The blade finds his throat.

  Not a killing stroke—I'm not quite fast enough for that. But deep enough that blood spurts in a dark arc across the moonlit stones, deep enough that his expression shifts with shock, deep enough that he staggers back with one hand clutching the wound and the other still trying to bring his knife to bear.

  He changed his mind at the last second. All that talk of surrender, of weariness, of wanting an ending—and when the blade came for him, his body chose to fight. Instinct overriding exhaustion. The survival drive that no amount of philosophical despair can fully extinguish.

  I should have expected it. Everyone fights at the end. Even the ones who want to die.

  "You—" He coughs, sprays red across the cloister floor. The blood looks black in the moonlight, pooling between the ancient stones like water rising in a cellar. "You actually—"

  "I told you." I circle him, blade extended, looking for the opening that will end this. The marks are singing inside my torso, alive with hunger—or it might be the Deep One's attention sharpening at the scent of violence. I sense every drop of moisture in the air, every pulse of blood through my opponent's failing veins.

  And then I do something I've never tried before.

  Instead of sensing the water—I pull it. Not from the air. From him. From the sweat on his skin, the tears in his eyes, the moisture in his breath. I pull, and he staggers, dizzy, weak, his movements slowing as if he's wading through honey.

  The carvings respond with something that might be approval. A new application. A new way to use what they gave me.

  Not just sensing. Commanding. "You don't get to walk away."

  He laughs. It's a wet, gurgling sound, more blood than air, but there's genuine amusement in it—the grim humor of a man who's spent his life dealing death and is now meeting it himself. Twenty years of hunting defectors, and this is how it ends. In a monastery cloister, under the eyes of stone saints, at the hands of a girl barely half his age.

  "Fair enough," he says. "Fair enough."

  But he doesn't stop fighting.

  He lunges again—faster than a dying man should be able to move, faster than a man with a throat wound should be capable of. The blade in his hand catches moonlight as it arcs toward my chest, a killing stroke aimed at my heart.

  I dodge, but not quite fast enough. The edge grazes my ribs, opening a line of fire just below the marks. I feel blood begin to flow—my blood this time, hot and wet against my skin. The pain is sharp, immediate, cutting through the cold focus that's sustained me through half a dozen kills.

  We circle each other across the ancient stones.

  The cloister is quiet except for our breathing—his ragged and wet, mine controlled despite the pain. Blood drips from both of us now, marking our paths in dark spatters that will puzzle the monks who find this place in the morning. The stone saints watch from their alcoves, their faces worn smooth by centuries of weather, their judgment as unreadable as the Deep One's.

  "Twenty years," Ashworth says, as if discussing quarterly reports. He's leaning against one of the Gothic arches now, using the stone to support himself, buying time his body no longer has. His left hand is pressed against his throat, trying to stem the bleeding, but the wound is too deep. His fingers are slick with blood that steams in the cold night air. "Twenty years of this work. I've killed better hunters than you. Smarter. Stronger. Better trained."

  "And yet here we are."

  "Here we are." He coughs again, and this time something dark and clotted comes up with the blood. His lungs are filling. He has minutes, maybe less. "Do you know what I've learned, in all that time? What all those deaths taught me?"

  "Enlighten me."

  "Everyone dies the same way. Screaming, begging, bargaining. The brave ones last a little longer. The clever ones see it coming sooner. But in the end, everyone dies the same." He almost smiles through the blood. "Even me. Even you."

  "I've already died once. It didn't stick."

  "Maybe not. But it will, eventually. The Deep One gives, and the Deep One takes. That's the only truth I've ever learned." He pushes off from the pillar, raises his blade one final time. The movement costs him—I see his legs shake, see the fresh wave of blood that pulses from his throat—but his eyes are clear. Focused. The eyes of a man who's made his peace with what comes next. "If I'm going to die tonight, I'll die fighting. That's more than most of my victims got."

  He charges.

  I'm ready for him this time. The scars flare bright, and suddenly I detect everything—the moisture in the air, the blood pumping through his failing veins, the pattern of his muscles as they contract for this final attack. I know where his blade will be before he does. I know how his weight will shift, how his arm will extend, how he'll leave his left side open in the moment of the strike.

  The Deep One is watching through me now. Not guiding my hand—it never guides, never commands—but observing. Curious. Interested in how its marked one will handle this moment of violence.

  I sidestep. His strike goes wide, cutting only air. And I drive my knife up under his ribs, into the space where his heart is laboring to keep him alive.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  The blade slides in easily. Too easily. As if his body has been waiting for this moment, has been ready to surrender even when his mind chose to fight.

  He freezes. Looks down at the handle protruding from his chest. Looks up at me.

  "Tell me your name," he says. His voice is barely a whisper now, the life draining out of him with every heartbeat. Blood bubbles at the corner of his mouth, black in the moonlight. "I want to know who killed me."

  "Eleanor Winchester. I was sixteen years old when they drowned me. And I survived."

  "Winchester." He tastes the name, rolls it across his tongue like something precious. "I'll remember that. Wherever I'm going."

  "You're not going anywhere. You're just stopping."

  He laughs one final time—a wet, broken sound that ends in a gurgle as the last of his strength fails. His legs give out. He slides down the pillar, leaving a dark smear on the ancient stone, and comes to rest sitting against the base. His eyes are still open, still fixed on my face.

  "Forgive me," he whispers. "All of them. Forgive me."

  And then he's gone.

  The light goes out of his eyes. The tension goes out of his body. What remains is just meat and bone and cooling blood—the shell that contained a man who spent twenty years hunting and killing in the name of something that never noticed him at all.

  I stand over the body, breathing hard.

