Deadwater Kings • Part I ✓

26. VAE VICTIS

"I am both worse and better than you thought."

―Sylvia Plath

Razo had his heels propped up on the control panel of the ship as he chattered on in his strange accent. It had been a little over an hour since Lin and Cortez left. Long enough for Hadrian to worry.

"An' that's why everything's shit in the southern islands," Razo concluded. He laughed as he looked at Hadrian, who affected undivided attention.

Wide eyes, half-open posture, forward lean. His head was starting to hurt.

He knew what Razo was doing, keeping him in sight. It was smart. Wouldn't want Lin's charge to meet some untimely end out of negligence. It grated on Hadrian's nearly-gone nerves. The ship rocked slightly. Something thudded against the hull.

Razo launched into another tirade -- a story, this time, featuring a young hunter -- and Hadrian let his attention divide.

One half of him searched the air for magic. He could feel it at the very tips of his fingers, brushing his skin and breathing somewhere just beyond his hearing. It was still there. He was still connected. He just couldn't grasp it. Couldn't control it. He ached to sink his hands into the water and feel the power coursing through him.

He pressed the urge back beneath his skin and tuned in to Razo's words again.

"And bang!" Razo punched the air. "There was nothin' left of the boy but bone and smoke."

Hadrian lifted an eyebrow. He'd missed quite a bit of Razo's story, forced to nod along with an attentive eyebrow lift. Before Razo noticed his lapse of attention, the Sirenita thudded with the sound of boots on the deck. Razo shut his mouth and reached down for a rusted shotgun that Hadrian feared would explode if he pulled the trigger.

Cortez's face popped through the open hatch. His shoulders heaved, a slight sheen of sweat illuminating his face in the dark. "It's time."

Like he'd been expecting it, Razo rocked to his feet gracefully. "Do you know which doors?"

He nodded. "Only two."

Hadrian picked up a duffel bag that weighed more than he did and hauled it over his back, listening as Razo did the same with ease. Cortez's jaw was clenched, muscles bunched at his shoulders. Hadrian relaxed his core and approached Cortez with as much reassurance as he could. He tipped his head. "You don't have to come with us if you don't want to."

Cortez's eyes flicked from Hadrian's face to some indeterminate spot in the boat. 

"I'm fine. Come on, she's waiting for us." The words spilled out flat. This wasn't what Cortez was thinking about, the anxiety stemmed from something else.

Probably what he'd been hiding for this entire trip. 

The two older men thrummed with energy. Razo, stepping out of the boat with more purpose than Hadrian thought him capable of. Cortez, yoyo-ing between pressing ahead of them and trailing to the side. Hadrian just stretched his legs to keep up and tried to ignore the growing pit of doubt that tickled at his ribs. He focused instead on what was ahead. Follow Razo, help Lin murder a room full of innocents, follow his own plan.