Silence was the key. Novari had repeated that a thousand times to the crew of the Starling. And still, as she helped to heft them over the rail of the Avourienne, she could hear their feet hit the ground with tiny thumps. Each thump, she winced. This wasn't just a mission she was leading from afar. It wasn't one she was guaranteed to get out of. She needed this to go smoothly.

The Starling had been briefed on a cunning plan: Two of the Starling crew for every one of the Avourienne. Cover their mouth, knock them out, drag them upstairs. If they couldn't be knocked out, they would be gagged. Since the Starling had a crew nearly twice as big, there were enough people to do it all at the same time.

They positioned themselves at the doors down the hallway of the Avourienne. When they were in position, Novari left Brynn to give the command.

They rushed the doors, exploded into the rooms. Shouts, yells and grunts of effort shattered the still night air. There was more shuffling than there should have been, but the Starling was doing their best. One by one, dragged out either unconscious or kicking, came the members of the Avourienne. Only two times, one of them broke free, and Novari had to step in. She watched every crew member be pulled from their room and up the steps. So the Devil's crew had lost their fight.

The air was completely still, but it hadn't been when they'd approached. It was almost as if the night had calmed for her, for them. She stayed unmoving belowdecks, the only one left in the now-silent space.

She glanced down the hallway. Somewhere down there was her room.

She had never been one to let emotions get in the way of a plan, but her feet moved without permission. She walked all the way down the hall, cracked open the already ajar door.

It was a shrine. It had not been touched, been entered. Her blankets were all the way she'd left them, the extra boots and shirts still ordered nicely. And there, curled into the pillow, was Novari's kitten. Except Minnow wasn't a kitten anymore; he was a fully-grown cat that seemed to have aged ten years in one. His whiskers were graying and his fur was matted. The pillow was indented as if the animal hadn't moved in ages.

Minnow lifted his head when she entered, almond eyes on her. He hissed, and Novari flinched. Traitor, he seemed to say.

"Novari."

She whirled around, reaching out and twisting the pistol out of Rusher's hands before even realizing it was him. She got a firm handle on it and put to it his forehead.

"Shoot," he said. "Please."

Novari blinked, then lowered the pistol.

He took a step forward, once-lively eyes now defeated. "I'd rather be the first," he said. "I just can't bear to be the last."

Novari raised the pistol again. It was going to happen. Slint wanted them all upstairs—probably so he could do some stupid spiel and risk the luck that they'd already had. The least Novari could do was give Alexander his wish.

He nodded, then closed his eyes. He leaned forward a little so the pistol touched his head. It was a soft, understanding gesture in the darkness.

Novari didn't move for a moment. Then, as the desperation she'd holed up inside of her released, she lowered the pistol again.

"I'll take you with me," she said. He was talented enough that Slint might go for it.

"Never," he whispered, a fight in him still. "I die with Bardarian. I die with my friends."

Bardarian. That name, that presence. He was here somewhere.

It hit her, fierce, heavy. He was here. Britter was here. Rusher was here. Everyone was here. The smell of the ship, the feeling of the magic, the pull of her soul. It was all here.

"Let me take you with me," Novari insisted. She'd bring Alexander only. She'd cling to him like a lifeline, use him as her tether to reality and past. She'd use him as a connection to Bardarian long after he was gone. She could not sail on this ship without that tether.

"Shoot me."

Novari felt a bubbling panic. When she hesitated again, Rusher reached out to take the gun for himself. Novari sidestepped him, took heaving breaths as if she'd run a marathon.

She turned and ran. Out of that room, away from her suicidal friend and her aged cat. Down the hall, up the steps. Onto the deck.

"Good, good. You're here." Slint was pacing up and down the side of the deck. "I was waiting."

Novari could see the crew tied up, exactly as was the plan. She could see all that, but she could also see the outline of a man leaning against the rail behind Slint. There were three Starling crew members ensuring he couldn't move.

It was in her peripheral, only, that outline. She kept it that way. If she looked, she might do something insane. Everything felt fragile and glass-like already, so easily broken. If she just kept out of his gaze, she might make it through this.

"You didn't need to wait," Novari said. Her voice wavered like it never had before.

"I did, actually."

Novari glanced at Slint, peeling her gaze off the tied-up crew and that peripheral man. He held a pistol in his hands, throwing it up and catching it.

"The Avourienne has a loyalty test, does it not?" Slint asked.

Novari stared right through him. She knew where he was going. She knew it, and she tried desperately to find a way around it in her head before he said it aloud. The Avourienne crew were gagged, bound or entirely knocked out, but they watched with interest and morbid curiosity. Slint walked closer to her, lowering his voice, keeping the conversation between them.

"Kill someone they love, isn't that it?"

Novari watched him carefully as he held something out in his palm. When she looked down, it glinted like expensive diamonds. Bardarian's mother's ring.

