The thought slices through me. I squeeze my eyes shut, but I can still see him—his grin, his hands, the way he looked at me when we first met. Before the shipwreck. Before I chose to save myself.
Before I left him to drown.
The orc’s words echo in my head.
We’re alike, Zoric and me. Both carrying ghosts. Both running from drownings we caused. The realization should disturb me. Instead, it settles into my chest with something almost like relief.
You’re not the only monster.
Sleep takes me before I can examine the thought further. And in my dreams, the dead are waiting.
I wake to silence.
The storm has passed. Gray light filters through the narrow window, painting the room in shades of ash and bone. For a moment, I just lie there, taking stock of aches and injuries, letting my body remember what it went through.
Still alive. Still human. Still carrying cursed gold in a fortress I don’t understand, guarded by an orc who admits to murder.
Perfect.
I dress in my own clothes—dried stiff by the fire someone lit while I slept, a detail I deliberately don’t examine—and check my weapons. Both knives still at my belt. Both blades still sharp. Small mercies.
The door is still locked from the inside. I unlock it carefully, half expecting guards or worse on the other side. The passage is empty. Quiet.
Too quiet.
I follow the route I remember from last night—down the stairs, through the twisting corridors, toward the great hall with its green-fire braziers. The fortress feels different in daylight. Older. More worn. The relics on the walls are clearer now: not just cutlasses and figureheads but maps, logbooks, sealed bottles containing things that float in murky liquid.
A pirate’s museum. Or a pirate’s mausoleum.
The great hall opens before me, and I pause at the threshold.
Zoric stands at one of the shattered windows, his massive frame silhouetted against the morning light. He hasn’t noticed me yet—his attention is fixed on something below, in the harbor. His posture is tense. Waiting.
“See something interesting?”
He turns. But his expression isn’t hostile. Just tired. The exhaustion of a man who’s been fighting longer than he can remember.
“They’re gone.” He nods toward the window. “Retreated before dawn. They do that.”
I cross the hall, ignoring the way my ankle protests. The window shows me the harbor—that crescent of sheltered water, the iron chains still stretched across its mouth. No pale shapes. No cold glow. Just dark water and darker stone.
“They’ll be back.”
“Yes.” He doesn’t soften the word. “Soon, if the pattern holds. They don’t attack during daylight. Can’t, maybe. The curse is stronger in darkness.”
“And you’ve been fighting them. All this time. Since you—” I stop. Choose my words carefully. “Since your first mate died.”
“Since I killed him.” Zoric’s voice is flat. “Don’t dress it up. I left him with the gold, sealed the wreck, and walked away. Whatever he’s become, I made him.”
The honesty cuts. I’m not used to people admitting their sins so plainly. In my world, everyone has excuses—circumstances, necessity, the endless justification of survival.
“Why?”
“Why did I leave him?” He turns from the window. Faces me fully. This close, I can see details I missed last night—the way his hands are marked with deep lines, the slight catch in his breathing when he moves his left shoulder. Old injuries. Fresh pain. “Because the gold was changing him. Faster than it changed anyone else. And I was afraid.”
“Of what he’d become?”
“Of what I might become if I stayed.” His gaze holds mine. Doesn’t waver. “The curse works on want. On greed. On every dark thing hiding in a person’s heart. Oreth had more darkness than most. But I had enough.”
