Chapter 12, Roberts

  I slept in, and that hardly ever happens. Maybe it’s the stillness of the water or the lack of shouting outside my door. Either way, I can’t seem to drag myself out of bed.

  Sarah is on my ship. If she’s telling the truth, and I want to believe she is, there’s a dragon out there somewhere. She confirmed it. The thing I saw wasn’t just a flame or some strange reflection off the water. That thought should wake me faster.

  Dragons haven’t been seen in a thousand years or more. Most people think they never existed. You see them woven into tapestries, stitched into noblemen’s cloaks, carved into the figureheads of ships that never leave the harbor. They do not mean danger anymore. They mean money, power, status.

  I wonder how big they can get? Some say they blot out the sun. Others say they’re small, fast, and clever. Maybe they don’t appear threatening at first. Not until the fire catches, and never goes out.

  Only one dragon can exist at a time and maybe that’s nature’s version of mercy. A single dragon could burn the world down. That is where we get the word reckoning.

  People like to throw that word around. I do it too. Storms. Battles. Near-deaths. I have called all of them reckonings. But a true reckoning is born from magic older than nations and kings.

  And that magic always chooses a female host, binding itself to her in a way that can’t be undone. Dragon Queen is what she’s called but even those words have worn thin over time.

  If dragon magic has returned… fuck, I don’t know what that means. Part of me is excited. It's about time something shook up the powers that be. I’m tired. We all are. Piracy has become a carnival game. We have to be so careful picking targets.

  I never felt good about it to begin with. It used to be easier when the merchants were filthy rich. I didn’t mind taking from them. These days there’s not much meat on their bones, cargo or otherwise.

  If King Gerod and the capital clowns finally got knocked down, maybe we’d all have a shot at something better. Gods know only a Dragon Queen could manage that.

  And if it’s Sarah... if she’s the one bringing the reckoning? Then damn. Small world.

  Top of my list is figuring out how she ended up this close to that kind of magic. That, and where she’s been all this time. I like to think she’s still the girl I knew. But life doesn’t let anyone stay the same. Not if they’re really living.

  There’s muscle on her now, lean and cut, like someone who’s fought and won more often than she’s lost. And there’s deep settled hunger carved into the hollows of her face that she carries like she’s always prepared to go without.

  She’s different, but not entirely. Because the way she looks at me is the same as before. Like she doesn’t know whether to hate me, fight me, or get lost in me.

  I turn onto my side and exhale slowly. I should get up. I should be thinking about what comes next, about the danger she brings. Instead, I let the past carry me away.

  Sarah, standing in the dim light of the chapel. Hands clasped behind her back. Brow furrowed in concentration as she murmurs scripture under her breath. I’m perched on top of the podium, watching her.

  "You don’t believe a word of that," I say.

  She doesn’t look up.

  “For I am born of darkness. Let my trespasses be drowned in crimson, that I may walk in light once more.”

  She continues, clinging to obedience like it could wash her clean. Pretending to be so innocent, so good.

  Like if she follows the rules hard enough, it will make her true nature disappear.

  “It’s this place that’s evil, you know.”

  That gets her attention. And there’s that look again. Like she can’t decide if she wants to hit me or kiss me.

  I remember how I first knew she had a dark side. I can still see it so clearly. Sarah, standing in the crowd, watching.

  That poor accused woman on the pulpit, wrists stretched high, shirt ripped clean from her back. The first crack of the lash sent a shudder through the congregation. But Sarah didn’t flinch. Her eyes stayed locked, wide, unblinking. Not with fear or pity. With satisfaction, fascination.

  Then later, we were sent to clean the altar. A scrap of fabric, stuck in the stain, stiff with blood. The way she turned it between her fingers, like it meant something.

  “Keep it, I won’t say anything.” I’d said.

  Her face turned red with admission. That’s when the idea came to me. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s getting into trouble.

  I stole Terese’s precious violet-grade corialis pendant and wore it into the auditorium like a trophy. She screamed, demanded it back, and I made her chase me just to savor every second of the thrill. Getting tackled, slapped, and dragged by the hair was fun, but gods, it was hard to hide the stupid grin tugging at my cheeks when I knelt at the altar for my own lashes.

  That night I lay bare, split open, shrouded in nothing but a bedsheet and bandages. Praying that Sarah would take the bait. And she did. That was the night she finally touched me.

  The landslide of memories crashes through me, and heat pools low in my belly, spreading like fire. Just ten more minutes. I roll onto my stomach, sliding my hand between my body and the bed, pressing where I need it.

  "Can you feel that? Feel what you do to me?"

  I let myself say it.

  "Fuck, Sarah, tell me—you want this."

