CHAPTER 25: DEATH IN THE MOONLIGHT
The cave mouth opened onto chaos.
Moonlight illuminated the shore—and the battle still raging across it. The curse had broken inside the treasure chamber, but the word hadn't reached everyone yet. Naval marines clashed with newly-mortal pirates who hadn't realized they could finally die. Cannon fire still echoed from the water, where the Black Pearl's remaining crew fired desperately at anything that moved.
I spotted Anamaria immediately.
She crouched behind a boulder with a cluster of surviving crew—Gibbs, Cotton, three others I recognized from the Interceptor. They were pinned down, caught between the cave entrance and a cannon emplacement on the Pearl's deck that had them zeroed.
My precognition screamed.
Not a vague warning. Not a general sense of danger. A specific, absolute certainty: the next cannon shot was aimed at Anamaria's position. The trajectory would clear the boulder. She would die.
I was running before I finished the thought.
"ANAMARIA!"
She looked up. Saw me. Her eyes widened—
The cannon fired.
I threw myself between her and the iron ball.
The impact was—
Nothing, really. No pain. No sensation at all. Just a sudden absence where my chest had been, and then darkness swallowing everything.
I died.
I felt it happen. The moment when consciousness snuffed out like a candle flame. The cold void that rushed in to fill the space where I'd existed.
This is the second time, I thought, in the fraction of an instant before thought became impossible. Will there be a third?
Then nothing.
The sea wept for me.
I don't know how long I was gone. Minutes, probably. The battle was still raging when consciousness returned—though "returned" implies something gradual, and this was anything but.
I exploded from the harbor waters.
Gasping. Choking. Salt water in my lungs, my eyes, my everywhere. I was naked—of course I was naked, the resurrection stripped everything—and my body convulsed with the trauma of being rebuilt from foam and kelp and the sea's own substance.
I vomited seawater until my throat burned. Collapsed onto the shallows, waves lapping at my bare skin, the taste of salt overwhelming everything.
Alive. I'm alive. Again.
The shaking wouldn't stop. My hands trembled against the sand. My whole body vibrated with the aftershock of death-and-return, muscles spasming, breath coming in ragged gasps.
And then I heard the screaming stop.
I looked up.
Anamaria stood on the shore, staring at me. Behind her, Gibbs and Cotton and the others had stopped firing, stopped fighting, stopped everything. They were all staring.
They'd seen me die. Seen the cannonball hit me—there was nothing left to hit after that kind of impact. Seen my body fall in pieces.
And now they watched me crawl from the water, whole and naked and impossibly alive.
"Micke?" Anamaria's voice cracked. "That's not—you can't—"
I tried to speak. More seawater came up instead. I retched onto the sand, tasting bile and salt and the memory of death.
The secret's out. They all saw. They all know.
The thought should have terrified me. Instead, I felt only exhaustion—bone-deep, soul-deep, the kind that came from dying twice in three weeks.
"Help me up," I managed. My voice sounded like gravel. "Please."
Anamaria didn't move. Her face had gone white, her hands shaking almost as badly as mine.
"What ARE you?"
The question hung in the salt-thick air.
I had no answer. Not one that wouldn't be a lie.
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