As if we all thought movement would draw our fate closer, no one moved, but only a few feet from the Wraith, a deep bellow erupted. It was worry and grief, and it stripped all the blood from my body.
“Rose,” I whispered.
Blackbeard, who’d been watching at the edge of the ship, lay down and let out a small mewl that wasn’t like him at all. Of all the omens I'd seen, that was the one that struck the most fear into my heart.
“Her Fylgja knows what we do not,” Morwenna said.
“And what the fuck is that?” Oscar asked, breathing coming quickly.
“She has touched what should not be touched, and now the Leviathan will be her judge,” Morwenna said, her voice hauntingly low. “It will judge us as well.”
She turned to face me, and all I saw was resignation.
“If it will soothe you and your crew’s fears, now would be a good time to strike up your weapons. There is peace in surrendering, though,” she said, walking down below deck as if it were any night.
“Bash,” Oscar said.
I was not interested in surrender. I opened my mouth to give the order, but the sea spoke first.
Something large and impossible slid under the ship, knocking into it and sending us careening portside. Just as quickly, it turned and sent us the other way. If this were judgment, then we were going to have to fight like hell.
“Ready the cannons!” I ordered.
Shouts erupted in the air, and Koinu bellowed something that sounded guttural and angry.
“He’s mad,” Dilly yelled over the sound of chaos.
“It’s better than grieving,” I answered. “It means we still have something to fight for.”
Oscar met my eyes and nodded.
The sea inhaled.
Not a metaphor—not a sailor’s tale uttered in some smoky tavern to frighten green lads. The ocean itself drew breath, a pull so powerful it dragged the air from our lungs and the lantern flames sideways.
Then the water rose.
Not in a wave, not in a swell—but in a shape.
A teal-green wall of scaled flesh erupted upward beside us, casting the Wraith in its shadow. The lanterns flickered once, twice—then died entirely, snuffed out by the sheer force of its arrival.
The Leviathan.
Longer than any map dared mark.
Thicker than the hull of the Wraith by tenfold.
Its body coiled beneath the surface in impossible spirals that pulsed with deep-sea bioluminescence—veins of turquoise and bruise-blue light flickering like heartbeat and hunger.
A single eye broke the surface, round as a cannon hatch, glowing with an inner storm. It fixed on us, on the wood beneath our feet, on the breath in our throats.
On me.
And I knew.
Somehow, impossibly, I knew that it understood everything.
“Fire!” I roared.
