FULL STORY CHAPTER 3
The roaring black-and-gold flagship of the High King’s personal guard tore through the ocean mist, its massive wooden hull cutting the waves like an iron plow. On the elevated quarterdeck of the Leviathan, the three hundred crewmen stood completely frozen, caught between the terrifying authority of Admiral Vance and the approaching doom of the royal inquisitor fleet. The air felt thick, heavy with the metallic tang of lightning and the suffocating pressure of a coming execution.
Commander Kael was still on his knees, his throat gripped firmly by Vance’s massive, armored hand. Yet, despite his humiliation, a sickening, desperate grin spread across Kael’s face. He could see the black sails on the horizon. He knew that the current High King, the usurper who had murdered my family fourteen years ago, would never allow a living heir of House Valerius to draw another breath. To the current throne, my very existence was a death warrant for everyone on this ship.
“You see them, don’t you, old man?” Kael choked out, his voice raspy as he thrashed against Vance’s unbreakable grip. “That is the Iron Sovereign. It is the personal vessel of Lord Inquisitor Malakar, the High King’s most ruthless executioner. He was sent to ensure this fleet remains loyal to the true throne. If you do not drop your sword and hand over this peasant brat, Malakar will blow this flagship out of the water and hang every single man from the yardarms!”
The sailors murmured in absolute terror. They looked at the approaching warship, then at me—a starving, bleeding fourteen-year-old child sitting in the captain’s velvet chair, wrapped in a tattered piece of sailcloth with two broken ribs. To them, I wasn’t a king. I was a curse. I was a spark that was about to ignite a fire that would consume them all.
“Silence, traitor,” Admiral Vance said, his voice entirely calm, entirely steady. He didn’t even look at the horizon. His piercing blue eyes remained fixed on Kael’s trembling face. “The men of the Great Eastern Fleet do not bow to inquisitors, nor do we take orders from murderers who hide behind black sails. We bow only to the blood of the Sea Throne.”
Vance let go of Kael’s throat, throwing him onto the deck planks like a piece of rotting meat. He turned toward his personal guards, his silver beard catching the icy rain.
“Secure the Commander,” Vance commanded. “Put him in the heavy iron irons. If he opens his mouth again, cut out his tongue.”
“Admiral, please!” the ship’s first mate stepped forward, his face pale with fear, his hands trembling as he gestured toward the approaching warship. “The Iron Sovereign has fifty heavy brass cannons primed and ready. Their gun ports are already open. They are signaling us to drop our sails and prepare to be boarded. If we resist, we will all die before the sun sets!”
I sat in the captain’s chair, every breath I took feeling like a hot dagger twisting into my chest. The pain from my broken ribs was agonizing, but the terror inside my heart was far worse. For seven years, I had survived by being invisible. I had allowed men to kick me, spit on me, and treat me like an animal just so I could see the next sunrise. Now, suddenly, my true name was being shouted across the deck, and a massive warship was coming to destroy me.
“Admiral Vance,” I whispered, my voice trembling as I clutched my side. “Let me go. Throw me into the sea. I am just a deckhand. I don’t want all these men to die because of me.”
Admiral Vance stopped. He turned slowly, walked over to my chair, and knelt in the freezing water before me for the second time. He took my small, raw, bleeding hand into his massive, scarred palms.
“Your Grace,” Vance said, his voice surprisingly gentle, carrying a deep, emotional warmth that cracked through his hardened warrior exterior. “Fourteen years ago, I failed your father. I was fighting on the western borders when the palace burned. I arrived too late to save the King, too late to save the Queen. For fourteen years, I have carried that shame in my bones. I swore an oath to a usurper only to keep this fleet together, waiting for a day that I prayed would come. I will not fail you again. Even if the entire ocean turns to fire, the Great Eastern Fleet belongs to you.”
He stood up, turning to face the three hundred sailors who were watching him with wide, frightened eyes. He drew his massive broadsword, lifting it high into the storming sky. The polished steel caught the flash of a distant lightning bolt, gleaming with a brilliant, terrifying light.
“Men of the Leviathan!” Vance thundered, his voice easily overpowering the roaring wind. “For seven years, you have watched this child crawl across these decks. You have seen him suffer, you have seen him starve, and you have seen him bear the cruelty of small men with silent dignity. But look at his neck! Look at the mark of the Sea Throne! He carries the blood of the ancient kings who built this empire before the usurper stained it with betrayal!”
