The freezing rain poured down on the deck of the Black Leviathan, washing the salt and the blood into the dark, churning waters of the northern sea. I could barely breathe. The cold iron of the chains bit deep into my ankles, raw and bleeding from weeks of endless labor. I was nothing but an orphan deckhand, a nameless piece of garbage thrown onto the ship after my mother died of starvation in a nameless coastal village. They called me a dog. They called me a curse.
Every single day on this ship was a living nightmare, but tonight was different. Tonight, the crew was drunk on stolen rum, and they wanted blood. The massive, scarred First Mate dragged me by my hair across the splintered wooden planks, his laughter roaring louder than the thunder overhead. I begged for mercy, crying out for anyone to help me, but the men only cheered. They threw me toward the heavy iron hatch that led straight down into the black belly of the ship—the beast cage.
They wanted to see a boy get torn apart for a few moments of cheap entertainment. I knew I had no strength left to fight. I knew nobody was coming to save me. But as the First Mate ripped away my torn, wet jacket to expose me to the wild, starving hounds below, the flickering light of the storm lantern caught something on my skin.
A dark, circular scar. A burn mark from a naval fire that happened fifteen years ago.
The moment the Pirate King saw that mark, the laughter died in his throat. His heavy iron cup clattered across the deck, spilling dark ale everywhere. He stood up, his face turning as white as winter snow, staring at me as if he had just seen a ghost from the depths of the ocean.
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CHAPTER 1
The wood of the deck was black from decades of salt, blood, and cheap whale oil. It stayed wet. Even during the rare days when the northern sun broke through the heavy grey clouds, the moisture never truly left the timbers of the Black Leviathan. It was a massive, three-decked warship, a floating fortress ruled by men who had long forgotten the meaning of the word mercy. To them, the world was divided into two kinds of people: those who held the sword, and those who bled on the floor.
I belonged to the floor.
I was only sixteen winters old, though my body felt twice as old. My ribs pressed hard against my skin, looking like the framework of a broken rowboat. I had no shoes. My feet were covered in thick, black calluses, split open by the freezing frost of the northern sea and salted by the waves that constantly broke over the bow. My hands were permanently stained with tar from hauling the thick, coarse ropes until my palms split and bled, only to heal into hard, ugly lumps.
“Move faster, you useless sea dog!”
The roar came from behind me, followed immediately by the sharp, whistling crack of a heavy leather whip. The braided leather bit straight into the meat of my back. It didn’t just hurt; it burned like a branding iron. The force of the blow sent me sprawling across the wet deck, my face slamming into a pile of cold, slimy fish guts that had been left near the galley hatch.
The crew laughed. It was a deep, rumbling sound, a sound I heard in my nightmares every single night. There were forty of them on deck, bearded giants with teeth rotted by sea scurvy and eyes hardened by a lifetime of murder and theft. They wore heavy coats of wolf fur and boiled leather, stained with grease and the grease of a hundred raided villages. To them, my pain was the only comedy they had on these long, brutal voyages through the icy mist.
“Look at him,” sneered Borak, the First Mate. He was a monster of a man, nearly seven feet tall, with a beard tangled with bits of old bone and grease. His left eye was entirely missing, replaced by a jagged, puckered scar that ran from his forehead down to his jawline, a parting gift from some forgotten naval officer he had slaughtered years ago. “The boy can’t even carry a barrel of salt-pork without falling over his own feet. Why do we keep this waste of rations on our ship, eh? He eats our bread and gives us nothing but tears.”
“Throw him to the sharks!” one of the sailors shouted, raising a wooden tankard of sour ale. “The sea gods are angry. We haven’t smelled a rich merchant ship in three weeks. A little sacrifice might clear the fog!”
I scrambled to my hands and knees, my breath coming in ragged, terrified gasps. The cold air stung my lungs. I tried to wipe the fish grease from my eyes, my body trembling so violently that my teeth clicked together like dice. “Please, Master Borak,” I whispered, my voice cracked from thirst and smoke. “I carried four barrels since dawn. My legs… they just gave out. I will work through the night. I will clean the bilge. Just let me breathe.”
Borak walked toward me, his heavy leather boots thudding against the deck like the steady beat of a war drum. Every step he took made my heart hammer harder against my brittle ribs. He stopped right in front of me, the iron-toed tip of his boot resting mere inches from my nose. I could smell him—the stench of old sweat, stale alcohol, and rotting meat that clung to his clothes.
Without a word of warning, he brought his boot back and kicked me squarely in the chest.
