FULL STORY
CHAPTER 3
The frantic cry of the lookout cut through the relative quiet of the deck like a rusty blade. Black sails on the horizon! The Fleet Commander’s loyalist ships… they’ve surrounded us in the dark!
My heart plummeted back into the familiar, cold hollow of my chest. Just moments ago, I had felt the heavy iron collar fall from my throat. For the first time in three winters, I had drawn a breath that didn’t taste of moldy timber, stale bilge water, and my own dried blood. I had stood before the hundreds of hardened men who had mocked me, watching them drop to their knees as the High Admiral declared me the rightful heir to the Sea Throne. But the sea is a fickle mistress, and she rarely lets a man savor his freedom before throwing him back into the teeth of the storm.
“Report!” Admiral Logan roared, his voice instantly losing its grief-stricken tenderness and snapping back into the sharp, booming command of a veteran warlord. He sprang away from me, his heavy boots splattering seawater across the deck as he rushed to the starboard railing. “How many, boy? Speak clearly or I’ll throw you to the sharks myself!”
“Three vessels, my lord!” the lookout screamed down from the crow’s nest, his voice cracking with pure terror as he clung to the swaying ropes. “The Iron Vixen, the Scourge, and the Black Maw! They’re running without lanterns, but the lightning caught their rigging! They’ve formed a crescent moon formation, blocking our path to the open ocean! They’re closing fast, running before the wind!”
A low, collective murmur of panic rippled through the crew. These were men who fought for a living, but they knew the math of the sea all too well. The Leviathan was a massive, heavily armored flagship—a floating fortress capable of tearing almost any single vessel to splinters with her sheer weight and firepower. But she was sluggish in a storm, her great sails catching too much of the howling wind, and she was currently short-handed. Half our rowing crew was still chained below, starved and exhausted, and the upper deck was in complete disarray following the sudden mutiny against Commander Vance. Worse still, the three approaching ships were the vanguard of Vance’s loyalist faction—captains who had grown fat and wealthy on the blood money Vance distributed from his illegal raids. If they realized Vance was gone, they wouldn’t surrender. They would sink The Leviathan to bury the truth forever.
“Vance’s personal hounds,” Logan hissed, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the wooden railing. He turned his weathered face up into the pouring rain, his gray beard soaking wet. “They must have been trailing us from the southern sector, waiting for the storm to separate us from the rest of the main fleet. They don’t know their master is at the bottom of the sea. They think they’re trapping an old man and a crew of tired sailors.”
He turned back to the deck, his eyes scanning the hundreds of faces staring at him in silence. The initial euphoria of finding the lost prince had vanished, replaced by the grim, suffocating reality of impending slaughter. The men were looking at Logan, but more terrifyingly, they were beginning to turn their eyes toward me.
I stood there, shivering, my bare chest exposed to the freezing rain. The raw, crown-shaped burn mark on my neck was still burning from the touch of the salt water, a permanent brand of a past I didn’t fully understand. I was a prince by blood, but right now, I was just a boy standing in the middle of a floating slaughterhouse. I had no armor. I had no sword. The iron manacles had left deep, purple grooves in my wrists, and my legs were still shaking from the hours of brutal rowing I had endured before being dragged up for execution.
“What are your orders, my prince?” Admiral Logan asked suddenly.
The question caught me completely off guard. It wasn’t spoken in mockery. It was spoken with absolute, dead-serious reverence. The old warlord was yielding the ultimate authority of the flagship to a seventeen-year-old slave who had spent the last three years staring at the back of another man’s head while pulling a wooden oar.
The entire crew fell silent, waiting. The wind howled through the rigging, making the thick ropes groan like dying men, but on the main deck, every eye was locked onto me. They wanted to see if the royal bloodline was nothing but a myth, or if the spirit of the High King truly lived within the broken shell of a slave rower.
My mind raced, the panic threatening to choke me. I wanted to run. I wanted to hide back in the dark cargo hold where the world was small and the choices were simple. But then I looked down at the deck, at the heavy iron collar lying in the mud, and something inside me snapped. If I died tonight, I would die a king, not a piece of property.
“We don’t run,” I said, my voice surprisingly steady, though it was raw and raspy from years of neglect. “If we try to turn this heavy beast in these narrow waters, they will catch our flanks and board us from three sides. We will be slaughtered before we can even raise the shields.”
Admiral Logan’s eyes flashed with a sudden, dangerous approval. “And what do we do instead, your Grace?”