The old Admiral pointed his blade directly at the approaching black-sailed warship.
“Lord Malakar comes to finish the murder of House Valerius! He thinks we are loyal dogs who will hand over our rightful King to save our own skin! I ask you now, warriors of the deep—are we slaves to a usurper, or are we the free sons of the Eastern Sea?”
A heavy, breathless silence hung over the deck. The sailors looked at one another, the conflict tearing through their minds. They were pirates, raiders, and hardened naval soldiers. They knew the penalty for rebellion was a brutal death on the execution platform. But they also knew Admiral Vance. They had followed him into the jaws of hell, and he had never lied to them. He had never abandoned them.
Then, an old, heavily scarred master gunner stepped out from the crowd. He was a veteran who had served under my father during the old wars, his body covered in old blast burns. He looked at me, staring intensely at the pale, geometric burn scar on my neck—the anchor, the rising sun, the three stars.
The old gunner’s eyes filled with sudden tears. He dropped his heavy iron ramrod onto the deck, fell to his knees in the icy water, and bowed his head completely until it touched the wooden planks.
“Long live Prince Ethan,” the old gunner choked out, his voice rough and broken. “Long live the true King of the Sea Throne.”
It was like a dam breaking. Another sailor dropped to his knees. Then five more. Then twenty. Within moments, a wave of motion rippled across the entire three-hundred-man deck as every single hardened pirate, ruthless raider, and seasoned soldier dropped to their knees in the freezing rain, bowing their heads toward my captain’s chair. The same men who had laughed as I was dragged toward the beast pit just an hour ago were now kneeling before me in absolute, reverent silence.
Only Commander Kael remained standing, held tightly by two heavy guards, his face twisted in a mask of pure, venomous hatred. “You are all fools!” he screamed. “You are kneeling to a corpse!”
“Man the cannons!” Vance roared, completely ignoring Kael’s screams. “Close the sail lines! Prepare for a naval engagement! We will meet the Iron Sovereign with the full fury of the Eastern Fleet!”
The deck instantly erupted into a frenzy of disciplined chaos. Sailors leapt into the rigging, hauling the heavy, frozen ropes to turn the massive ship directly into the wind. Down below on the gun decks, the heavy iron port covers slammed open, and the massive brass cannons were rolled forward, their black muzzles pointing out toward the approaching enemy.
The Iron Sovereign was closing the distance fast, its massive black hull towering over the waves. On its elevated bow stood a figure wrapped in a dark, ceremonial cloak—Lord Inquisitor Malakar. He held a long brass spyglass to his eye, his cold, pale face hardening as he realized the Leviathan was not dropping its sails. It was positioning itself for a direct battle.
“They are not surrendering!” the first mate yelled over the wind. “Admiral, they are preparing to fire a full broadside at us!”
“Let them fire,” Vance calmly replied, stepping up to the ship’s heavy iron wheel, taking the handles into his massive hands. “Hold your fire until we can see the whites of their eyes. We have only one shot to break their line.”
The world seemed to slow down to a terrifying, agonizing crawl. The two massive warships surged toward each other through the raging storm, two wooden titans on a collision course in the middle of a black ocean. I clutched the arms of the captain’s chair, my heart hammering against my broken ribs, watching as the black sails of the inquisitor ship blocked out the sky.
Suddenly, the side of the Iron Sovereign erupted in a massive, deafening roar of orange flame and thick, black smoke.
Twenty heavy brass cannons fired simultaneously. A split second later, the world turned into an absolute nightmare of flying splinters, roaring iron, and screaming men. The heavy iron cannonballs slammed into the side of the Leviathan, ripping through the thick oak timbers with a sound like a hundred lightning bolts striking at once.
One cannonball shattered the forward bulwark just twenty feet from my chair, sending a deadly storm of jagged wood splinters crying through the air. A sailor standing nearby was thrown completely off his feet, his chest ripped open by a piece of flying oak. The ship tilted violently to the side as water began to pour into the lower decks.
“Hold the line!” Vance’s voice echoed through the carnage, his grip on the wheel completely steady despite a deep cut on his forehead that was now dripping bright red blood down into his silver beard. “Keep her steady! Gun decks, prepare to fire on my command!”
