CHAPTER 3
The sound of twenty heavy iron-bound crossbows being cocked at the exact same moment was a click that traveled straight down my spine. The naval guards did not hesitate. Their faces were hidden behind heavy iron visors, cold and unfeeling, reflecting only the dim, flickering amber glow of the dying ship lanterns. To them, I was not a symbol of an ancient sea throne, nor was I a prince of the bloodline they had spent two decades hunting into extinction. I was a target. A breathing piece of flesh that their master had ordered them to turn into a sieve.
“Aim for the throat,” Fleet Commander Vance hissed, his voice trembling with a mixture of raw panic and venomous hatred. He stepped back into the shadow of his high-backed oak throne, pulling his long, gold-trimmed velvet cloak tightly around his chest as if the expensive fabric could somehow shield him from the changing wind of the entire ocean. “Do not let them speak another word! Shoot them down! Shoot the old man, shoot the slave, shoot anyone who refuses to draw their blade against these traitors!”
Old Kaelen did not move an inch. His heavy, scarred knee remained firmly planted on the soaking wet, salt-encrusted deck planks directly in front of my bare, bleeding feet. His hands, thick and gnarled like the roots of an ancient coastal oak, held the heavy boarding pike steady across his lap, but he did not raise it to defend himself. He looked up at me, his weathered face wet with a mixture of pouring rain and old tears that he had kept hidden behind a wall of military discipline for twenty long years.
“If this is where the line of Valerius ends, my lord,” Kaelen whispered, his voice deep and steady, completely unaffected by the twenty iron bolts pointed directly at his chest, “then I will gladly go to the great hall of the deep with my eyes open, knowing I finally lived long enough to see the true king of the black water.”
“Stand up, Kaelen,” I rasped, my throat raw from twelve years of breathing bilge smoke and swallowing dry corn husks. I reached out with a trembling hand, my fingers closing around his leather-wrapped shoulder. The weight of the heavy iron chains around my wrists clanked loudly against his armor, a harsh, metallic reminder of my reality. “Do not die for a ghost. I am nothing but a broken rower who stole a piece of rotted bread.”
“You are everything this fleet forgot,” Kaelen replied, refusing to rise.
Behind the line of armored guards, the three hundred crew members of The Leviathan were a sea of pale faces and hesitant eyes. The wild, drunken laughter that had filled the deck just ten minutes ago when they were tossing garbage at my face had completely evaporated into the freezing midnight air. Men who had spent their entire lives cutting throats for silver were now looking at each other, their hands hovering over the hilts of their cutlasses, their minds racing through the old songs and forbidden tales of the Three-Headed Dragon. They were trapped between the immediate terror of Vance’s crossbows and the ancient, superstitious dread of shedding the blood of the true sea throne.
“What are you waiting for?!” Vance screamed, his voice cracking into a high-pitched shriek that sounded entirely unbefitting of a grand commander of the high seas. He snatched a heavy iron torch from the bulkhead, swinging it wildly toward his own guards. “Fire! I order you to fire! If you do not pull those triggers by the count of three, I will have every single one of you stripped of your commission and thrown into the harbor slave pens along with the rest of the garbage!”
The lead guard, a massive brute with a jagged scar running across his exposed jawline, tightened his gloved finger against the cold iron trigger mechanism of his heavy crossbow. The string groaned under the immense tension of the bent steel. I closed my eyes, drawing one last breath of the cold, salt-laden Atlantic air, waiting for the sudden, violent impact of the iron bolt that would finally end twelve years of absolute agony.
But the bolt never left the groove.
A sound tore through the bottom of the ship that made every man, guard, and officer drop their jaws in absolute horror. It was not the sound of a wave striking the hull, nor was it the familiar groan of the timbers under the stress of the storm. It was a deep, low, sub-bass vibration that started deep within the bowels of the ocean and rattled the very fillings in our teeth. The entire ninety-gun battleship didn’t just tilt—it lifted. The massive, ten-ton iron cage chained alongside the hull was violently wrenched upward, the thick link-chains snapping like dry twigs with a series of loud, metallic explosions that sent iron shrapnel flying across the gunwales.
