Page 45 of Daughter of the Dark Sea
What was wrong with her? She’d won half her trails in the Darkoning intoxicated—it was the only way for her to survive herstubborn choice. To forget the souls she’d reaped, seeking a title that’d never been in their reach. Except for the males bred for it. She’d had no issues disposing of them.
But she’d left the trials a different person. Tainted by the blood of those who were buried deep underground. It was how she’d learnt to slip on a mask, to allow the red haze to consume her body, mindlessly flowing to the rhythmic music of slaughter.
Kora’s speciality in her training had always been wielding daggers—even going as far as throwing an axe or two. But now, she could barely pitch a throwing knife with a little, inconsequential hangover.
Frustration and disappointment boiled within her as she furiously gripped a steel knife within her palm. She’d expertly struck Cannon down with an envelope knife of all things, had impaled Silas with the daggers strapped to her back, in the fury of grieving heartbreak.
Her stomach clenched, mind roiling at her failure.
As Erick knelt to reclaim the knife from the parched ground, Kora’s grief swelled like a tide and her hands shook from the reverberating sound of Finlay’s neck snapping, vibrating through her, down to the soles of her feet and into the earth.
“What’s Marwood been teaching you on that ship?” Erick muttered. “Have you been practising at all like I—”
Two of the knives soared as he began to rise, Kora pouring her anger into the throw as they ferociously embedded into the misshapen head of the dummy. She instantly followed with the third to the heart, a mere inch away from Erick’s head, slicing the top of his hair. He raised a brow.
The burning urge to fight, to expel the grief pummelling her organs, was overwhelming. Kora whirled, grabbing another two knives. They struck true in the head of the second dummy. She swung an axe, cleaving through the chest of the third.
A raven-steeled lance, propped against the marble table, beckoned her. She twisted, leaping forwards, using the force to propel the spear straight through the heart of the fourth target and into the sturdy, stone wall behind.
Erick quietly assessed her marks as she panted, hands on her knees, and retched on the grass. The contents of The Abandoned Barnacle spewed all over the earth, followed by her breakfast porridge. Appearing by her side, he lightly stroked her back as she gasped for breath, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes.
Because shehadbeen practising. But with Finlay, and not Blake.
“Tell me what happened,” he quietly murmured. He’d always been so observant.
Kora straightened, shakily wiping her mouth with a grimace. “I had . . . a friend. He died. On the ship.” Saying it out loud, on Aldarian soil, suddenly made it all too real. “Silas killed him.” She met Erick’s warm gaze. “And I killed Silas.”
Her voice was so quiet, she wasn’t even sure if she’d spoken out loud. In all her years of hunting pirates, she’d never once executed one through blind rage. She refused to stoop low to their level of mindless killing. She felt disgusting.
His jaw clenched. “Don’t mistake me for a fool, Kora. I know it was Jack that we sent to Deadwater Prison.”
“Then why make me decide? Jack had begged Silas to stop. We made a deal that he’d be fairly trialled in the courts. I wagered a lighter sentence for him.”
“A pirate is a pirate. The council declared he’d be incarcerated to the prison. Does it matter whichone?” Erick’s questioning gaze returned. “He’s where he belongs. If you wish to be admiral, these are the kinds of the decisions you’ll have to make.”
Kora then realised what else ate away at her. Theguiltof committing Jack Flint to Deadwater Prison. He was doomed to live in the skin of his dead identical twin. All because of what she did. Even if she hadn’t have hunted down pirates, lured by her secretive voice, she still could’ve saved Jack from his twin’s noose.
And when she became admiral, she would change all of that.
“Why are the council enforcing sentences without proper trials?”
“Why are you sailing after pirates during a scouting mission?” he countered.
Ice crept into Erick’s consistently calm stare, his jaw clenched so hard he could cut boulders on it. She bit her lip, refraining from admitting that a voice she’d heard for ten years told her to sail west. She’d end up in Deadwater Prison right alongside Jack. Mateys for life.
“There’re things we need to discuss, but not here.” He glanced to their right.
A grey stone wall intersected the gardens, separating the training grounds from a courtyard adorned with lemon trees. An archway loomed in the centre, breaking up the simple brick work, with a lone figure lurking within.
Blake Marwood curiously glanced from Kora to Erick, to the pile of sick at her feet, to the destroyed target dummies. His eyes widened at the lance piercing through the fourth dummy, cracking the solid wall behind.
“Am I interrupting?” He audibly swallowed as Erick stepped forward, half blocking Kora—and her lump of vomit. Her muscles relaxed at Blake’s presence, the individual fibres sighing with relief after clenching for so long, yet her gut still roiled.
A light sheen of sweat glistened underneath his swept-up groomed hair, from walking here from the barracks. He bore no sign of pain, and stood miraculously straight as his forest eyes scanned her, desperately seeking for an indication of her wellbeing.
She reciprocated the look, eyeing his wounded side, as if she could peer through the fabric of his grey linen shirt. Tucked into black trousers, and paired with laced boots, he was still striking, even if he’d been on the edge of Thanos’ realm days ago.
“We’re just finishing up,” Erick gruffly replied, and addressed Kora. “Meet us in the parlour.” He regarded her vomit-splattered state, and then her hair. “It’s time for a haircut as well.”
