All three ships flanked our own, and their boarding bridges fell onto the deck with a heavy wooden slap. Footsteps followed — boots marching across the planks, wood creaking under their weight. Three men were walking towards us.
The atmosphere on our ship had gone cold. I could tell everyone was trying their best to keep it together, and there was that unspoken tension beneath the surface — suppressed, coiled, waiting to snap.
Kassie and I sat near the cabin entrance. Yuan wasn't here. She'd been sleeping since that intense moment at dawn, and no one had wanted to wake her. Po and Nisha stood by the port railing, faces carefully neutral. Derry waited at the center of the deck, hands clasped behind his back, his expression carved from stone.
