“The survival instinct says otherwise.”
“The survival instinct is what’s been killing everyone around me.” I stop at the edge of the gold pile. The coins at my belt vibrate, straining toward their kin, and I can feel the curse’s attention focusing—the ancient hunger recognizing a compatible vessel. “Maybe it’s time to stop surviving and start ending things.”
Oreth is close now. Close enough that I can smell him—rot and salt and something sweeter, like flowers growing from corpses. His chains clink as he reaches toward me, one preserved hand extending to touch my face.
“Kneel,” he commands. “Show me you mean it.”
I kneel. The gold is cold against my legs, its hunger pulsing through my body, the curse’s attention settling on me with crushing force. I feel what it wants—to claim me, to bind me, to make me part of the hoard forever.
I feel exactly how to stop it.
“The coins you carried.” Oreth extends his hand. “Give them to me.”
This is it. The moment.
I reach for the pouch. Feel the leather warm against my palm, the coins inside singing with anticipation.
And I throw them.
Not at him—past him. Into the hoard. Scattering across the piled gold in a spray of metal and hungry yearning. The curse reacts instantly, energy cascading through the chamber as forty-seven new pieces demand to be part of the whole. The gold shifts. Slides. Moves with a sound like a thousand coins falling at once.
Oreth screams.
“Zoric!” I’m on my feet, scrambling back from the convulsing gold. “Now! Scatter it!”
He breaks free of the wraiths holding him—their grip weakening as the curse that animates them destabilizes. His blade catches one across the throat, drops it, and then he’s moving, tearing through piles of treasure, kicking coins into the water, spreading the hoard as wide as possible.
The chamber shakes. The gold screams. And Oreth?—
Oreth recovers faster than I expected.
His chain catches my ankle, yanks me off my feet. I hit the gold hard enough to blur my vision, and then I’m being dragged toward him, toward that terrible face and that hollow gaze and the hunger that’s frantic for something to claim.
“Clever girl.” His voice is strained, the curse fighting to hold itself intact. “But not clever enough.”
He lifts me by the throat. His grip is ice and iron, his fingers digging into my flesh hard enough to bruise. Up close, his face is a horror—skull visible beneath skin, eyes nothing but cold light, everything stripped away to reveal the monster underneath.
“Your blood will still work.” He pulls me closer. “Willing or not.”
“Then you don’t know much about curses.” I manage the words through the grip on my throat. “Thalira says willing sacrifice has power. Forced taking has consequences.”
“The witch lies.”
“Maybe.” I grin, bloody and defiant. “Guess we’ll find out.”
Zoric’s blade takes Oreth’s arm off at the elbow.
The dead captain drops me, screaming, and I scramble back as the two men who were once brothers finally clash. Zoric’sblade sings through the air in arcs of brutal efficiency. Oreth’s remaining arm and chains lash out in response, the curse feeding him strength despite his wound.
But the curse is failing. I can see it—the gold dissolving at the edges, coins turning to rust and dust. The wraiths are collapsing, their animating force draining away. The chamber is filling with the death throes of something ancient and hungry.
“The chains!” I shout at Zoric. “The gold fused to his skin—that’s his anchor! Destroy that!”
He hears me. Shifts his angle of attack. But Oreth is fast despite his wounds, and the chains are wrapped tight around his torso, protected by arms and movement and the primal instinct of something that doesn’t want to die.
I sprint toward them, slide beneath Oreth’s reaching arm, and drive my blade into his back. Not to kill—just to anchor myself. Then I start cutting.
The chains are part of him, fused to flesh, resistant to steel. But I’m not trying to cut through them cleanly. I’m sawing, hacking, tearing at the joins between gold and meat. The metal burns my hands—cold so intense, it feels like fire—but I don’t stop. Can’t stop.
