FULL STORY
CHAPTER 3
The iron cage below the waterline of The Leviathan was a living hell of rust, black water, and the crushing weight of the sea.
Every time the massive warship slammed into a twenty-foot Atlantic wave, the timbers around my head groaned like dying monsters. Cold, salty bilge water swirled around my shins, freezing my bare feet until I couldn’t feel my toes. The air down here was thick with the stench of rotting wood, old fish brine, and the damp mold that grew on the ship’s lowest ribs.
I leaned my head against the wet iron bars, my breath coming in ragged, painful gasps. My chest felt like it was on fire. Every time I breathed, the broken ribs Vance had left me with dug into my lungs.
But the physical pain was nothing compared to the storm raging inside my mind.
For thirteen years, I had been Finch. A nameless street rat. A boy who hid in the shadows of coastal taverns, dodging the boots of drunk sailors and scavenging for fish heads in the mud of dirty ports. My mother had raised me in poverty, always looking over her shoulder, always moving us from one lawless harbor to the next before the winter ice set in. She had worked herself to the bone, washing clothes for low-life pirates and mending sails with bleeding fingers, just to keep a scrap of hardtack in my belly.
Before the black fever took her, she had held my face in her cold, trembling hands and whispered, “Never show them the paper, Finch. Never look inside. Just keep it safe until the day you have no choice.”
Now I knew why.
I wasn’t a nobody. I wasn’t the son of a harbor whore.
I was Valen Augustus Rey the Second. The blood of the High Admiral. The rightful heir to the shattered Sea Throne. The boy whose cradle had been surrounded by silver, silk, and the loyalty of a hundred captains, before Fleet King Brandon brought fire and steel to our home.
The door at the top of the dark wooden companionway creaked open, throwing a thin, flickering beam of yellow lantern light down into the gloom.
Heavy, uneven footsteps descended the stairs. The wood groaned under a massive weight. I pulled myself back into the furthest corner of the iron cage, my heart hammering against my fractured ribs. I knew that walk. It was the heavy, thudding stride of a man who carried a deep, burning malice in his chest.
First Mate Vance stepped into the light of the bilge hold.
He was alone. He had a heavy iron lantern in one hand, and his face was twisted into a mask of pure, unadulterated venom. The silver-hilted cutlass he usually wore was missing—confiscated by the King’s personal guard after their clash in the Grand Hall—but a long, wicked hunting knife was tucked into his leather belt.
He walked straight up to the iron bars, slamming his heavy leather boot against the cage. The iron rattled loudly, the sound echoing through the hollow hull of the ship.
“You think you’re clever, don’t you, little rat?” Vance hissed, leaning close to the bars. The stench of stale rum and sour sweat rolled off him. “You think because the King froze up like a scared virgin, you’re safe? You think those old fools in the hall are going to rise up and put a crown on your filthy head?”
I didn’t answer. I just stared at him through the darkness, my jaw clenched, trying to hide the trembling of my body.
“Look at you,” Vance mocked, spitting a thick glob of black tobacco juice into the bilge water near my feet. “The son of the Great Admiral. Bleeding in the mud like a dog. Your father was a traitor, and your mother died in a gutter because she was too weak to survive the world we built. And you’re going to die right here, before we ever reach the stones of Oakhaven.”
“The King ordered you not to touch me,” I said, my voice low and ragged, but steady. “He said if I die before we reach port, your head will roll on the deck.”
Vance let out a low, sinister laugh that chilled me to the bone.
“The King is an old man, Finch. He’s haunted by ghosts. He looks at you and sees the man he murdered fifteen years ago, and it makes his hands shake,” Vance whispered, leaning his face so close to the bars I could see the yellow reflection of the lantern in his bloodshot eyes. “But I don’t see ghosts. I see meat. I see a piece of street trash that ruined my standing with the High Council. You made me look like a fool in front of the Jarls.”
He reached into his coat and pulled out a small, corked ceramic vial.
“The King said I couldn’t touch you with steel,” Vance purred, a sickening smile stretching across his scarred face. “He never said nothing about the water. A little night-shade in your bilge bucket tonight, or maybe just a loose bolt on this iron cage when the ship takes a heavy roll into the next reef. People drown in storms all the time, your Highness. A tragic accident. The sea claims another orphan.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” I whispered, a cold dread washing over me. He didn’t want to wait for Oakhaven. He knew that if I made it to the grand trial, the old loyalists among the fleet might actually gather their courage and spark a civil war. He wanted me dead in the dark, where no one could look into my eyes and see my father’s ghost.