  It spills out just under my breath, a whisper only meant for the air.

  "Say you feel it too."

  Just enough to make it real. Just enough to believe it’s happening.

  "It’s okay, you’re safe. Don’t stop."

  I let myself hear her answering, let myself feel her hands, her weight, her breath.

  "Don’t stop. Please don’t—"

  It’s happening, it’s real. My thoughts unravel as fantasy overtakes memory. What I wish had happened drowning out what really did.

  "Fuck, I’m gonna—yeah—gonna cum for you."

  My breath comes sharp, uneven, but not gasping. It fades fast, settling into something steady. My pulse still kicks beneath my skin, but the rest of me feels heavy, the tension draining from my muscles in slow waves.

  Of course that’s not how it really ended. The truth slips back into my skull, ruining the moment before I can even enjoy it.. But it’s okay. That was all I needed. Just enough to keep those memories of Sarah in the past where they belong.

  My legs feel loose, my body flushed, but there’s no lingering warmth, no real satisfaction. Just the quiet after. A hard reset.

  “You’re trouble,” is what she’d really said.

  And what she really did was leave. Leave me furious, wrecked and wanting. It doesn’t matter because I’ll never let her do it again.

  A knock at the door, Harken. “Come in.”

  Harken opens the door. “I see you’re hard at work.” He’s been running the night crew and he’s here for our daily shift change ritual. .

  My jaw is slack, cheek mashed against the sheets. “Someone has to do the thinking for this lot of dimwits.”

  Harken leans into the bedframe, settling in like a parent who refuses to leave until their child gets up.

  "Your little pet is curled up by the stove in the galley. If she’s not here to warm your bed, the least you could do is give her a proper place to sleep."

  “I did give her a place to sleep.” I say, slowly rolling myself over and nodding toward the wash basin. “Toss me that towel?”

  Harken sidles over, picks up the towel, and flicks it through the air with the theatrical flair of someone far too pleased with his own antics.

  "Your Holiness," he intones, mock reverence dripping from every syllable.

  I catch it and slide it under the sheets, wiping between my legs without ceremony. Harken smirks, one brow lifting. Not at the act itself, but at the implication.

  “That bad, huh?”

  It’s not judgment, it’s a joke. A quiet dig, implying my hands do better work than whoever was in my bed last night.

  “Go to hell.” I huff a laugh, sitting up and stretching my neck. “I told you it’s not like that.”

  “Then what is it like?”

  "I know her," I admit. It’s the easier of two truths I’ve been holding back. The one I know he’ll take in stride.

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  Not the part about the dragon. Just the part where she’s someone I used to know.

  “Care to explain?” He’s more serious now. I hesitate, still unsure of how much to admit.

  Sarah isn’t just someone I know, she’s someone I could never have. Someone I loved despite constant rejection. And for some self-defeating reason, I still want to be close to her.

  "I know her from Prophet’s Landing."

  I stop. Another flood of memories presses in, sharp-edged and tangled. Sarah, with her perfect facade, the way she followed every rule.

  Our families spent so much time together, their lives intertwined through religious and social ties. But that never stopped Sarah’s parents from looking down on me, singling me out as a bad apple.

  And for what? Being loud and getting dirty? For refusing to play pretend like the rest of them? It’s so ironic that while they warned Sarah I was a deviant, she was the one harboring something dark.

  Not wicked or evil. Just... shadowed. But I never thought less of her for it. Never tried to name it or fix it or make it something it wasn’t. Her parents would’ve called it broken, fallen, proof she was lost. But to me, it was just another part of her that I loved.

  Harken has made himself at home at my desk, boots propped up, looking like he’s got all the time in the world.

  “I had a hunch that you two had met before,” he says.

  I grunt, dragging myself out of bed and pulling on yesterday’s trousers, left draped over the bedpost. “You know me too well.”

  “Maybe.” He tilts the chair back, balancing it on two legs. “But I don’t know much of anything about your life inside the walls. By the time we met, you’d already buried those memories.”

  I take a swig of mouth rinse and swish the bitter mint around while I turn my next words over in my head. He’s right, I thought I had buried them. All it took was seeing her again. I step out the back and spit over the railing, then return to where Harken waits, patient as ever.

  “You remember what I told you about Maria?” I ask, slipping out of the shirt I slept in.

  I tighten the binding around my chest. Looser than I wear it for conquest, tighter than I’d sleep in. Just enough to be practical. “At first I went somewhere else in my mind—” I hesitate. “To someone else.”

  “I remember.” He nods, solemn.

  My shirt is clean enough so I put it back on, tucking it into my trousers. “It was her,” I say, voice low. “Sarah. She’s who I imagined.”

