Aviora signals: There.
I follow her pointing hand. And I see it.
TheSilver Fortunerests on a ledge of black rock, her hull intact in ways that defy thirty years of submersion. Masts standing straight as the day she sailed. Rigging swaying in currents that don’t reach us. No growth on her timbers, nobarnacles on her keel. She looks frozen in the moment of sinking—preserved by a force beyond nature.
And she glows.
The light comes from within. Seeping through gaps in the planking, illuminating portholes with sickly phosphorescence. Not the greenish glow of the Wrecktide’s usual luminescence—this is older. Hungrier. A light that makes my eyes ache and my skin crawl with instinctive revulsion.
Aviora is already swimming toward her.
I catch her arm, pull her back. Her eyes meet mine through the murk—questioning, urgent. I shake my head. Point toward the deck, then toward myself.
I go first.
Her jaw sets in the stubborn expression I’ve come to know well. But she nods.
We approach theFortuneside-by-side, swimming through water that feels thicker than it should. The cold is worse here—worse than the depths should account for, a chill that goes beyond temperature into metaphysical wrongness. Every instinct screams at me to turn back, to surface, to get as far from this impossibly preserved ship as my body can take me.
I don’t turn back.
The deck is scattered with debris—crates split open, rope coiled in patterns that suggest violent motion, the personal effects of sailors who never reached port. And gold. Everywhere, gold. Coins and ingots and jewelry, spilling from broken chests, carpeting the planks in a layer of wealth that could buy kingdoms.
The glow intensifies as we descend toward it. The light pulses with a rhythm that feels almost organic—like breathing, or a heartbeat, or the slow digestion of a vast and patient predator.
The original hunger.
The phrase surfaces from the captain’s journal. The ancient want that Oreth’s curse merely echoed. Looking at theFortune’s treasure now, I understand what those words meant. This gold didn’t become cursed—it was born cursed. Created cursed. Gathered and sacrificed to feed a presence that predates human memory.
Aviora lands on the deck beside me. Her feet disturb the coins, sending them sliding across wood that creaks despite being underwater. Her face is pale in the phosphorescent light, her pupils dilated, her breath coming in small bubbles that rise too slowly toward the surface.
She’s staring at the gold.
Her hand reaches out, fingers stretching toward the nearest pile. Slow. Dreamy. The movement of someone sleepwalking toward a cliff’s edge.
I grab her wrist. Pull her back.
She fights me. Actually fights—twisting in my grip, her free hand shoving against my chest with strength that surprises me. Her eyes are glassy, unfocused, seeing a reality other than my face.
No.
I yank her against me. Her body collides with mine, all sharp angles and futile struggling. She’s trying to get to the treasure—to whatever the treasure is showing her, whatever illusion the ancient hunger has crafted from her guilt and grief.
“Aviora.” I shape her name with lips that have no air to spare. “Come back.”
She doesn’t hear me. Her gaze is fixed on a vision behind me—a phantom only she can see. Her struggles intensify, nails scraping against my arms, legs kicking against my hold.
I’m losing her.
TWENTY-FOUR
ZORIC
The realization hits like reef rock to the chest. The curse is taking her—not the way Oreth’s gold took people, not with gradual corruption and escalating want. This is direct. Immediate. A hook in her soul, reeling her toward oblivion.
I have seconds. Maybe less.
I do the only thing I can think of.