“I dare whatever keeps me alive and powerful, boy,” Vance snarled. He reached through the bars, his thick, hairy fingers clawing at my tunic, trying to drag me forward, but my broken body couldn’t move. He cursed, slamming the lantern against the iron bars again. “Enjoy your last night on The Leviathan, Prince of Trash. By tomorrow noon, you’ll be floating face-down in the North Atlantic, and the Sea Throne will belong to those who have the strength to hold it.”
He turned on his heel, his heavy boots splashing through the shallow bilge water as he climbed back up the companionway. The heavy oak door slammed shut at the top of the stairs, plunging me back into the absolute, terrifying darkness of the ship’s belly.
I collapsed against the damp straw on the floor of the cage, the tears finally breaking free. I wasn’t a warrior. I didn’t know how to fight a mountain of a man like Vance. I didn’t have a sword, an army, or a fleet. All I had was a name that everyone hated or feared, and a body that was rapidly failing me.
“Mother,” I sobbed into the dark, my fingers clutching the cold iron of the cage. “Why did you leave me here? Why didn’t you just burn the paper? I don’t want to be a king. I just want to live.”
Hours passed. The storm outside seemed to grow even more violent, the ship tilting at terrifying angles as it fought the open ocean. The bilge water rose to my knees, freezing, black, and relentless. I pulled my legs up to my chest, shivering so hard my teeth clicked together, my vision starting to blur as the fever from my infected wounds began to take hold of my brain.
Then, through the rushing sound of the waves against the hull, I heard a sound.
It wasn’t Vance’s heavy, brutal stride. It was a soft, rhythmic clicking. The sound of light leather boots moving with practiced, silent grace down the wooden steps.
A single candle lantern, shielded by a dark cloth, appeared at the bottom of the stairs.
A figure wrapped in a heavy, black oilskin cloak stepped toward the cage. The hood was pulled low, hiding their face in deep shadow. My breath caught in my throat. Had Vance sent one of his assassins to finish the job cleanly? I scrambled backward, my back hitting the cold iron bars behind me.
“Stay away from me,” I choked out, my voice barely a whisper.
The figure reached up, slowly pulling down the hood of the cloak.
The dim candle-light revealed a face lined with deep wrinkles, silver hair tied back in a traditional northern warrior’s braid, and a pair of sharp, intelligent gray eyes that looked as if they had seen a thousand battles. It was Jarl Kaelen—the grey-bearded warlord who had given me the forbidden naval salute in the Grand Hall.
Behind him stepped two younger men, clad in the heavy chainmail of the King’s elite guard, but their faces were grim and tense.
“Hush now, child,” Kaelen said, his voice a deep, resonant rumble that carried an unexpected warmth. He stepped quickly to the door of the cage. He reached into his belt and pulled out a large, heavy iron key.
With a sharp CLICK, the lock turned, and the heavy iron door of my prison swung open.
“What… what are you doing?” I gasped, staring at him in disbelief. “The King said I must be kept here until Oakhaven.”
“The King is blinded by his own fear, Valen,” Jarl Kaelen said, using my true name with a reverence that made my throat tighten. He knelt in the freezing bilge water, reaching out to gently touch my bruised shoulder. “Brandon thinks he can buy time by putting you on trial, but he doesn’t see what is happening right beneath his nose. Vance has already ordered three of his personal enforcers to loosen the iron bolts of this cage from the outer hull. They intend to let the sea pressure crush this compartment before the sun rises.”
“He was just here,” I whispered, the terror returning. “He told me I wouldn’t survive the night.”
“And he was right, if you stayed here,” Kaelen said grimly. He turned to the two guards behind him. “Lars, Torin. Lift the boy. Gently, by the gods! His ribs are shattered.”
The two large warriors stepped into the cage. They didn’t rough me up like Vance’s men. They lifted me with incredible care, supporting my broken back and wrapping a thick, warm wool cloak around my shivering shoulders. The warmth of the wool felt like life flowing back into my dead limbs.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked as they carried me out of the iron cage and toward the dark companionway. “If the King finds out you took me, he will hang you all.”