The impact lifted my small frame completely off the deck. I flew backward, my spine crashing hard against the heavy iron rim of the main cargo hatch. The air exploded from my lungs in a dull, wet gasp. For several seconds, the world went entirely black. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t speak. I could only lie there on my side, curled into a tight ball, waiting for the sky to stop spinning.
“Get up,” Borak growled, spitting a thick wad of yellow tobacco juice right next to my face. “Don’t pretend you’re dead yet, boy. The night is young, and the men are bored. Captain’s coming up from his cabin soon, and he expects to see a lively crew. We need some sport.”
The cargo hatch beneath me was not just for storage. It was the entrance to the deep, dark belly of the Black Leviathan, a place where the air was thick with the stench of rot, mold, and something far worse. Beneath the main deck sat the iron cage. It was a massive, rusted structure built into the structural timbers of the ship, used to hold dangerous prisoners, captured beasts from foreign lands, or anyone who dared cross the officers. Tonight, the cage held three massive, starved hunting hounds—half-wild beasts captured during a raid on a northern kingdom’s coastal outpost. They hadn’t been fed in four days. Their low, deep growls vibrated through the wooden planks beneath my body.
“The beast cage!” a sailor named Torstein yelled, his eyes widening with cruel excitement. “Let the boy dance with the hounds! Let’s see if the little orphan can run faster than a northern wolf!”
The suggestion spread through the crew like a wildfire through dry pine. Men began slamming their axes against the wooden bulwarks, creating a rhythmic, terrifying clatter that echoed across the dark water. “Cage! Cage! Cage!” they chanted, their drunken faces twisted into hideous masks of joy.
I tried to crawl away, dragging my broken body toward the relative safety of the foredeck, but two heavy hands grabbed my ankles. Torstein and another sailor hoisted me up by my feet, laughing as my head dangled just inches above the wet planks. My shirt slid down, exposing my scarred back to the freezing rain that had begun to fall.
“Let me go! Please!” I screamed, the tears finally bursting from my eyes, hot and stinging against my cold cheeks. “I’ll do anything! Don’t throw me in there! They’ll kill me! They’ll tear me apart!”
“That’s the point, boy!” Borak roared, stepping toward the cargo hatch and grabbing the heavy iron ring. With a massive groan of iron hinges, he threw the hatch cover back. A wave of foul, warm air erupted from the darkness below—the unmistakable smell of wet fur, animal feces, and copper-scented blood. From the darkness, the growls turned into high-pitched, frenzied barks. The hounds knew it was time to eat.
“Bring him to the center deck!” Borak ordered. “We do this properly. In front of the throne.”
They dragged me like a slaughtered pig, my shoulders scraping against the rough wood, leaving a faint trail of blood behind me. At the center of the main deck stood a large, high-backed chair carved from the spine of a dead whale—the Captain’s throne. It was where the ruler of this fleet sat to watch executions, divide plunder, and pass judgment on those who failed him.
And then, the heavy wooden door of the aft cabin groaned open.
The crew immediately went quiet, though the rhythmic thumping of their weapons continued at a lower, more respectful pace. Out of the darkness of the cabin stepped the man whose very name made the kings of the northern lands tremble in their stone castles.
Captain Vance. The Pirate King of the Crimson Fleet.
He was a man of middle age, but his body looked as though it had been forged from grey iron. His hair was long, silvered at the temples, and tied back with a strip of black leather. Unlike the rest of the filthy crew, Vance wore a dark, clean coat of fine wool, trimmed with silver thread that had long since grown tarnished by the salt air. At his hip hung a heavy, curved cutlass with a hilt made of solid ivory, carved into the shape of a roaring sea dragon. His eyes were the color of winter ice—pale, cold, and utterly devoid of human emotion.
He didn’t look at me. He didn’t look at the crew. He walked slowly to his whalebone chair, his long coat snapping in the rising wind, and sat down. He leaned his chin on his fist, staring out into the dark, rolling waves of the ocean.
“What is the noise, Borak?” Vance asked, his voice low and calm, yet it carried perfectly over the howling wind. It was the voice of a man who never had to scream to be obeyed.
“The men are restless, Captain,” Borak said, bowing his massive head slightly, his tone shifting from arrogant bully to obedient servant. “The fog has kept us from finding any merchant meat. The gold is low, and the ale is turning sour. We were just about to give the boys a little amusement. A dance in the cage.”
