The salt from the sea always felt like fire when it hit the open cuts on my back. On the Black Leviathan, the largest and most terrifying pirate flagship to ever sail the jagged northern reaches of the Sea Throne, mercy was a word spoken only by men about to die. I was just fourteen years old, a starved, nameless cabin boy whose only purpose was to scrub the blood off the oak decks, carry heavy iron buckets of lard to grease the cannons, and bear the weight of every crewman’s anger. They called me “Ratsmeat.” They told me my mother was a dockside beggar and my father was food for the crabs. I believed them, because my memory before the age of seven was nothing but smoke, the screaming of dying men, and the smell of burning timber.
The worst of them was the First Mate, a massive, scarred brute named Iron-Hand Silas. He didn’t have a left hand; instead, a heavy iron block was bound to his wrist with thick leather straps, and he used it to enforce his own twisted laws on the lower deck. Silas hated me more than any other creature on the sea. He hated that my bones were small, that my skin was pale, and that I never cried out when his iron hand found my shoulders.
On the night of the Great Equinox storm, the waves were rolling as tall as the pine trees of the old Nordic kingdoms. The sky was pitch black, torn apart only by jagged streaks of blue lightning that made the ocean look like a boiling cauldron of ink. The wind screamed through the rigging like a thousand dying horses. Down below, in the central deck where the main mast met the heavy timbers, the crew had gathered. They were drunk on sour ale and fermented honey, craving blood to pass the terrifying hours of the storm.
“Bring out the rat!” Silas roared, his voice booming over the sound of the crashing waves.
Two burly deckhands grabbed me by the hair and dragged me out of the dark hole beneath the anchor chains where I slept. I was shivering, wearing nothing but a torn burlap shirt and linen trousers soaked through with frozen sea spray. They threw me onto the center of the deck, my knees skinning against the rough oak boards. The pirates cheered, slamming their wooden mugs against the tables.
In the center of the deck hung the Storm Cage—a massive, rusted iron cage used to punish traitors or to hold wild beasts captured from foreign lands. Tonight, the cage wasn’t empty. Inside was a massive, cross-bred fighting hound, a beast with the jaw of a mastiff and the scarred grey hide of a northern timber wolf. It was starving, strings of thick saliva dripping from its black jowls as it growled, its yellow eyes locked onto me.
“The rules are simple, boys!” Silas shouted to the roaring crowd, stepping forward and resting his heavy iron hand on top of the cage. “The rat has to stay in the cage for three turns of the sandglass. If he keeps his throat unbroken, he gets a scrap of salted beef. If he doesn’t… well, the dog gets a fresh meal!”
I looked around the room, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. The faces watching me were hard, cruel, and twisted with laughter. They wanted to see a helpless boy torn apart. I looked toward the back of the deck, where the Pirate King sat.
Lord Vane, the Warlord of the Seven Reefs, was a man whose name made grand admirals tremble in their stone fortresses. He sat in a high-backed chair carved from the whalebone of a leviathan, a long silver cutlass resting against his knee. His face was a mask of cold stone, his grey eyes staring out into the dark ocean through the open ports, completely indifferent to the cruelty of his men. To him, my life was worth less than a single iron nail holding the hull together.
“Please,” I whispered, looking up at Silas, my voice cracking with terror. “Please, sir, the beast will kill me. I haven’t finished grease-packing the lower cannons yet. Let me work.”
Silas laughed, a wet, disgusting sound. He raised his heavy iron hand and struck me across the side of my face. The blow sent me spinning across the deck, my lip splitting open, the warm taste of blood filling my mouth. The crowd roared with approval.
“You speak when you’re spoken to, carrion!” Silas spat, grabbing me by the collar of my torn shirt and hoisting me into the air. “You think your tiny life matters to this ship? You are nothing. Your mother died in a ditch, and you will die in this iron box.”
He dragged me toward the narrow door of the cage. The wolf-hound slammed its heavy body against the bars, its teeth snapping just inches from my face. The stench of its foul breath made my stomach turn. I kicked and screamed, pulling against Silas’s grip with every ounce of strength my starved body possessed.
“Put him in! Put him in!” the crew chanted, slamming their fists on the tables.
Silas shoved me through the narrow opening. I tumbled into the filth at the bottom of the cage. The iron door slammed shut behind me, the heavy bolt sliding into place with a sound that felt like the closing of a coffin.
