Chapter 12: The Drowning King
The order hung in the damp air, a stone dropped into still water. Ripple after ripple of disbelief and horror spread across the faces of his crew. Jack looked as if he’d been gut-punched. Rook’s usual placid amusement was gone, replaced by a pale, stricken stillness.
“Captain…” Jack began, his voice thick.
Leona didn’t let him finish. “You heard me. Set the charges at the main entrance. Collapse it. Bury every slaver inside.” He turned away from the rail, from the sight of the cave where Vil had been dragged. The calculation was made. The numbers were clear. Sacrifice the few to save the many. Sacrifice one… to end this.
It was the right move. The only move. A king’s move. He strode toward the hatch leading below decks where the captured slavers were shackled, his boots striking the wood with a final, rhythmic thud. His mind was already elsewhere: on powder ratios, structural weak points, fuse lengths.
But his feet slowed as he passed the mainmast. A small, grimy hand shot out from behind a coil of rope, clutching at his leg. He looked down.
It was one of the hybrids. A child, no more than eight, with patches of iridescent scale on her cheekbones and webbing between her small, dirty fingers. Her eyes, a watery green too old for her face, were wide with terror. Not of him, but of the echoing shouts still coming from the slaver’s cave. She didn’t speak. She just held on, her tiny grip surprisingly strong.
Behind her, more pale faces peered from behind barrels and crates. Dozens of them. The children from the Bloody Melody’s hold. Jack had herded them onto the deck for air. They were silent, a gallery of hollow-eyed ghosts watching him pronounce doom on the only world they’d ever known.
Leona stared at the child’s hand on his trousers. He felt nothing. He made himself feel nothing. This was logistics. Sentiment was a luxury that got men killed.
But then his eyes, against his will, flicked back to the cave mouth. Not to the brute holding a knife, but to the memory of the net. Vil, limp and still. Vil, who had looked at him on that black sand not with pity, but with a shattered, undeniable trust. Who had breathed for him. Who had, in the silent language of the deep, given him something no one else ever had.
‘You made a deal with a pirate. You should have read the finer print.’
The words curdled in his gut. They were Azul’s words. Azul, who had worn Vil’s face, Vil’s skin, who had tried to drown him in that lagoon back in Chapter 8. Azul, who had offered Vil a choice: 60 pirate lives for Leona’s one.
And Vil, vain, beautiful, cruel Vil, had taken the deal without a second’s hesitation.
Leona had never understood it. He’d been a prize, a trinket. A transaction. It had made no sense.
Now, standing on the deck of a stolen ship, with a child clinging to his leg and the lives of dozens of abused sirens hanging in the balance of a single, ruthless command, the understanding hit him like a boarding axe to the chest.
It wasn’t about sense. It wasn’t about numbers, or worth, or logic.
It was about him.
Vil had looked at the 60 and looked at Leona and the choice had been laughably easy. Because it was him.
The realization was a physical thing, a crack in the foundation of every ruthless calculation he’d ever made. The sirens in the caverns, the children on his deck… they were a weight on one scale. On the other was a single, infuriating, breathtaking siren with a collar of black iron around his throat.
The balance tipped. It wasn’t even a contest.
“Jack,” Leona said, his voice different. Strangled.
“Captain?”
“Forget the main entrance.” He pried the hybrid child’s hand gently from his leg. Her eyes welled with tears. He couldn’t look at her. “The charges. Bring them to me. All of them.”
“But the plan—”
“The plan’s changed.” Leona turned, his green eyes blazing with a new, terrifying light. “You’re going to take the Savanaclaw, the Bloody Melody, every soul on these ships, and you’re going to get the hell out of this cove. Sail for the open channel. Now.”
Rook stepped forward, understanding dawning. “You are not going to collapse the main cave.”
“No,” Leona said, stripping off his coat and belt. He kept only his cutlass, two long knives from his boots, and a leather cord which he tied around his forehead, pushing his damp hair back. “I’m going in the front door.”
