“You are really scary,” the redhead with bouncing curls said as I boarded the Wraith.
“You think so? I’ve been practicing,” I said, nudging her shoulder.
“How did you get Koinu to do that? Is it a trigger word, or are you projecting? Because I absolutely have no precedent for that, certainly not for Koinu in general, but–”
I sucked the sea air into my lungs, letting it burn everywhere it touched.
“Dilly, I have no idea. None of it. I really don’t.”
Her bouncing feet stilled as she reached out her hand to me.
“Soon, right?” she whispered. “It’s a good sign we haven’t heard about Oscar and that they haven’t held a trial for Flynn, right?”
I shrugged.
The answer was another “I don’t know.” All I truly knew was I couldn’t keep sinking ships and traumatizing sailors who just needed to make a living. I was becoming a monster worse than anything in the Mysterious Deep.
Three ships in four months, and still they didn’t know my name. A name without power was useless as a bargaining piece. I needed England to fear me as much as it had Captain Sebastian Flynn. That was the only way I was getting him and my brother back.
“He didn’t know your name,” Inu said, coming up behind us.
She clutched her sword close to her. I watched as my crew came back over our side, protests and pleas ringing in my ears. I had to sink it. A name meant nothing if it wasn’t feared.
“We should go. I can sneak in and–” Inu began.
I held up my hand and met her dark, up-tilted eyes. “Flynn is the prize Captain Edmonds has worked his entire career for. Hewon’t give him up without an equal prize. The amount of guards on them will be impossible even for you. We do this right or not at all,” I said.
The muscle in Inu’s cheek feathered, and I could see her composure slipping behind the mask she carefully crafted. Worry leaving her insides in tatters meant only for the wind. I knew how she felt because it was ingrained in my very bones.
“Not at all isn’t an option,” she bit out.
I’d spent months disliking her. Months questioning my brother’s sanity for how he loved her because she was quiet and stoic. Mutual loss did something interesting to fractured relationships. We had the same goal, and as long as that existed, only we could understand each other. The rest of the world was just collateral damage.
I nodded, taking in the sea before me. The mist had been pushed away, dissipated under the weight of the sea breeze. An inevitability. It didn’t even try to fight back.
“I agree. So we take a bigger prize that forces them to acknowledge us.”
“Like what?” Dilly asked.
It is said insanity was when there were no lines you wouldn’t cross to achieve your goal.
The planks were removed, and there could be no further delay. Messages didn’t mean anything if they didn’t have a cost.
I raised my hand and balled it into a fist. The sound of cannon fire filled my ears, but it was the rattle of the Wraith that reminded me I was alive. Ten cannons, one after another, filled the morning air with smoke that clung to it more than the mist ever had.
Wood splintered into the sea, the watery depths claiming the lives left on board. Another sacrifice to a one-sided war. Sooner or later, Edmonds would realize the game we played.
Flynn made his name over the course of a decade; I had less than a year to do the same, and the clock was loud enough that I didn’t sleep anymore for its incessant ticking.
I watched as Ruby’s Revel sank below the surface. A ship my father named after my older sister and loved with his entire being. That was before James Allan stole it. One month ago, the courts sided with a liar and a thief, making James the sole owner of a company my father built with his bare hands.
It was a shame James thought I was dead. I could only imagine the way he raged after every ship of his I sank, wondering why the Wraith targeted only his company. A smarter man would have figured it out by now, but I suspected it would take me standing in front of him to realize the woman he called ‘fiancée’ was the reason his world was now crashing and burning.
My only consolation was that I would be the one to tell him.
“East,” I ordered.
The sea waves and Koinu sang as one as we left behind the living to their fate.