  The wound on my ribs burns with every breath, but it's shallow—painful, not dangerous. The marks settle back to their oceanic rhythm, gradually calming as the violence fades. The weight of the abyss withdraws, returning to its eternal watch in the depths below.

  Footsteps behind me. I spin, blade raised, before I recognize the sound.

  Corrine.

  She emerges from the shadows at the edge of the cloister, her face pale in the moonlight. Her hands are empty—she left her blade at the extraction point, as we planned—but her eyes are fixed on Ashworth's body with an expression I can't quite read.

  "You killed him," she says.

  "Yes."

  "He was..." She stops, starts again. "He was the one who hunted me. For three months, after I ran. I thought he was going to catch me. I thought I was going to die. Every shadow looked like him. Every footstep behind me sounded like his boots on the cobblestones."

  "Now he's dead instead."

  "Yes." She crosses to where I'm standing, steps careful around the spreading pool of blood. "Does it feel the way you thought it would? Killing someone who hurt you?"

  I consider the question. The space where my heart should be aches with absence. The satisfaction I expected—the catharsis, the release—isn't there. Just the cold efficiency of a job completed, another name crossed off a list that seems endless.

  "No." I shake my head. "It doesn't."

  "I didn't think so." She looks at Ashworth's face—the expression frozen in something between surprise and acceptance. "He was a monster. He deserved this. But it doesn't fix anything, does it? Doesn't undo what he did."

  "Nothing undoes what they did. The best we can do is make sure they don't do it again."

  Corrine nods slowly. Then she looks at the blood soaking through my clothes.

  "You're hurt."

  "It's nothing. We need to move—the guards will be changing soon."

  "Let me see."

  "Corrine—"

  "Let me see."

  Something in her voice stops me. Fear. Real, raw fear. The kind that comes from caring about someone more than you meant to. Her hands are shaking as she reaches for me.

  I lift my shirt, show her the wound. It's shallow, as I thought—a long cut just below the marks, bleeding freely but not dangerously. A few days of rest and it'll be nothing but another scar to add to my collection.

  Corrine's breath catches when she sees the marks themselves. They're glowing faintly—they always glow after violence, as if the connection to the Deep One needs time to settle back into dormancy. The symbols Celeste carved into me, pulsing with stolen light.

  "Does it hurt?" she asks. "The marks, I mean. When they do that."

  "Something like awareness. Like something is paying attention through me."

  "The Deep One."

  "Yes."

  She reaches out, hesitates, then touches the edge of one of the symbols with her fingertip. The glow intensifies—responding to contact, to the warmth of another person's skin against mine—then fades back to its normal pulse.

  Her touch is gentle—far gentler than anything I've felt since the drowning. I should pull away. Should button my shirt and pretend this moment didn't happen. But I don't want to. When her fingertip traces the curve of a symbol, light as a breath, I find myself leaning into her touch instead of away from it.

  And something strange happens. My marks go quiet. The same unnatural stillness I felt in the barn—that connection between her congregation blood and my marks, whatever it means.

  "That happened before." Her voice is barely audible. "In the barn. I noticed."

  "I've noticed."

  "What does it mean?"

  "I don't know." The honest answer. The marks have never responded to anyone this way before—not to Mei, not to the cultists I've killed, not to anyone. Only Corrine.

  We stand there, her fingers still resting against the edge of the marks, the moonlight silver on the wet stones. Two broken people in a cloister full of death, finding something neither of us expected.

  "We need to move,"

  "I know."

  "But after we're clear—after we're safe—" I pause, find the words. "I'm glad you're here too."

  She doesn't smile. Neither do I. But something passes between us—an understanding, maybe, or a promise.

  "Come on," I reply. "Mei's waiting."

  We slip out of the cloister together, leaving Ashworth's body for the guards to find.

  Mei is waiting in the shadows beyond the garden wall, exactly where we planned. Her eyes find Ashworth's body through the archway—still visible, slumped against the pillar, blood black in the moonlight.

  She doesn't speak. Doesn't move. Just stands there, watching, her three-fingered hand pressed flat against her thigh.

  "It's done," I say quietly.

  "I know." Her voice is strange. Hollow. "I thought I'd feel something. After all these years."

  "Do you?"

  A long pause. The rain patters against the stones. Somewhere in the monastery, a bell begins to toll the hour.

  "No," she says finally. "Just tired. Just... finished with one thing and not yet started on the next."

  She turns away from Ashworth's body without another word. But I see her hand rise briefly to touch the stumps where her fingers used to be—a gesture of acknowledgment, maybe, or farewell.

  Some debts can only be paid in blood. And blood, I'm learning, doesn't buy back what was taken.

  It just ends the account.

  Let them know the Tide was here. Let them spread the word to the rest of the congregation.

  Ashworth's paper sits heavy in my pocket. Names. Locations. The keys to dismantling an organization that's operated in shadows for centuries.

  Twelve names remain on my list. And somewhere, a mother I thought was dead. A woman on a ship who vanished into shadows. Answers that feel further away with every name I cross off.

  But somewhere behind us, in the night we've just escaped, the congregation is already learning what happened. Already sending word to Celeste, to Marsh, to the final four who wait at the center of the web.

  The Tide is coming for them, and the tide waits for no one.

  Corrine walks beside me through the rain-slicked streets, close enough that our shoulders occasionally brush. The contact is small, but I find myself wanting more of it. Wanting the warmth of connection in the cold that's become my constant companion.

  That's new, dangerous, human—and I don't pull away. My marks go quiet, and I let myself feel something close to hope.

  But somewhere in London, a telegram is already clicking through the wires. Celeste Vane reads the name of another dead man—and begins to understand that something more than a hunter is coming for her.

  Something that used to be her sister's daughter.