Wraith of Fort Morgan by M. L. Bullock

Author:M. L. Bullock [Bullock, M. L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2025-09-24T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen — Cassidy

The stairwell was a throat of brick and shadow, cool even in the breathless dark. My hand slid over the rail as we climbed, palm damp, fingers cramped from holding the sketchbook too tight. The book had a pulse again. Faint at first. Then stronger. I pressed it against my ribs and tried to imagine it as only my own heartbeat echoing back, but the rhythm was off by a fraction. The mismatch made my skin crawl.

The baby shifted low and left. A small roll, confident and certain. Life announcing itself under all that death. I cupped my belly as we reached the landing and whispered that I had us both. A lie and a hope in one breath.

We stepped out onto the wall walk. Wind plucked at my shirt and ran a cold finger behind my ear. The Gulf sprawled on one side, black as a closed eye. On the other, the fort fell away in angles and curves, arches gaping, casemates dark. Sound moved differently up there. Closer to the sky, closer to the ghost of a storm. Somewhere below, a rope clinked softly against a ring like a bell that had forgotten its language.

Midas walked ahead of us and stopped where the parapet bowed outward. He lifted his chin as if testing a current only he could feel. Jericho came even with him and set his broad palm a breath from the stone, not touching, respecting the old rule he carried in his bones. Sierra paused beside me and drew in a slow breath, then let it out in a prayer too soft for anything but angels.

Joshua lingered near the stair, half-turned toward me, half toward the dark. He was both sentry and anchor. I was grateful for the way he is always both.

The wind brought a sound thin as a thread. A high, sure whistle that did not waver. The note stretched until the air felt tight. I thought of Eph in his little charter boat and how his voice had cracked when he told Midas about this very sound. I thought of how he almost laughed when the false hope of that steady light first lifted in the fog.

The book climbed a degree in my arms. Warm. Then warmer. I knew better than to open it. I did not open it. The cover warmed anyway until the heat pressed through cloth to skin. A breath caught in my throat and the baby answered with a small firm kick that said keep steady. I have you. I believed him. I tried to.

The faintest shimmer lived in the air twenty feet down. Not a real flame, not something a photograph would catch and claim, but an outline of memory. On any other night, on any other wall, I would have called it nothing. On this night, this place, I called it what it was. The place where a lantern had been held without mercy. The place where a man wanted to be found and was ruined for trusting that he would be.

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