“Let him try,” Jarl Kaelen muttered, his hand resting firmly on the pommel of his massive broadsword. “For fifteen years, we old captains have bowed our heads to a murderer. We watched Brandon butcher your father, the High Admiral, because we were weary of war and wanted peace for our families. We thought a new King would bring stability to the Sea Throne. But look at what we became. A fleet of thieves, ruled by pirates and cruel men like Vance, who treat the children of the North like dogs.”
He looked straight into my eyes, his gray gaze unyielding.
“Your father saved my life at the Battle of the Black Reef, boy. I swore an oath to his bloodline on the sacred rings of Odin. I broke that oath once by letting Brandon take the throne. I will not break it again by letting his lapdog murder you in the dark.”
We climbed the dark, narrow steps, avoiding the main corridors of the ship. The two guards moved like shadows, their boots silent against the groaning wood. We moved down into the deepest, lowest storage bays of the massive warship—the place where the spare sails, the extra anchor chains, and the heavy barrels of salt pork were kept.
It was a massive, cavernous room, lit only by a single iron brazier that cast long, dancing shadows across the towering stacks of crates.
As we entered, I realized we weren’t alone.
Sitting on the heavy barrels, standing in the shadows of the massive wooden pillars, were over thirty men. They weren’t the young, arrogant pirates who followed Vance or the pampered nobles who flitted around Prince Jarek. These were old, battle-hardened men. Men with silver in their beards, deep scars across their faces, and eyes that held the hard, steady look of true naval veterans. They wore the faded, dark blue tunics of the old Grand Fleet beneath their iron armor.
When the guards carried me into the room, every single one of those thirty men stood up.
The silence was deafening. No one spoke. No one cheered. They simply stood in a perfect, rigid military formation—the old line of the High Admiral’s personal division.
“My brothers,” Jarl Kaelen’s voice echoed softly through the vaulted storage bay. “I have brought him.”
The guards set me down gently onto a stack of soft sailcloth. I leaned back, my eyes wide as I looked at the sea of hardened faces before me. These were the men who had once ruled the oceans under my father’s banner.
An old, one-eyed warrior with a wooden leg stepped forward from the crowd. He looked down at me, his single eye misting over with tears as he saw my face, my dark hair, and the unmistakable features of the Rey bloodline.
“By the gods,” the old warrior whispered, falling heavily to his knees before my sailcloth bed. He took my small, trembling hand in his massive, calloused palm, his voice breaking. “It is him. It is the Admiral’s boy. I was there, young master… I was there the day you were born in the coastal citadel. Your father held you up to the fleet, and ten thousand swords struck their shields for you.”
“I… I don’t remember,” I whispered, tears spilling over my cheeks. “I only remember the fire.”
“We all remember the fire, boy,” Jarl Kaelen said, stepping to the center of the room. He looked around at the gathered veterans. “And that fire has burned in our bellies for fifteen winters. We thought the bloodline was gone. We thought we were serving the only king left to us. But the sea has brought the true heir back to The Leviathan.”
“What is the plan, Jarl Kaelen?” another captain asked, his hand tightening on his axe hilt. “We are thirty men against a crew of five hundred. If we try to take the ship now, during the storm, we will be slaughtered before we reach the main deck.”
“We do not take the ship tonight,” Kaelen answered, his voice sharp and calculating. “Brandon is heading for the harbor of Oakhaven because he wants the public trial to validate his rule. He wants the entire armada to watch him legally execute the last Rey. He thinks it will solidify his power forever.”
Kaelen leaned over a heavy wooden crate, looking down at me with a fierce, brilliant light in his eyes.
“But he forgets one thing. Oakhaven is not his city. It was built by your father, Valen. The old dockworkers, the shipwrights, the garrison guards who man the stone walls—their fathers served the High Admiral. They hate Brandon’s taxes and Vance’s cruelty. If we bring you to Oakhaven, we aren’t bringing you to an execution. We are bringing a spark to a city made of dry tinder.”
“But how do we get him there alive?” the one-eyed warrior asked. “Vance will realize he’s missing from the cage within hours.”
“Vance will realize nothing,” Kaelen smiled, a cold, dangerous expression. “Because we are going to leave him a body.”
He signaled to one of his guards, who stepped forward carrying a heavy burlap sack. Inside was the frozen corpse of a young deckhand who had died of the cold three days ago on the lower decks, his body kept in the cold storage to be thrown overboard later.
