Read Chapter 23: The Final Voyage Begins

The wind had died the moment I stepped back onto the Santa Catalina. The ghost ship groaned beneath my boots, its timbers singing like a living thing remembering how to breathe. Behind me, the Sea Serpent bobbed at anchor a hundred yards out, my crew little more than silhouettes against the dying sun. Rosa held the letter against her chest. I'd told her to keep it safe. I'd lied about why.

In my hands I carried the folded parchment and the strip of Blackwood's coat I'd cut from my own chest—the wool warm, almost feverish, as if it knew what I intended.

The deck shimmered. The dead crew stood in loose formation along the rails, their faces hollow caves of shadow. At the helm, Admiral Pimm watched me with eyes like drowned coins. And before the mainmast, where the captain's chest had rested in every vision, stood Blackwood himself.

He looked more solid now. More real. The epaulettes of his coat caught a light that came from nowhere, and his beard was grey with sea salt and centuries.

"You've brought it," he said. Not a question. His voice rolled off the planks like thunder over open water.

I set the letter and the cloth on the deck between us. "Your letter. Your coat. The admiral's grave is empty, but you said this would work. So make it work."

Blackwood stepped forward. The crew pressed closer, a wall of watching dead. He reached down, and his fingers passed through the letter like smoke through a net. He tried again. Nothing. His jaw tightened.

"Living hands," he said. "The task requires living hands."

"Then tell me what to do."

He opened his mouth, but the first mate stepped between us—a gaunt figure with a rope burn circling his throat like a necklace of old scars. I'd seen him in every vision, standing at Blackwood's right hand. His name was Corvus. I knew it the way I knew the weight of my own lungs.

"The captain's hands are not the only ones bound," Corvus said. His voice was wet, like stones shifting underwater. "You wear his coat. You carry his purpose. But the gold still calls to him, Mack Donovan. Every coin in that chest hums with his soul."

Blackwood turned sharply. "Corvus—"

"Silence." Corvus didn't raise his voice, but the deck shuddered. "You made me your first mate for your honesty, Captain. I will not lie to the man who carries our fate." He looked at me with eyes that had no whites, only deep and endless blue. "The curse is not broken by delivering the letter. The curse is broken when the Santa Catalina stops sailing."

I stared at him. "The ship's already dead. It's a ghost."

"It is bound to the gold," Corvus said. "As long as the treasure lies in the deep, the ship rises. As long as the ship rises, the captain sails. And as long as the captain sails, he is neither alive nor forgiven—he is simply waiting."

Blackwood's fists clenched at his sides. For the first time, I saw something like fear cross the dead man's face. "There is another way."

"There is not," Corvus said. "And you know it."

The wind picked up, howling across the deck. The ghost crew stirred, their hollow forms flickering like candle flames in a draft. Pimm stepped down from the helm, his admiral's coat heavy with barnacles and brine.

"The boy's right," Pimm said. "The gold must be lost forever. Not hidden. Not stolen. Lost—sunk beyond any hope of salvage." He looked at me, and his dead eyes held a sympathy that cut deeper than any blade. "You understand what that means, don't you, captain?"

I understood. My debt. My freedom. Every dollar of salvage that would have pulled me out of the hole I'd dug for myself. The treasure that had cost me my partner, my honor, my crew's trust—it would all vanish into the trench, and I would be left with nothing but the weight of having carried it.

"Why me?" I said. "Why any of this? If the answer was always to sink the gold, why drag me across an ocean to do it?"

Blackwood's ghost laughed, bitter and broken. "Because I couldn't do it myself. I tried, Mack. I stood on this deck with the chest in my arms and I could not let go. The gold is my greed made solid. And greed does not release its hold without a fight." He gestured at his spectral crew. "They died because of my greed. Every man on this ship. And still I could not sink it."

Corvus nodded slowly. "You are not the first living man to wear the captain's coat. But you are the first to stand here and ask what it costs."

The gold was faintly visible below deck, through the gaps in the planks—a dull gleam that pulsed like a heartbeat. I could feel it calling to me too. A warmth in my chest that had nothing to do with the coat. A voice that whispered my debts could be paid, my failures erased, my name made whole again.

I clutched the railing. My knuckles went white.

"If I sink the gold," I said slowly, "my crew—they signed on for a share. For a payout."

"They signed on for a captain," Pimm said. "And they chose to follow you to an island of the dead. Greed is the chain, Donovan. But it does not have to be yours."

The coat burned against my skin. The gold pulsed below. Somewhere across the water, on the distant shore of Myrrdin's Island, the others were waiting for me to come back with answers.

I had answers now. They just weren't the ones anyone wanted.

I looked up at Blackwood. "If I sink your treasure, do you finally rest?"

Blackwood's ghost met my eyes. "If you sink it, Mack Donovan, I am freed from the gold. And you are freed from me." He paused. "But the coat will still be yours."

I reached to my shoulders and pulled the coat off. It felt like peeling away a layer of my own skin. I held it out to Blackwood.

He shook his head. "It's not mine anymore. It was never mine to keep." He smiled, and for a moment he looked almost young. "You know what you have to do. The question isn't whether you can let go of the gold."

He nodded toward the chest below deck.

"The question is whether you can let go of what it promises."