I stepped forward, my bare feet gripping the wet, splintered wood of the deck. I pointed out into the darkness where the jagged silhouettes of the three enemy warships were rapidly growing larger against the flashes of lightning. “The Black Maw is their heaviest ship, leading the center. The other two are smaller, faster raiders flanking her. They expect us to panic. They expect us to turn. Instead, we give them the iron.”
I turned to the young guard who had saved my life from Vance’s blade—the man who now held the First Mate’s heavy leather whip. “Go to the lower decks. Do not beat the rowers. Unlock their chains. Tell them that the true King has returned, and that if they pull with everything they have for the next ten minutes, they will never wear iron again. Tell them they are fighting for their freedom, not for Vance’s gold.”
The young guard’s face lit up with a fierce, wild energy. “By your command, my prince!” he shouted, turning and sprinting down the wooden companionway into the dark depths of the ship.
“Logan!” I called out, turning to the old Admiral. “Take the helm. Put our bow straight into the teeth of the Black Maw. We aren’t going around them. We are going through them. Prepare the main ram.”
A savage grin broke through Logan’s gray beard. He raised his black steel dagger into the air and roared to the crew, “You heard the prince! To your stations, you lazy sea dogs! Clear the broadside ports! Load the heavy ballistae with pitch and fire! Tonight, we show these traitors how the royal fleet fights!”
The deck erupted into a frenzy of purposeful violence. The very same men who had been laughing and drinking wine twenty minutes ago were now throwing themselves into their duties with terrifying speed. Heavy wooden hatches were slammed open. Massively thick ropes were hauled across the deck as the sails were trimmed to catch the absolute fury of the storm wind. The flagship groaned as she began to turn, her massive bow swinging away from the safety of the open sea and locking directly onto the center enemy vessel.
Below our feet, a deep, rhythmic thudding began to vibrate through the timbers of the ship. It wasn’t the slow, agonizing beat of dying slaves being whipped to work. It was a fast, frantic, pounding rhythm—the sound of hundreds of desperate men pulling for their very lives, fueled by the sudden, unbelievable promise of freedom. The Leviathan surged forward, her massive wooden hull cutting through the towering waves with a newfound, terrifying speed.
Through the darkness, the enemy ships finally realized what we were doing. Lanterns suddenly flared to life across their decks, signals frantically waving in the wind. They hadn’t expected the flagship to attack. They had expected a panicked flight. The Black Maw tried to turn her bow to bring her broadside guns to bear, but she was too slow, caught flat-footed by our sudden acceleration.
“Brace yourselves!” Logan’s voice boomed from the high helm balcony, his hands straining against the massive wooden wheel as he held the flagship true. “Hold fast to the timber!”
I grabbed hold of a thick iron belaying pin near the main mast, my muscles locking tight. Through the sheets of driving rain, I watched the massive, ugly bow of the Black Maw rush toward us. I could see the terrified faces of her crew hanging over the railing, shouting in panic as our massive iron-tipped ram aimed directly for their midsection.
CRASH!
The impact was cataclysmic. The sound of splitting oak, tearing iron, and screaming men filled the night, drowning out even the thunder. The force of the collision threw me completely off my feet, my body slamming hard against the deck planks. All around me, men were thrown into the air like rag dolls, loose equipment and heavy water barrels shattering across the wood.
Our iron ram had cut deep into the side of the Black Maw, tearing through her lower decks and snapping her timbers like dry twigs. The enemy vessel groaned a terrible, metallic death rattle as she was lifted partially out of the water by the sheer momentum of The Leviathan, her main mast snapping in half and crashing down onto her own deck, crushing dozens of her crew.
“Boarders!” a voice screamed through the chaos.
Before the dust and sea spray could even settle, the smaller flanking ship, the Iron Vixen, slammed against our starboard side, her crew throwing heavy iron grappling hooks across our railings. Hardened, bloodthirsty pirates, their faces twisted with hatred, began swarming over the wooden sides of our ship, swords drawn, howling like wolves.
“Protect the prince!” Admiral Logan roared, drawing his ancient black steel dagger and throwing himself down from the helm balcony into the fray.
The main deck of The Leviathan turned into an absolute slaughterhouse. The storm raged above us, lightning illuminating the brutal, hand-to-hand combat in brief, terrifying flashes of white light. Steel clashed against steel, blood splattering across the wet wood, mixing with the rain and the salt water.
