Thalira watches our exchange with undisguised amusement. “You two are either going to save each other or destroy each other. I look forward to seeing which.”
“Helpful.”
“I’m not here to be helpful. I’m here to trade information for information.” She returns to the coin pattern, adjusting pieces with careful precision. “Speaking of which, your coins have told me interesting things. The curse that infected them is changing. Evolving. Oreth has been feeding it for years, and it’s grown stronger than any curse I’ve seen.”
“Stronger how?”
“The drowned he commands—they’re not just animated corpses anymore. They’re extensions of his will, carrying fragments of the curse itself. Kill one, and the fragment returns to him. Makes him stronger.” She frowns at the coins. “You can’t fight his army, girl. Every victory would feed his power.”
“Then we avoid the army. Take the route you described, reach the hoard before he realizes we’re coming.”
“He’ll know the instant you enter the water. The curse tells him everything.” Thalira scoops the coins back into their pouch. “But the wards might mask your approach. Buy you time. If you’re fast enough, clever enough, lucky enough?—”
“We’ll be enough.” Zoric takes the pouch from her hands, turns, offers it to me. “We have to be.”
I accept the coins. Feel them settle against my skin, their hunger familiar and unwelcome. Months of carrying this burden. A few more hours, and it ends one way or another.
The climb back to Dreadhaven is harder than the descent—muscles aching, lungs burning, every handhold a test of strength I’m not sure I have left. Zoric stays close, his body blocking the worst of the wind, his presence a steadying force I’m grateful for even as I resent needing it.
Halfway up, I slip.
My foot finds empty air instead of stone, and for a horrible instant I’m falling—wind rushing past, the distant roar of waves, the absolute certainty that this is how it ends. Not in the caves. Not fighting the curse. Just a stupid accident on a cliff face I never should have been climbing.
A hand catches my arm. Hauls me against the rock. Against him.
“I’ve got you.” His voice grumbles in my ear, his body pressed against my back, his arm a bar of muscle pinning me to the cliff. “I’ve got you.”
I can’t breathe. Not from the fall—from him. The heat of his skin through my clothes. The smell of salt and something else, something that makes my pulse kick in ways that have nothing to do with fear. His breath on my neck. His hand on my waist.
I blank it out of my mind.
But I feel it anyway. Want it anyway. The warmth of another body against mine, the certainty that someone is there to catch me when I fall. Things I haven’t let myself want since Finn died. Things I trained myself to stop needing.
“You can let go now.” My voice comes out whispered. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I know.” He doesn’t let go. “Just... give me a moment.”
A moment. The word hangs between us, heavy with things neither of us is saying. I can feel his heart beating against my back. Fast. Too fast for this to be a simple concern.
“The curse.” I manage. “The witch said it works on want.”
“This isn’t the curse.” His voice drops. Rough and low. “This is...”
He doesn’t finish. Doesn’t have to. Because I know. I’ve been feeling it too—the pull that has nothing to do with cursed gold, the awareness that started when he dragged me out of the sea and hasn’t stopped since.
“We should keep moving.” I push the words out. “Sundown isn’t waiting.”
“No.” His arm tightens briefly. Then releases. “It isn’t.”
We finish the climb in silence. But I can still feel the ghost of his touch. Can still hear the roughness in his voice.
And yet. When he reaches back to help me over the final ledge, I take his hand without hesitation.
SEVEN
ZORIC
Four ships now.
