“You keep saying that.”
“Because I keep meaning it.” He draws me toward him, around the table’s corner, until I’m standing between his knees. His hands settle on my hips. “Whatever’s down there—we face it. Same as everything else.”
I let him pull me closer. Let myself sink into his warmth, the solid reality of his body against mine. My arms wrap around his neck. My forehead rests against his.
“I found a possible location.” The words barely audible. “The captain noted theFortune’s planned heading. If I’m reading his charts right, she went down in the deepest part of the Wrecktide. Below the shelf. Below anywhere we’ve ever dived. Just like Margit said.”
“How deep?”
“Deep enough that normal lungs might fail before reaching the bottom.” I pull back to meet his gaze. “But maybe not too deep for an orc who’s spent years learning to swim where he shouldn’t and a human with no good sense.”
He’s silent for a long moment. His thumbs trace circles against my hipbones—a nervous habit I’ve learned to recognize.
“The deep water is different. Even with Oreth gone, there are things down there. The curse remnants. Whatever we’ve been sensing in the shallows.” His grip tightens. “If we dive for theFortune, we might not come back up.”
“If we don’t dive for theFortune, Gyla wins. Your people starve. The coastal villages suffer.” I cup his face in my hands, force him to look at me. “We both knew this might kill us. The question is whether we let it kill us on our terms or hers.”
He kisses me. Hard, hungry, his hands fisting in my shirt as if he can anchor us both to this moment through sheer force of will. I kiss him back with equal ferocity. My fingers tangle in his hair. My body presses against his until there’s no space left between us.
When we finally break apart, we’re both breathing hard.
“We dive for theFortune. But tonight—” His hands slide beneath my shirt, finding bare skin. “I want you here. With me. No curses, no deadlines, no ancient horrors.”
“Yes,” I breathe.
The journal lies forgotten on the table as he pulls me toward the bed.
Sleep finds me eventually,tangled in Zoric’s arms, my body sated and warm for the first time in days.
The dream starts simply.
I’m swimming. The water is dark—darker than any dive I’ve ever made, darkness that presses against my skin with physical force. My lungs don’t burn. My body doesn’t tire. I just sink, deeper and deeper, drawn by a presence I can’t see but can feel.
Gold.
It glimmers below me. Not the scattered debris of shipwrecks—this is an accumulation. A pile so vast, it fills my entire field of vision, coins and ingots and jewelry heaped in a mountain that seems to pulse with its own light. The phosphorescence of the Wrecktide, but stronger. Older.
Hungry.
The word surfaces from somewhere deep in my mind. Not a voice—a knowing. The gold is hungry. Has been hungry for thirty years, since the last tribute ship went down. And now...
Now it’s awake.
Shapes move in the darkness beyond the pile. Not drowned—different. Things that were old when orcs first sailed these waters. Things that wait in the deep places and feed on the gold that humans are foolish enough to sacrifice.
One of the shapes turns toward me. I can’t see its face—don’t think it has a face, not in any way I would recognize—but I feel its attention settle on me with crushing force.
You carry our gold.
The coins I stole. The curse I’ve been running from. Even destroyed, even scattered in Oreth’s hoard, they came from this place. From this hunger.
You owe us.
The shape moves closer. The gold-light grows brighter, searing, and in its glow I see?—
I wake gasping.
Zoric is already awake, his arms tight around me, his voice a low rumble in my ear.