“That is pure suicide!” Jack roared, finally finding his voice. “It’s a fortified position! They’ll have lookouts, traps—”
“They’ll have their hands full with a new prisoner,” Leona snarled, checking the edge of his blade. “And they’ll be expecting a negotiation. Not this.”
He looked at Jack, then at Rook, then at the scared, silent children. “Get them out of here. That’s an order. If I’m not back by the time you hit the channel…” He paused, the ghost of his old smirk touching his lips. “Assume I’m dead and throw a party. A good one.”
He didn’t wait for arguments. He vaulted over the rail of the Bloody Melody, down into the waiting cutter Rook had used. He hauled the sacks of powder charges in after him, the heavy, greasily ominous bags thudding on the boards. He grabbed the oars.
As he rowed, muscles burning, toward the slaver’s water-level cave, the parallel was a perfect, painful mirror in his mind. Vil, choosing one life over sixty. Him, choosing one life over… how many? He didn’t even know the exact count. It didn’t matter.
The cave mouth loomed, a dark, dripping maw. He could hear shouts echoing from within, the clang of metal, cruel laughter. And beneath it, a quieter, more terrible sound: a faint, collective weeping that seemed to seep from the rock itself.
He tied the cutter to a rusted iron ring, slung the sacks of powder over his shoulder, and slipped into the water. It was colder here, deep and full of shadows. He filled his lungs with one last breath of stale air and dove.
The underwater tunnel was a nightmare. The bioluminescent algae cast a sickly violet glow over everything, making the world look bruised. The walls were lined with rusted cages, some empty, some holding skeletal remains. Others held living sirens. He saw them as flashes of luminescent scale and wide, despairing eyes through the bars. They watched him pass, a strange, armed shadow, their songs muted into hollow, bubbling dirges.
He followed the main channel, his lungs beginning to ache. Then he saw it—a faint, pulsing amethyst light ahead, coming from a side cavern. Vil’s necklace. The one he’d glamoured to always find his way back to the ship. It was still working, a beacon in the gloom.
Leona kicked toward it. The water in the side cavern was tinted pink. Bodies floated in the current, slavers in leathers, their throats slit or their chests caved in. Vil hadn’t gone quietly.
The cavern opened up into an air pocket, a domed space where the water was waist-deep. The source of the violet glow was a massive, grotesque altar of welded coral and threaded pearls. And chained to it, spread-eagled, was Vil.
He was conscious. His head lolled, but his amethyst eyes were open, burning with a fury that dwarfed the cold iron collar locked around his throat. His clothes were torn. Across his chest, arms, and stomach, bleeding runes had been carved—crude, painful symbols meant to bind magic, to poison a siren’s song from the inside out. The water around the altar was stained a diluted red.
Three slavers were there. One was the brute from the boat, cleaning his knife. Two others were preparing more tools on a stained table.
Leona didn’t surface. He stayed beneath the black water, a spectre moving through the pink haze. He came up behind the two at the table, his head breaking the surface without a sound. One hand clamped over a mouth, the other drew a knife across a throat. He lowered the body silently into the water. The second man turned, his eyes widening. Leona’s cutlass took him in the heart before he could scream.
The brute spun, his knife held ready. He saw Leona standing in the bloody water, breathing hard, his eyes reflecting the violet algae like a beast’s.
“Kingscholar,” the brute grunted, a nasty smile spreading. “Knew you’d come. Sent your dogs away, did you? Smart. For a dead man.”
Leona said nothing. He dropped the sacks of powder charges onto the dry part of the altar ledge. They landed with a wet, heavy thud.
The brute’s smile faltered. His eyes darted to the sacks, then back to Leona. “What’s that?”
“A negotiation,” Leona said, his voice a low rasp. He took a step forward. “You let him go. I let you live.”
A laugh boomed through the cavern. “You’re in no position to make demands, pirate. I have your songbird.” He gestured with his knife toward Vil. “I can make him sing a pretty, silent tune.”