I scrambled to my feet, my heart pounding against my ribs like a trapped bird. A massive enemy pirate, his face scarred and his breath reeking of cheap ale, leapt over the railing right in front of me. He spotted my bare chest, my lack of armor, and the iron scars on my wrists. A cruel, murderous grin spread across his face as he raised a heavy, notched battleaxe.
“A slave boy!” he roared, lunging forward. “Vance will pay a pretty penny for your head!”
He swung the axe downward with terrifying force. I had no weapon to block it, no armor to absorb the blow. Survival instinct, honed by three years of dodging the First Mate’s brutal kicks, took over. I threw my body to the left, the heavy axe blade biting deep into the wooden deck right where I had been standing a fraction of a second before.
Before the pirate could pull the weapon free from the thick oak planks, I lunged forward. I didn’t have a sword, but I had the raw, unadulterated rage of a boy who had been pushed into the dirt for too long. I grabbed the heavy iron chains that were still dangling from my wrists—the very manacles that had bound me to the rowing bench—and wrapped them tightly around the pirate’s thick throat.
With a primal scream that tore from the very depths of my soul, I pulled with everything I had. My muscles, hardened by years of pulling the heavy oars under the whip, locked with terrifying strength. The pirate gasped, his eyes bulging as the heavy iron links crushed his windpipe. He thrashed wildly, his fingers clawing at my face and chest, but I didn’t let go. I squeezed tighter, my vision turning red, until the giant man went completely limp in my arms, crashing down onto the deck like a felled tree.
I stood over his body, gasping for breath, my hands shaking as I looked down at what I had done. I had killed a man with the very chains that had enslaved me.
“My prince! Catch!”
I looked up just in time to see the young guard throw a heavy, polished steel cutlass across the deck. I caught the hilt in my right hand, the weight of the weapon familiar yet completely empowering. It felt right. The steel was cold, but it sent a surge of heat straight up my arm.
“The left flank is breaking!” Admiral Logan yelled, his black steel blade covered in dark blood as he fought off two enemy officers near the companionway. “But the third ship, the Scourge, has hooked our stern! They’re pouring men onto the lower decks! They’re trying to retake the slave hold!”
My blood ran cold. If they retook the slave hold, they would slaughter the men who were currently pulling our oars, leaving us dead in the water and surrounded. I didn’t hesitate. Holding the cutlass tightly, I ran toward the dark hatch that led to the lower decks, the young guard and a dozen loyal sailors falling in behind me like a pack of wolves.
The air inside the lower companionway was thick with the smell of smoke, sweat, and gunpowder. The sounds of fighting echoed up from the darkness below—the clashing of swords and the terrified screams of unarmored men. As I rushed down the narrow wooden steps, I saw a group of enemy pirates trying to force their way through the heavy iron gate that led to the main rowing deck.
Standing in front of the gate, his body covered in deep cuts and his armor dented, was the young guard I had sent down earlier. He was fighting alone, his spear broken in half, desperately trying to keep the enemy from breaching the hold where the freed rowers were still working.
“Get away from that gate!” I roared, leaping from the bottom of the steps and swinging my cutlass with a fury that completely blindsided the lead enemy pirate.
The blade cut deep into his shoulder, sending him crashing into the timber walls. The remaining pirates turned to face me, their eyes widening as they saw a half-naked boy, covered in blood and rain, leading a charge of fierce, loyal flagship warriors.
“It’s the boy Vance wanted dead!” one of them shouted. “Kill him and we can take the flagship!”
They threw themselves at me, but I didn’t feel fear anymore. I felt nothing but an absolute, cold clarity. I didn’t fight like a trained noble in a clean hall; I fought like a desperate animal that had just broken out of its cage. I used the narrowness of the hallway to my advantage, ducking beneath their heavy swings and striking at their unprotected legs and throats. My cutlass became a blur of silver in the dim, flickering light of the wall lanterns.
Beside me, the loyal sailors fought with a savage desperation, inspired by the sight of their young prince bleeding on the front lines. We pushed the enemy back step by step, our boots sliding in the blood that was pooling on the narrow floorboards. The pirates, realizing they had underestimated the ferocity of our defense, began to panic. They turned and tried to retreat back up the stern hatches, but we hunted them down without mercy.
Within minutes, the lower companionway went quiet, save for the heavy, ragged breathing of my men and the groaning of the ship’s timbers. The enemy attackers lay dead or dying at our feet.