"Why'd you keep this?" he whispered to her.

"Jon—"

"Tell me why you kept this. Tell me why I found this."

Novari let out a fake, theatrical sigh. "It's worth money—"

"Bullshit!" Slint shouted, causing Novari to flinch just the slightest. "Fucking bullshit." He threw the ring across the deck, and it sparkled as it hit the rail and bounced back down. "You're a fucking liar. I don't trust you. You tell me one thing but you're thinking something entirely different—"

"There is a better time to have this conversation—"

Slint violently shook his head. In the moonlight, his face casted angular, inhuman shadows. His eyes were glazed with some unplaceable emotion.

"This is the best time!" he exclaimed. He smiled like a monster, then handed her the pistol. "This is the best time." He placed a hand tenderly on her back, then raised his other to that shape by the rail.

Novari looked over at Slint. "It's your ship now," she said, panic trying as hard as it could to bubble through her words. "It's your honour."

Slint tilted his chin down, those angular shadows increasing. "I think it should be yours, Silta. It's your plan. It's your masterpiece. It's your honour."

It wasn't about whose honour it was. It wasn't about anything other than Slint's faith in Novari. In his trust. He wanted to see her end it once and for all. See her put a bullet through Bardarian. He wanted to win.

Novari took a deep breath. "You're the Captain—"

Slint gave her a shove, but she didn't move much. "I'm giving this to you. Why won't you take it?"

He knew why. He knew exactly why. And this game—this posturing—it wasn't getting Novari anywhere. She needed to beg. She needed to roll over, or this would end with her pistol to Bardarian's head—a trigger she had no clue if she could pull.

She spun around, letting all the panic and the desperation out. To hell with the charade, with the politics.

"Please don't make me do this," she begged. Her voice came out as a strained whisper. "Please don't, please—"

If he was surprised by her change in attitude, he didn't show it. He gave her another shove back. She stumbled a little, but she reached out to cling to his shirt.

"Please," she said. "Please, Jon." Her vision began to water. "Just—shoot him yourself. I won't hate you for it. Just shoot him. Don't make me do it."

There was that emotion again, the one that flickered across his face. He stepped forward, walking her back to the rail with the pistol in her hand.

Novari searched his face, his eyes, anything to place that emotion. That draw of the eyebrows, that line in his mouth—

Fear. Terror. That's what it was. Jon Slint was about to be the Captain of the Avourienne, and he was too terrified to do it. He was forcing Novari to pull the trigger as a wild card. As a way to get out somehow. He'd gotten everything he wanted only to realize he wasn't up to the task. Something had changed his mind.

"We can leave," Novari whispered—anything to get out of this. "We can leave this now, Jon, we don't have to do it—"

"Pull the trigger," he snapped. "Kill him."

"That's not what you want—"

"You don't know what I want. Pull the trigger."

But she did. She could see it there on his face like a story. This was too much for him. It was too heavy, too many responsibilities and legends on him. Too much in too little time. Whim-acting Jon Slint, who doesn't think before he acts. His deadly trait.

"Please, Jon," Novari breathed.

"You pull the trigger, Novari," Slint whispered back, "or I'll kill you both."

That gleam of fear in his eyes—Slint was on his fight or flight, and right now he was fleeing, spiralling, shattering. He was unable to think, unable to act. He would shoot Novari in the moment if he had to. If that's what it took. He didn't know what he was working towards. He only knew that the moment he dragged Bardarian onto the deck, something took a hold of him. It felt evil, burdened.

It was the Devil, ready for its new host.

Shoot him, it whispered. Shoot her. Shoot them all. Make it a bloodbath. It's been too long since I saw blood.

Jon felt his own blood curdle. Congeal and thicken. He needed something to happen. Whatever it took to get this voice out of his head. That sour feeling of dread around his heart. The tug of something awful. Something needed to happen to make something happening there was something happening—

Novari stepped away from him. His eyes were darting, his nostrils flaring like some rabid animal. He reached out to her, to the pistol. To shoot her.

She wrenched it away from him. He would shoot her if that's what it took to accomplish whatever it was he was needing to accomplish. He'd shoot her without a doubt.

Novari turned around all at once, the movement rushed and anything but her usual composure. She raised the pistol to that shape, but kept her eyes off of it. She cocked the weapon. She hoped she could aim without looking at him.

But he just couldn't leave it at that, could he? He was still a fighter, in the end.

"You're such a coward, stunner."

His voice was not the same, but it was still his voice. Still the same cords that said a million lovely things to her. It shook her to the core, made her skin freeze.

"Look at me," he said. "Don't be a coward."

She shook her head. She couldn't see through her watery eyes, through the moonlight and the darkness. Cold swam up and down her spine, over her chin and her nose.

"I don't care if you shoot me," he said. "But I deserve you to look."