“We will place this poor lad in the cage, wrap him in Finch’s rags, and loosen the hull bolts just enough for the bilge water to fill the compartment,” Kaelen explained, his voice chillingly precise. “When Vance’s men go to check on him at dawn, they will see a drowned boy in the dark. They will report to the King that the ‘rat’ died of his wounds and the cold. Brandon will be relieved. Vance will think he won. And they will sail into Oakhaven completely off their guard, believing the threat to their throne is buried in the deep.”
I listened to them plan, my mind spinning. They were going to fake my death. They were going to use my old identity—the street rat named Finch—to bury the evidence, while the true Prince of the Sea Throne hid in the shadows of the cargo hold, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
“And what do you want me to do?” I asked, looking up at Kaelen, my voice small among these giant warriors.
Kaelen knelt beside me, placing his heavy hand on my cloak covered shoulder.
“I want you to heal, young master,” he said softly. “I want you to eat, to rest, and to remember every single insult, every blow, and every drop of blood Vance took from you. Because when we drop anchor in the bay of Oakhaven, the entire northern fleet will be gathered in the harbor. The King will hold a grand feast to celebrate the winter catch. And that is when you will walk into his great hall, not as a starving cabin boy, but as the High Admiral of the Sea Throne.”
The old warriors in the room slowly raised their fists, a silent, powerful pledge of allegiance that filled the dark storage bay with an electrical tension.
That night, for the first time in thirteen years, I didn’t sleep on a cold floor with an empty belly. They gave me dried meat, warm broth, and clean bandages for my broken ribs. I lay hidden beneath the heavy canvas sails, listening to the roaring of the storm outside, but I wasn’t afraid of the water anymore.
The sea had kept me alive for a reason.
Four days passed in the darkness of the lower hold. Four days of hiding, healing, and listening to the distant commands of Vance and the King echoing down from the upper decks. Through the ship’s internal reports, we learned that Kaelen’s plan had worked perfectly. Vance had found the drowned corpse in the cage, laughed over it with Prince Jarek, and reported to King Brandon that the “problem” had resolved itself.
The King had ordered the body thrown into the deep ocean without a second glance, relieved that he wouldn’t have to face a complicated trial that might stir up old loyalties.
On the fifth morning, the violent tossing of the ship finally stopped.
The heavy thud of the massive iron anchors dropping into the water vibrated through the entire hull. The muffled sound of cheering, horn-blowing, and temple bells drifted down from the surface.
We had arrived. Oakhaven. The capital of the naval empire.
“It is time, Valen,” Jarl Kaelen whispered, entering the storage bay with a heavy wooden chest in his hands. His armor was polished, his blue cloak clean, and his face set like stone. “The King has already gone ashore. He has called a Grand Council feast at the High Citadel to celebrate the arrival of the winter fleet and the official declaration of Prince Jarek as his sole heir. Every captain, every warlord, and every citizen of Oakhaven is gathered in the Great Hall.”
He opened the chest, revealing what lay inside.
It wasn’t rags. It wasn’t a slave’s tunic.
It was a beautiful, dark blue linen doublet, embroidered with fine silver thread along the collar and sleeves. Beside it sat a heavy, polished steel breastplate, stamped with the ancient crest of the broken anchor and the wolf. And resting at the bottom of the chest was a magnificent, broad-bladed cutlass, its hilt forged from solid silver, shaped like a roaring sea dragon.
“This belonged to your father, boy,” Kaelen said, his voice thick with emotion as he lifted the heavy sword and held it out to me. “He wore it the day he defeated the western raiders. It is time for his son to carry it back into the King’s hall.”
I stood up, my body still aching, but the weakness was gone. My ribs were tightly bound in clean linen, my skin washed clean of the bilge mud and blood. I reached out, my fingers wrapping around the cold silver hilt of my father’s sword. The moment my hand closed around the grip, a strange, powerful warmth seemed to surge through my veins.
I looked at my reflection in the polished steel of the breastplate.
The scared, weeping cabin boy named Finch was gone. In his place stood a young man with steady gray eyes, a sharp jaw, and the blood of kings flowing through his heart.
“Let’s go,” I said, my voice deep and resolute. “Let’s go show the King that some ghosts don’t stay buried.”
CHAPTER 4
The Great Hall of the Oakhaven Citadel was a masterpiece of old northern architecture, built from the massive, ancient pines of the surrounding forests and stone carved from the sea cliffs.