The massive hound immediately backed into the corner, its ears flattening against its scarred skull, its low, guttural growl vibrating through the iron bars beneath my hands. The ship pitched violently to the port side, throwing both me and the beast against the rusted iron walls. The animal snapped its jaws, missing my arm by a hair’s breadth, tearing a strip of burlap from my sleeve.
“Time starts now!” Silas laughed, turning the large wooden sandglass upside down.
I backed away until my spine pressed against the cold iron bars, pulling my knees to my chest. The hound advanced, its heavy paws sliding on the wet wood, its eyes glowing with the primal urge to kill. I knew I couldn’t fight it. I had no weapon, no strength, and no allies. I closed my eyes, waiting for the cold teeth to tear into my neck, wondering if my mother would be waiting for me in whatever dark afterlife belonged to nameless deckhands.
The hound lunged.
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FULL STORY
CHAPTER 1
The massive hound lunged, its heavy paws slamming into my chest with the weight of a falling boulder. The breath exploded from my lungs in a sharp, ragged gasp. I threw my thin arms up, instinctively guarding my throat as the beast’s jaws snapped shut, teeth scraping violently against the bones of my forearms. The pain was immediate, a sharp, white-hot agony that made my vision blur, but the terror was greater. I pushed against the dog’s wet, muscular chest with everything I had, my bare feet slipping in the foul slime at the bottom of the cage.
Outside the rusted iron bars, the crew of the Black Leviathan went wild. They slammed their heavy wooden tankards against the long oak tables, spilling sour ale and dark rum onto the floorboards. Their laughter was a deafening roar, a wall of cruel sound that filled the dark, suffocating hold of the ship. To them, my desperate struggle for survival was better than any tavern sport in the southern ports.
“Keep your throat clear, Ratsmeat!” one scarred pirate bellowed, his face twisted in a drunken grin. “A silver coin says the beast takes his left hand before the first turn of the glass!”
“Two silver coins says the boy doesn’t last a single turn!” another shouted back, leaning over the table to get a closer look at the blood now dripping onto the cage floor.
Iron-Hand Silas stood right at the front of the crowd, his massive frame towering over the iron enclosure. His single good hand was planted firmly on his hip, while his heavy iron-block wrist attachment tapped rhythmically against the bars, a sharp clang-clang-clang that seemed to drive the fighting hound into an even greater frenzy.
“Look at him squirm!” Silas roared, turning his head to face the crowded tables. “That’s what you get when you breed dockside trash! No marrow in the bones, no blood in the veins! Fight back, boy, or I’ll give the dog your boots too!”
I couldn’t fight back. My fingers were clawing uselessly at the thick, leathery hide of the animal’s neck, but its muscles were like iron cords. The hound’s hot, heavy breath blasted directly into my face, smelling of old blood and rotten meat. It snarled, a deep, guttural vibration that I could feel inside my own chest, and reeled its head back for another strike, aiming directly for my exposed neck.
The ship suddenly lurched violently to the starboard side as a massive rogue wave slammed into the hull. The entire deck tilted at an impossible angle. The heavy wooden tables slid several feet, sending mugs, knives, and platters crashing to the floor. Inside the cage, the sudden shift threw the heavy hound off balance. Its paws slipped, and its massive body went flying sideways, crashing hard against the rusted iron bars.
I didn’t hesitate. Survival is a cruel teacher, and it had taught me to move fast when danger hesitated. I scrambled backward on my hands and knees, dragging my bleeding arms away from the beast, forcing myself into the furthest, tightest corner of the cage. I pulled my knees tightly against my chin, wrapping my torn burlap shirt around my bleeding forearms to stem the flow of dark red blood.
The hound recovered quickly, shaking its massive head, its long grey ears flapping against its skull. It turned its yellow eyes back to me, but the sudden, violent motion of the ship had made it cautious. It lowered its front quarters, its belly almost touching the wet wood, and began to circle me slowly, its claws clicking against the iron deck of the cage.
“Get up, you miserable cur!” Silas snarled, his laughter fading as he realized I hadn’t been instantly torn apart. He smashed his iron wrist-block against the cage door, the sound echoing through the hold like a blacksmith’s hammer. “Do your job! Tear the meat from his ribs!”
I looked past the roaring First Mate, my eyes searching the dim, smoky depths of the grand cabin area at the stern of the hold. There, sitting elevated above the common crew on a chair made from the massive, bleached ribs of a sea monster, was Lord Vane, the Pirate King.