The Iron Sovereign was passing directly alongside us now, so close I could see the cruel, arrogant faces of the High King’s personal guards lining the rails. Lord Malakar stood on the quarterdeck, a cold, superior smirk on his face as he raised his hand to order a second, final broadside to sink us to the bottom of the sea.
But Vance was faster. With a massive heave of his broad shoulders, he spun the iron wheel, slamming the Leviathan’s heavy wooden bow directly into the side of the inquisitor ship.
The impact was cataclysmic. The two massive vessels crashed together with a deafening screech of breaking wood and tearing canvas. The force of the collision threw me completely out of the captain’s chair, sending me sliding across the wet deck until a heavy guard caught me, shielding my fragile body with his iron armor.
“Fire!” Vance roared.
The gun decks of the Leviathan exploded. At point-blank range, our thirty brass cannons unleashed a devastating storm of iron and fire directly into the lower hull of the Iron Sovereign. The explosion was so powerful it shook the very ocean beneath us. The inquisitor ship’s side was completely obliterated, its thick oak supports turning into sawdust as the heavy iron balls ripped through their gun lines, detonating their gunpowder barrels in a chain reaction of blinding orange fire.
Screams of agony rose from the burning wreckage of the enemy ship as it began to tilt violently, its internal structure failing as the black sea rushed into its torn belly.
“Board them!” Vance ordered, drawing his broadsword. “Leave none of the usurper’s dogs alive!”
The sailors of the Leviathan, fueled by a sudden, wild fury and the realization that their true King was watching them, threw heavy iron grappling hooks across the gap, pulling the burning wreckage of the Iron Sovereign closer. They leapt across the rails with wild war cries, their cutlasses flashing in the dim light as they engaged the surviving inquisitor guards in a brutal, hand-to-hand slaughter.
I watched from the deck, trembling, as the old Admiral Vance led the charge himself. He moved like a god of war, his heavy blade cutting through the elite guards as if they were made of paper. Within minutes, the deck of the Iron Sovereign was covered in red, the black-and-gold flags of the usurper torn down and trampled into the blood-stained wood.
Lord Malakar, his beautiful ceremonial cloak burning and his face covered in soot, was dragged across the shattered deck by two of our sailors, thrown down onto his knees before Admiral Vance.
“You… you are a dead man, Vance,” Malakar choked out, spitting blood onto the Admiral’s boots. “The High King will burn the entire Eastern Fleet for this treason. You cannot hide from his wrath.”
Vance did not reply. He simply looked down at the inquisitor with an expression of cold, absolute disgust. He reached down, grabbed Malakar by the hair, and dragged him across the burning bridge between the two ships, throwing him onto the main deck of the Leviathan, right in front of my captain’s chair.
The surviving crew of the Leviathan gathered around, their weapons dripping with blood, their chests heaving as the storm began to slowly break, the heavy rain turning into a light, freezing drizzle.
Commander Kael, still bound in heavy chains, looked at the burning, sinking wreckage of the Iron Sovereign, then at the bloodied, defeated Lord Inquisitor lying on the deck. The final traces of Kael’s arrogance completely evaporated, replaced by a sudden, paralyzing realization that his protection was gone. His power was gone. He was entirely alone.
Admiral Vance walked over to my chair, wiping the blood from his brow. He looked down at Kael, then up at the crew.
“The inquisitor ship is destroyed,” Vance announced, his deep voice filling the silent deck. “But our journey is just beginning. The usurper still sits on the Sea Throne in the capital city of Oakhaven. He thinks he is safe behind his stone walls and his black-sailed fleets.”
The old Admiral turned to me, dropping to one knee, offering the silver hilt of his broadsword toward my trembling hands.
“Your Grace, the fleet is yours. The men are ready. But before we sail for the capital to reclaim your birthright, there is still one unfinished piece of business on this deck. The law of the sea states that a traitor must face the judgment of the King.”
Vance turned his piercing blue eyes toward Commander Kael, who instantly fell to his knees, his entire body shaking with a sudden, desperate terror.
The entire crew turned their eyes toward me, waiting for my very first command as their King, and the dead silence of the battleship felt heavier than any storm we had faced.
FULL STORY CHAPTER 4
The freezing rain had nearly stopped, leaving only a cold, gray mist that clung to the shattered timbers of the main deck. The burning carcass of the Iron Sovereign was slowly sliding beneath the black waves of the ocean, its final dying groans sending small plumes of white steam hissing into the sky. The sea was calming, as if the water itself were waiting to witness the final judgment of the true heir of House Valerius.
