Dilly nodded. “Which is why we are doing it, but acknowledging the cost matters.”
“Fair enough,” Val said. “Shall we, then, because the Bane is almost on us and I prefer not to hang today?”
Sure enough, she was closing in; the sea turning white with the disturbance of her entry.
“Koinu?” I asked.
“No sign,” Dilly said. “I put some on Blackbeard’s food just in case. He glared at me the whole time, but seemed to be tolerating it. I have no way of knowing if it affects creatures of the deep.”
So be it.
Hopefully, Koinu was smart enough to know to stay away. History said that he was, but I couldn’t stall on his behalf.
I reached out and gently took the first jar from Emille, who wore a permanent frown at this point. I uncorked it with a too-loud popping sound that was followed by red smoke that singed my nose hairs with its potency. I was the one who ordered this–I would be the one to cast it into the sea.
Before I could tip it over, Dilly took the second jar and sneezed as the smoke reached her. When I raised my eyebrow at her, she merely shrugged her shoulders and wiggled her nose.
“It was my idea. I’m just as responsible,” she said.
And that was just another reason why Cordelia Shaw was one of the best people I knew, even if what we were doing was wrong. I was grateful to have her by my side.
Taking a deep breath, we lowered the blood-red sap into the sea and watched as everything turned to crimson.
“Seas,” Emille whispered.
Seas indeed.
Red.
Not red like wine or rust or spilled blood on a deck.
No.
Red like a wound in the world.
The sea split open beneath the Wraith, blooming outward in great crimson veins. The color spread fast—too fast—like it had been waiting beneath the surface all along. The waves stilled in a single breath, falling into an uncanny calm that set my teeth on edge. The air thickened as a faint, metallic mist seeped upward, brushing against my cheeks with icy fingers.
A hush rolled across the deck—not silence, but the kind of quiet a church holds before a funeral. My pulse hammered so loudly I thought the sap had found its way into my veins.
The Bane reached the outskirts of the bloom—and slowed.
This close now, I could see enough that there was no hiding from the consequences of what I’d done.
I watched them through the rising red mist—shadows at first, then men, armed and shouting… and then falling eerily still. Their oars hung useless. Their sails slackened, though the wind still blew. One sailor lurched backward as if shoved by an unseen hand. Another pressed both palms to his temples, dropping to his knees. A third stumbled to the railing and vomited overboard.
A scream tore the air—thin, ragged, breaking. Then another. And another.
The sap was working.
I gripped the rail, staring straight into the reddened water. It stared back. Ripples spiraled outward, shimmering like wet muscle. For a heartbeat—a mad, impossible heartbeat—I swore I saw a face beneath the surface. Someone I cared about. Someone I had lost. Billy’s outline flickered in the dark, distorted by waves, and my vision buckled.
“No,” I whispered, digging my fingernails into the wood. “Not me. Not today.”
The antidote Emille had crafted still burned faintly in my throat, a bitter anchor keeping me from tipping into the hallucinations. But even with it, the mist carried whispers—soft and pleading—as though the sea had been waiting centuries to speak.
The Bane crept through the red waters now, its men staggering like drunkards. Lurching. Dropping. Shouting at ghosts I couldn’t see.
Fear had her fingers around their throats now.