He hadn’t moved a single muscle since the torment began. His long, grey-streaked hair fell over his broad shoulders, framing a face that looked as though it had been carved from the jagged cliffs of the northern fjords. A thick, dark fur cloak was draped over his shoulders, pinned at the neck with a heavy silver brooch. His long, calloused fingers rested lightly on the pommel of his heavy silver cutlass, which stood upright between his knees.
Lord Vane didn’t look at me. He didn’t look at Silas. His cold, pale grey eyes were fixed on the open gun ports, watching the dark, white-capped waves rise and fall in the storm outside. He was a man who ruled over a fleet of three thousand brutal sea-wolves, a man who had burned kingdoms and drowned admirals. To him, the life or death of a nameless cabin boy was less important than the dust blowing across his deck.
“The sand is running out, Silas!” a voice called from the back of the room. “The boy is still breathing!”
Silas’s face darkened, his thick eyebrows knitting together in a scowl of pure malice. He prided himself on his cruelty; to him, a cabin boy surviving his game was a personal insult to his authority on the lower deck. He looked around the room, seeing the amusement in the men’s eyes changing from bloodlust to mockery.
“He won’t breathe for long,” Silas muttered, his voice dripping with venom.
He stepped toward the side of the deck where a row of heavy iron tools was secured to the bulkhead. He grabbed a long, iron-tipped gaff—a tool used for hooking large fish or dragging heavy ropes. Returning to the cage, he slid the sharp iron hook through the bars, aiming directly for my thigh.
“Let’s see how well you dodge when you can’t walk, Ratsmeat!” Silas hissed.
He thrust the iron gaff forward. The sharp point caught the flesh of my calf, ripping through the thin linen of my trousers. I screamed, a high, piercing sound of pure agony that cut through the roaring of the wind. The pain was blinding. I tried to pull my leg away, but the iron hook was embedded deep, pinning my leg against the floorboards.
The smell of fresh, hot blood immediately triggered the hound. It didn’t hesitate this time. With a low growl, the beast sprang forward, its jaws wide, aiming directly for my pinned lower body.
“No! Please!” I shrieked, my hands clawing at the wooden floor, trying to drag myself away from both the iron hook and the approaching teeth.
The crew exploded in cheers again, leaning over the tables, their eyes wide with excitement. Silas grinned, his yellow teeth bared in a triumphal smirk as he twisted the gaff, driving the point deeper into my leg to keep me from moving.
But the storm wasn’t finished with the Black Leviathan.
An even greater wave, a wall of black water twenty feet high, slammed directly into the ship’s stern. The impact felt like a collision with a stone fortress. The entire vessel groaned, its massive timbers screaming under the pressure. The stern lifted high into the air, and then dropped with a sickening, stomach-churning plunge.
The heavy iron lantern hanging directly above the Storm Cage broke from its iron chain. It plunged downward, crashing heavily against the top of the iron enclosure. The glass shattered into a thousand pieces, and the whale oil inside ignited instantly, sending a brief, brilliant flash of bright blue and white fire cascading down over the cage and the surrounding deck.
The sudden flash of fire and the violent drop of the ship threw everyone into chaos. Silas lost his grip on the gaff, his boots slipping on the wet deck as he staggered backward, flailing his arms to keep from falling into the row of heavy storage barrels behind him. The hound was terrified by the sudden burst of fire; it aborted its leap, yelping loudly as a stray drop of burning oil singed its hide, and retreated to the far corner of the cage, whimpering and tucking its tail between its legs.
I was thrown forward by the impact, my shirt catching on a jagged piece of the broken lantern chain that had fallen through the bars. The rough burlap tore completely open, from my left shoulder down to the middle of my waist, exposing my bare back and neck to the cold, wet air of the hold.
The ship slowly righted itself, rolling heavily in the troughs of the massive waves. The roaring of the crew had died down for a brief moment as men scrambled to pick up their dropped weapons and secure their sliding gear. The only sound in the hold was the panting of the terrified hound and my own ragged, sobbing breaths.
I lay on my stomach, my face pressed against the wet wood, gasping for air. The torn remnants of my shirt hung loosely from my arms. The bright, flickering light from the burning oil on the deck cast sharp, dancing shadows across my exposed skin.
“Get up, you clumsy fools!” Silas roared, recovering his balance and kicking a nearby deckhand out of his way. His face was red with embarrassment and rage. He grabbed another iron rod from the bulkhead, his eyes locked onto me with murderous intent. “The game isn’t over! I’ll break the rat’s back myself if I have to!”
