We ran. Val’s laughter echoed like a dare to the gods, Dilly clutching the map to her chest, Inu pulling Emille forward as he stumbled. The air thickened, humid and choking. Beneath the waves, something vast stirred.
The moonlight fractured on the water’s edge as the island began to sink.
We leapt the last few feet, hitting the boat hard enough to nearly capsize it. Val shoved off with her oar, and I snatched the other, rowing with everything I had left. The sea roared its discontent, waves rolling outward from the creature’s descent.
We rowed because anything else meant death. A groan split the air, and a massive wave rolled under us, dragging us further out to sea, like the mysterious creature didn’t want to harm us either. My heart beating outside my chest, I clutched the edge of the boat while it tilted and creaked with the pressure beneath it.
And then—silence.
The water smoothed, eerily calm. Only the moon remained, a pale coin above an unbroken mirror.
“We’re alive,” Dilly whispered.
“What a shame,” Val said, wiping salt spray from her face.
Alive. We were alive. Against all odds.
Emille held up the two vials. They glowed faintly, as if they too were alive.
I exhaled, shaking. “Get them sealed and hidden,” I said.
Val leaned back, hair plastered to her face, and let out a low whistle. “You’re mad, Captain. Utterly mad. Much more so than Bash ever was.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Probably why he is in a cell, and I am not.”
Dilly’s voice trembled, soft and hollow. “We just survived an aspidochelone’s descent.”
I looked back over my shoulder at the still sea. The water seemed to breathe once more, a pulse beneath its stillness.
Too easy. I couldn’t help but feel like that last wave was a lifeline, but if I knew one thing about the Mysterious Deep, it was that it never gave–only took. It was luck. Nothing more and nothing less.
The boat cut through the black water toward the waiting horizon, five shadows fleeing an ancient god, and me—haunted by the truth that monsters of the deep were never half as dangerous as what desperation could make of a woman.
Chapter six
A Touch of Madness
Bash
It is not the cell that drives one mad, but the echo of one’s own thoughts pacing the same four walls.
— Letters from the Gallows, Volume II
The smell of shit would follow me all the days of my miserable life, of that I was sure. I could feel it clinging to my clothes and everything it touched. Anything was better than this. The gallows would be a welcome friend by the time I finally made it to them. I should have written in that letter that she was torturing me by denying me the fate I designed for myself. It likely wouldn’t have swayed her, but she would at least have it on her conscience.
My back ached after being on this poor excuse for a bed. Billy would have called me whiny for all these complaints and told me it was the price of pirating. I fished through my mind, trying to recall how Billy endured his time in Newgate.
Unfortunately, of everything he taught me, I catalogued it in a less important file inside my mind. Covered in dust and time, coupled with malnutrition and chronic exhaustion, made the information nigh on inaccessible. Just another thing I’d never be able to ask him.
The sound of a pistol shooting off and the smell of smoke clogged all of my senses as I sat up with a choked gasp.
“Easy, Bash,” Oscar said, from where he was sitting against the wall. “It’s only in your head. Everything’s fine.”
That was a load of shit. I’d seen dogs more groomed and well-fed than the man across from me. His beard was long and tangled, but his mustache was somehow still patchy, which would have amused Rose greatly. More concerning was that his clothes, which used to fit him perfectly, were now nearly two sizes too big. His eyes were glazed over as he stared at the ceiling.
Realization settled over me with icy tendrils.
“I’ve done this before,” I said.