I turned to the heavy iron gate of the rowing hold. Through the bars, hundreds of hollow, exhausted eyes were staring at me. These were my brothers of the oar. Men I had sat beside in the dark for three long years. They were covered in sweat, their hands wrapped in bloody rags, their faces pale with fear and exhaustion. They had pulled the ship through a collision that should have shattered their bones, all on the promise of a boy they used to call Seven.
I stepped up to the gate, my chest heaving, the bloody cutlass resting against my leg. I looked at them, and for the first time, I didn’t see them as slaves. I saw them as my first army.
“The First Mate’s keys,” I said, turning to the young guard who was leaning against the wall, bleeding from a deep gash on his arm.
He handed me the heavy iron ring of keys that had once belonged to Robert. I took them, stepped up to the massive padlock on the gate, and turned the key. The heavy iron door swung open with a loud, echoing groan.
I stepped inside the dark hold, the familiar stench of the place washing over me, but it didn’t hold any power over me anymore. I lifted the keys high into the air so every man on the long rowing benches could see them.
“The Fleet Commander is dead,” I said, my voice carrying clearly over the deep hum of the ship’s movement. “The traitors who held your chains are being slaughtered on the deck above. I told you that if you pulled for me, you would never wear iron again. I do not break my word.”
I threw the heavy ring of keys onto the wooden floorboards in the center of the walkway.
“Unlock each other,” I commanded, my eyes hardening. “Then grab the weapons of the fallen. Come up to the main deck and help me reclaim our kingdom. Tonight, we cease to be property. Tonight, we become the masters of the sea!”
For a second, the hold remained dead silent, the men staring at the keys lying in the dirt as if they were a trap. Then, an old, skeletal rower near the front—a man who had been in the hold for ten years and had lost his mind to the dark—let out a wild, primal scream. He lunged forward, grabbed the keys, and instantly unlocked the heavy iron band around his own ankle.
The entire hold erupted into a mad, chaotic frenzy of clanking iron and roaring voices. Men were laughing, weeping, and embracing each other as the chains that had bound them for a lifetime were stripped away. They grabbed the swords, axes, and iron bars from the dead enemy pirates lying near the gate, their eyes turning toward the upper deck with a terrifying, vengeful hunger.
I turned and led them back up into the storm.
When we emerged onto the main deck, the battle was reaching its final, desperate climax. The third enemy ship, the Scourge, had managed to wedge itself against our stern, and their captain—a ruthless, wealthy warlord named Justin—was personally leading a massive wave of fresh reinforcements onto our deck. Admiral Logan and our remaining loyal crew were completely surrounded near the helm balcony, fighting back-to-back behind a wall of broken shields.
“Push them into the sea!” Captain Justin was roaring from the center of the deck, his fine silver-plated armor gleaming under the lightning. “The flagship is ours! Kill the old Admiral and we will divide the gold before morning!”
“You will divide nothing but the graveyard, Justin!” I roared, stepping out of the dark hatchway.
The enemy captain froze, turning his head toward the sound of my voice. His eyes widened in absolute shock as he saw me standing there—a half-naked boy covered in blood, leading a terrifying horde of over two hundred freed slaves armed with broken irons, rusty axes, and captured swords. The rowers poured out of the hatch like an angry swarm of hornets, their faces twisted with a lifetime of unspent rage.
“What is that?” Justin stammered, his confidence instantly evaporating as he looked at the massive army of vengeful men surrounding his forces. “Where did those slaves come from?”
“They are not slaves anymore,” I said coldly, raising my cutlass toward him. “Attack!”
The freed rowers charged with a ferocity that no disciplined naval force could ever match. They didn’t care about formation or self-preservation; they only cared about tearing down the men who had kept them in the dark. They threw themselves onto the enemy pirates with bare hands and broken chains, pulling them down to the deck and beating them with a terrifying, primal strength.
The enemy line shattered instantly. Captain Justin’s men, completely overwhelmed by the sheer numbers and raw brutality of the slave army, turned and tried to flee back toward their own ship, but the rowers cut off their retreat.
I cut a path through the chaotic melee, my eyes locked entirely onto Captain Justin. He saw me coming, his face turning pale as he realized that this half-naked youth was the epicenter of the entire mutiny. He raised his heavy broadsword, his hands shaking slightly as he took a defensive stance.
“Get back, you little rat!” Justin screamed, lunging forward with a desperate, wild strike meant to cleave me in two.
