“You need to eat.” He crosses to the bed, settles beside me with the careful movements of someone approaching a wounded animal. “Thorne’s made broth. It’s terrible, but it’s hot.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“I know.” His fingers brush hair from my face—gentle, tender, the touch of a man who’s learned how to be soft despite hands built for violence. “Eat anyway. You’ll need your strength for what comes next.”
“What does come next?” I push myself upright, meeting his gaze. “We killed hundreds of people to stop Gyla. Now her fleet is gone, her threat is ended, and we’re—what? Victorious?”
“We’re alive.”
“Are we?” The laugh that escapes me sounds nothing like humor. “Because I don’t feel alive, Zoric. I feel hollowed out. I feel like something crawled inside me and ate everything that used to matter.”
He doesn’t offer platitudes. Doesn’t tell me it will get better, or that we did what we had to, or any of the comfortable lies people use to excuse the inexcusable. Instead, he pulls me against his chest, wraps his arms around me, holds on with the fierce determination of someone who refuses to let go.
“Then we carry the hollow places for each other.” His voice rumbles against my ear. “Fill them when we can. That’s all anyone gets.”
I press my face into his shirt. Breathe him in—salt and leather and the particular scent that’s become more familiar than my own. My arms wrap around his waist, fingers fisting in the fabric at his back.
“It’s not enough.” My voice emerges muffled against his chest. “What we have. It can’t fix what we’ve done.”
“No.” His lips brush the crown of my head. “But it’s a reason to keep going. To do better. To make the next choice count for more than the last one. Now we have thirty years of safe passage. Think of all the ships crossing this water over that time. We’ve saved more than sacrificed.”
We stay like that until the shadows lengthen and the light through the window fades from gray to purple to black. Damaged souls, holding each other against the dark.
It’s not absolution. But it’s something.
The visitor arrives at midnight.
I’m finally eating—the broth is as terrible as Zoric promised, but my stomach has stopped rebelling—when the shout goes up from the harbor gate. Voices raised in alarm, then confusion, then something that sounds almost like fear.
Zoric is on his feet before I can set down my bowl. His cutlass clears the sheath with the whisper of steel on leather, and he’s moving toward the door with the predator’s grace I’ve come to recognize.
“Stay here.”
“Like hell.”
He doesn’t argue. We’ve moved past the point where he tries to protect me from danger by leaving me behind. Instead, he grabs my arm as we pass through the door, keeping me close as we navigate the corridor toward the commotion.
The Great Hall is crowded when we arrive. Thorne stands at the center, her face pale in the torchlight. Brek hovers behind her, his young features twisted with an emotion I can’t read. And in front of them both?—
An old orc woman.
Thalira,the sea witch. The one who knows secrets that most people would rather stay buried.
“Children.” Her voice scrapes like wind over rocks. “You’ve been busy.”
“Thalira.” Zoric releases my arm, steps forward to face her. “You weren’t summoned.”
“I was.” The old woman’s gaze sweeps the hall, taking in the gathered guards, the damage from the siege, the two of us standing at its center. “Not by you. By the sea itself. Something has stirred in the deep—something that hasn’t moved in thirty years. You’ve felt it. I can see it in your faces.”
“Gyla’s fleet.” I force my voice steady despite the fear coiling in my gut. “We lured them over theSilver Fortune,thinking only the boats?—”
“Would be taken.” Thalira’s interruption is sharp as a blade. “Yes. I know. I watched from my cave as the guardians rose. Watched them claim the ships, the sailors, the merchant queen who thought she could take what the sea didn’t offer.” Her storm-cloud eyes fix on mine. “Watched you escape. Clever. But cleverness isn’t wisdom, girl. And what you’ve done is very far from wise.”
“We did what we had to?—”
“You did what you wanted.” The words cut through my defense like a hot knife. “What you convinced yourselves was necessary. There’s a difference, child. The sea knows the difference. And so does the thing you’ve woken.”
Zoric settles his palm on my lower back, drawing me against his side. A protective gesture, though I’m not sure either of us knows what we’re protecting against.
