ONE
AVIORA
The sea wants me dead.
I’ve known it for months now—felt its hunger in every wave that crashed over my deck, every ship that sank beneath my feet. But knowing something and experiencing it are different beasts, and right now, with my fingers scraping bloody against splintered wood and my lungs burning with salt water, the difference has never been clearer.
Another wave slams me into the wreckage. Pain explodes through my ribs. I cling tighter to what’s left of the mast, my arms screaming, my grip slipping on wood slick with rain and worse.
Hold on. Just hold on.
The storm shrieks overhead, lightning splitting the black sky in jagged veins. In the flash, I see them—the rocks that gutted my ship, rising from the water in serrated rows. The Wrecktide. Every sailor from here to Saltmere knows to avoid these waters. Every captain with half a brain gives this coast a wide berth.
But I’m not here because I wanted to be. I’m here because something brought me.
The lights.
I saw them an hour ago—pale blue, drifting among the reef stones. Beautiful. Beckoning. Our helmsman turned toward them before anyone could stop him, his eyes glassy, his hands moving on the wheel with mechanical precision. By the time I reached him, it was too late. The hull screamed as it struck the first reef, and then the sea poured in, and then?—
Don’t think about it. Don’t think about the screaming.
But I can’t help it. Jorah’s face as the wave took him under. The cook’s prayers cut short mid-word. The hand that grabbed my ankle in the dark water—frigid, impossibly frigid—and tried to drag me down.
I kicked free. I kick free every time.
The thought tastes bitter. I’ve been surviving for years now. Running. Escaping. Leaving behind everyone who gets too close because staying means watching them die. First Finn. Then crew after crew, ship after ship, each one claimed by the curse I’m too stupid—or too stubborn—to outrun.
My hand finds the pouch at my belt. Still there. Still sealed against the water.
This is your fault.
They don’t answer. They never answer. They just pull, their icy need seeping through the leather, through my skin, into the hollow places where better emotions used to live.
Another wave. Another mouthful of water that burns going down. My arms are giving out, muscles tearing, strength bleeding away with every second I spend in this churning hell. The mast is drifting, caught in a current that’s pulling me deeper into the reef maze. Toward the rocks. Toward death.
Move.
I force my legs to kick. Pain shoots through my left ankle—twisted when the deck buckled beneath me, maybe broken, definitely useless. The cold has numbed everything else, turned my body into a clumsy, unresponsive thing. But I kick anyway,fighting the current, fighting the exhaustion, fighting the seductive whisper at the back of my mind that saysI won’t let go. I haven’t survived this long by giving up.
The reef rises on my left—jagged teeth reaching for soft flesh. I twist away, feel stone scrape along my hip, ripping fabric and skin in a single burning line. Blood in the water now. Blood and salt and the taste of my own desperation.
Lightning again. And in the flash?—
Stone. Not reef. Something built. Rising from the water in clean geometric lines, a wall or a platform or?—
A harbor.
The realization hits harder than the waves. A harbor means a shore. A shore means survival. My arms find new strength, fueled by hope I thought I’d forgotten how to feel.
The current fights me. The sea fights me. Everything in this cursed stretch of water seems determined to claim me before I reach safety. But I’ve been fighting my whole life—fighting poverty, fighting circumstance, fighting the endless procession of people who looked at a dock rat and saw nothing worth saving.
You’re worth saving.
My hand strikes stone. Real, solid, immovable stone, crusted with barnacles that slice my palm open but I don’t care because it’s something to hold, something that won’t shift or sink or disappear beneath me. I haul myself up, every muscle screaming, every breath a victory torn from the sea’s grip.
The platform is narrow—maybe four feet across—slippery with spray and rain. I collapse onto it face-first, coughing water, tasting blood, trembling so hard my teeth rattle. For a long moment, I just lie there. Breathing. Living.
Get up. This isn’t over.
