The Reine des Mers cut through the sea like a blade through flesh.
Yusuf stood at the prow, knuckles white on the rail, the taste of salt sharp on his lips. He hadn't slept. The sky had shifted from night to bruised gray morning, and still he hadn't closed his eyes. He couldn't.
Below deck, the ship creaked like it remembered its own death. The wheel he had rebuilt groaned softly, not from use—but from resistance, as though the ship did not want to obey.
Behind him, footsteps. Heavy, impatient. Rouen.
"You're looking like a man about to piss off the edge," the captain muttered. He spat into the wind. "Or jump."
"Maybe both," Yusuf muttered back.
Rouen chuckled. "Welcome to the bloody sea."
The crew moved around them like ghosts. Hardened men and women with eyes too tired, too old. Pirates, deserters, liars—every one of them bound by something darker than coin.
They called themselves Corsaires Noirs.
Yusuf hadn't spoken to Amina since they left port. She'd vanished into the ship's lower decks, where old maps and stranger things were kept. Rumor whispered she spoke with the ship when no one listened.
He didn't know what that meant. He didn't like what it meant.
But he did know the Reine was headed somewhere the Imperial charts had erased. North, beyond the Maw. Toward what Amina called the Leviathan's Spine.
"You're quiet," Rouen said, eyes on the mist ahead. "That worries me."
"I don't trust you."
"Good."
"I don't trust this ship."
"Smarter."
Yusuf turned. "Why did you really come back? You had to know they'd try to kill you."
Rouen's scarred face twisted into something between a grin and a grimace. "They did. Several times. I just refused to die. Petty of me, I know."
A bell rang once from the crow's nest.
"Ship spotted," someone barked.
Rouen's demeanor changed in an instant. "Battle stations. All of you scum, move!"
Yusuf stepped back, heart racing. Figures emerged through the fog—another ship, sleeker, painted in Imperial blue and silver.
"The Eye," Rouen muttered. "Persistent fuckers."
Cannons rolled into position. The air thickened with tension and powder.
Then a voice—magnified by some unnatural means—cut across the sea.
"Return what you stole."
It wasn't a demand. It was a sentence.
Amina appeared beside Yusuf like a ghost. Her eyes were glassy, distant.
"They can't have it," she whispered.
"What is it?" Yusuf asked.
"The heart of the ship."
Rouen raised a spyglass. "Bastards have a Speaker aboard. That'll complicate things."
Yusuf looked at him. "A what?"
"A mage," Amina said. "The Empire calls them Speakers. They speak to machines, to flame, to steel. To minds, if they must."
The enemy ship turned broadside.
The first cannon fired.
Wood splintered. Smoke roared. Men shouted.
Yusuf fell backward as the Reine bucked violently. He scrambled up, coughing.
Rouen barked orders like a man born for war. "Fire, godsdamn you! Sink that gilded bastard!"
The Reine des Mers returned fire. Black iron flew. The sea turned red.
Yusuf grabbed the rail and looked at the wheel. It was spinning—on its own.
He ran for it.
"Amina!" he shouted. "It's steering itself!"
"I told you," she said. "It remembers."
The ship surged forward unnaturally fast, as if pulled by unseen hands.
The enemy vessel didn't react in time.
The Reine slammed into it with a scream of splintered timber and a roar of flames.
Yusuf was thrown again, landing hard beside the wheel. It throbbed under his palm—like a living heart.
Then he heard a whisper.
"Steer me, Corsaire. Or drown."
He looked around. No one had spoken.
But the voice was inside him.
And it was ancient.
And angry.
He grabbed the wheel.
The Reine des Mers turned with him, fast as thought.
Below deck, something massive stirred.
Amina's eyes widened. "You've awakened it."
"What the fuck is it?"
Rouen didn't answer.
Because he was already drawing his sword.
From the sea, a shadow rose—taller than the mast. Tentacled. Armored. Watching.
And somewhere deep inside the ship, something answered its call.