“Go find Oscar and see if he has a job for you, and make sure to listen to Val when we make port, no wandering off.”
“Yes, Captain!” he said, running off to the front of the ship to where Oscar was gathering rigging.
I stared after him for a while, watching the way Oscar played with him and taught him how to tie a knot. Arms wrapped around my waist, and Rose rested her head against my back. I let out a long breath, drawing strength from her.
“Billy would be so proud of you,” she said.
I fought back the feeling threatening to drown me. I wasn’t ready to feel it. Not when we were about to make port and hopefully find answers. I missed Billy in a way that I never thought myself capable of. He was everywhere. No part of this ship that he didn’t touch.
“He’s a good kid,” I said.
Rose squeezed me once.
“And you, Sebastian Flynn, are a good person,” she said.
I turned, pulling her into me as she laughed and tried to escape.
“Well, now you’ve gone too far.” I joked.
She let me catch her easily, and with her in my arms, I could almost believe those words.
“Don’t you two have a cabin or something to do that shit in?” Val called across the way.
Unfortunately, as the port of Angra do Heroísmo was quickly taking shape before us, there was not enough time to do the things I would have liked to do for my wife just then.
“Are you ready?” Rose asked, raising her chin up.
“The sooner we get this over with, the sooner I can get that mark off your wrist,” I said.
In answer, Rose pulled back her jacket and held out the serpent mark between us.
“Sometimes it burns or itches,” she confessed. “The closer we get, the more frequent it is.”
“That’s because a North Sea vowwantsto be fulfilled,” Dilly said, coming up behind us carrying a satchel that appeared half her weight. “The mark will encourage you to fulfil it in any way possible.”
“Why do you think he chose that vow?” Rose asked.
“Probably because of all the vows of the deep, that one has the highest rate of fulfilment. It’s why I don’t think he was trying to trick you. He genuinely wants whatever that conch shell does.” Dilly said.
“Which is why it’s probably a mistake to give it to him,” Bash said.
Dilly nodded. “Hence why he made her make the vow. Now you have to choose between giving him something you shouldn’t or her dying.”
Rose frowned, tucking her wrist back into her sleeve.
“Maybe there is a third option,” she said. “But first things first, we need to know what it is and how to get it.”
Dilly stared out at the bustling port town. “I doubt the pages pulled from the journal are out there, but someone has to know.”
I hoped she was right, but either way, this was a shot in the dark. Either way, we were going to retrieve that shell by anymeans necessary because failure meant Rose dying, and that was not a fate I was willing to endure.
Angra announced itself long before we saw the curve of her bay.
The wind carried the scent first—wet stone, citrus groves crushed under the sun, and that volcanic tang the Azores wear like a second skin. It was cleaner than the ports I was used to. No rotting fish, no sour ale, no unwashed sinners crowding the docks. Just salt, heat, and the slow, steady breath of an island that had weathered centuries of storms and dared the sea to try again.
When the fog thinned, I caught my first glimpse of her.
The fortress walls rose out of the cliffside like the spine of some great beast, São João Baptista on one end, São Sebastião on the other, watching the harbor with all the suspicion of old kings. Between them lay the town—whitewashed houses stacked along the hillside, red-tiled roofs bright as spilled wine, church towers spearing the sky.