I didn’t try to block it with my sword. I knew his heavy broadsword would shatter my lighter cutlass if the impact was direct. Instead, I ducked beneath the blade, using the slippery, wet wood of the deck to slide past his right side. As I passed him, I drove the point of my cutlass deep into the unprotected joint of his armor beneath his arm.
Justin let out a sharp, choked gasp, his broadsword slipping from his fingers as he fell heavily to his knees. Blood began to seep through the seams of his expensive silver plating, splattering onto the wet deck. He looked up at me, his eyes wide with a sudden, suffocating terror as I placed the cold tip of my cutlass right against his throat.
“Who… who are you?” he whispered, his voice trembling as the rain washed the blood down his face.
The fighting around us suddenly began to die down as the remaining enemy pirates threw down their weapons, realizing their captain had been defeated and their ships were lost. The hundreds of freed slaves and loyal flagship warriors formed a massive circle around us, their eyes locked on the final judgment.
Admiral Logan stepped through the crowd, his face covered in soot and blood, but a look of absolute, triumphant joy in his eyes. He stopped beside me, looking down at the defeated captain.
“He is the son of the High King, Justin,” Logan said, his voice echoing across the quiet deck. “He is the true master of the Sea Throne, and you are standing on his ship.”
Justin gasped, his eyes shifting from the old Admiral to the crown-shaped burn mark clearly visible on the side of my neck under the flickering light of the storm lanterns. He realized then that the old legends were true, and that the empire Vance had built on lies was collapsing into the ocean.
“My prince…” Justin stammered, trying to crawl forward to touch my bare feet. “Mercy… I didn’t know… Vance told us the royal blood was gone… I will serve you… I will give you my ships, my gold…”
“Your gold was stolen from my father’s people,” I said, my voice cold and hard as the iron that had bound me. “And your mercy was spent three winters ago when you allowed your men to buy children from the slave docks.”
I didn’t waste another breath. With a swift, decisive motion, I pulled my cutlass back and struck, ending the life of the traitor captain who had helped Vance destroy my family. His body slumped forward onto the deck, his silver armor turning dark in the rain.
The crew and the hundreds of freed slaves let out a massive, earth-shattering roar, lifting their weapons into the air as the storm above us finally began to dissipate, the dark clouds parting to reveal the cold, gray light of the early morning dawn.
We had survived the night, and the vanguard of the enemy fleet lay shattered and burning in the water around us. But as I looked out at the horizon where the open ocean met the sky, I knew that this was only the first battle of a much larger, bloodier war. The capital of the naval kingdom was still held by Vance’s remaining allies, and they would not give up the Sea Throne without burning the entire world to the ground.
I turned to Admiral Logan, my face set in hard, unyielding lines. “Signal the remaining ships of our fleet. Tell them to gather at the reef. We sail for the capital within the hour.”
Logan bowed deeply, but before he could speak, the young guard rushed back up from the lower hatch, his face completely pale, his eyes wide with a new, unexpected terror that made my blood run cold.
“My prince!” the guard gasped, struggling for breath as he pointed down into the dark opening of the ship’s belly. “The First Mate… Robert… he’s managed to break his bonds in the confusion… and he’s locked himself inside the powder magazine with a burning torch!”
CHAPTER 4
The roar of the victorious crew died instantly in their throats. The silence that followed was heavy and suffocating, more terrifying than the loudest clap of thunder the storm had thrown at us during the night.
The powder magazine.
Every man on that deck, from the oldest veteran sailor to the youngest freed slave rower, knew exactly what those words meant. Deep in the absolute lowest belly of The Leviathan, beneath the cargo holds and the rowing decks, lay a room lined with thick oak walls, containing hundreds of barrels of highly volatile black powder. It was the ammunition for our heavy ballistae and fire-cannons—the raw destruction that made the flagship the most feared vessel on the water. If Robert touched a single spark to one of those barrels, the entire massive warship would be blown into a million splintered fragments within a heartbeat, sending all of us to a watery grave before we could even savor our victory.
“That mad bastard,” Admiral Logan whispered, his face turning a sickly, pale white beneath the dried blood and soot. “He knows he’s a dead man. He knows he has nowhere to run, so he’s trying to drag the entire kingdom down into the abyss with him.”
“How long ago did he lock the doors?” I demanded, my voice cutting through the rising panic of the men like an icy wind. I didn’t let my hands shake. I couldn’t. If the crew saw their new prince show even a flicker of fear, the fragile order we had just built would collapse into a mad stampede for the lifeboats.