Vance finally turned his pale eyes toward me. I lay at the feet of his throne, a pathetic, shivering mass of wet rags and bruises. I looked up at him, my eyes pleading, begging for a shred of humanity from the lord of the sea. But his gaze passed over me as if I were nothing more than a broken barrel or a torn sail.
“The boy?” Vance asked softly. “He is the one we picked up from the wreckage of that southern village last winter?”
“The very same, Captain,” Borak replied, a vicious grin stretching across his scarred face. “He’s lived off our scraps for six months and hasn’t earned a single copper of his keep. His mother died in the dirt, and he belongs in the dirt. The hounds are hungry, Captain. It’s a good trade. A useless boy for three sharp watchdogs.”
Vance didn’t say yes. He didn’t say no. He simply picked up a heavy silver tankard from the small table beside his chair, took a long, slow sip of dark rum, and gave a slight, dismissive nod of his head.
That nod was my death sentence.
“No! No! Captain, please!” I shrieked, kicking wildly as Torstein and Borak grabbed my arms, hauling me toward the yawning black square of the open hatchway. “My mother told me stories of you! She said you were a man of honor! She said you weren’t a monster! Please, look at me! Look at me!”
“Keep your mouth shut, rat,” Borak growled, striking me hard across the mouth with the back of his hand. The taste of copper filled my mouth as my lip split against my teeth. “The Captain doesn’t listen to the cries of orphans. Down you go.”
They dragged me to the edge of the hatch. Below, in the flickering orange glow of two oil lanterns hung from the overhead beams, I could see the cage. It was ten feet deep. Inside, three massive hounds—creatures with coats as black as night and teeth the size of a man’s fingers—were throwing themselves against the rusted iron bars, their eyes locked onto me.
The crew pressed in close, forming a tight circle around the hatch, leaning over the edge to get a better view. They were grinning, betting silver coins on how many minutes I would last before the hounds tore my throat out.
“Wait,” Borak muttered, a dark, twisted thought entering his mind. He stopped just as my legs were dangling over the edge of the dark hole. “The boy’s rags might choke the dogs. Let’s give them a clean meal. Strip his jacket.”
I fought with everything I had, but I was nothing against their monstrous strength. Borak grabbed the collar of my filthy, oversized linen shirt—the only clothing I had left from my old life—and with one violent, downward jerk, he ripped it entirely off my body.
The fabric tore with a loud, sharp crack, exposing my bare chest and shoulders to the freezing rain and the harsh, orange glare of the storm lanterns.
Borak raised his heavy hand to throw me down into the darkness.
But he never did.
The heavy silver tankard in Captain Vance’s hand suddenly hit the wooden deck with a deafening, metallic crash. The dark rum splashed across the planks, soaking the boots of the men nearby, but nobody cared about the alcohol.
Because Captain Vance had just stood up from his throne so fast that the heavy whalebone chair tipped backward, crashing against the bulwark.
The Pirate King was staring at my left shoulder. His face, usually the color of weathered bronze, had turned a terrifying, deathly shade of pale. His pale blue eyes were wide, veins bulging at his temples, his breath coming in short, ragged gasps as if he were the one who had just been kicked in the chest.
“Borak,” Vance whispered. It wasn’t a roar. It was a trembling, hollow sound that made every single man on that deck freeze in his tracks.
“C-Captain?” Borak stammered, his confidence suddenly vanishing as he looked at his commander’s terrified face. “What is it? Do you want to kill him yourself?”
Vance didn’t answer. He walked forward, his heavy, confident stride completely gone. He stumbled. The great Pirate King, who had faced down naval fleets and killed three kings in single combat, actually stumbled over a rope on his own deck. He didn’t take his eyes off my left shoulder.
There, stamped deep into my skin from a terrible fire when I was a infant, was a perfect, circular burn mark. But it wasn’t just an accidental scar. Within the faded, twisted flesh of the old burn, the skin had healed into a distinct shape—the shape of a three-headed sea serpent wrapping around a broken crown.
It was the forbidden crest of the Royal Naval Empire. The personal mark of the Sovereign Fleet that had been burned to the ground twenty years ago.
“Hold him,” Vance commanded, his voice shaking so violently it sounded like a dying man’s rattle. He reached down, his trembling, leather-gloved hand grabbing my chin, forcing my head up so he could look directly into my tear-stained face. “Look at me, boy. Look into my eyes right now.”
I looked at him through my tears, shivering from the cold, terrified that he was going to cut my throat himself.