Leona’s gaze flicked to Vil. Their eyes met. In Vil’s, past the pain and the fury, Leona saw a flicker of something else. Not hope. Recognition. A grim, bloody understanding.
“You have him,” Leona agreed, taking another slow step. “But I have enough black powder to bring this whole mountain down on our heads.” He pointed a thumb at the sacks. “Your lookouts are dead. My ships are gone. It’s just us. You can kill him. And then we all die here in the dark, buried under a thousand tons of rock.” He tilted his head, the catlike green of his eyes utterly flat. “Or you can live. Your choice.”
The brute hesitated. Greed and fear warred on his bloated face. He looked at the powder. He looked at Vil. He looked at Leona’s cold, unwavering stare.
It was the moment of doubt Leona needed.
He moved. Not towards the brute, but to the side, snatching up a rusted iron bar from the ground. The brute charged, roaring. Leona sidestepped, the knife slicing air, and brought the iron bar down with all his strength on the man’s wrist. Bone crunched. The knife flew, skittering across the stone into the water.
The brute bellowed, cradling his shattered arm. Leona didn’t pause. He drove a knee into the man’s gut, then slammed his head against the sharp coral of the altar. Once. Twice. The bellowing stopped.
He turned, breathing heavily, to Vil.
Up close, it was worse. The runes were deep, angry. The iron collar was a vile, dark blight against his skin. Leona’s hands, steady through the killing, trembled as he reached for the chains.
“Took you… long enough,” Vil gasped, his voice a shredded whisper, ruined by the collar.
“Had a crisis of conscience,” Leona muttered, his fingers searching for the lock mechanism on the manacles. It was complicated, trapped. He swore, pulling a pick from his belt.
“You came… alone.” It wasn’t a question. It was a realization, soaked in pain.
“Yeah.” The first manacle clicked open. Vil’s arm dropped, limp.
“The others… the sirens…”
“Can’t save everyone.” The second manacle sprang free. Leona’s hands went to the hateful collar. There was no keyhole. It was sealed magic, cold-wrought. He couldn’t break it here. “Hold still.”
Vil sagged against him as the last of the restraints fell away, his strength gone. Leona caught him, staggering under the dead weight. He was shockingly light. “The powder…?” Vil breathed against his neck.
“A bluff. Mostly.” Leona hoisted him, one arm under his knees, the other around his back. He carried him toward the water, toward the tunnel out. “We need to move. Now.”
He waded into the deeper pool, ready to dive, to swim for their lives with Vil in his arms.
A low, grinding rumble shook the cavern. Not from their direction.
From above.
Dust and pebbles showered down from the ceiling. A deep, booming crump echoed through the tunnels, followed by another, and another. Distant, muffled screams filtered through the rock.
Leona froze, waist-deep in the water, holding Vil.
The charges. The orders he’d given Jack. Collapse it. Bury it all.
Jack, loyal to a fault, had followed his original command. He hadn’t questioned the countermanded order delivered in a frantic moment. He’d set the charges at the main entrance.
The explosion tore through the mountain’s heart. The world screamed in protest. Stalactites the size of masts splintered and crashed into the water around them. A great crack shot across the cavern ceiling above the altar, widening like a starving mouth.
They were out of time. The tunnel behind them, their way out, began to collapse in a roar of falling stone. Leona looked down at Vil’s ashen face, then back at the crumbling exit.
They were trapped.
The ceiling fractured with a sound like a dying god’s spine snapping. Leona’s grip on Vil tightened, his mind racing through collapsing geometries of stone and water. The tunnel they’d come through was gone, buried under a slide of shattered rock. The reverberations shook more debris loose, plunging into the black pool around them.
Vil coughed, a wet, painful sound. “Your… brilliant plan.”
“Working on it.” Leona’s eyes scanned the shuddering cavern. The violet algae pulsed erratically, casting jumping shadows. His gaze landed on the sacks of powder, still on the dry ledge. Then it swung to a smaller, darker fissure in the far wall, one he’d dismissed before. Water was being sucked into it with a low, gulping sound.
