Chapter 6
Chapter six
Killian
By the oceans, this one either sulks like a petulant little child or keeps running that mouth of his trying to offend me and the crew.
The way he is glaring at Seviin, like he is checking if she knows how to prepare the food he got us, is going to cost him an eye.
Normally, I would tell the crew to treat him with respect.
But he is the second most slapable person I have ever met.
I hate how he made me lose control, and the pin prick of dried blood on his chin—a constant reminder of my failure.
“Go wait in your tent. Your mere presence annoys me,” I snarl, seemingly unprovoked.
I am met with this mocking grin, like he knows why I suddenly cannot bear to be in his presence anymore.
“Sure thing Cap’n,” he mimics Samuel’s earlier words. Unable to help myself, I yank the rope still tied to his waist. It ends up between his legs. The sudden tension on the rope makes him trip. Mud splatters his face, like the foam of the oceans paints the body of the Obsidian Oath.
“Sorry, darling.” I smirk before turning my attention back to my crew.
Some of them glance at me. It’s not like me to lose my composure like this.
Luckily enough, they know why this is all getting a little too close for comfort.
They understand why I need this, why we are still here sailing the silver seas, not going home.
Unlike the lost ones, who cannot go home physically, my inability to return is tied up with my mind and my reason for being here.
There is too much here I still need to do before I can leave this damned island behind and go back home, hoping I will still be welcome there.
Not that it matters, because if I get her back, it will all have been worth it.
She, who should have been more like James.
Or maybe the other way around. I thought Peter’s fated mate would be like Celeste used to be before it all.
At least, that is what I had prepared myself for when I decided to capture James.
But he is a brat, a moody, a stubborn brat, I got to him before Peter broke him.
That is what Peter does—he uses people, fae, faun, children.
It doesn’t matter who or what you are. He uses them until there is nothing left, but a shell of whom you once were.
Left behind broken as the king of the goats goes and finds his next toy.
Celeste was the only one to ever see the truth and look what it cost her.
What it costs us both. The fact that everyone falls for his charm sickens me.
It has settled in my bones like an ancient weariness, even if I now finally have a way to stop him.
And James is the way out, so let him sulk, and mock, and scream.
Let him lie to us, let him beg me when he finally realizes there is no way out.
That we will always be one step ahead of him.
Let him crumble and be the first one I will break.
The first person I will leave behind as a broken toy, in the hands of the vile doll maker.
If it is what I need to do to get her back, it is the only logical thing to do in this illogical world, I will do it.
There is no way I will choose this spoiled little brat over Celeste.
Two hours later, we are back on our way to the Obsidian Oath again.
The food was good. I have to admit that without James, we would never have eaten as much as we did now.
Not on a track like this. But the fact that he was so eager to forage for food didn’t sit right with me.
When he proposed it, I figured he would be trying to escape.
Trying to attack me so he could escape. Get food that would poison us, leave hints for his precious Peter to find us.
He did nothing of the sort, and it’s a bit unsettling. It’s not that he is compliant either.
I let him go out foraging, because I wanted to see what he was going to do.
The only way to defeat your enemies is to know what they do, how they think, how they act.
It was the first mistake with Peter, the mistake that cost me my hand.
Thinking I knew what he was going to do. Thinking I knew what mattered to him.
I didn’t. Now I don’t have her, and I am missing my left hand.
A part of me was hoping he would leave hints for Peter to find us.
I want him to find me. I want him to come to the Obsidian Oath.
Last time we played, it was on his home turf.
Now he is coming to my home, and I will finally get what I want from him.
Hopefully soon. Not just because I want to get Celeste back, but because I am already over the little brat we are dragging along with us now.
“What are you thinking about, Cap?” Samuel asks.
In a previous life, we weren’t equals. I was the prince, he was a nobleman, and now, I am the first among equals.
More importantly, though, I have always considered him my brother.
And I know the feeling is mutual. That’s why no matter what, I can never get away with bullshitting this one.
“Nothing much. I am just so over that brat,” I grumble: “And I don’t get him.
Who the hell goes foraging for food with his kidnapper?
” I shake my head before I continue: “Who the hell goes and takes a nap in Silvermist forest when their so-called fated mate has so many enemies? He is unnerving, and now, we are stuck with him,” I tell Samuel honestly.
His eyes fly to James, who is walking his spine ramrod straight, a posture clashing with his eyes trained on the forest floor in front of him.
Eyes that portray fear, obedience, everything you would expect from a mere human, kidnapped by a race he knows nothing about, in a realm that is still too novel for him to actually comprehend.
Even if he had not been living in a gilded cage, surrounded by the colorless peaks.
His posture betrays an arrogance he has no right nor reason to have.
“He is a mysterious landlubber, isn’t he?”
I just nod at Samuel’s remark. There is nothing else to say about the matter.
He is a mystery, so we will keep him close enough to make sure he won’t do anything to harm our cause.
Not long after the Obsidian Oath’s mizzen appears, a stark contrast to the yellowing sky, the scent of salt lands on my skin like a lover’s touch.
The salt prickles my lungs with every inhale of breath.
Making me feel like I finally can breathe well again.
Nothing compares to the taste of the salt in the air, the sound of the waves breaking against the bow of the ship.
The gentle sway of the waves is a rhythmic heartbeat to every step you make.