“What was your mother’s name?” Vance whispered, his face just inches from mine. The entire crew had gone dead silent. Even the hounds below seemed to quiet down, sensing the sudden, suffocating tension that had gripped the deck.
“Her… her name was Elena,” I sobbed, my voice trembling. “Elena of the Silver Harbor.”
Vance’s cutlass slipped from his belt, the ivory-hilted weapon clattering uselessly against the deck planks. He fell to his knees right in front of me, in the middle of the dirt, the blood, and the fish guts, his hands gripping my bare, cold shoulders as if he were trying to anchor himself to reality.
“By the gods,” the Pirate King whispered, a single tear cutting a clean line through the grime on his weathered cheek. “It’s you.”
The crew looked at each other in absolute, stunned confusion. Borak stared at his captain, his jaw hanging open, his heavy whip dangling uselessly in his hand.
“Captain?” Borak asked, his voice cracking with fear. “What are you doing? It’s just a slave boy. It’s just a nameless piece of garbage.”
Vance slowly stood up. The sorrow in his face instantly vanished, replaced by a cold, murderous fury that I had never seen on a human being before. He turned to face Borak, and the air on the deck seemed to drop by ten degrees.
“If you ever call him a slave again,” Vance said, his voice dropping to a deadly, quiet growl that promised nothing but death, “I will skin you alive and hang your hide from the mainmast. Get away from him. All of you, get away from him right now.”
CHAPTER 2
The silence that settled over the deck of the Black Leviathan was heavier than any sea fog I had ever seen. Forty hardened killers, men who would slit a man’s throat for a silver coin or a warm coat, stood like stone statues. The only sound was the creaking of the ship’s massive wooden timbers as it rolled over the dark, heavy swells of the northern sea, and the steady, cold drip of rain falling from the rigging.
Borak slowly took a step back, his massive hands lifting away from my body as if my skin had suddenly turned into white-hot iron. His single eye darted from me to Captain Vance, his thick lips twitching with a mixture of confusion and growing terror. He had never seen Vance look like this. Nobody had.
“Captain…” Borak began, his voice losing every ounce of its previous cruelty, replaced by a hollow, desperate plea for understanding. “I don’t… I don’t understand. The boy is an orphan from the southern raids. We found him shivering in the ruins of a burning village. He’s nobody. We’ve treated him like a dog for months because he is a dog. Why are you kneeling before him?”
Captain Vance didn’t answer his First Mate. Instead, he reached down with a gentleness that seemed entirely impossible for a man of his reputation. He took his own heavy coat—the fine, dark wool coat lined with expensive grey wolf fur—and wrapped it around my shivering, bare shoulders. The warmth of the fabric hit my frozen skin like a crackling fire. It smelled of tobacco, rich spices, and old iron. It was the first time in sixteen years I had felt anything resembling comfort.
“Can you stand, my boy?” Vance asked softly, his cold blue eyes now filled with a strange, protective light that terrified me almost as much as his anger.
“I… I think so,” I stammered, my legs shaking so violently they felt like wet straw. I tried to push myself up, but my knees buckled instantly under the weight of my own bruised body.
Before I could hit the deck again, Vance caught me. He lifted me up, supporting most of my weight with his powerful arm, ensuring my bare, bleeding feet didn’t have to bear the pain of the cold wood. He looked down at me, his gaze locked onto my face, scanning every line, every feature, as if he were looking at a map of a long-lost home.
“You have her eyes,” Vance muttered, his voice thick with an emotion he tried desperately to suppress. “Elena’s eyes. Green as the deep water before a storm. I should have known the moment I saw you in that village. I should have looked closer. Forgive me… please, your Highness, forgive me.”
Your Highness.
The word echoed across the deck, striking the crew like a physical blow. Torstein dropped his wooden tankard, the sour ale splashing against his boots, but he didn’t even notice. Men began to mutter to one another, their faces turning pale beneath their thick beards. They looked at me—the boy they had beaten, the boy they had starved, the boy they had laughed at while he scrubbed the grease from their boots—and sudden, cold dread filled their eyes.
“Highness?” Borak repeated, his voice cracking. He took another step back, his hand instinctively moving toward the hilt of his heavy iron axe, a survival instinct kicking in. “Captain, you’ve lost your mind. The fever from your old wound must be taking you. There are no kings in the southern waters. There is no royalty among the ruins. We burned that world down twenty years ago!”
Vance slowly turned his head toward Borak. The gentleness he had shown me disappeared in an instant. His face hardened into a mask of pure, unadulterated hatred. He didn’t reach for his fallen cutlass. He didn’t need to. The raw authority radiating from him was enough to keep every man in his place.