“Just moments ago, your Grace!” the young guard stammered, his knuckles white as he gripped his broken spear. “He was being dragged to the benches by two of our men, but he used his brute strength to break his wrists free from the temporary ropes. He killed the guards, snatched a burning oil torch from the wall corridor, and threw himself inside the iron-plated door of the magazine room. He’s bolted it from the inside!”
“Logan, keep the men on deck,” I commanded, already moving toward the dark companionway hatch. “Prepare the lifeboats just in case, but do not let them panic. If they flood the lower decks, nobody will survive.”
“My prince, you cannot go down there alone!” the old Admiral argued, rushing to grab my shoulder. “He is a giant of a man, driven mad by terror and spite. Let me send a detachment of armored guards to break the door down!”
“There is no time to break a reinforced iron door, Logan,” I said, turning my head to look him straight in his weathered eyes. “By the time your axes make a dent, he will have already dropped the torch. He knows me. He spent three years trying to break my spirit. If anyone can get him to hesitate, it’s the boy he used to call Seven.”
Without waiting for his response, I ripped myself away from his grip and plunged back down into the dark, smoky hatchway, the wet cutlass held tight in my right hand.
The descent into the deepest parts of The Leviathan felt like a journey into the underworld itself. The air grew thicker, warmer, and more suffocating with every lower deck I passed. I ran past the main rowing hold, where the remaining broken chains still hung from the empty wooden benches like skeletal fingers. The silence here was eerie, a stark contrast to the chaotic violence that had filled the space just an hour prior.
I reached the absolute bottom of the vessel, where the floorboards were slick with slimy bilge water and the only light came from the faint, orange glow of the wall lanterns. At the end of a long, narrow wooden corridor stood the heavy, iron-plated door of the powder magazine. The two guards I had sent down lay crumpled on the floorboards, their bodies broken by Robert’s immense, brutal strength.
The heavy iron door was completely shut, the massive internal bolts thrown into place. From inside the room, I could hear a low, unhinged laughter—a sound that was completely devoid of human sanity. It was the laugh of a man who had lost his status, his master, and his future, left with nothing but a desire for absolute destruction.
I stepped up to the door, my bare feet splashing softly in the shallow bilge water. I didn’t try to kick it down. I didn’t scream in rage. I took a deep, steady breath, placed the palm of my left hand flat against the cold iron plating, and spoke in a quiet, conversational tone that carried clearly through the cracks of the heavy wood.
“Robert,” I said softly.
The mad laughter inside the room stopped instantly. The only sound left was the crackling of the burning torch and the deep, rhythmic sloshing of the ocean against the exterior hull of the ship.
“Seven?” Robert’s voice came through the thick door, raspy, trembling, and completely unstable. “Is that you, you little thieving rat? Have you come to watch your new kingdom turn into ash?”
“The kingdom isn’t turning into ash, Robert,” I replied, keeping my voice entirely devoid of emotion, matching the cold, steady authority of the sea itself. “The storm has passed. The enemy vanguard is destroyed. Captain Justin is dead, and Commander Vance is at the bottom of the ocean, his body being torn apart by the currents. The war hasn’t even begun, but your part in it is finished.”
“Don’t speak to me like you’re a king!” Robert roared from behind the iron door, his voice cracking with an intense, frantic hatred. I could hear him pacing frantically inside, his heavy boots slamming against the wooden floorboards. “You’re a slave! You’re an orphan dock rat that I bought for thirty pieces of silver! I whipped your back until I could see your ribs! I made you beg for water! You are nothing but Seven! You cannot be a prince! I won’t allow it! I won’t let a piece of property sit on the Sea Throne while I rot in a cage!”
“I am a prince, Robert,” I said, my voice dropping an octave, carrying the weight of twenty years of stolen history. “Not because of the gold or the titles. But because even when you chained me to that wooden bench for three long winters, even when you starved me until I was chewing on leather rags to survive, you could never break the spirit inside me. You thought you were beating a slave. But you were only hardening the iron that is going to rule this empire.”
There was a long, agonizing pause from inside the room. I could hear his heavy, ragged breathing just inches away from the other side of the iron door. He was listening, his twisted mind struggling to grasp the reality of his own ruin.
