“And how many others died because those coins were here at all?” The woman’s voice rises. “Doric. Henna. My brother—” Her voice breaks. “They died because she brought Oreth’s curse to our door.”
I stand frozen, the words hitting like physical blows. Because she’s not wrong. I did bring the curse here. I’ve been bringing it everywhere I go for months, leaving a trail of dead ships and drowned sailors. Dreadhaven is just the latest stop on a journey paved with corpses.
“Enough.” Zoric’s voice cuts through the murmuring. He steps forward, placing himself between me and the gathered survivors. “The curse is broken. Oreth is dead. What happened, happened. We don’t have time for blame—we have work to do.”
The woman who spoke falls silent, but her eyes don’t leave me. I can read her thoughts as clearly as if she’d spoken them.
“Salt Margit.” Zoric turns to the older guard. “The survivors with families on the coast—when’s the next supply run to Saltmere?”
“A few days, if the weather holds.” Margit’s expression is carefully neutral. “Word will spread.”
“Word of what?”
“Everything.” Her gaze flicks to me. “The siege. The curse. The woman who brought it.” A pause. “There’s a bounty on her head. Has been for two years. Some folks here have family who’d be interested in that information.”
The words hit with the force of stones dropped into still water. I knew the bounty existed—Gyla Murker’s price on my head, payment for debts I can never repay. But hearing it spoken aloud, here, surrounded by people who’ve just lost friends and family...
“Then we deal with that when it comes.” Zoric’s voice is hard. “For now, no one leaves Dreadhaven without my permission. We have dead to burn, a keep to rebuild, and wounds to tend. Everything else waits.”
The gathered survivors disperse, returning to the grim work of salvage and recovery. But the looks don’t stop. The whispers don’t fade. And I stand there in the ruins of a fortress that I helped destroy and helped save, knowing that everything I’ve been running from is about to catch up with me.
Zoric’s hand presses against the small of my back. A private touch, hidden from view. “Stay close.”
“Planning to.” I keep my voice light, but something cold is settling in my stomach. “Though I’m starting to think I should have drowned after all.”
“Don’t.” His fingers tighten against my spine. “Don’t even joke about it.”
I look up at him—this massive, scarred, guilt-ridden orc who fought beside me, bled beside me, held me against cold stone while the world fell apart around us. I think about what he said in the alcove.
“Zoric.” I pitch my voice low, for his ears only. “What happens now?”
He doesn’t answer immediately. His gaze sweeps the ruined keep, the bodies in the courtyard, the handful of survivors who are all that remain of Dreadhaven’s garrison. When he finally speaks, his voice is rougher than I’ve ever heard it.
“Now we survive. Same as we’ve been doing.” His fingers lace through mine, hidden in the folds of our clothes. “You’re not alone in this. Whatever comes—you’re not alone.”
It should be comforting. It is comforting. But as I stand in the wreckage of a fortress, surrounded by people who blame me for their losses and watched by a man who’s just seen his entire world crumble, I can’t shake the feeling that surviving is about to get a lot harder.
The sea has stopped trying to kill me. But I have a feeling the land is just getting started.
FIFTEEN
ZORIC
Iwake before dawn. Old habit. The kind that keeps you alive when the sea decides it wants you dead.
For a moment, I don’t move. Just lie there in the gray half-light filtering through the arrow slit that serves as my window, listening to the sounds of the keep settling around me. Water dripping somewhere in the damaged levels below. The distant crash of waves against the cliffs. Wind moaning through gaps in the stone that weren’t there a few days ago.
And breathing. Soft. Even. Coming from the woman curled against my side.
Aviora.
I turn my head slowly, careful not to wake her. She’s burrowed into the hollow of my shoulder, one arm draped across my chest, her fingers curled loosely against my ribs. Her hair has dried in a tangled mess across my pillow—dark against the faded linen, carrying the salt smell of the sea we nearly died in.
In sleep, her face loses the sharp edges it carries when she’s awake. The wariness smooths away. The calculating assessment that lives in her gaze goes quiet. She looks younger. Softer. The kind of woman who might have had a different life if the world hadn’t broken her early and often.
I shouldn’t be here. Should have taken the floor, given her the bed, maintained some semblance of the distance that kept me sane for the past years. Instead, when she stumbled into my quarters last night—exhausted, hollow-eyed, still wearing clothes stiff with salt and blood—I pulled her down beside me and held her until she stopped shaking.
We didn’t speak. Didn’t need to. The words would have been inadequate anyway. What do you say after you’ve watched a man destroy a curse, burn your people, and then take her against cold stone because the alternative was drowning in the truth of how close you both came to dying?
