Chapter 46
Nia didn’t have time to scream, so Zanta screamed for her. It filled Rowan’s head, horrible and wrenching. And then something else drowned it out.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The thunder of a full broadside echoed from the mist. Zanta surged forward, finally breaking from the mercenary’s hold. She screamed Nia’s name again as she made it to the rail, but what could she do? Her arms were still bound.
But someone could do something.
“Yves!”
Yves’s dark eyes found him. He’d accepted Rowan’s lead silently throughout their ordeal, but now he looked vicious, ready to fight.
“Go!” Rowan shouted. “Get Nia!”
He hesitated only for a second, torn between obeying Rowan and protecting him. With every moment of delay, Rowan imagined Nia sinking deeper beneath the waves. Struggling. Losing breath.
Shouting rang out belowdecks. Their crews had heard the cannon fire. Shaw shouted for his men.
A ball of fire arced toward them, ricocheting off a stone pillar, and crashing to the sea off the Lonesome’s bow. Two sets of masts appeared from the mist.
“Go!” Rowan ordered Yves.
Yves broke for the side as fast as the chains allowed.
“Seize him!” Shaw bellowed, even as he discarded his sword and raised a pistol. From his position on the ground, Logan kicked the back of Shaw’s knee, and the shot went wide. The bullet caught Yves in the arm as he dove off the end of the plank.
Chaos descended. As clashing sounded from below, Rowan barreled forward into Shaw, hoping to knock him overboard, but only succeeded in landing both of them in a tangled heap in Logan’s lap.
Rowan managed to disengage himself, and snatched up Shaw’s sword.
He brought it down with as much force as he could muster on the ropes binding Logan’s real hand to the rail.
It wedged fast in the wood, and Rowan had to abandon it as Shaw roared to his feet.
More flaming projectiles rained down on the two ships, accompanied by near continuous cannon fire. Were they friend or foe? It didn’t matter for now. All that mattered was using the chaos to his advantage.
To Rowan’s left, Zanta headbutted a mercenary in the face. He went down, clutching a broken nose, and his cutlass skittered away. The other mercenaries converged on Rowan. Bound and outnumbered, he didn’t stand a chance.
The door to below deck burst open, but instead of Rowan or Yves’s crew, it was Gael who charged onto the deck, followed by five crew members who had joined the Sweet Mercy all those months ago.
Rowan’s heart thudded. He couldn’t spare a glance for the attacking ships, but if Gael was here, he was willing to bet one of them was the Sweet Mercy.
It didn’t matter right now how they’d managed the miracle of being here, how they’d managed to approach undetected, or how Gael and his men were on board the Kraken when the ships were still far away.
All that mattered now was that they stood a chance.
Gael roared a battle cry as the group crashed into the surprised mercenaries. One of Gael’s axes embedded into a merc’s jaw. A spray of crimson followed the arc of the blade on its way out. Gael’s eyes darted across the deck, no doubt searching for Fox in the melee.
Rowan reached the broken-nosed man’s discarded cutlass. He dug his toe under the cross guard and flipped it up, barely managing to catch it in his bound hands. He stabbed the point between two deck boards and frantically sawed his bindings against the sharp edge.
Not fast enough. A mercenary charged him.
Rowan rolled away, kicking the man in the shin, and sprang to his feet just in time to catch a knife stroke on the last strands of rope holding him.
Feeling roared back into his hands with a vengeance, needles prickling inside his skin.
He backed up a step, clumsily wrenched the sword from between the deck boards, and avoided the merc’s next charge with a side step, landing a harsh stroke across the man’s hip.
Pirates spilled onto the deck, beating the mercenaries back.
Rowan’s head whipped around, taking in the situation in a matter of moments.
No sign of Yves or Nia yet. Logan had escaped his confinement and now skewered a mercenary’s shoulder with his hook and tossed him overboard.
His detached wooden hand remained bound to the rail.
But where was Shaw? Where was Zanta?