I sat in the heavy captain’s chair, wrapped tightly in Admiral Vance’s white bear-fur cloak. The fur was warm, but it felt incredibly heavy on my small, broken shoulders. For seven years, I had been the lowest thing alive on this ship—a nameless stray who was kicked for being too slow, beaten for being too weak, and forced to sleep in the damp, rat-infested holds. Now, three hundred of the most ruthless warriors on the ocean were standing in a massive, silent circle around me, their heads bowed, their breath misting in the cold air.
In the center of that circle lay Commander Kael.
His iron-trimmed leather armor was covered in mud and sea salt, and his thick, braided beard was soaked with his own sweat. The heavy iron chains around his wrists rattled loudly as he shivered against the cold deck planks. There was no mockery left in his eyes. There was no brutal laughter. His face was a mask of pure, unadulterated terror as he looked up at me—the fourteen-year-old child he had tried to throw into a beast pit just hours ago.
Beside him stood Lord Inquisitor Malakar, his hands bound tightly behind his back, his pale face twisted into an expression of quiet, venomous desperation.
“Your Grace,” Admiral Vance said quietly, standing beside my chair with his hand resting firmly on the pommel of his drawn broadsword. “The crew awaits your command. By the ancient code of the Naval Kingdom, a commander who abuses his power to murder his own crewmen, and who plots to assassinate the true heir to the throne, has forfeited his right to live. The judgment is yours.”
I looked at Kael. My broken ribs throbbed with a sharp, burning agony every time I took a breath. My left hand was swollen, the fingers dark blue and broken from where his iron boot had crushed them against the deck. My body carried the physical map of his cruelty. I had every reason to demand his head. I had every reason to watch him slide into the dark waters just like the inquisitor ship.
“Ethan… Prince Ethan…” Kael stammered, his voice cracking as he crawled forward on his knees, his iron chains scraping against the wood. “Please… have mercy. I did not know! I swear by the gods of the sea, I did not know who you were! If I had known you carried the blood of House Valerius, I would have protected you! I would have carried you on my shoulders!”
“You are a liar, Kael,” the old master gunner shouted from the crowd, stepping forward with his heavy iron ramrod. “You didn’t care who he was! You abused him because he was small! You starved him because you could! You threw him to the Winter Wraith just to give us a show!”
“He’s right!” another sailor roared, drawing his cutlass. “Throw him into the beast pit! Let the wolf have him!”
“To the pit! To the pit!” the crowd of three hundred sailors began to chant, their voices rising in a terrifying, synchronized roar that shook the rigging. They slammed their weapons against the wooden rails, their eyes hungry for the blood of the man who had ruled them with terror for so long. They wanted to see the powerful villain destroyed in the exact same way he had tried to destroy me.
Kael wept, his heavy shoulders shaking as he pressed his forehead directly against the wet, splintered deck planks, begging for his life. “Mercy, Your Grace! Mercy from the true King!”
I held up my uninjured right hand.
The gesture was small, but the moment my hand rose, the entire three-hundred-man deck fell into an instant, absolute silence. Not a single weapon clashed. Not a single man breathed. The power of my bloodline was so absolute that a single movement from a fourteen-year-old boy could control the fury of an entire army.
I looked down at Kael, my voice quiet, but carrying clearly through the silent mist.
“When you threw me into the hatch today, Kael,” I said, my voice steadying as the fear inside me finally turned into something cold and solid, “you told me that my life was worth nothing to the Crown. You told me that my mother was a harbor whore, and that my father died in a ditch. You told me that weak, sniveling orphans don’t deserve mercy.”
Kael flinched, his body trembling violently as my words echoed back to him.
“My father was King Alistair Valerius,” I continued, staring directly into his terrified eyes. “He was a man who built hospitals for the poor, who gave land to the widows of fallen sailors, and who never allowed a child to starve in his kingdom. My mother was Queen Eleanor, a woman who stayed behind in a burning palace just to ensure her servants could escape through the secret tunnels. They were rulers who knew that true strength is not measured by how many men you can terrify, but by how many people you can protect.”
I turned my gaze to Lord Inquisitor Malakar, who was watching me with a cold, analytical stare.