Tonight, it was ablaze with the light of a thousand tallow candles and roaring log fires. The scent of roasted venison, spiced ale, and expensive southern wine filled the air, thick enough to choke a starving man. Over six hundred people packed the hall—high warlords in gleaming chainmail, wealthy merchants in rich furs, foreign ambassadors, and the elite captains of the grand armada.
At the high table, elevated on a massive stone platform above the crowd, sat Fleet King Brandon, looking triumphant.
To his right sat Prince Jarek, draped in stolen purple silks, a smug, arrogant grin plastered across his young face as he accepted the toasts of the surrounding nobles. And standing right behind the King’s throne, looking more self-important than ever, was First Mate Vance. He had been given a new, gold-trimmed uniform to celebrate his “faithful service” during the voyage, his chests puffed out like a proud rooster.
“A toast!” Prince Jarek shouted, standing up and raising his golden chalice high. “A toast to the Sea Throne! To my uncle, the Great King Brandon, who has cleansed our waters of the old traitorous bloodline, and ensured that our empire will stand for a thousand generations!”
The crowd cheered, a booming, roaring sound that shook the high wooden rafters. Swords were raised, shields clapped against tables, and tankards slammed together in a deafening display of loyalty.
Vance laughed loudly, leaning down to whisper something in the King’s ear, likely boasting about how easily he had disposed of the “rat” Finch in the dark belly of The Leviathan. The King smiled, nodding casually, raising his own horn of ale to his lips.
They thought they were safe. They thought the past was buried beneath three thousand fathoms of black Atlantic water.
Then, the massive, iron-reinforced oak doors at the far end of the hall swung open with a deafening BANG.
The sudden blast of cold, salty sea wind rushed into the warm room, causing the candles to flicker and the roaring fires to hiss. The loud laughter and cheering died down instantly as the guests nearest the door turned to look, annoyed by the interruption.
Through the doorway walked Jarl Kaelen, his face grim, flanked by thirty of his personal veteran guards. They were fully armed, their shields held at their sides, their faces completely devoid of celebration.
Fleet King Brandon narrowed his eyes from his throne, setting his horn down with a heavy thud.
“Jarl Kaelen,” the King’s voice boomed across the silent room, laced with a subtle undercurrent of irritation. “You are late to the celebration. Come, take your seat at the high table. We are celebrating the eternal stability of our kingdom.”
“I am not here to celebrate your stability, Brandon,” Kaelen’s voice rang out, clear and powerful, echoing off the high stone walls.
The entire hall fell completely silent. Warlords stopped mid-bite, their forks hovering in the air. The captains looked at each other, their hands instinctively dropping toward the hilts of their daggers. A Jarl did not address the Fleet King by his first name unless he was declaring war.
“What did you say?” Prince Jarek snarled, his face twisting into an ugly expression of rage. “How dare you speak to the King with such disrespect, you old fool! Guards! Arrest him!”
The King’s personal guard, clad in heavy iron armor, stepped forward from the shadows of the pillars, their halberds raised. But before they could move a single step, Kaelen’s thirty veterans drew their broadswords with a synchronized, metallic SHWING that sent a shiver of terror through the crowd.
“Stand down, boys,” Kaelen told the palace guards, his eyes never leaving the King. “You don’t want to die for a false king tonight.”
Vance stepped forward from behind the throne, his hand dropping to the hilt of his weapon, his face turning purple with rage. “This is treason, Kaelen! You think because you have a few silver hairs you can defy the fleet? The King ordered the death of the traitor’s line! There is no one left for you to fight for!”
“You are right, Vance,” Kaelen said, a cold, dangerous smile spreading across his lips. “The King did order the death of the traitor’s line. And you reported that the boy Finch drowned in his cage like a rat, didn’t you?”
“He did!” Vance shouted. “I saw his cold body myself! He’s dead and food for the crabs!”
“Then tell me, First Mate Vance…” Kaelen stepped aside, his thirty veteran guards splitting down the middle, creating a wide, open pathway that led straight from the double doors to the King’s dais. “…who is this standing behind me?”
From the dark shadows of the open doorway, a single figure stepped forward into the bright, warm light of the hall.
The crowd gasped, a collective, terrifying intake of breath that sounded like a rushing wave.
