POV: Beth
The night tasted like metal.
Cold. Heavy. Breathless.
The sea below our small boat churned as if it knew what I was about to attempt and disapproved. Alaric stood beside me at the bow, arms crossed, jaw sharp in moonlight. Not smug this time. Not joking. Just watching me like a storm about to take something from him.
“You’re sure,” he asked, voice low—almost brittle.
No teasing. No arrogance. Just the raw edge of fear trying to hide behind steel.
“I have to be,” I whispered.
Because if I didn’t grow strong enough—Rowan would die. I would never get him out. The Prince would win. Adrian’s blade would fall. And everything I’d suffered would amount to nothing but ash.
Alaric handed me the rope tied around my waist. “If you’re not back up in five minutes, I’m dragging you out myself—screaming or unconscious.”
His fingers lingered on the knot longer than necessary.
Caring disguised as command.
I nodded once, swallowed the tremor in my throat, and stepped over the edge.
Cold swallowed me whole.
The water was ink—thick and suffocating. It crushed my lungs, skin burning as the magic of the ritual caught hold. Light bled from nowhere, pale and eerie, illuminating the deep like moonlight through bone.
The world went silent.
Then—
Hands. Cold. Ghostlike. Gripping my ankles. I kicked, panic flaring, but the water held me suspended like a puppet forced to watch its own fate.
Shapes formed in the dark. Not fish. Not wraiths. Drowned pirates—dozens—drifting like puppets with hollow sockets.
Their jaws hung open as if screaming under water, though no sound reached me.
One reached toward my face, fingers skeletal and long. My throat tightened; every instinct screamed to swim back up, break free, surface and gasp. But I couldn’t move.
The ocean wanted me still.
Wanted me to witness what came next.
A woman appeared among them like a memory made flesh—hair black as deep tide, eyes bright with sorrow. My mother.
Not as I remembered her—not gentle candlelight at my bed as she brushed my hair—but dressed in salt-slick pirate leathers, soaked in rain, dagger at thigh. Beautiful, strong, fierce.
She pressed a hand to my cheek through water.
Her lips moved soundlessly, but I knew.
Forgive me.
Before I could reach for her, another shape stepped out of the abyss like a world cleaving in half.
Tall. Broad. Coat torn and drifting with barnacles. A sword strapped to his back made of jagged shark teeth. Hair tangled like ropes. Eyes—my eyes, but darker, merciless.
The sea itself seemed to bow.
My real father.
Legend. Monster. King.
He didn’t smile—not warmth, not softness—only a curve of lips like approval stained in blood. Power radiated off him like lightning in the deep. Every drowned pirate around us shuddered and lowered their heads.
He stepped closer and the water trembled.
“You carry my blood,” a voice thundered inside my mind—not spoken through lips, but carved straight into bone.
My heart stuttered.
He reached out, fingers brushing my chin lightly, like examining a weapon being forged.
“You are not meant for crowns of lace,” he growled. “You were born to wear storms.”
The drowned pirates circled, bowing. My lungs burned, but I couldn’t look away.
Images slammed into my skull:
—The Leviathan Bone Sword, chained and waiting.
—Kraken’s eye opening beneath black waves.
—Me standing atop a sinking fleet, sea rising at her command.
—Blood. War. Power. A crown of bone.
My father leaned closer until his forehead nearly touched mine.
“Find me,” he commanded. “At the end of the world.”
The water surged—and suddenly his hand pressed flat over my heart. Pain ripped through me like lightning, searing every nerve.
My body convulsed. Magic erupted out of my chest like a scream.
The drowned army shrieked—bubbles exploding—and the world shattered into light.
I broke the surface gasping, dragged by strong arms into the boat. I didn’t even remember rising. Everything was light and sound and shaking hands.
Alaric’s face was inches from mine, wild fear in his eyes.
He was out of breath. Sweating. Kneeling over me like he’d nearly torn the sea apart to pull me out.
“I told you five minutes,” he snapped—voice breaking sharply—“and you were gone for seven.”
There was resentment in him. Fear. Something rawer.
I coughed seawater, trembling. “I… saw them.”
“Who?”
“My parents.” My voice cracked. “He was— he was real. My father was real. A pirate. A king. A monster. He—”
My throat closed.
Alaric stared at me, chest rising hard. He didn’t know how to comfort. He never had. But he sat there anyway, hand still gripping my wrist like he couldn’t let go yet.
“Tell me,” he ordered—softer than anything he’d said before. Not command—plea.
So I did.
I told him about the drowned pirates. My mother’s apology. The man with my eyes. His voice like thunder. The order to find him. The promise of power. The bone crown.
When I finished, silence fell heavy as the sea.
Alaric’s gaze moved across my shaking body, the cold-blue glow still faint around my skin like magic refusing to fully fade.
“You’re not just pirate-blood,” he murmured. “You’re the heir to a sea legend.”
“I didn’t ask for that.”
“No,” he agreed. “But the ocean chose you anyway.”
He looked away, jaw tight.
“Power like that… people will try to claim it. Use you.”
“You mean Silas,” I whispered.
His fist tightened. “And others worse than him.”
He didn’t say her name—but I thought it.
Mira.
The storm rocked beneath us, waves slapping wood like impatient hands.
I swallowed. “I’m scared.”
He didn’t smile. Didn’t mock. He only lifted a hand—hesitated—then touched the side of my face like it might burn him.
“I am too,” he admitted.
And the boat swayed closer, bodies almost touching, breath mingling.
Almost something.
Almost.
But pride built walls like iron.
He lowered his hand first.
“Let’s go back,” he said, tone shifting—cold armor returning over vulnerability. “War is coming—and you’re not dying before I collect that damn sword.”
I managed a shaky laugh.
Power hummed beneath my ribs like a beast waking.
And something dark waited for me at the end of the world.