“We didn’t burn it all, Borak,” Vance said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, vibrating frequency. “We thought we did. We took the gold, we took the ships, and we took the lives of everyone who stood in our way. But we missed the most important piece.”
Vance reached out and gently pulled the collar of the heavy coat away from my left shoulder, exposing the circular burn mark to the entire crew. He pointed a long, scarred finger at the faded shape of the three-headed sea serpent wrapping around the broken crown.
“Do you see this?” Vance roared, his voice finally breaking into a thunderous boom that drowned out the sound of the ocean. “Look at it, you miserable sea rats! Look at it and remember who we used to be before we became thieves and murderers in the dark!”
The sailors pressed closer, squinting through the rain and the dim, orange lantern light. One of the older men, a gray-bearded navigator named Hakan whose legs had been crushed in a battle decades ago, stumbled forward. He wiped the rain from his ancient eyes and stared at my shoulder.
Suddenly, Hakan fell to his knees. His heavy wooden staff clattered against the deck.
“By the Great Anchor,” Hakan whispered, his voice trembling with a religious awe. “It’s the Sovereign Seal. The bloodline of the Iron Fleet. The High King’s personal house.”
“It’s an old burn!” Borak shouted, his voice turning frantic as he saw his control over the crew slipping away. “Any slave can be marked with a hot iron! The boy’s mother probably stole a seal or found an old coin in the mud! He’s a fake! Captain, if you protect this piece of garbage, the men will think you’ve gone soft! They will think you’re unfit to lead!”
That was a direct challenge. On a pirate ship, telling a captain he was soft was the first step toward a mutiny. The air became so thick with tension you could have cut it with a knife. A few of Borak’s closest allies, heavy-set men with loaded pistols tucked into their belts, began to shift their weight, their hands creeping toward their weapons.
Vance didn’t flinch. He let go of my shoulder, stepping away from me just enough to give himself room to move. He looked at Borak, his lips curling into a cold, deadly smile.
“You think I’ve gone soft, Borak?” Vance asked quietly. “You think because I haven’t cut a throat in three weeks, my arm has grown weak?”
“I’m saying the crew needs gold, not a ghost story!” Borak roared, drawing his heavy iron axe with a sharp, metallic ring. He held it high, the heavy blade gleaming in the lantern light. “We are the Crimson Fleet! We bow to no king! We take what we want, and we kill what we don’t need! And right now, we don’t need a broken boy pretending to be a prince!”
Borak lunged forward, his massive muscles bunching as he swung the axe down in a devastating, vertical arc meant to split Vance’s skull in two.
But Vance was faster. He didn’t try to dodge backward. Instead, he stepped into the strike, his left hand flashing forward like a striking viper. He caught Borak’s thick wrist mid-air, the force of the collision producing a loud, fleshy smack that echoed across the deck.
Borak’s single eye widened in shock as he realized his downward swing had been completely halted by a single hand. He strained, his veins bulging against his neck as he tried to force the blade down, but Vance’s arm was like a pillar of solid oak.
“You forgot one thing, Borak,” Vance whispered, his face inches from the First Mate’s nose. “You forgot who gave you that scar on your eye. You forgot who taught you how to hold an axe.”
With a sudden, brutal twist of his wrist, Vance snapped Borak’s arm backward. A sickening CRACK of breaking bone echoed across the deck, followed by a guttural scream of agony from the massive First Mate. The heavy iron axe fell from his limp fingers, clattering uselessly against the wood.
Before Borak could fall, Vance grabbed him by the throat with both hands, lifting the seven-foot monster completely off his feet with an impossible, terrifying display of strength. He marched Borak backward, slamming his heavy body against the wooden bulwark right next to the open cargo hatch where the hounds were still growling.
“Twenty years ago, I was the Grand Admiral of the Sovereign Fleet,” Vance shouted, his voice shaking with a lifetime of buried rage and regret, directed not just at Borak, but at the entire crew. “I was the man who betrayed the High King! I was the one who opened the harbor gates for the northern warlords because I wanted gold! I wanted power! I became a Pirate King, but I lost my soul in the fire!”
He slammed Borak’s head against the wood again, drawing a thick line of blood from the man’s temple.
“The High King died in his burning castle, but before he fell, he charged me with one final duty,” Vance roared, tears streaming down his face, mixing with the rain. “He told me that his wife, Queen Elena, had escaped into the night with their infant son. He told me that if I ever found them, I must protect them with my life, or my soul would burn in the deepest circle of hell for eternity!”