I walked slowly down the center path, my boots clicking firmly against the stone floor. I wore the dark blue doublet of the Grand Fleet, the polished steel breastplate gleaming under the light of a thousand candles. At my hip hung the silver sea-dragon cutlass of my father. My head was held high, my shoulders square, my jaw set with an iron determination that no thirteen-year-old boy should ever possess.
The physical injuries Vance had given me were hidden beneath the steel, but the fire they had lit in my soul was visible for every single man in that room to see.
Vance’s mouth dropped open so wide his jaw looked unhinged. His face went from flushed red to a deathly, sickening green. He stumbled backward, his hand flying off his sword hilt, his knees trembling so violently he had to catch himself on the back of the King’s throne.
“No…” Vance choked out, his voice a pathetic, high-pitched squeak. “No… it’s impossible. I saw him… he was dead… I threw him into the deep…”
Prince Jarek fell back into his chair, his golden chalice slipping from his hand and crashing to the floor, spilling dark red wine across the stone like a pool of fresh blood.
Fleet King Brandon stood up so fast his heavy oak chair tipped backward, crashing loudly onto the dais. His eyes were wide, bloodshot, fixed entirely on my face, then down to the silver sea-dragon hilt at my waist, and finally to the unmistakable gray eyes that had haunted his nightmares for fifteen winters.
“Valen…” the King whispered, his voice completely stripped of its royal authority. “You… you are alive.”
“I am alive, Brandon,” I said, my voice ringing out with a terrifying clarity that filled every corner of the massive hall. “The sea did not want me. And the men you trusted to murder me in the dark were too weak to finish the job.”
The hall erupted into absolute chaos. Warlords were shouting, captains were standing on benches to get a better look, and the citizens of Oakhaven packed into the balconies began to whisper a name that had been forbidden for a generation.
“Rey… it’s a Rey… the Admiral’s boy lives… the true bloodline has returned!”
“Silence! SILENCE!” Prince Jarek screamed, hysterical with fear, pointing a trembling finger at me. “He is an impostor! A street rat dressed in stolen armor! Vance, kill him! Palace guards, cut his throat! I command you! Kill him now!”
But the palace guards didn’t move. They looked at each other, then at Jarl Kaelen, and then at the thirty veteran captains who had served my father. They knew that if they drew blood from the rightful heir of the fleet, the city outside would burn before the moon reached its peak.
“Nobody moves,” Jarl Kaelen roared, his voice silencing the room once more. He stepped up beside me, looking up at the terrified First Mate on the dais. “Five days ago, in the Grand Hall of The Leviathan, this man, Vance, publicly humiliated, beat, and dragged a thirteen-year-old child across the deck. He accused him of defacing a piece of wood. He called his mother a whore. He called his father a traitor. He thought the boy was a nameless piece of trash who had no one to defend him.”
Kaelen reached out, his hand resting on my shoulder, drawing the attention of every captain in the room.
“But this boy is Valen Augustus Rey the Second! The true heir to the High Admiralty! The rightful commander of every ship docked in this harbor! And according to the ancient laws of the Sea Throne, an assault upon the blood of the Admiral is an act of high treason against the entire empire!”
The old one-eyed warrior stepped forward, drawing his own blade and pointing it straight at Vance’s chest. “The law of the sea requires blood for blood, Vance! You struck a prince of the fleet! You tried to murder him in the dark! What is your defense before the High Council?”
Vance looked around the room desperately, searching for a single friendly face. But the same warlords who had laughed at his crude jokes five days ago were now staring at him with cold, murderous eyes. They were politicians and pragmatists; they could see the wind had shifted. Nobody was going to die to protect a brutal First Mate who had botched an assassination.
“My King!” Vance cried out, falling to his knees before Brandon, grabbing the edge of the King’s fur cloak. “Help me! I did it for you! I did it to protect your throne! I drowned the body… I thought it was him… protect me, my King!”
Fleet King Brandon looked down at the weeping, sweating man clawing at his boots. The King’s face was a mask of cold, ruthless survival. He knew that his own throne was dangling by a single thread. If he defended Vance now, the loyalist mutiny would begin right here in the hall.
“Get your hands off me, you piece of filth,” Brandon said, his voice dangerously quiet.
He kicked Vance’s hand away from his cloak, stepping forward to the edge of the stone platform. He looked down at me, his eyes filled with a calculated, desperate submission.