He marched back toward the cage, his heavy leather boots thudding against the deck. He raised the iron rod high above his head, preparing to thrust it through the top bars of the cage to finish me off before the crew could mock him for failing to kill a cabin boy.
“Hold.”
The word wasn’t shouted. It was spoken in a low, raspy tone, barely louder than the hum of the wind through the timber. Yet, the moment it cut through the air, the entire hold went completely, utterly silent.
Silas froze, his iron rod suspended in mid-air. The deckhands who were laughing stopped, their mouths still open. The men who were reaching for their dropped mugs stood like statues.
I slowly lifted my head from the deck, my vision blurred with tears and pain.
Lord Vane, the Pirate King, had stood up from his whalebone throne.
He wasn’t looking at the ocean anymore. His pale grey eyes were fixed on the Storm Cage. More specifically, they were fixed on me. His hand, which had been resting casually on his cutlass, was now gripping the silver pommel so tightly that his knuckles were stark white. His face, usually as unreadable as stone, was pale, his lips parted in an expression that looked dangerously like terror.
“My Lord?” Silas asked, his voice losing its arrogant edge, replaced by a sudden, nervous tremor. He lowered the iron rod an inch. “The boy is just trash… he’s just cabin meat. I was only entertaining the men before the midnight watch—”
“Step away from the cage, Silas,” Lord Vane repeated, his voice dropping another octave. He began to walk down the raised steps of his dais, his long fur cloak dragging behind him on the wet floor boards.
“But Lord Vane—” Silas started, his pride making him foolish.
“I said,” Lord Vane hissed, his hand suddenly moving with the speed of a striking viper, drawing his silver cutlass in a single, fluid motion that filled the room with a sharp shhhk sound, “step away from the boy.”
The tip of the long, razor-sharp blade stopped precisely one inch from Silas’s throat. The First Mate swallowed hard, his face turning a sickly shade of white. He slowly raised his hands, dropping the iron rod, and took three long steps backward, his eyes wide with confusion and fear.
The entire crew watched in breathless silence as the Pirate King walked slowly toward the rusted iron cage. Every eye in the room was fixed on him, trying to understand why the ruler of the Northern Seas was stepping into a dispute over a nameless cabin boy.
Lord Vane reached the cage. He didn’t look at the massive, snarling hound, which immediately shrank back into the shadows at his approach. He knelt down on the wet, bloody deck, his expensive leather boots sinking into the filth without a care.
Through the narrow iron bars, he reached out with his left hand. His long, scarred fingers were trembling as he gently pushed aside the remaining shreds of my torn burlap shirt, exposing the base of my neck where it met my left shoulder.
There, highlighted by the flickering light of the burning whale oil, was a deep, jagged scar. It wasn’t a scar from a pirate’s whip or a guard’s blade. It was a severe, ancient burn mark, shaped precisely like a triple-crested wave rising above a broken anchor—the ancient, forbidden crest of the Royal Naval Fleet of the High Kingdom, a symbol that hadn’t been seen on the seas since the Great Betrayal seven years ago.
Lord Vane stared at the mark for what felt like an eternity, his breath catching in his throat. He slowly lifted his eyes to meet mine, and for the first time in my seven years of misery, I saw a man look at me not with hatred, but with a shock so profound it looked like he had just seen a ghost rise from the ocean depths.
“By the old gods,” Lord Vane whispered, his voice trembling so violently that every man in the hold could hear it. “It cannot be.”
CHAPTER 2
The hold of the Black Leviathan remained so silent that the only sound was the creaking of the massive ship’s timbers as it rolled over the heavy swells. Nobody moved. Men stood with their breath caught in their throats, their eyes darting between the knelt figure of their terrifying King and the broken, bleeding cabin boy inside the rusted cage.
Iron-Hand Silas shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his leather boots squeaking on the wet floorboards. The sound seemed to snap him out of his initial shock, though his face remained tight with a mixture of confusion and lingering anger. He looked around at the crew, seeing the dawning confusion on their faces, and realized his reputation as the feared First Mate was hanging by a thread.
“My Lord,” Silas said, stepping forward again, though he kept his distance from the King’s long silver blade. He tried to force his usual booming, confident tone back into his voice, but it came out strained. “What is the meaning of this? The rat is nothing but a gutter-born orphan we picked up from the wreckage of a southern trader years ago. He’s a thief and a slacker who doesn’t earn his keep. Why do you stay my hand over such trash?”