“I have the torch right above an open barrel of black powder, Seven,” Robert whispered, his voice suddenly dropping into a terrifying, childish whimper. “One drop of this burning oil… just one tilt of my wrist, and we all go to the sky together. The old Admiral, the crew, the freed slaves… and you. Especially you. You won’t ever wear a crown, boy.”
“If you drop that torch, Robert, you die a coward,” I said, my tone turning sharp and biting as a winter frost. “You die a terrified servant who couldn’t face the consequences of his own cruelty. The men on the upper deck won’t remember you as a fierce warrior. They will remember you as a pathetic piece of garbage who blew himself up because he was too afraid to look his former slave in the eye.”
“I am not a coward!” Robert shrieked, his voice filled with a sudden, violent rage. “I’ll show you! I’ll show all of you!”
I heard a heavy metal latch slide back inside the room. Robert, driven completely mad by my words and the desire to prove his own twisted sense of dominance, didn’t drop the torch onto the powder. Instead, he wanted to see my face when he did it. He wanted to see the terror in my eyes before the world exploded.
The massive internal bolts of the iron door slid back with a loud, echoing CLANG.
The heavy door swung open, and the intense, flickering light of the burning oil torch spilled out into the dark corridor, illuminating Robert’s giant, muscular form. His shirt was torn away, his face covered in sweat and dirt, his eyes wide and bloodshot with a manic, unhinged energy. In his right hand, he held the heavy wooden torch, its flame dancing dangerously just inches away from an open, massive wooden barrel filled to the brim with dark, granular black powder.
He looked down at me, a hideous, triumphant grin spreading across his scarred face as he raised the torch higher. “Look at it, Seven! Look at the fire! Tell me you’re afraid! Beg me for your life one last time, and maybe I’ll let you live long enough to watch the ship burn!”
I didn’t beg. I didn’t even blink.
The moment the door swung fully open, I didn’t look at his face. I didn’t look at the torch. My eyes were entirely locked on his stance, on the way his heavy boots were positioned on the slick, wet floorboards of the corridor. He was leaning forward, his weight completely concentrated on his right leg as he held the torch over the barrel.
With a speed that had been forged through years of avoiding his sudden, unpredictable strikes on the rowing deck, I lunged forward. I didn’t swing my cutlass at his chest—the space was too narrow, and if his body fell forward, the torch would drop straight into the powder.
Instead, I used the flat of my left hand to strike the bottom of his right knee with a precise, crushing blow, using all the leverage of my low stance.
CRACK!
The joint buckled backward with a sickening snap. Robert let out a sharp, agonized scream as his balance was instantly shattered. His giant body tilted violently to the left, away from the open powder barrel, his arms flailing wildly in the air as he tried to keep from falling.
The burning torch flew from his fingers, spinning through the air, its flame trailing a streak of orange light through the darkness.
My heart stopped. The torch was falling straight toward another row of closed powder kegs along the wall. If a single spark caught the dry wood, we were dead.
I threw my cutlass down, diving across the wet floorboards like a hunting seal. I stretched my arms out, my fingers scraping against the rough timber, and caught the wooden handle of the torch just three inches before the burning flame could touch the surface of the dry oak barrels.
The heat of the fire singed the hairs on my forearm, but I held on, my muscles locking tight as I pressed the burning end of the torch directly down into the pool of shallow bilge water on the floor.
HISSSSS!
A thick cloud of white, foul-smelling steam erupted into the corridor as the flame was instantly extinguished, plunging the deep belly of the ship into a heavy, dark twilight, illuminated only by the faint light of the distant wall lanterns.
We were safe. The powder was dry.
A heavy, animalistic groan came from the floorboards behind me. Robert was writhing in the mud, his right leg twisted at an impossible, unnatural angle, his face contorted in absolute agony. The giant brute who had ruled the lower decks through pure terror was now completely helpless, crawling on his elbows like a wounded dog, trying to find his weapon in the dark.
I stood up slowly, my breathing deep and even. I picked up my polished steel cutlass from the floor, the cold weight of the hilt solid in my hand. I stepped over to where the giant First Mate was groveling, the tip of my blade resting gently against the back of his thick neck, right over the heavy scars he had earned in his own years of piracy.
“The time for begging is over, Robert,” I said, my voice cold, quiet, and completely absolute.
I didn’t kill him there in the dark. That would have been too easy. That would have been a mercy he didn’t deserve. He needed to face the full weight of his actions in front of the very world he had tried to destroy.
“Guards!” I shouted up the companionway.