“The usurper who sits on the throne right now thinks like you do, Kael. He believes that power belongs to the cruel. He believes that the sea belongs to the wolves. But he is wrong. A crown built on the blood of children is nothing but a heavy shadow that will eventually be swallowed by the light.”
I looked back down at the weeping Commander.
“I will not throw you into the beast pit, Kael. I will not allow the wolf to tear you apart for the entertainment of this crew. If I do that, I am no different than you are. I am no different than the murderer who killed my parents.”
The sailors looked at one another, confused, a low murmur of disappointment rippling through the back rows. They wanted blood. They wanted the brutal satisfaction of revenge. Admiral Vance frowned slightly, looking at me with a look of intense curiosity.
“Your Grace?” Vance asked softly. “Do you mean to let him live?”
“No,” I replied, standing up from the captain’s chair. I let the heavy white bear-fur cloak slip from my shoulders, standing before the crew in my torn, bloody wool shirt, my chest bare, revealing the pale royal naval burn mark on my neck for every man to see clearly. “The law of the sea must be fulfilled. But justice is not a show. It is a debt that must be paid.”
I walked slowly toward Kael, my bare feet stepping into the freezing water on the deck planks. I stopped just inches from his head.
“Commander Kael, by the laws of the Sea Throne, you are stripped of your rank, your titles, and your honor. Your iron armor will be melted down to create fishing hooks for the poor villages you raided. Your name will be erased from the fleet registers, and you will never hold a blade for as long as you live.”
Kael looked up, a sudden flare of desperate hope in his eyes. “Thank you… thank you, Your Grace…”
“Do not thank me yet,” I said coldly. “You will not die by the teeth of the wolf. You will die by the judgment of the sea. You will be placed in a small, wooden rowboat with no oars, no sails, and no water. You will be left in the middle of this ocean, at the mercy of the waves you have spent your life abusing. If the sea decides you are worthy of survival, it will carry you to a distant shore. If not, it will swallow your crimes forever.”
Kael’s face turned completely white. A rowboat with no oars in the middle of the deep eastern ocean was a slower, far more terrifying sentence than a quick death in the pit. It was a complete surrender to the ultimate power of the world we lived in.
“As for you, Lord Malakar,” I turned to the inquisitor, “you will be kept in the heavy irons. You will sail with us back to the capital. You will stand before the gates of Oakhaven, and you will be the one to announce to the usurper that the true King has returned to reclaim his throne.”
Malakar’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing. He knew that his master’s reign was officially coming to a bloody, catastrophic end.
“Take them away,” I commanded.
The guards immediately stepped forward, grabbing Kael by the chains and dragging him toward the ship’s rail, where a small, tattered wooden rowboat was being lowered into the gray water. Kael did not fight. He could only weep silently as he was lowered into the vast, empty expanse of the sea, his small boat quickly disappearing into the thick ocean fog.
The three hundred sailors of the Leviathan watched the empty fog for a long moment, then turned back to face the quarterdeck. The old master gunner stepped forward, drawing his heavy steel cutlass and lifting it high into the air.
“To the true King!” the gunner shouted.
“To the true King!” the entire three-hundred-man crew roared in unison, a massive, deafening chant that echoed off the clouds, their weapons raised in a brilliant forest of steel.
Admiral Vance walked over to me, a deep, proud smile finally breaking through his weathered, scarred face. He dropped to his knees before me, taking my right hand and placing it firmly on the heavy silver hilt of his broadsword.
“Where to, Captain?” Vance asked, his voice filled with a fierce, absolute loyalty.
I looked out past the grey mist, toward the western horizon where the capital city of Oakhaven lay across the water. For seven years, I had been a ghost, a nameless slave who had forgotten what it felt like to be human. But as I looked at the three hundred warriors kneeling before me, and the massive battleship that was now completely under my command, I knew that the child who had crawled through the dirt was dead.
“Turn the wheel, Admiral,” I said, my voice carrying the absolute, unquestionable weight of a sovereign ruler. “Set a course for the capital. It’s time to go home.”
The old man stood up, his massive shoulders squaring as he took the iron wheel, spinning it hard to the starboard side. The massive sails of the Leviathan caught the rising wind, ballooning outward like the wings of a massive white bird as the warship surged forward through the water, cutting a path of pure white foam through the dark, unforgiving ocean.
And for the first time in many long years, nobody knelt on my back again.
