It finds memories instead.
Finn laughing at a bad joke I made on our first salvage dive.
Finn holding me through a fever that should have killed me.
Finn crying—the only time I ever saw him cry—when we lost a crewmate to a reef we should have avoided.
Finn’s face in the storm light, the moment before the wave took him. Fear, yes. But also something else. Something that looked almost like acceptance.
“He didn’t blame me.” The realization hits like a boarding axe to the chest. “He never blamed me. The only one who’s been punishing me for years is myself.”
The hunger screams.
It’s a sound I’ll hear in nightmares for years to come—if I survive this, if I ever dream again. The wail of something ancient and empty, finally understanding that it’s been outmaneuvered. That the meal it expected has turned to poison in its mouth.
Zoric appears beside me. His arm wraps around my waist, pulls me away from the dissolving mass of the hunger’s form. We’re moving—swimming, fighting, escaping—but I can’t look away from what’s happening behind us.
The hunger is collapsing.
Every memory I’ve released has weakened it. Every transformation from guilt to acceptance has burned away another piece of its essence. It’s shrinking, fragmenting, the ancient want coming apart at the seams because it can’t digest what I’ve fed it.
“I was happy.” My voice is barely a whisper now. “I lost him. And I survived.”
The hunger reaches for us one last time. A tentacle of pure wanting, grasping for anything it can hold onto, anything that might sustain it for another moment.
I meet it head-on.
“That’s not betrayal.” I catch the limb in my hands—feel the cold, the emptiness, the desperate hunger for something to fill it. “That’s life.”
The ancient want dissolves.
Not with a bang—not with the dramatic explosion I expected. It simply... fades. Like a dream fading with morning light. Like grief fading with time and distance and the slow, painful work of learning to live again.
The phosphorescence dies. The glow that’s haunted the Wrecktide for centuries, that’s lured ships to their doom and fed on the wanting of countless souls—it goes dark. The water around us is just water now. Cold and deep and dangerous, but ordinary. Natural.
Zoric’s arm locks around my waist.
“Aviora.” My name, rough with emotion. “Aviora, we need to surface.”
I’m crying. I didn’t realize until now, but tears are streaming down my face, mixing with the saltwater, making everything blurry and bright. My chest hurts—not from pressure, not from drowning. From something being released. Something that’s been crushing me for years finally letting go.
“He’s gone.” I’m not sure if I mean Finn or the hunger. Maybe both. “He’s really gone.”
“I know.” Zoric’s lips brush my temple. “I know, love. Come on. We need to get you home.”
We swim for the surface.
THIRTY-SIX
AVIORA
The Wrecktide is different.
I notice it the moment we break into air, gasping and coughing and clinging to each other in water that no longer feels like a trap. The reefs are still there—I can see them, dark shapes beneath the waves—but they’re just reefs now. Stone and coral and the ordinary dangers of any coast. The supernatural malevolence that’s defined this place for centuries... gone.
“Look.” Zoric treads water beside me, his arm wrapped around my waist, his attention fixed on something in the distance. “The light.”
I follow his gaze. The horizon is brightening—not just with sunrise but with something else. The perpetual gloom that’s hung over these waters, the gray overcast that never quite cleared, is breaking apart. Actual sunlight streams through the gaps, painting the water gold in places it’s never touched.