Lord Vane did not look up at his First Mate. He remained on one knee, his eyes locked onto the burn mark on my neck. His fingers, still resting lightly near my skin, brushed against the edge of the jagged scar. A strange warmth seemed to radiate from his touch, a stark contrast to the freezing cold of the storm-drenched hold.
“Silas,” the King said, his voice dangerously calm, the kind of quiet that always preceded a slaughter on the high seas. “If you speak another word before I command you to, I will cut out your tongue and feed it to the hound myself. Do you understand me?”
Silas’s jaw tightened, but he went pale and took a step back, his iron-block wrist clicking softly against his leather belt. He nodded once, his eyes burning with a secret, venomous rage.
Lord Vane turned his attention fully back to me. His stern, weathered face seemed to soften, a sight I had never witnessed in all my years on this ship. He looked into my eyes, searching for something deep within them.
“What is your name, boy?” he asked, his voice low and intense.
“They… they call me Ratsmeat, sir,” I whispered, my teeth chattering from the cold and the throbbing pain in my calf. My voice sounded small and pathetic, like a dying bird in a cage. “I don’t have another name. That’s all I’ve ever been called since the day the crew brought me aboard.”
“Who gave you that mark on your neck?” Vane demanded, his grip on the iron bars tightening until his knuckles went white again. “Tell me the truth, boy. Think back. Before this ship. Before the sea. Who did this to you?”
I shook my head, a sharp stab of pain lancing through my temple as I tried to force my mind into the dark, foggy void of my early childhood. “I don’t know, my Lord. I don’t remember. I only remember fire… a great fire that smelled like burning pine and hot metal. I remember screaming, and the sound of bells ringing out across the water. When I woke up, I was in the cargo hold of a merchant vessel, and then Silas took me from the wreckage after the crew slaughtered them. I’ve had the mark for as long as I can remember.”
Lord Vane’s breath hitched. He stood up slowly, his great height towering over the cage, his fur cloak swaying with the motion of the ship. He turned around to face the crowded tables of his crew. The cold, ruthless mask had returned to his face, but his eyes were blazing with a fire that made even the oldest, most hardened killers in the room look down at the floor.
“Bring the Fleet Register,” Vane commanded, pointing his silver cutlass toward the ship’s scribe, a thin, stuttering old man named Craig who sat at a small desk near the corner of the hold, surrounded by rolls of parchment and ink jars secured in wooden racks.
“T-the Register, Captain?” Craig stammered, his spectacles slipping down his long nose as he scrambled to his feet. “The old one? From the time before the League of the Seven Reefs was formed?”
“The Royal Register,” Vane barked, his voice echoing like a thunderclap through the rafters. “The one we took from the flagship of the High Admiral during the burning of the Capital Seven Kings’ Harbor. Move, old man, before I lose my patience!”
Craig didn’t need to be told again. He tripped over his own stool, his long robes trailing behind him as he rushed toward a heavy iron-bound chest located directly beneath the King’s whalebone throne. He unlocked it with a large brass key that hung from his neck, his hands shaking so violently that the key clattered against the iron lock three times before sliding into the keyhole.
He reached deep into the chest and pulled out a thick, leather-bound volume wrapped in oilskin to protect it from the salt air. The edges of the pages were tipped with gold leaf, now tarnished and dark with age. He hurried back down the steps, holding the book out before him like a sacred relic.
Lord Vane snatched the volume from the scribe’s hands. He strode over to the nearest long table, kicking aside a large wooden bowl of old porridge to clear a space. He slammed the heavy book down, the weight of it causing the wood to groan.
The crew leaned forward, their curiosity completely overcoming their fear of the storm. Even the men on the upper tiers climbed down the wooden ladders to get a better view of what their King was searching for. Silas stood just a few feet away, his arms crossed over his massive chest, his eyes darting between the book and the cage where I still lay shivering in the blood-stained filth.
Vane flipped through the heavy parchment pages, his rough fingers tearing slightly at the edges in his haste. He passed sections detailed with names of captured vessels, lists of executed officers, and inventories of stolen gold. Finally, he reached a section at the very back of the book, where the pages were decorated with the crest of the Royal Naval Fleet—the same triple-crested wave and broken anchor that was burned into my skin.
He traced his finger down a list of names written in beautiful, flowing black ink, a style of writing that belonged to the grand academies of the mainland, far different from the rough scratches of the pirate scribe. He stopped his finger near the bottom of the page, where a specific line had been crossed out with a single, thick red mark.