Vance turned his head slightly, looking back at me as I stood there, wrapped in his heavy coat, stunned into absolute silence.
“For fifteen years, I thought they were dead,” Vance whispered, turn his gaze back to the terrified First Mate. “I thought I had erased the bloodline of the man who loved me like a brother. But the gods have brought his son to my deck. He has been here for six months, Borak. For six months, you have beaten him. For six months, you have starved him. For six months, you have made the rightful heir to the Sea Throne scrub your filthy boots.”
“Captain… please,” Borak choked out, his face turning a dark shade of purple as Vance’s grip tightened around his throat. “I didn’t know… nobody knew…”
“And that is the only reason your head is still attached to your shoulders,” Vance growled.
He didn’t drop Borak. Instead, he turned his body around, still holding the massive man by the throat, and looked out at the forty sailors who were now trembling in fear. Some of them had already dropped to their knees, their weapons discarded on the wet planks.
“Torstein!” Vance barked.
The sailor who had helped drag me toward the hatch jumped as if he had been struck by lightning. He fell to his knees instantly, press his forehead against the wet, cold wood of the deck. “Yes, Captain! Please, Captain! I was only following Borak’s orders! I didn’t know who the boy was! I swear by my mother’s grave, I didn’t know!”
“Bring the Fleet Register from my cabin,” Vance ordered coldly. “And bring the silver key that hangs behind the map of the Northern Pass. Move, before I feed your legs to the hounds myself.”
Torstein scrambled to his feet, slipping twice on the wet deck in his haste, and sprinted toward the aft cabin as if his life depended on it—because it did.
Vance slowly let go of Borak’s throat, allowing the massive First Mate to collapse into a miserable heap on the floor, clutching his broken arm and gasping for air. Vance didn’t look at him again. He walked back to me, his heavy boots splattering through the puddles of rain and rum.
He reached down, picked up his ivory-hilted cutlass from the deck, and wiped the rain from the blade with his sleeve. Then, with a slow, deliberate movement that carried the weight of twenty years of guilt, the Pirate King dropped to both knees right in front of me.
He held the sword out horizontally on his open palms, bowing his head so low that his silvered hair touched the toes of my bare, bruised feet.
“Your Highness,” Vance said, his voice loud enough for every man on the ship to hear. “The Crimson Fleet is yours. My life is yours. Command me, and I will tear this world apart to put you back on your father’s throne.”
I stood there, a sixteen-year-old orphan who had spent the last six months begging for a scrap of moldy bread, staring down at the most feared man on the northern seas kneeling in the dirt at my feet. The wind howled louder, shaking the massive sails above us, but inside my chest, a strange, unfamiliar warmth was beginning to bloom. It wasn’t the warmth of the fur coat.
It was the first spark of power.
Before I could find my voice to speak, Torstein came sprinting back out of the cabin, his face pale, holding a heavy, leather-bound book with iron clasps and a long, ornate silver key. He fell to his knees beside his captain, offering the items up with trembling hands.
Vance took the silver key but didn’t open the book. He looked up at me, his eyes burning with an intense, deadly seriousness.
“There is a secret compartment in the belly of this ship, your Highness,” Vance said, his voice dropping to a whisper that sent a chill straight down my spine. “A compartment that has remained locked since the day the capital fell. Inside lies your father’s armor. His true crown. And a document signed by the seven Admiral Lords of the old world, swearing an oath of blood to whoever carries the Sovereign Seal.”
He stood up, holding the silver key out toward me.
“But to claim it, we must first clean this deck,” Vance said, turning his head slowly toward the shivering, broken form of Borak, and then toward the rest of the crew who were watching our every move. “The men who humiliated you are still breathing your air. The man who ordered your death is still lying at your feet. Tell me, my Prince… what is your first command?”
I looked at the silver key in his hand. I looked at the heavy, ivory-hilted cutlass. And then, for the first time in my life, I looked at Borak not with fear, but with something cold, sharp, and unforgiving.
The entire crew held their breath, waiting for the words that would decide the fate of everyone on the Black Leviathan.
I opened my mouth to speak, but before the first word could leave my lips, a deep, resonant horn blasted through the thick ocean fog from the dark waters ahead—a sound that made even Captain Vance freeze in terror.
It was the war horn of the High King’s Royal Guard fleet, the very men who had been hunting us for years, and they were surrounded by the darkness, closing in fast.
