Page 132 of The Worst of Them

She gasped, heaving one greedy lungful of breath after another.

The Fortuna Royale floated mere yards away, completely whole and no longer shrouded in mist. Survivors hurried around on board.

“I’m here!” Cecily shouted, her voice hoarse. “I’m down here!”

Hester’s face appeared over the rail. “Cecily!” She looked over her shoulder to frantically call, “I found her!”

A ladder was thrown over the side, and the creature swam her closer as Jack rushed to the rail, his eyes wild.

“I am sorry,” the creature called to Jack, moving away from Cecily as soon as she clung to the ladder, her limbs shaking and lungs heaving. “She would have died had I not done it.”

Jack looked ready to hurl himself down the ladder and carry Cecily up himself. “Done what?” he demanded.

“Keep her in the sunlight as long as you can,” the creature said. “And if there is none, put her near fire and light. If you wish to keep her, do not let her reach the sea.”

Then he disappeared beneath the waves.

32

GRACE AND FREEDOM

Cecily collapsed to the deck. Above her, the sunlight was still watery and faded, but at least the sky was blue. The sails fluttered with a weak breeze, proving the unnatural stillness had broken. She shivered as it grazed over the wet clothes clinging to her skin.

A long, warm coat was thrown over her, and then Jack knelt at her side, frantically pushing loose tendrils of hair from her face. “Are you alright? What happened?”

Hester was on her other side, Greyson standing above. As Jack looked on the verge of flying apart, she pushed up to wrap her arms around his neck, comforted by the smell of his skin and sweat.

“You’re alive,” she breathed. “You’re all alive.”

Stede was not.

“Cecily?” Jack pulled back, eyes tense with anxiety as they raked over her face.

Belatedly, she realized she was sobbing.

“Stede,” she croaked, tears burning trails over her cold skin. “I watched it k-kill him. He saved me and it killed him.”

The memory of him swam before her, his face cast in blue light and his kitchen knife clutched in his hand. The way he’d looked at her…he’d loved her too. Now all of him, who he was—his kindness, his warmth—all of it had vanished in an instant.

He’d been the first to give her somewhere to exist in all her brokenness, with no judgment or condemnation. He had asked for nothing in return, and he’d saved her life.

He was dead. He was dead.

Jack swallowed hard, opened his mouth, closed it, then swallowed again. “We lost many,” he said thickly. “But Stede…”

The four of them sat in silence. All around them, pirates cleaned the dead and gore off the deck and scrubbed away the blood. Many had been killed today, but to her, Stede was the greatest.

“I saw your knives,” she said to Jack. “I thought maybe—maybe you were—” She shook her head, trembling. “I had a chance to kill it, and I took it.”

Down in the brig, she knew Fiero would still be alive, having brought this fate on all of them. But whether or not he was dead, Jonah would still come for them.

Hester sat back on her heels. Greyson cursed.

Jack’s voice darkened, his eyes narrowing as he said, “You’re telling me you jumped off the damn ship? I thought you fell.”

She hesitated, trying to determine what was so shocking about this. That thing had killed her friend—their friend.

“It killed Stede,” she told him again, as though he might not have understood the first time.