“The cage!” Bor shouted, his massive form tumbling across the wet wood as the deck listed a sharp forty degrees to the starboard side. “The main support chains have sheared off! The beast is loose from the hull!”
Through the thick, rolling ocean fog and the blinding sheets of rain, a massive shape rose from the black water right alongside the main deck. It was the deep-sea leviathan, a creature of ancient nightmares, its scarred, barnacle-encrusted hide gleaming like wet obsidian under the flash of the lightning. But it was not attacking. It did not tear at the wooden gunwales with its massive, razor-sharp teeth as it had done for the last three days while it starved in the dark.
Instead, the massive creature rose until its giant, sulfur-yellow eye was level with the main deck. The eye, wider than a ship’s longboat, rolled slowly in its socket, bypassing the cowering First Mate, bypassing the terrified guards, and bypassing the trembling Fleet Commander.
The ancient creature looked directly at me.
A heavy, unnatural calm seemed to fall over the beast as its gaze locked onto the silver-white crest burned into my right shoulder. The wild, thrashing fury that had threatened to split The Leviathan in half just seconds ago stopped instantly. The beast let out a low, rumbling hiss that sounded like steam escaping a volcano, a sound of profound recognition that sent Sela, the pirate witch, tumbling to her knees in the wet slop of the deck.
“The Sea Lord’s beast…” Sela whimpered, her black-stained hands clawing at her own face in utter disbelief. She pointed a trembling, skeletal finger toward the giant yellow eye. “It knows him! It doesn’t want to eat him—it’s bowing to him! The ancient pact… the bloodline of Valerius commands the deep! We are all dead men… the sea has come to claim its own!”
The naval guards froze entirely. The lead guard slowly lowered his crossbow, the iron tip pointing toward the deck planks. He looked at Vance, his voice hollow beneath his visor. “Commander… we cannot fight the deep. Our weapons are for men, not for the things that rule the black water.”
“You fools! It’s an animal!” Vance screamed, his face completely distorted by panic as he ran forward, snatching a heavy boarding axe from the weapon rack near the mainmast. He pushed past his own guards, his expensive leather boots slipping on the bloody deck slop. “It’s a mindless fish! I will kill him myself! I will take his head and show the High King that the line of the dragon is truly dead!”
Vance lunged forward, the heavy iron axe raised high above his head, his eyes wide with the desperate madness of a man who knew his empire of lies was crumbling in front of his very eyes. He didn’t see the old master-at-arms moving.
Kaelen didn’t use his boarding pike to defend. With the speed of a veteran who had fought in a hundred naval boardings, he lunged forward, his heavy iron-toed boot catching Vance directly in the shin. The Fleet Commander gasped as his leg buckled beneath him, his expensive silks dragging through the wet filth as he tumbled forward, the heavy axe flying from his grip and clattering into the darkness of the lower deck.
Before Vance could recover his footing, three older sailors—men who had stood silently in the back row just minutes prior—stepped forward with their heavy iron cutlasses drawn. They didn’t point them at me. They formed a tight, impenetrable wall of steel directly in front of my body, their blades angled outward, pointing directly at the throat of their own Commander.
“Do not move another inch, Vance,” one of the older sailors said, a man named Harlen whose face was covered in old powder burns from the royal wars. His voice was cold, completely devoid of the fear he had shown toward the Commander for the last ten years. “We have carried your gold, and we have eaten your maggot-infested bread while you drank wine from silver cups. But we will not let you touch the son of Admiral Valerius. The true flag has returned to the water.”
“This is mutiny!” Vance shrieked from the deck, his hands covered in wet salt and grease as he tried to scramble backward toward the protection of his guards. “Guards! Cut them down! Every single one of them! I will double your silver! I will give you lands in the southern provinces!”