“Seven years ago,” Lord Vane began, his voice carrying a strange, theatrical weight that commanded total submission from every man in the room. “The High King’s Royal Fleet was betrayed from within. The Grand Admiral, Prince Valen of the Sea Throne, was murdered in his own cabin during the siege of the Capital. His flagship was set on fire, and his entire bloodline was thought to have been wiped out in a single night of blood and betrayal.”
He looked up from the book, his eyes locking directly onto Silas.
“The men who carried out that murder were never found,” Vane continued, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. “The High King claimed it was the work of rogue pirates. But we know better, don’t we, Silas? We know that someone inside the Royal Fleet took a bribe from the usurper prince to open the harbor gates and eliminate the Grand Admiral’s family.”
Silas didn’t blink, but a small muscle in his jaw began to twitch violently. “What does an old war story have to do with this worthless cabin boy, Captain? The war is over. The High King rules the mainland, and we rule the waves. The boy is just a stray dog.”
“This ‘stray dog’ carries the mark of the Sea Throne,” Vane snarled, slamming his fist down onto the open book. “A mark that is only given to the first-born sons of the Grand Admiral’s lineage, branded into their flesh at birth using the silver signet of the Naval Crest. Look at the register, Silas! Look at the name of the child who was reported burned to death in the flagship’s nursery!”
Vane pointed his finger at the crossed-out line on the parchment. He looked back at me, his eyes wide and shining with an emotion I couldn’t fully comprehend.
“The boy’s true name is Valen the Third,” Vane declared, his voice echoing through the silent hold. “He is the rightful heir to the Sea Throne, the only surviving son of the Grand Admiral who saved my life twenty years ago at the Battle of the Black Reefs.”
A collective gasp rippled through the hold. Hardened pirates, men who had killed without mercy for a handful of silver, looked at each other with pale faces. The name of Grand Admiral Valen was legend across the oceans; he was the only man who had ever defeated Lord Vane in open combat, yet had spared his life and granted him the freedom to rule the outer reefs out of respect for his honor as a warrior.
Silas looked as though he had been struck by a bolt of lightning. His face shifted from white to a dark, furious purple. He stepped toward the cage, his iron hand raised as if he wanted to smash the bars down and crush me before the words could settle into the minds of the crew.
“This is madness!” Silas roared, turning to the crew, his voice filled with a desperate, frantic energy. “The King has lost his mind to the sea rot! He’s trying to make a king out of a boy who cleans your boots! Don’t listen to him! If we allow this trash to be called an admiral’s son, what does that make us? It’s a lie!”
He turned back toward Vane, his hand reaching for the heavy broadsword at his hip. “I say we finish the boy now and put an end to this ghost story! The sand is run out, Captain! The game is over!”
Silas lunged toward the cage door, his iron hand reaching for the bolt to slide it open and let the hound finish me.
“Touch that bolt, Silas,” Vane said, his voice as sharp as a razor, “and you will die before your hand leaves the iron.”
But Silas was consumed by a sudden, desperate panic. He ignored the warning, his fingers gripping the cold iron bolt of the cage door.
Before he could slide it open, Lord Vane moved. It was a blur of steel and fur. The King didn’t use his cutlass; instead, he stepped into Silas’s space, his heavy leather-gloved hand grabbing the First Mate by the throat. With a display of monstrous physical strength, Vane lifted the massive brute completely off his feet and slammed him backward onto the long oak table, shattering the wood into splintered fragments.
Mugs and plates flew into the air as Silas crashed onto the deck, groaning in pain, his broadsword clattering away into the darkness. The crew scrambled away from the table, forming a wide circle around the two men, their eyes wide with terror.
Vane stood over his First Mate, the point of his silver cutlass resting directly against Silas’s right eye.
“The boy stays in the cage for now,” Vane said, his breath coming in even, controlled counts. He looked at the crew, his voice cold and absolute. “We sail for the old harbor fortress of the High Admiral at dawn. We will find the truth of who put this boy on a pirate ship, and who tried to erase his name from the earth. And anyone who objects… will find their truth at the bottom of the sea.”
He looked back at me, his eyes lingering on my bleeding leg. He looked like he wanted to pull me out right then, but something stopped him—a cold, calculating look that told me the game was far larger than a cabin boy’s life.
“Sleep well, young Admiral,” Vane whispered, his voice filled with a grim promise that sent a shiver straight down my spine. “Your trial is just beginning.”