Within seconds, the young guard and a dozen heavily armed flagship warriors came rushing down the steps, their swords drawn, their faces filled with an intense, breathless panic. When they saw me standing tall, the extinguished torch in my hand and the giant First Mate weeping in agony at my feet, they stopped dead in their tracks, their eyes wide with an absolute, reverent shock.
“My prince…” the young guard breathed, dropping his spear to his side as a look of intense relief washed over his face. “The gods be praised… you did it.”
“Bind his arms,” I commanded, pointing down at Robert with my cutlass. “Drag him up to the main deck. Do not let him faint. He has a debt to pay to the crew.”
They seized the screaming giant, lifting him by his broken leg without an ounce of pity, and dragged him up the narrow wooden steps, his blood leaving a dark, smeary trail along the companionway.
When we emerged onto the main deck, the sun had fully risen above the horizon, casting a blinding, brilliant layer of gold light across the calm, blue waters of the ocean. The storm was completely gone, leaving only the crisp, clean air of the morning and the endless expanse of the sea empire stretching out before us.
The hundreds of sailors, loyal warriors, and the two hundred newly freed slave rowers were gathered in a massive, silent circle around the main mast. When they saw me walk out of the hatch, alive and unharmed, a deafening, earth-shattering roar erupted from their chests. They slammed their swords against their shields, shouting my name into the morning sky until the very timber of the flagship vibrated with their pride.
Admiral Logan stepped forward, his eyes bright with tears as he looked at me. He didn’t say a word. He simply fell to his knees, lowering his head in a gesture of absolute submission that was instantly duplicated by every single soul on the deck.
“Stand up, my friends,” I said, my voice carrying clearly over the gentle lapping of the waves against the hull. “Today, we do not kneel to men. We stand as one.”
I walked over to the center of the deck, where the guards had thrown Robert down into the dirt. The giant First Mate was shivering, his broken leg swelling rapidly, his eyes looking up at the hundreds of vengeful faces staring down at him. He knew there was no escape. He knew the empire of fear he had helped Vance build had completely collapsed.
I looked down at him, the polished steel cutlass resting at my side. I could have ordered him to be hanged from the highest mast. I could have ordered him to be cut into pieces and thrown to the sharks. But as I looked at his terrified, weeping face, I realized that true justice wasn’t about matching his brutality. It was about showing him the absolute insignificance of his past power.
“Robert,” I said, my voice echoing across the silent deck. “You spent three years trying to make me forget who I was. You thought that by putting me in chains, you could turn the blood of kings into the dirt of the docks.”
I reached down and picked up the heavy iron collar that had been cut from my own neck during the night—the thick, rusted band of metal that had carried the number Seven. I dropped it onto the wood right in front of his face.
“You will not be hanged,” I declared, my voice carrying the absolute, unyielding authority of the Sea Throne. “And you will not be killed. You will live. You will live to see me take the capital. You will live to see the true flag of the High King fly over every fortress in this empire. And every single day, you will sit on rowing bench number seven, pulling the heavy oar in the dark, knowing that the boy you whipped is the man who rules the waves.”
The crew erupted into a fierce, triumphant cheer, their voices filled with a deep, satisfying joy at the perfect irony of the punishment. The young guard stepped forward, grabbed the heavy iron collar, and locked it tightly around Robert’s thick neck with a loud, definitive CLICK.
The giant man wept openly, his head slumping onto the wet deck as he was dragged away by the freed rowers—men who would now be his masters in the dark belly of the ship.
I walked up to the high balcony of the helm, stepping up to the massive wooden wheel. Admiral Logan followed me, standing at my right side, his hand resting proudly on the hilt of his sword.
The cold morning wind caught my hair, blowing it back from my face, exposing the deep, crown-shaped burn mark on my neck to the brilliant golden sunlight. I looked out over the endless blue horizon, where the distant towers of the capital city were just beginning to appear against the sky.
The journey ahead would be long, and the enemies who held my father’s throne would fight with the desperation of dying wolves. But as I placed my raw, scarred hands onto the smooth wood of the flagship’s wheel, I didn’t feel the weight of the past anymore. I didn’t feel the pain of the chains or the sting of the whip.
I felt the pulse of the ocean beneath my feet, a wild, free, unconquerable force that answered to my blood. The slave named Seven was gone, buried forever in the dark hold of the ship, and the true King of the sea had finally come home.
And the deck that had once been my prison stood silent as I steered us toward the dawn.
