“How?” I jumped at a nearby explosion and hugged my ears. “How will we get over there?”
“Longboat.” He gripped my hand, rising to his feet.
And with a deafening boom, he was gone.
Gone in a gale of fire and debris that hit so soundly it sucked him away from me and into the night.
I screamed, arms reaching, scrambling in the direction he was blown. But I didn’t know where that was. I couldn’t see through the smoke. Couldn’t hear over the rage of battle. Couldn’t breathe beneath the horrific fumes of death. Oh, God, where was he?
“Ashley!” Panic drove me forward, disregarding the dangers around me.
A ball whizzed past my head, so close it singed my hair. But it didn’t halt my mad rush across the splintered deck, my tear-soaked eyes frantically searching the carnage of dismembered extremities.
“Ashley! Where are you? Ashley, please!” My voice bled, cracking and raw, but I kept screaming. Kept searching.
Another shot rang out, knocking me onto my back. As I pushed myself up, a terrible sound buzzed in the distance, growing closer, faster, louder. White-hot terror turned my limbs to seaweed.
Overhead, the storm of a thousand fiery bees swarmed across the ship, smothering lanterns, snuffing out sounds, and spitting iron at the decks and rigging. The attack of gunpowder blew in and blasted over in a roaring fire, taking everything with it—sheets, spars, sailors, chunks of the mast, the entire forecastle, and most of the hull beneath it.
I took cover under a bulwark as violence rained down like angry fists, hurling burning pieces of canvas, cables, and timbers onto the cracked and burning upper deck.
Men cried out in agony, screaming for their mates. I was right there with them, crawling through rivers of blood and scattered bodies, searching for Ashley with shrieking desperation. Terror gripped me so brutally my insides became a single pulsing, ice-cold spasm.
From the sky fell an armless corpse, and it landed beside me with a bone-breaking crunch. A severed section of a backstay tangled around the leg, suspending the body feet over head. Shielding my face, I followed that line up, squinting heavenward at what remained of the crosstrees.
Nothing. There was nothing left of this ship. No one left to watch it sink. No one to hear my cries as I went down with it.
Except Madwulf MacNally.
If Hell existed after this life, I would find him and become his own personal devil, his eternal punisher. I looked forward to death if only so that I could revenge whatever had befallen Ashley.
Returning my attention to the deck, I resumed my search for him. But there was no time left.
The flagship heaved in a great groaning roar of snapping timbers and rushing water. The stern rose heavenward, tipping shoulders over the nose as it began a vertical dive into the sea.
I tumbled downward along the sharply sloping deck, shoved by gravity and banging into debris. The descent was unpreventable, terrifying, stealing every ounce of breath from my lungs. Even so, I swung my head left and right, looking for Ashley, desperate for a last glimpse of him.
The waves rose up and grabbed my legs, drenching me in salt water and tossing me into the flotsam of netting, chunks of wood, dead bodies, and chaos.
I tried to stay afloat and evade the line of cannon fire coming from HMS Blitz. My lungs seethed with smoke. Busted casks slammed into my head, and the ocean rolled over me, pulling me under.
Warm currents surged from every direction, driving water into my nose and eyes. Pieces of shipwreck arrowed through the water like bullets. I pumped my arms and legs, trying to avoid the volley while swimming toward the surface. But I was too deep.
Far above, the ship exploded in orange balls of fire, lighting up the sea. The hull’s broken skeleton dove into the abyss, clouding the water in boils of smoke as it dragged canvas, spars, and cables down with it.
Ashley’s shirt fluttered around my upturned legs, contorting my view of the devastation. As the warship plunged to its death, following me into the nether world, it felt dreamlike. Fantastical. Beautiful even.
But it wasn’t. I’d lost Ashley and Priest.
All had been taken from me, and soon my last breath would be taken, too.
My lungs began to give out. Something crashed into my head from behind. Pain shattered. My heartbeats slowed, and the inevitability of the end fell upon me.