Page 27 of Fated to the Fang

That lands between us harder than denial would have.

Celeste studies me for a long moment. "What did you find?"

"A route. Not a hunting ground. Fuel records tied to Saltline boats list night runs through Wrackmouth, Cobb's Landing, Gull Reach, and three other county harbors Greer never entered into public record. Missing workers. Animal strandings. Lost hours. Dead humans."

Her face stills.

"And the mark?" she asks.

"In more than one harbor."

The composure does not leave her. It tightens. "Then this is no longer Crimson Harbor's breach."

"No."

"It is a controlled, structured plan. A campaign"

I look toward the window where Avery sleeps. "It is a road," I say. "And she is already on it."

At the fuel dock, the courier comes with the slack tide.

I feel him before I see him—wrong rhythm on the gravel, a heartbeat schooled too quiet. He moves for the disused fuel line under the north pilings, where the harbor forgets to keep lamps. I take him there, between one step and the next, faster than the truth I owe Avery.

He doesn't run. They've trained that out of him. His hand goes to his chest, where a charm hangs beneath his collar. I catch his wrist before he can crush it, but the charm breaks anyway, splitting open against his palm. Whatever command was tied inside it wakes faster than I can stop. His eyes go empty, like a snuffed wick. Dead by someone else's hand.

It comes in pieces. A banner—old cloth, a rebellion sigil I have not seen in three hundred years—going down into black water. Then rising. The same cloth, surfacing wet, dark across it now, fresh as a wound.

A voice under it, giving an order, calm as a man ordering supper. Pale gold eyes. And the phrase, soft as a hand closing around my throat. The fragment closes. The courier is disintegrating to ash as I open my eyes. I stay crouched there with Celeste behind me.

Three centuries I've kept one face buried under deeper water than this harbor holds. I built the grave myself. I stood at it. The gold eyes belong to a dead man. It isn't Maddox. Maddox is a small piece. A middleman.

This is older. It knows me. Avery already knows the tunnels. Her ignorance could get her killed. By keeping her blind, I'm helping them clear the path to her.

17

AVERY

Iwake before the gulls shriek, and before Dorian has a chance to decide what lie will be told to me today.

The headboard hangs split overhead, oak that shouldn't break under any hand. My thumb finds the splinter, and my body remembers him; my judgment won't pardon it.

I dress in darkness, lamp off. Downstairs I leave Mabel a note: Out early, survey, back by noon. I take the service door that doesn't face the street. I'm done being monitored by him and his cronies.

My phone's been pulsing since four. O.

didn't sleep. went back through the boat frames. look at 9 and 11.

Frame nine: the Saltline boat cutting toward the harbor mouth, and in the wheelhouse glass a reflection—a figure on the foredeck where no passenger could stand without going overboard. Frame eleven: behind him a piling stenciled F-9, and below a mark with three lines.

don't go alone, he writes. you're going alone aren't you. I know F-9—the dead Saltline berth past the cannery, condemned since the pier fire, chained off where the lamps give up.

I send Owen one message before I leave.

F-9. If I don't text by seven, call Greer. Not Dorian.

Then I turn my phone to silent and go before anyone can turn caution into shackles.

A chain bars the gangway, but the padlock has been sheared and rehung to look untouched, the way staged evidence behaves. I duck under.