  Harken rubs his jaw, considering. “She must have meant a lot to you.”

  I fasten my doublet. “She did, and she didn’t.”

  “What do you mean?” He waits, watching as I tug on my boots, stomping them into place.

  “I never meant anything to her. So—”

  “So whatever history you two had, it was one-sided?”

  “You could say that.” I slip into my shoulder belt, adjusting the leather across my chest until it sits right.

  “Is that why you pursued Maria?” Harken asks. I’ve always appreciated the way he really listens. You can tell by the questions he asks.

  I could never win Sarah’s heart, but I did win Maria’s, and I let myself believe what we had was real. It was real. I killed for her, I would have done anything for her. She loved me too, she just let her fear get the best of her. And in the end, she sold me.

  “Something like that.” I shrug, shoving a few loose braids back under my bandana and tightening it across my forehead.

  “So what are you hoping comes of this?” he asks. His voice is steady, but there’s a warning in it.

  “I just couldn’t leave her there, that’s all.”

  “She in trouble?”

  “Think so.”

  “Wanted?”

  “Not sure yet.”

  He looks at me the way he does when he’s figuring out whether I’m lying to myself. Then he softens, letting it go. “Well, I don’t blame you for going easy on her.”

  I lean against the desk, arms crossed. “She doesn’t know it’s me. Can you believe that?” The words leave a bitter taste in my mouth.

  “Ouch,” Harken echos.

  "Ah, don't feel sorry for me. I was a prick."

  I pull out the flat tin of black grease I keep in a small pocket of my doublet and use my pinky to reapply the dark lines beneath my eyes. It’s not cheap, but it's a kind of armour I refuse to go without.

  "I just didn’t think I had such a forgettable face." I say, looking away from my reflection and back to Harken.

  "You’ve changed. Muff-divin’ like it’ll fund your retirement’s done wonders for your jawline."

  I suppress a laugh, shaking my head. He presses further.

  “Hell, I hardly recognize you without a pair of legs over your shoulders and a grateful audience.” He grins, knowing full well he’s cracked me.

  This time, I throw my head back and laugh out loud.

  Harken's changed too, more than most. When we first met, the two of us were a grim sight. But where I burned hotter, he’d gone cold and given up. I don’t blame him. It’s not that what he went through was worse than what the rest of us on that rotship had seen. It wasn’t.

  He wasn’t happy being a husband and a father, only did it because he thought that’s what life was supposed to be. When sickness took his wife and three children, all in the span of a year… he thought he’d wished it into being. Thought his secret longing for freedom had summoned death to his doorstep and let the guilt hollow him out.

  The thing that set Harken’s suffering apart from the rest of us was that he gave himself to the slavers willingly, as if to punish himself for surviving. It wasn’t the grief that nearly broke him. It was the belief that he deserved it.

  Even after I forced him to escape with me, fighting for my freedom and bargaining for his in a way he couldn’t refuse, and carving out a name for us, it still took years for him to shed those beliefs. Guilt had its claws in him deep.

  But now? Every crude joke and filthy grin is a testament to the weight he’s let go of. Proof that he lets himself live.

  “You gonna remind her? Or show her what she’s been missing out on?” he asks, still chuckling to himself.

  “Haven’t decided yet.” I lower my voice.

  “You want her to join the crew,” he says more quietly, picking up on my shift in tone.

  “I might.”

  “Mm.” He pauses, thoughtful. “You’re letting them believe she’s here for company. Buying yourself time to decide how you feel about her?”

  “Right.”

  Harken stands up and hands me the ledger. “Well, you might need to sell it a little harder.” He says with a wink.

  “What, you want me to throw her over my shoulder and parade her around the deck?" I flip open the ledger, skimming his latest entries and handing it back.

  I hate paperwork, but I delegate well. I’ve given most of the record keeping responsibilities to Harken. He likes being indispensable to me, so I let him have it. But I always know the numbers, and I expect updates.

  I open the desk drawer and pull out my compass. Tucked behind it are other tools of navigation that I don’t know how to use. Lately, we’ve been skating by on a compass and lines.

  The air is fresh, and the sun already glaring, as we step onto the lower stern deck that doubles as my private balcony. I had Manee retrofit a staircase, giving me easy access from here to the upper stern deck.

  I loved this ship at first sight, mostly because of the dual stern decks. I don’t have a type, per se, but I can appreciate a woman with a generous rear.

  Jake has trained himself to listen for our boots on the stairs. Despite the late hour, he’s already standing at attention when we arrive.