“Jarl Kaelen is right,” the King announced to the entire hall, his voice steady but hollow. “The law of the sea is absolute. First Mate Vance acted without my authority. He abused his position, he brought shame upon this fleet, and he attempted to murder a noble son of the empire in secret. I did not order this. I was deceived.”
“Uncle, no!” Prince Jarek gasped, but the King ignored him entirely.
“Valen Augustus Rey,” the King said, looking straight into my gray eyes. “As the current ruler of the Sea Throne, I grant you the right of immediate justice. The man who struck you, the man who humiliated you, is yours to judge. Speak your sentence, and it shall be carried out before this council tonight.”
The hall fell into a breathless, dead silence.
Vance looked over the edge of the stone dais down at me, his eyes wide with a pathetic, begging terror. He was shivering now, the same way I had shivered in his iron cage five days ago. The same crowd that had watched him humiliate a starving cabin boy was now waiting to see him destroyed.
I looked at him. I looked at the man who had broken my ribs, who had torn my mother’s drawing to pieces, who had treated my life like it was worth less than a scrap of dirty canvas. I felt the weight of the silver-hilted cutlass at my hip. I could have drawn it. I could have climbed those stone steps and cut his head off right there in front of the King, and no one would have stopped me.
But as I looked at him weeping in his gold-trimmed uniform, I realized something.
Killing him quickly with steel was too merciful. He didn’t deserve a warrior’s death. He deserved to be exactly what he had tried to make me—a nameless ghost, stripped of everything, crushed by the very system he used to oppress others.
I stepped forward, my voice calm, cold, and echoing with the absolute authority of my father’s bloodline.
“Five days ago, Vance, you told me that a dog only deserves to lick the grease off your boots,” I said, my words cutting through the silence of the hall like ice. “You told me that my hands were only fit for the lower decks and the filth of the bilge.”
I pointed my finger straight at his sweating face.
“I will not take your life tonight. That would be too clean. Instead, I strip you of your rank, your uniform, your gold, and your name. You are no longer First Mate of The Leviathan. You are now the lowest deckhand in the fleet. You will spend the rest of your days in the dark belly of the ships, shoveling coal, mending sails with bleeding fingers, and washing the blood off the decks after the battles are done.”
I looked around the room, my gaze locking onto the two palace guards who had stood by while Vance beat me.
“Take his gold. Tear off his uniform. Throw him into the iron cage below the waterline of the flagship—the very cage he left me to die in. Let him taste the salt water. Let him feel the cold. And let him know every single day that the cabin boy he crushed is the man who owns his soul.”
A roar of approval erupted from the old captains and the citizens in the balconies.
The two massive palace guards didn’t hesitate. They stepped up onto the dais, grabbing Vance by his gold-trimmed collar. He screamed, he kicked, he begged for mercy, but they violently ripped the fine cloth from his back, tearing his badges of rank away and tossing his gold coins across the stone floor where the common servants scrambled to grab them.
They dragged him down the steps, his bare feet sliding over the cold stone, his weeping face smeared with dirt as he was hauled past the tables of warlords who didn’t even look at him. He was dragged out of the Great Hall, his screams fading into the howling sea wind outside, heading straight for the dark, freezing prison of the bilge.
Prince Jarek sat frozen, his mouth open, completely broken by the sheer display of power.
Fleet King Brandon slowly looked back down at me. He knew this wasn’t the end. He knew that by letting me live, by letting me take my vengeance publicly, he had just acknowledged the true heir to the empire. The throne still sat beneath his weight tonight, but the loyalty of the fleet had just walked out the door with the son of Valen.
Jarl Kaelen stepped beside me, drawing his massive sword and holding it high above his head.
“ALL HAIL THE HIGH ADMIRAL!” Kaelen roared.
Six hundred men and women stood up, their voices joining together in a thunderous, deafening shout that shook the foundation of the citadel, echoing out across the harbor where ten thousand sailors waited in the dark.
“ALL HAIL THE HIGH ADMIRAL! ALL HAIL REY!”
I looked up at the high wooden rafters, the tears finally clearing from my eyes. The pain in my ribs was still there, but the crushing weight on my back was gone. I looked down at my father’s silver cutlass, feeling the steady, ancient pulse of the ocean beneath the stone floor.
The sea had carried away my mother, and it had swallowed my father’s fleet, but it had brought me back to claim what was mine.
And for the first time in many long, brutal years, nobody knelt on my back again.