But the guards did not move. One by one, they uncocked their heavy crossbows, the loud, snapping sounds of the strings releasing a clear signal that the authority of the Fleet Commander was dead. The lead guard took off his heavy iron helmet, tossing it onto the deck with a loud, metallic clang. He looked down at Vance with pure contempt.
“Your silver cannot buy our souls from the bottom of the ocean, Vance,” the guard leader said coldly. “The fleet belongs to the sea. And the sea has chosen its master.”
A low cheer began to rise from the back of the crew, a sound that grew louder and louder until it drowned out the howling of the midnight storm. The word began to spread down the hatches, through the gundecks, and down into the dark, suffocating holds where the seventy other galley slaves remained chained to their heavy oak oars.
“The Prince is alive!” the shout echoed up from the lower decks. “The line of Valerius is on the main deck! The dragon has returned!”
Suddenly, the heavy wooden hatches leading down to the rowing decks were violently smashed open from below. The sixty-nine other galley slaves—men who had been beaten, starved, and worked to the bone for over a decade—came pouring up onto the main deck. They had used their massive rowing pins and the raw, desperate strength of their broken bodies to snap the rusted chains that bound them to their benches. They were covered in bilge filth, their ribs showing through their tattered rags, their wrists bleeding from the iron cuffs, but their eyes were burning with a terrifying, vengeful light.
First Mate Bor saw them coming and tried to run toward the safety of the captain’s cabin, but he wasn’t fast enough. A dozen starved rowers tackled him to the deck, their massive, calloused hands pinning his heavy frame down against the wood he had spent years painting with their blood.
“Please!” Bor screamed, his filed teeth clicking together in terror as the men he had whipped daily stood over him with heavy iron pin-bars raised high. “I was only following orders! It was Vance! Vance ordered the flayings! Vance kept the rations for himself!”
“You enjoyed every strike of the whip, Bor,” a young rower named Tom shouted, his voice cracking with years of suppressed rage as he slammed a heavy iron chain link across Bor’s jaw, knocking the oversized pirate flat onto his back. “You told us we were nothing but fuel for the High King’s fire. Let’s see how well you burn!”
I stood in the center of the deck, the cold rain washing away the remaining grime from my skin, the silver-white crest on my shoulder gleaming like iron in the moonlight. The massive deep-sea leviathan remained steady alongside the ship, its giant yellow eye watching my every move as if waiting for a final command.
Vance was surrounded. The very crew he had ruled through fear and absolute cruelty had formed a tight, suffocating ring around him. He was on his knees now, his expensive gold-trimmed coat covered in bilge water and sea slop, looking up at the starving slave he had tried to execute for a scrap of rotted bread.
“What do we do with him, my lord?” Kaelen asked, his voice deep and respectful as he stepped beside me, offering me a heavy, wool captain’s cloak to cover my bare, shivering shoulders.
I looked down at Vance. The man who had held the power of life and death over thousands of souls across the sea was now nothing but a trembling, pathetic creature, clutching at his wet leather boots, his aristocratic pride completely shattered in front of the entire fleet.
“He wanted to see how a thief is punished under his flag,” I said, my voice cold and calm, carrying over the roar of the ocean. “Let’s show him the true law of the water.”
CHAPTER 4
The iron-tipped crossbow bolts remained lowered, their deadly points reflecting the fractured glare of the dying storm lanterns. The heavy, armored guards who had stood as an impenetrable shield for Fleet Commander Vance for over a decade now stepped backward into the shadows of the quarterdeck, their boots sliding through the slick mixture of salt water, spilled wine, and black bilge filth. The air on the main deck of The Leviathan was thick, heavy with the scent of ozone from the lightning and the raw, suffocating stink of the ancient deep-sea creature that still hovered alongside the wooden gunwales, its massive sulfur-yellow eye locked onto the silver-white crest burned deep into my right shoulder.