  There’s an attention to detail that comes with being submissive by nature, a hunger to anticipate. Jake has it. A need to notice everything, to perfect the smallest tasks as if they mean something greater. And they do.

  It’s his ability to find purpose in the mundane that makes him indispensable. It also makes him ready for a promotion. I see why Sonya cherishes him, why their thing just… works. I’m going to miss having him as lead deckhand.

  "Mornin’, Captain!" Jake greets me, crossing his fists over his chest with a slight bow.

  It’s more formal than how most pirates acknowledge a captain, but it’s been catching on. Jake started it, because of course he did.

  He turns to Harken, tapping two fingers to his forehead in a quick, familiar salute. "Quartermaster."

  Jake barks an order to one of the swabbies under his charge. I don’t bother learning all their names. Most of them come and go too fast for that.

  The kid snaps to attention, then bolts for the rigging. Barefoot, they climb up onto a crossbeam in a blur of movement. The moment they find their perch, they twist, cupping their hands around their mouth and letting out a sharp, ringing cry.

  "Hellcats—Captain on deck!"

  The crew squares up as I pass, straightening instinctively and adjusting their stances. Then, from the quarterdeck, a whistle cuts through the morning air.

  Manee stands at the helm and plays a single, piercing note on the boatswain’s pipe. It carries across the deck like a summons. The day has begun.

  "What do we take?" I step forward.

  A growl ripples through the crew. "Only what’s owed!"

  "And what do we leave?"

  "Nothing but bones!"

  "And the ones who stand in our way?"

  "Bones to the sea!"

  Manee blows a second, sharper note to signal the end of the ritual, and its back to business.

  “Wind’s still fickle. Held, then died, then picked up again. Never dropped below four knots, though. If our reckoning’s right, we’ll hit the first shoals by midday." Jake says, still by my side.

  I nod, pulling my fists up toward my shoulders, flexing my biceps as my back tightens in a stretch. That should put us near the edge of the sandbars.

  "We ran the log line a few times through the night," Manee offers. "Speed held steady, course hasn’t drifted. Might be worth dropping the lead."

  I shake my head. "Not yet. The water’s still deep enough to lie to us."

  Manee and Jake exchange glances.

  "If we’re off course—" Jake trails off.

  "Then we’ll correct it," I say. "I don’t want to waste daylight slowing down now. Keep the heading steady. Advise me if anything changes."

  I glance toward the horizon again. Everything sounds right. The speed, the heading, the timing. But I’ve learned that what sounds right and what is right aren’t always the same.

  That’s the trick with the sandbars. Getting through them is our specialty. Getting to them is where we earn our pay.

  A shift by as little as a quarter mile could mean the difference between navigating the shallows like a master or ripping our hull to shreds in the shards. That’s what we call the reefs running parallel to the sandbars. They're sharp and hidden enough to sink a ship before you ever see them coming.

  Jake is still glued to my side as I start the rounds. I give him a look that says why are you still here? And he peels off at a precise ninety-degree angle, as if the thought was his own.

  I roll my shoulders, trying to shake the irritation curling in my gut. My whole life has been one reason after another to walk around pissed off. But somewhere along the way, I made a choice to stop letting it affect me. To wear my swagger on my sleeve instead of my heart, no matter how much turmoil might be stirring beneath the surface.

  Despite how tightly I’ve kept the lid on things, Sarah is settling under my skin like a splinter I can’t dig out. I push off the rail harder than necessary, pacing impatiently toward the helm.

  I’m still thinking about what I told Harken this morning. I didn’t give him everything, but I gave him more than I planned to. And for a moment, I felt steadier. But the feeling didn’t last… not with the weight of what I left unsaid. Sarah has a dragon.

  Or had one?

  That part isn’t lining up. She thought there wasn’t a dragon until I told her I saw one. The shock on her face wasn’t a lie. Is it hers or did she steal it? Maybe she’s on the run from the real Dragon Queen. That would not be ideal… for me.

  There are too many unknowns, which means I need to tread carefully. Choose my words. Measure my steps. But how I’m acting this morning is anything but.

  A rather large red chicken with the temperament of a jilted mistress, is tied to a barrel near the quarterdeck. It’s part of the deal Gery worked out after the last incident. Griselda serves as the ship cat, if you can believe it, chasing rats better than any mouser I’ve seen. But ever since she developed a personal grudge against me, she’s not allowed above deck without a leash.

  She sees me. Wings go out, neck down, beak open and hissing like she’s about to spit fire. She lunges at full speed and hits the end of her leash with a violent jerk that rattles the barrel.

  I stop mid-stride. So does conversation around me.

  “Someone tell Gery to get this fucking bird off my deck before I turn her into dinner.”