Novari swallowed something that wasn't there. Her fingers shook. Jon wrestled internally with some sort of devil just behind her.

"You don't look," Bardarian said, his voice a deathly calm, "because then you're not killing a person. You're killing some faceless, nameless thing."

How could he speak so calm? How could reason still thread his words after all that time, heartbreak, alcohol, sweat, tears, blood—

"I'm not faceless or nameless," he said, his voice only slightly edged. "And if you're going to shoot me, you're going to look. Because then you'll live with it."

"Pull the trigger!" came Slint's desperate shout.

"Look at me," Bardarian demanded. "I'll haunt you either way."

Novari did not move her eyes nor her head. She covered the trigger.

Vallin didn't even have the energy to fight to the end. Had the Devil given up on him? Had he been written off? Was he too far gone for even his oldest friend to abandon him?

Come back, he begged to something more powerful than him. Just make her look. Just give me one more chance.

Slint felt fear in his bones. In his skin.

Bardarian looked up to the flag of the Avourienne. I beg you, he called. One more chance.

Slint felt evil pulling at his organs, at his mind, in his hair and his cells and his—

Last chance.

It was gone.

"Look at me," Vallin said, one more time.

His voice called Novari's gaze, careened it. Tugged it, pulled it, begged her eyes to move. Just one time, something told her. Just look once. You'll still be able to shoot. Just look. How bad could it be? He won't look like he used to. He'll look different. It'll be easier to shoot him if he's not the man you loved.

Novari moved her eyes, focused them on her former lover.

His chin raised slightly, then fell back down—like a nod, maybe—no, no. Not a nod. A thank-you. To something.

He did look different. Longer hair, all untrimmed. Thinner, maybe. More gaunt, less imposing. But he also looked...sober, almost. And his eyes—they were exactly the same. Deep and glittering, just like the darkest part of an underwater trench. A killer of everything, an embodiment of the Devil. A ruthless, awful man that wasn't any of those things for her.

Ambition Above All. Ambition Above All. Ambition Above All, you useless, useless, unsatisfactory girl.

Novari blinked away the tears. Focused on his face. Was that her—

Shoot. Shoot. Shoot shoot shoot shoot—

Novari held his gaze, and she saw something there. Simple uncertainty, perhaps, in the beginning, but it morphed to chaos, like heartbreak and guttural pain. But there was also a whisp of something in the end, after all that. Something almost like...freedom, maybe.

Shoot. Shoot. Ambition Above All. You useless, useless, unsatisfactory—

Your rules are so safe, Keira whispered to her. I never pegged you for safe.

Halleveire monere.

Novari lifted her chin just a little and smiled. Not a regular smile, though. That one with the canines. The Siren smile that was synonymous with I'm about to do something that someone around me is not going to like.

Bardarian nodded gently. Not to her, to Alexander, left unrestrained near the entrance to belowdecks.

Fate is so ironic, Alexander thought, and he sprinted from the steps. He dove to snatch the pistol from Silta's outstretched hands just as she began to lower it—before anyone else could move or think or even process this. He shot Jon Slint in the head before Silta had even solidified her decision.

Carnage was the only word for such a scene. Before Slint's body had even hit the deck, Bardarian had thrown a member of the Starling on him over the rail. Britter kicked out from his stale position, shattering Rhea's kneecap. Rusher was onto his third kill and half the Avourienne crew were out of their bonds before Novari even realized what she'd done. Bardarian hadn't drank since that morning—only because they'd officially ran out of liquor. He was himself for a moment. He could hold this composure for a few minutes longer.

The mere moment the crew of the Avourienne saw that familiar leadership in Bardarian's eyes, they were back, too, as if they'd never fallen apart in the first place. Kill with malice. Get the job done. Protect the ship, your family, your captain. Do it with your life.

Novari couldn't breathe. Ambition Above All. But she'd—

"Prisoners?" Britter shouted across the deck.

"Kill them all."

Novari stepped back. How could she be so stupid—

"All of them?" Bates asked. He was coming up behind Novari, his eyes on her but his question to Bardarian.

Bardarian glanced behind him momentarily. He saw who Bates had set his sights on, but his expression didn't change.

"All of them," he repeated.

"Vallin," Novari whispered back to him, still in disbelief. Bates held out a knife, coming up slowly. Courtley flanked him. Two on one. No members of the Starling to help her.

It was ending now, the dead falling like rain. It only took a mere minute for the crew of the Starling to be entirely murdered. They could've done this the whole time; they just had to fight for something.

The moment it was done, Bardarian dropped the knife he'd picked up. He moved past Novari, backing away from Courtley and Bates, and took the balcony steps. He needed a drink.

"All of them?" Courtley asked, one more time.

Bardarian opened the door to the captain's quarters.

"All of them," he said.