The attacking ships had edged closer now, still barely visible through the mist. The Lonesome weakly returned fire on them, but they were unprepared. Most of their crew had been on the Kraken keeping the pirates subdued and searching for Stroud’s treasure.
“Rowan!”
He whipped around in time to find a mercenary charging up from his blind side. Thanks to Logan’s shout, he managed to catch the swing on his cross guard, steel screaming. When he pushed the man back, and Logan pierced his throat with the sharp tip of his hook, a different scream filled the air.
A hawk’s scream.
Nephele’s gray silhouette passed in front of the strange sky. Soaring high out of range among the tops of the stone spires. But if she was here, that meant the other ship…
“It’s the Siren!” Logan whooped, his astonished joy mirroring the lift in Rowan’s heart.
Last time they’d seen their beloved ship, she’d been hopelessly wedged between two spires high above the water’s surface.
Yet here she was, coming to their rescue alongside the Sweet Mercy, hale and whole.
A laugh burst out of him, cut short by a shout from the quarterdeck.
Zanta squared off with Shaw, and she was injured, favoring her right leg.
“Take care of things down here. I’m going after Shaw.” The pirates were gaining the upper hand, and Rowan didn’t wait for Logan’s agreement before he charged for the stairs.
Gael caught up with him just as he reached the bottom step.
“Where’s Fox?” he shouted, frantic.
“The other ship! He’s a hostage!”
Gael’s eyes widened only for a second before he whirled.
“You! With me.” What was left of his group of Mercy crew broke away to follow him through the fray toward the Lonesome. Rowan bounded up the stairs.
He didn’t give Shaw time to react. He barreled into him, knocking him against the wheel column. Zanta shouted, and Shaw punched Rowan on his blind side, dislodging his eye patch.
The world shifted, disorienting. Suddenly the air came alive with magic only he could see. Shaw’s eyes widened. “You—”
They’d both lost their weapons in the tackle. Zanta hobbled toward them, in no condition to fight.
“Your sword!” Rowan held out his hand. He could end this now while he had Shaw trapped against the wheel.
Zanta tossed it, and Rowan would’ve caught it if not for the explosion of a stray projectile colliding with the Kraken’s sterncastle, knocking them all off their feet.
Zanta cried out as her injured leg hit the deck.
Godsdamnit, John was launching literal fireballs from a fucking trebuchet.
Rowan scrambled to his feet, casting about for a weapon. If he hadn’t been caught sleeping he’d have at least four knives, and a couple guns on him. But he’d woken up on the floor of Yves’s parlor to the sight of Yves getting struck hard in the head with the butt of a rifle.
He spotted Zanta’s fallen sword and dove for it. It was getting fucking annoying to constantly have to find new weapons. Shaw caught his legs, bringing him crashing to the deck. He kicked, but Shaw’s weight pinned him. He scrambled onto Rowan and drew a pistol from his boot.
It was a tiny thing. The kind of gun designed for assassinations and last resorts. Not enough firepower to blow the back of your head off, but enough to kill at close range. Shaw pressed it to Rowan’s forehead.
“You have the crystal eye,” Shaw growled. The warm metal imprinted a circle into Rowan’s skin.
Rowan couldn’t deny it now, it was there in his face, plain as day. Shaw clearly hadn’t thought the object described in the journal was an actual eye until the moment he’d seen it in Rowan’s eye socket.
“Give it to me.” The hand that wasn’t holding a gun reached for his face, thumb settling against his tear duct like he intended to gouge it out with his bare fingers. Rowan’s mind went blank.
No. No. Not again. He couldn’t…
He couldn’t give up the one thing that allowed him to truly see Yves.
Before he could react, Shaw wrenched him to his feet. The clamor of Rowan’s panicked thoughts had drowned out the sudden eerie silence down on the deck. Even the bombardment seemed to be over. Shaw locked an arm around Rowan’s shoulders, and settled the gun barrel against his temple.
And Rowan saw the reason for the silence. No one had won, but a new player had entered the game.
Chains rattled as Yves stepped over the rail of the Kraken’s Fury, Nia’s limp and sodden form slung over his shoulder.