Why was it so dark? I brought my hands, which had been bound together with rope, to my face. I was blindfolded, and someone was hauling me through the water, holding me beneath my arms. From the stench searing my nostrils—rum and rot—I knew it was Teachie and Rackham.
We were moving quickly, at a speed that would match my own or the Mer’s. How far had we traveled whilst I’d been unconscious? My head throbbed where Rackham had struck me, and a dull ache weighed down every inch of my body.
“Where are you taking me?” I rasped, turning my blindfolded face from side to side, searching the dark for the pirates I knew were on either side of me.
No answer, just an awful chuckle and rummy breath.
I wriggled against their grip.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” a voice warned. I suspected it was Teachie, from the husky tone.
A chill crept through the water, pebbling the skin on my arms as amournful wail sounded, soft, like a distant breeze, but then intensifying into a wailing scream. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as the lament filled with grief and anguish. “W-what is this place?” My voice cracked as I shook my shoulders against the hands holding me.
“Those are the cries of the souls lost to the garden.” Teachie’s breath was warm against my neck.
The Garden of Mortimer.We must have been passing the outskirts of the Mors Kingdom.
We continued moving, and my insides knotted as the haunting cries drifted after us, like pleas of desperation. My throat was parched, and hunger twisted in my stomach. I battled to stay alert, but exhaustion crept in, and soon, my eyes fluttered shut.
I awoke to rough hands removing my blindfold. The ocean surrounding me was warmer here, its hue a blinding light aqua as the bandana slipped from my eyes. I thrashed against the two pirates’ grip, but they held me fast, dragging me through the water.
“We thought you might like to see this mermaid lover,” Teachie growled in my ear as they hauled me up a sandy bank.
My blood chilled as I took in the scene below me from its ridge. Tattered pavilions stretched out as far as the eye could see, and thousands of silver-stained Drowned moved between them. The pirates dragged me down the sandbank toward the waiting cavalry, then hauled me along a winding path of sand that snaked through the tents.
Terror clawed at my core as my gaze darted left and right. Awnings crowded the walkway on either side, their frayed cloth coverings crudely propped on driftwood poles and lashed together with rope, looking like they might have been salvaged remnants of torn sails.
There were Drowned all around us. Some were sharpening weapons,some sitting at makeshift tables sharing bottles of rum, others brawling or fucking. All of them were covered in the same silver-stained veins as Teachie and Rackham.
As we passed, the ones nearest the sandy track halted to leer at us. Some jeered and whooped as if I were a battle prize. My stomach turned when a Drowned man with a ripped cap and overalls licked his rotten teeth. “Can I have some of her once you’re finished?”
He reached for me, and I let out a frightened yelp, but Rackham kicked him away.
Then I saw the Mer, and bile burned the back of my throat as my insides churned. They had been strung up on crossbars at regular intervals along the walkway. Most were wearing black armor, and I recognized it as the same design worn by Queen Asherah of Mors. These were the bodies from Manannán’s most recent victory.
As we drew closer to the nearest crossbar and its shadow fell on my face, nausea eddied in my gut. I looked up, meeting the lifeless merman’s cloudy eyes. His hair hung limp, dark tail faded, skin gray, and his body... his body was a husk of what it might’ve been, gaunt within his Mors armor.
I’m so sorry this happened to you.I silently prayed for him.
A long-clawed hand seized his tail, and I gasped as the slick, hairless head of a Drowned man appeared, sinking its rotting teeth into the merman’s flesh.
“Get off him,” I cried, trembling against Teachie and Rackham as the creature sank its teeth deeper, a revolting expression of bliss spreading across its face as it began to drink.
“You make me sick, all of you,” I spat, tears blurring my vision as my shoulders shook.
Teachie and Rackham only laughed and continued dragging me between them.
At the end of the rows of tents lay a sunken galleon, half-buried insand and listing to one side. Its bare masts jutted forward, casting long shadows across the seabed, its wood distorted by the presence of sea life. The pirates hauled me toward the towering deck, where a crudely fashioned hatch had been hewn.
“Put her blindfold back on,” Teachie grunted. Rackham began refastening the bandana over my eyes as Teachie held me still.
“Wait, no,” I pleaded, panic churning through me at the thought of being shrouded by darkness while heading into what seemed to be the heart of this awful place.
I tried to escape, squirming and tugging and kicking him in the shin. I reached for my magic, but it wasn’t there. I scrunched up my eyes, but there wasn’t even a flicker of silver. The blue-ringed octopus venom must still have been in my system, or perhaps they’d injected me with more while I’d been passed out.
“We can’t have you seeing the layout of the lord’s underground lair now, can we?” Teachie made a scoffing sound. “Not that you’d have much luck escaping. The maze of tunnels we’ve built travels beneath the Caribbean to the sunken city of Port Royal.”
My world went dark as Rackham finished fastening the tie around my eyes and grabbed my arm again. The trapdoor creaked open, and the two pirates hauled me through it. I could tell we had gone into the eroded ship’s belly, and then we began traveling downward.
