
Why do I ache in places that I have never known want?
It infuriates me. The thought of him, out there, chasing the same wish I am.
Wanting the same truth. Holding all that power and knowing how to use it.
Sometimes I wonder if we even stand a chance, but that’s a fleeting weakness.
Because while he may have magic in his blood, I have it in the wood of my ship.
From what I know, the Fountain of Wishes has a few unbreakable rules.
You can’t ask for a wish that’s already been made.
You can’t wish death upon anyone. And you can’t wish for the tides to turn in anyone’s favor.
That last one I still don’t fully understand.
Maybe it’s a metaphor. Or maybe it’s a warning.
But one thing is certain: break any of these rules, and you’ll turn to dust where you stand.
Not metaphorical dust. Bones to ash. Gone.
The fountain was once just an old sailor’s tale.
Whispered in taverns. Traded in drunken slurs around bonfires.
A bedtime story for children too afraid of the sea.
Until it wasn’t. Until it resurfaced, real.
And far more dangerous than any legend should ever be.
It’s sparked the dreams of many pirates and claimed even more lives.
The path to it is cruel. Not just perilous, but cursed.
No one’s laid eyes on the fountain in over a hundred years and lived to tell the tale. The map that leads to it was shattered, split into pieces and scattered to the corners of the sea. Each fragment cursed, hidden, nearly impossible to find… or so the legends say.
But pirates, we love a tale as old as time. Especially if it ends in blood, gold, and power.
We drift into a black fog thick as tar, heavy as grief. It clings to our ship like claws, choking the air from our lungs. The Siren groans beneath me, the sound sharp and strained in the unnatural quiet.
“I know, girl,” I whisper, tightening my grip on the helm. My fingers dig into the rich, enchanted teak, as if I can anchor us both through touch. The fog unsettles her. It unsettles me, too.
Around me, the crew coughs, harsh, rasping gasps. Some collapse where they stand, their legs folding like broken sails. I yank the brown bandana from around my neck and tie it across my nose and mouth, forcing myself to breathe only when absolutely necessary.
The darkness swallows us whole. It’s suffocating.
Hallucinatory. My vision swims, my balance teeters.
“Light the lanterns!” I shout, voice ragged with urgency.
The thought of steering blind into the unknown, of running aground or worse, twists something deep in my gut.
I won’t lose her, my ship. Not to this. Not to fog born of curses and things with teeth.
She’s more than a ship. She’s family. The only piece of it that I have left.
The ship jolts, then stops. Not with anchors, but just a sudden, silent halt, as if gripped by unseen hands.
The black fog begins to peel away, slow and steady, like smoke retreating from fire.
And then it appears, a narrow bridge stretched out across the water, conjured from nothing.
No splash, just magic leading the way. “Smith!” I call, voice slicing through the thinning haze.
He rushes up the deck, breath sharp in the cold air. “Yes, Cap’n?”
I look down from the helm. “You’re coming with me.” He nods, crisp and wordless.
“Cap’n, want me to come with you?” Nate’s voice cuts through the mist. I turn toward him—my third in command, steady as stone even when the sea’s against us.
“No, Nate,” I say. “Keep your eye on The Siren while we’re gone.”
He nods once, no argument, just loyalty. The red bandana tied around his head is damp with fog, his jaw set as he breathes through the sickening air. “Aye, Cap’n,” he mutters, voice rough.
I step down from the helm, the wood cool beneath my boots, and begin strapping on more weapons to my belt: blade, dagger, pistol, another blade. Each click of metal grounds me.
Smith does the same. Shadows my movements like the soldier he is.
We descend the rope ladder, each rung slick with sea mist. The moment our boots hit the bridge, it groans beneath us.
Not like it was made from wood but from cursed bones.
I step cautiously. One foot. Then the other. Smith mirrors me, silent and ready.
The farther we walk, the more the fog thins, revealing a crooked hut at the end of the bridge.
As though the hut had drowned once, then clawed its way back to the surface, resurrected.
Vines snake across the rotting wood, tangled with twitching insects and patches of pulsing moss.
Something skitters in the shadows, a rat, or worse.
How anything can live here, I’ll never understand.
The air reeks, like rotting fish and old boots left to bake in the sun.
It hits the back of my throat, sour and unshakable.
The hut is barely lit. A faint, flickering glow leaks through the warped wooden slats like a dying heartbeat. Still, I know where we are.
With magic guiding us, we’ve made it to Taika’s.