Ink before dawn [Final]
A sound tore from Silas’s throat—no word, no command. Just grief unleashed. “NOOOOO!!!”
The choice was there, twisted cruelly in the split-second that followed: chase the thieves and reclaim what they stole, or fall to her side and bear witness to what might be her last breath. There was no deliberation. His boots struck the dock like war drums as he sprinted to her.
He dropped to his knees beside her fallen body, sliding across the blood-slick planks. His hands—those hands that had torn sails and suffocated men—now trembled as they pressed against her throat, trying to seal the wound. Blood poured between his fingers, hot and unforgiving. It was already too late. But his heart refused what his eyes screamed.
He drew her into his arms, cradling her like something sacred. Belle. Soft. Motionless. His tears—never seen by friend or enemy alike—spilled down his cheeks, carving silent trenches into his weather-worn face.
People gathered.
Whispers floated across the dock like ash. “The baker woman…” “It’s that pirate. Surely he’s to blame.” “What do you expect from his kind?”
Silas heard it all—his name, her name, woven into accusation. And somewhere inside, a sickening part of him agreed. Hadn’t he told Portus he was the kind of man mothers warned their daughters about?
But that didn’t stop him.
He lifted her—not like a burden, but like a vow—and carried her back to the Stormcrow. No one dared stop him. The crew watched in stunned silence as he placed her on the bed in the captain’s quarters, the one place he had never let softness live.
Something inside him broke open that day.
Not with reckless fury. No—his grief took a different shape.
Cold. Unrelenting. Purposeful.
Silas Drake, once bound by gold and sea spray, had changed. And now, there was only the storm.
Crows Murder 
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