The crew lights up, their pace picking up just slightly. Their weariness from tracking the forest ebbing away like foam on the waves with every step closer to our home. The forest parts, revealing the headman’s cliffs. The last barrier between us and the Obsidian Oath.
“Keep the pace, hearties, we will board the Obsidian Oath before nightfall. The rum will flow freely, and our booty will get to watch us feast over his downfall. We will regale our mates with the easiest capture since the dawn of Silvermist,” I shout out over the cliffs.
Without prompting, the crew burst out into a chanty.
Yo ho heave ho, on the Obsidian Oath we go.
Raise our glass, and raise our sails
Heave ho
Yo Ho heave ho, loss we will bestow.
On the King of faun and fails
Heave ho
Yo ho heave ho, the rum will flow.
We’ll drown the goat.
Heave ho
Yo ho heave ho, peaks will crumble
As the goat king tumbles
Heave ho
Yo ho heave ho, we got his beau and will use him so.
To slit his throat.
Heave ho, heave ho.
I grin, joining in on the chanty, every heave ho filling my lungs with a gulp of increasingly salty air.
What pleases me most is that it is not only the goat king who crumbles in our chanty.
The words seem to slam into James like daggers.
His arrogance falters, his eyes no longer downcast, fly up to the crew swirling with a mixture of anger and hurt.
Do I see worry in them? Maybe it’s for his mate.
I revel in it. Not just the pain it is inflicting on him.
But the emotions. Emotions are a weakness I can exploit.
Break him before he ever sees his goat king again.
Because when he sees him again, I am just not sure Peter will still be alive.
James will not perish unless I will it so.
If needed, though, he will succumb to end Peter’s false reign.
Silvermist will be left in tethers when their king drowns.
Celeste will return to me. I will bring her to the home I might not be welcome in anymore.
It doesn’t matter, because after it, I will sail all the seas of the nine realms. I will bring down every false king.
I will plunder treasuries until the Obsidian Oath becomes a treasury.
And I will do so without a care, because the day Peter King of the Faun draws his last breath, is the day I will fulfill my life’s purpose.
And whatever realm that brat will end up in, he will forever know that he was the sword that cut his mate’s life down.
Giving me back mine and Celeste’s, a heartbreak I hope will be as constricting and painful as my life without her is.
Only the sound of wood clattering against wood draws me from my violence-filled daydreams. The chanty has long died down, and we reached the Obsidian Oath, its black wood painting a stark contrast with the pink and golden sky. As if even the sun rejoices in our homecoming.
“Ahoy, mateys, we have returned with booty that has freely given himself to us. Why pillage and plunder when treasure naps in the forest,” I call out to the pirates still on board.
We’re met with loud cheers. James is hauled on board, dragged over the plank.
Until now I deemed him unable to defend himself.
Apart from trying to hit me with the stick when we found him in the forest, he hasn’t tried to defend himself much.
However, now as Belle and Dex drag him down the plank, aboard the Obsidian Oath, he kicks and screams like his life depends on it.
I walk the plank right behind him, intending to grab his legs. Before I reach them, what feels like leather covered rocks slam into my chin. The tangy iron taste of the blood from my split lip where my teeth were slammed into fills my mouth.
“You fucking, vile, dog,” I roar, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.
Spitting at him, I order my crew, . “Lock him up in the bellows.” The spit stains his green trousers with pink foam.
I drag him onto the boat with Bell and Dex.
The siblings are smart enough not to comment.
As soon as my boots touch the familiar wood of the Obsidian Oath, I let go of James’ feet. They take him toward the bellows.
I am not even sure if I will keep him in the bellows.
It is a horrible place to be on a ship. More so if you are not accustomed to the sway of a mighty ship in open waters.
But my most trusted crew members and I planned to merely go on a recon mission.
The mermaids had let us know that Peter would be out hunting for me again.
Mermaids, or sirens, are fickle creatures, living in all the nine realms. They don’t show real loyalty and are instead attracted to all that glitters and is gold.
Their intel is only valuable when your pockets are heavy enough to pay for their loyalty.
I am not sure if they kept the information about James from me because I did not pay them enough.
Or if we just got incredibly lucky to stumble across something even the mermaids didn’t know.
Whatever it was, the opportunity had been too good to pass up.
Tomorrow, I will deal with complications of this sudden arrest. Now I need a bath, a good warm meal, and a few glasses of rum.
The stench of Silvermist’s forest is still clinging to my clothes, my skin, my hair. Like the scent of someone else’s tobacco clinging to you. A smell you will only notice when you are somewhere clean.
I have been sailing the Silvermist oceans for years now. There is beauty to be found here. The colorless peaks, honoring their name, are drab, ghastly, dark mountains with no life on them. Mountains where the toughest and smartest men can fall to their death with just one wrong footstep.
The mountains are beautiful in all the ways they are lethal. It is why we chose to cross headman’s cliffs and the Silvermist forest for our scouting mission-turned-arrest.
They are far from being as deadly as the colorless peaks.
Both headman’s cliff and, even more so, Silvermist forest, are saturated with Peter’s repugnant possessive claim.
The oppressively stale air, where fauns mess with nature to make a fortress of protection against beings they perceive as lesser—whether it be human, fae or trolls—clings to me. I need it gone.