Fleet Commander Vance scrambled backward across the wet deck like a crab caught in a low tide. His magnificent, gold-trimmed velvet cloak was ruined, soaked through with the rotted sea slop and grease of the very deck he had used to humiliate me only twenty minutes prior. His fingers, heavy with rings stolen from the dead captains of the Western Reach, clawed at the splintered planks as he tried to find a pocket of space away from the tight, angry circle of three hundred hardened sailors and seventy freshly liberated galley slaves who now surrounded him.
“This is madness!” Vance screamed, his voice cracking into a high, desperate whine that no longer carried the smooth, aristocratic arrogance of a highborn officer. He pointed a trembling, pale finger at Old Kaelen, then at the lines of starved rowers who held heavy iron pins and shattered chain links in their calloused hands. “You are listening to the mad delusions of an old, broken warrior and a thieving galley slave! Look at him! He is nothing but a nameless piece of garbage who belongs in the mud! He stole from the High King’s stores! He broke the naval code!”
“The only code broken on this ship was the one written in the blood of Admiral Valerius,” Kaelen said, his voice rising like a steady gale over the fading thrum of the thunder. The old master-at-arms stepped forward, his heavy, salt-stained leather boots clicking firmly against the deck as he positioned himself directly between me and the cowering commander. He raised his heavy boarding pike, pointing the iron tip directly at the center of Vance’s gold-embroidered doublet. “For twenty years, we followed your family because we believed the line of the Three-Headed Dragon had been extinguished in the fires of the capital. We thought we were keeping the fleet together for the survival of the kingdom. But you knew. Your father knew. You hid the true bloodline in the dark hold, turning the son of the Great Admiral into a nameless beast of burden so you could wear a crown that doesn’t belong to you.”
“It’s a lie!” Vance shrieked, his eyes darting toward the darkness of the captain’s quarters, looking for an escape that didn’t exist. “The boy died in the harbor slave pens! My father saw the body!”
“Your father saw what he wanted to see, Vance,” I said, stepping forward from the protective circle of the older sailors. The heavy wool captain’s cloak that Kaelen had thrown over my bare, shivering shoulders dragged against the wet deck, but for the first time in twelve years, my spine was perfectly straight. The rusted iron cuffs still hung from my raw, bleeding wrists, but they no longer felt like a weight. They felt like evidence. “He saw a city burning and assumed the sea would swallow the truth. But the ocean doesn’t bury secrets. It just waits for the tide to turn.”
The three hundred crew members watched in absolute, breathless silence as I walked toward the man who had ordered my execution over a piece of moldy sea biscuit. The rowdy, drunken killers who had spent the night spitting on me and kicking old bones at my face were now pulling back their caps, their heads bowing slightly as I passed them. The old veterans—men who had fought alongside my father before the great betrayal—were weeping openly, their rough hands trembling as they touched the edges of my tattered cloak.
Beside the mainmast, First Mate Bor lay groaning in the filth, his jaw shattered by the iron chains of the rowers he had spent a decade torturing. He looked up at me with his remaining eye, his filed teeth covered in blood, his massive frame shivering with a terror he had never shown to any living soul. He tried to speak, to beg for the mercy he had never once granted to a man on the rowing benches, but the words were drowned out by his own blood.
“What is the judgment, my lord?” Harlen asked, his hand firmly gripping the hilt of his heavy naval cutlass as he kept his eyes locked on Vance. “Do we hang him from the yardarm by his own gold chains? Or do we let the rowers have him in the dark hold where he kept you for twelve years?”
Vance looked up at me, his face pale as a corpse, his lips trembling as he realized that not a single sword on this ninety-gun battleship would be drawn to defend his life. The naval guards had completely turned away, their weapons resting against the gunwales, their allegiance broken by the undeniable sight of the Sovereign Seal on my shoulder and the unnatural calm of the deep-sea leviathan that still watched from the black water.
