“Yes,” I said, my voice low but cutting. “And tell them to be ready for a fight.”
His mouth twitched. “Aye. Think it’s trouble?”
“I’m counting on it.”
He didn’t ask why. He didn’t need to. The crew was already in motion, blades and pistols being checked, boots thudding on the planks.
If there was danger waiting in that darkness, I’d welcome it. If there was blood to spill, I’d take it.
The wreckage groaned under our weight as we spread across her deck. The boards were slick beneath my boots—not just from seawater, but from blood that had dried in dark, sticky pools.
Lantern light swayed, revealing the bodies. Dozens of them. Sailors sprawled where they’d fallen, some slumped against the rails, others collapsed mid-step.
Every throat had been opened, every chest torn. The wounds were clean in their precision—surgical in some places, savagely ripped in others. Whoever had done this hadn’t simply killed. They’d harvested.
Garen crouched beside a corpse, his jaw tightening. “Covenant.”
I didn’t need him to say it. I knew the signs. The air reeked of copper and decay, of magic burned down to nothing but ash. It clung to the wreckage like a curse, thick enough to taste. Planks shifted beneath our boots as Nerina climbed aboard, her movements stiff, distant—still carrying the weight of the words we’d thrown at each other this morning.
Crates lay scattered between the bodies, lids torn off or split wide, iron clasps bent with brutal force. Inside—
The first was packed with straw.
At first glance, I thought the contents were weapons. Bone-white curves. Blackened points.
Then the shape came into focus.
A horn.
Talons.
A wing, shredded and scorched at the edges.
A fae beast, bound in iron before its throat was cut. The restraints still bit into flesh long after death, rusted with old blood. Someone had taken their time.
Nerina stopped short behind me. The next crate was worse.
A siren lay crumpled inside, her body folded at angles no living thing should bend. Her tail had been split open from gill to fin, the delicate webbing torn apart. Once-shimmering scales were dulled to gray, scraped raw and broken. Her mouth hung open in a soundless scream.
Nerina didn’t flinch. Didn’t recoil. She just stared.
Crate after crate told the same story.
None of them spared. None of them pitied. Whatever strength or magic they’d once possessed had meant nothing.
I felt her anger gather beside me—still hot from the morning, still aimed at me, but now… expanding. Turning outward. Taking in everything.
“Nerina,” I said quietly, stepping closer. “Maybe you should go back to the Marrow.”
I reached for her arm. She tore away from me. Not fear. Not surprise. Anger.
Her eyes flashed, bright and furious, before she shut me out entirely. She didn’t say a word. Not one. Just turned back to thewreckage, to the bodies, to the crates stacked like cargo instead of corpses.
As though I were no longer there.
Whatever fight we’d had that morning suddenly felt small—irrelevant—against the truth unfolding in front of her.
Something in her hardened—not fear, not horror, but certainty.
