I moved to the back window and looked out.
Angra do Heroísmo rose out of the fog like a bruise—dark roofs slick with rain, lanterns smudged into soft, trembling halos, the harbor water thick and gunmetal. The Azores had always looked like a place that couldn’t decide whether it belonged to the sea or the sky. Tonight it belonged to neither. Tonight it belonged to something in-between, where prayers went to rot, and bargains came to collect.
My wrist itched beneath my sleeve.
“Rose.” Bash’s voice was quiet. “He’ll want it the moment you step off.”
“I know.”
“And Morwenna—”
“I know,” I repeated, because if I let my thoughts touch that woman—her wet hair on my deck, her hands on the ropes of ourfate, her eyes that did not blink when she spoke of drowning—I would begin to feel the sick churn of sympathy, and sympathy was a luxury I didn’t trust myself with.
Not today, when everything I’d done–terrible things–awful costs– they'd all been for this moment. I could not afford to be anything less than prepared.
The cabin was too small for all the ghosts. I could feel them crowding around us—Val laughing with a knife between her teeth, Inu’s stillness like a blade, Billy’s voice telling us the sea never gave without taking.
I turned back and looked at Oscar.
He slept like someone who had been punched hard enough to forget how to breathe. His mouth was slightly open; his lashes stuck together from salt and crying. There was a pistol beneath his hand, fingers curled around it even in sleep, like he expected the world to attack him the moment he let go.
I swallowed hard.
“Let him sleep,” I whispered.
Bash nodded. “We won’t wake him until we have to.”
I tucked my hair behind my ear and felt Sebastian Jr. shift, the crab’s small legs tightening briefly in my curls as if he, too, could sense Angra drawing close, the promise of land and the threat of people.
Blackbeard lifted his head at the mention of nothing at all. His remaining paw kneaded the blanket with a slow, satisfied violence. His eyes were half-lidded, unimpressed by everything except my hand.
“You’ll stay,” I told him softly, as if he’d listen.
He blinked once.
Which, for Blackbeard, was practically a vow.
Outside, the Wraith’s bell sounded—low and mournful. We were entering the harbor.
Bash moved to the door. “I’ll have Dilly bring the men up. And Emille.”
“Emille?” I asked.
Bash’s expression tightened. “If Edmonds decides he doesn’t like the ending of his deal, I want our doctor where I can see him.”
Fair.
I reached for the abyssal conch on the desk.
It was lighter than it had any right to be. A shell that had once held a song that could destroy monsters of the deep or whisper untold secrets that could give a person power that would change the world. Now it sat mute and cold, its surface dull where the bioluminescence had burned out. The crack along its side was thin—almost elegant.
My stomach turned.
“I hate it,” I admitted.
Bash’s gaze flicked to it. “Good. Hate keeps you sharper than reverence.”
I cradled it anyway, because hatred didn’t change obligation.