An outflow. It had to lead somewhere.
Another stalactite speared the water where they’d stood seconds before. No time for deliberation. He hauled Vil towards the ledge, shoving the heavy sacks off. They splashed into the water. “Can you hold onto these? Just float with them.”
“I can… manage not to drown,” Vil rasped, though his arms wrapped weakly around the greasy canvas.
“Good. Don’t sue me for the accommodations.” Leona grabbed the rope ties on the sacks, knotting them together around his own waist. He fixed his eyes on the sucking fissure. It was tight. “Deep breath. Now.”
They plunged under just as a massive slab of ceiling dropped onto the altar, crushing coral and pearl to dust. The world became a roaring, dark chaos of churning sediment and violent currents. Leona kicked, hauling the dead weight of the powder and Vil’s limp form behind him, aiming for that greedy dark mouth.
The fissure was a stone throat. It scraped his back, tore his shirt. He felt Vil jerk against him, a muffled sound of pain escaping. Then the current took them, a sudden, violent flush of water propelling them forward through utter blackness. No light. No sound but the thunder in his ears and the burn in his lungs.
They burst into a wider tunnel, the bioluminescent glow returning faintly. Leona exploded to the surface, dragging air into his screaming chest. He pulled Vil up. The siren gasped, choking, his body seizing.
“Still with me?”
“Regrettably,” Vil coughed out, his voice utterly ruined.
The current was still pulling them, faster now. The tunnel sloped downward. Leona could hear a new sound ahead—a deep, rolling boom that wasn’t collapsing rock. The open sea. The explosions above had opened new channels, draining the cavern system.
He fought to steer them, kicking against the flow to avoid jagged outcrops. It was like trying to wrestle a typhoon. The powder sacks were waterlogged anchors, threatening to drag them under. A pointed rock spire loomed ahead in the current. He couldn’t avoid it.
“Let go!” he yelled.
Vil’s arms uncurled from the sacks. Leona fumbled with the knot at his waist, fingers numb. The spire rushed toward them. The rope came free. The sacks vanished into the depths, and they shot past the stone spear, Leona’s shoulder glancing off it with a jolt of white-hot pain.
Then there was light. Not violet algae, but the grey, stormy daylight of the open ocean. The tunnel mouth spat them out like scraps into a heaving sea at the base of the cliffs. The air was clean and salt-stung. The roar of the destroyed caverns was a muffled rumble behind the rock face.
Treading water, Leona spun, looking for the ship. Nothing but rolling grey waves and rain.
A low whistle cut through the wind. He turned. There, maybe two hundred yards out, was the Savanaclaw. And beside it, the cutter, with Rook standing in the bow, an arrow nocked with a bright orange signal flag attached to it. He fired it into the sky.
“Stubborn dog,” Leona breathed, a savage grin cutting his face. He hooked an arm around Vil’s chest. “Swim. Or float. I don’t care which.”
It was a long, cold, agonizing struggle. Every kick sent fire through Leona’s bruised shoulder. Vil was a silent, heavy weight, his breaths shallow. But the cutter met them halfway, strong hands hauling them from the hungry sea.
Jack’s grim face appeared above him. “The charges—”
“Went off. I heard.” Leona collapsed onto the cutter’s deck, Vil half on top of him. “You followed orders.”
“You’re alive.”
“Disappointed?”
“Yes.” The word had no bite. Jack tossed a thick wool blanket over them both as the crew rowed furiously back to the Savanaclaw.
The ship was a cacophony of shouted orders and tension. The hybrid children were clustered amidships, wrapped in spare sails, silent. Leona shrugged off helping hands and carried Vil down to his own quarters, kicking the door shut on the world.
He laid Vil on the bed. The runes were stark and angry against his pale skin, still weeping faintly. The iron collar was an obscenity. In the steady lantern light of the cabin, Vil looked hollowed out, all sharp edges and shadows.