“Please…” Vance whispered, his aristocratic pride finally collapsing into pure, pathetic desperation. He fell completely forward, his forehead pressing against the wet, salt-encrusted wood of the deck, right at my feet. He reached out with a trembling, ring-covered hand, trying to touch the edge of my tattered rags. “Valerius… your father was a man of honor. He believed in the law of the fleet. He would not allow a common mutiny to decide the fate of a commissioned commander. Spare my life… I will give you the flagship. I will give you the gold in the lockbox below. I will tell the High King that you died a hero… I will give you anything…”
“You have nothing to give, Vance,” I said, my voice carrying a cold, quiet weight that seemed to silence even the wind. “The ship belongs to the men who pull the oars. The gold belongs to the widows of the captains your father murdered. And my name is not yours to bargain with.”
I looked out over the crowded deck, at the seventy rowers whose bodies were marked with the same whip scars as my own, at the sailors who had been forced to serve a tyrant out of fear, and at the massive, scarred beast that still waited patiently by the side of the hull. The storm had passed its peak, the heavy black clouds parting just enough to let a single ray of cold, northern moonlight cut through the ocean fog, illuminating the deck of The Leviathan in a pale, silver glow.
“The law of the fleet says a thief must be punished,” I announced, looking down at the cowering commander. “You did not just steal a piece of rotted bread from a starving man, Vance. You stole twenty years of peace from this kingdom. You stole the names of every man who died in your dark holds. You stole the honor of the Royal Armada.”
I turned my back on him, looking toward Kaelen. “Strip him of his gold. Take his rings, his cloak, and his polished armor. Give them to the men who have spent the last decade shivering in the bilge water. And then, throw him into the empty beast cage alongside the hull.”
“No! No! Please! Not the cage!” Vance screamed, his voice rising to a frantic shriek as four large rowers stepped forward, their massive, calloused hands gripping his shoulders and tearing the expensive velvet and gold filigree from his body. He fought against them, his silk shirt ripping, his white skin exposed to the freezing night air as his stolen rings were pulled from his fingers and tossed into an iron bucket for the crew to divide. “The beast will tear me apart! Sela, help me! Bor! Protect your commander!”
But the pirate witch was gone, having slipped away into the shadows of the lower decks to save her own skin, and Bor was too broken to move. The crew watched with a grim, silent satisfaction as the naked, shivering Fleet Commander was dragged across the very planks where he had stood like a god only moments ago. He was hauled over the side of the gunwale and shoved down into the massive iron cage that had held the deep-sea leviathan for three days.
The massive creature did not attack him. It didn’t need to. The leviathan let out one final, deafening roar into the midnight sky, a sound of absolute liberation, before diving deep into the black water, its massive tail-fin slamming against the surface and sending a mountain of freezing spray directly over the cage where Vance lay screaming in the dark. The cage drifted behind the flagship, a cold, iron prison for the man who had built his empire on the chains of others.
Old Kaelen walked toward the mainmast, his heavy boarding pike resting on his shoulder. With a single, powerful stroke of his cutlass, he severed the heavy ropes that held the black, jagged flag of High King Magnus to the rigging. The tyrant’s banner fluttered down into the wet filth of the deck, where seventy freed rowers trampled it into the grease with their bare feet.
In its place, Harlen reached into his old sea chest and pulled out a faded, carefully preserved piece of silk—a deep blue flag bearing the crest of the Three-Headed Dragon twisting around a broken crown. As the true banner of the Sea Throne rose to the top of the mainmast, catching the cold northern wind, the three hundred men of the flagship fell to one knee, their weapons raised in a silent, solemn salute to the horizon.
I stood at the helm of the massive battleship, the cold wind blowing through my matted hair, the weight of the captain’s cloak warm against my scarred shoulders. The iron cuffs on my wrists were still there, but they were no longer a sign of my bondage—they were the anvil upon which my survival had been forged. I looked out over the black, open water, knowing that the High King’s empire would soon tremble when they saw this flagship returning from the dark.
And for the first time in twelve long years, nobody knelt on my back again.