“The collar,” Vil whispered, his fingers lifting weakly to touch the dark metal. A hiss of pain escaped him.
“Later.” Leona rummaged for his kit: clean cloth, a bottle of strong spirits, a salve meant for rope burns and worse. His hands were steady as he poured the liquor onto a rag. “This’ll sting.”
It did. Vil stiffened, a sharp inhale catching in his throat, but he didn’t make a sound. Leona worked methodically, cleaning each cursed rune, the smell of blood and antiseptic cutting through the cabin’s familiar scent of leather and salt. He was all focus, all deliberate motion.
He tended the shallow cut on Vil’s throat from the brute’s knife. He cleaned the abrasions on his wrists from the manacles. The silence between them was full of everything unsaid: the cold altar, the choice, the collapsing dark.
When the physical wounds were as clean as he could make them, covered in salve and bound with soft cloth, Leona finally sat back on the edge of the bed. His energy left him in a sudden, draining rush. The adrenaline was gone, leaving only a deep, bone-chilled tremor.
Vil’s eyes were closed, his breathing slightly easier. “The souls for Azul?”
“Delivered.” Leona’s voice was rough. “Jack handled the transfer before the... diversion. Our part of the bargain is done.”
A long silence stretched. The ship creaked around them, a comforting, living sound. They were safe. The mission was, against all odds, complete. The rational part of his mind catalogued it: objectives met, enemy neutralized, assets secured.
Then he looked at Vil’s throat. At the black iron cutting into the skin where he’d just wiped away blood. He remembered the net. The knife. The sound of the ceiling coming down. The absolute void of the underwater tunnel. The weight in his arms going still.
The calm, collected mask he wore for Jack, for Rook, for his crew—the mask of the leader who made ruthless calculations and never looked back—splintered.
It didn’t fall. It shattered.
A harsh, ragged sound tore from his chest. It was half a sob, half a curse, choked and foreign to his own ears. He bent forward, his forehead pressing against the edge of the mattress beside Vil’s hip, his long hair a dark curtain hiding his face. His shoulders shook once, violently.
A hand, cool and faintly trembling, came to rest in his hair. The touch was impossibly light.
“Idiot,” Vil whispered, his ruined voice barely audible.
Leona didn’t lift his head. The words were ground into the wool blanket. “You should have dived faster.”
“You should have blown the cave and been done with it.”
“I tried.” The admission was a raw thing. “I gave the order.”
Vil’s fingers twined slightly in his hair. “I know.”
“They were going to… I saw the tools.” Leona’s fist clenched in the bedding. The image of those runes being carved, the cold iron sealing away the very thing Vil was, rose behind his eyes. A rage, cold and retroactive, flooded him, followed by a wave of nauseating relief so potent it stole his breath. “You were right there and I…”
He couldn’t finish. The thought—of that light going out, of that voice being permanently silenced, of that particular, infuriating presence being erased from the world—was a yawning chasm he’d almost stepped into. It wasn’t a tactical loss. It was an unthinkable subtraction.
Vil was quiet for a long moment. His thumb moved, a slow, unconscious stroke against Leona’s temple. “You came anyway,” he said, finally. It wasn’t forgiveness. It wasn’t gratitude. It was a simple, staggering fact. “You never do anything you don’t want to, Leona. You came anyway.”
Leona finally lifted his head. His eyes were dry but red-rimmed, the green stripped bare of all boredom and arrogance, raw with a fatigue that went deeper than muscle or bone. He looked at Vil, really looked, at the exhaustion and the pain and the stubborn, surviving light in the amethyst depths.
He didn’t have words for what was in his chest. It was too big, too tangled. So he just bent again, this time pressing his lips to Vil’s collarbone, just above the hated iron. A kiss that was an anchor, a confirmation, a silent scream of relief.
He stayed there, breathing him in, until the tremors in his own hands finally stilled.