Chapter 3 Kaspar
Kaspar
“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t gut you right here and feed you to the sea kraken.” The man pressed in farther, his breath ghosting across my face as the steel blade dug into my skin. If I moved even a hair, it would draw blood.
I tried to swallow around my fear—and around the blade—but my mouth was dry even as my eyes threatened to fill, a mix of terror, regret, and hopelessness. A week in, and I’d been caught. I should’ve known that vexling would give me away.
I’d just wanted to get away. I wanted to live, not be stuck in a dungeon in a waking coma. How was that fair to me? Didn’t I… didn’t I deserve an actual life?
And now I was going to be killed by some…
some… pirate with a brown curl hiding one of his pretty brown eyes.
Goddesses help me, of course I’d notice that right now.
My murderer had pretty eyes and a nice body under his leather coat, so obviously that made all of this okay.
What in the holy dragon’s breath was wrong with me?
My mind was gone, completely disappeared in the face of danger.
“Answer me, boy!” He pushed even harder, the steel slicing my skin, a drop of blood dripping down to my collarbone.
“I-I… I… I’m s-s-sorry. I…” A whimper escaped me.
“Th-they were going to…” I stopped that sentence, unsure how to finish it when I couldn’t very well tell a stranger, let alone a pirate, that I was a fluxweaver.
I’d be sold to the highest bidder before I could blink.
“I… I didn’t… have a choice.” The words came out barely above a whisper, but I had no doubt the pirate heard me.
He grunted, and his hold loosened, just a hair, enough to let me take a breath and swallow without cutting myself further.
“There’s always a choice,” he murmured before releasing me completely.
I barely had a moment to catch my balance before he grabbed the back of my shirt and started hauling me across the hold.
“Wh-where are you taking me?”
He grunted again, his nostrils flaring in anger.
“Please… please, I didn’t have a choice. I’m sorry.” I sniffled as tears started to roll down my cheeks. “Please. I-I can work. I can… do anything. I’m a quick learner. I…” I sniffled again. “Please. Please don’t kill me.”
He ignored me, dragging me along until I was stumbling up the ladder to the lower deck. He didn’t release my shirt, dragging me around to the next ladder. There were a few pirates sitting or lying around, and one man with an eye patch called over, “Well, what’da we have ‘ere?”
The pirate holding me grunted. “Stowaway.”
Every single pirate there stared at me with this horrifying… glee on their faces. They were looking at me like I was one of those water pixies, and they were about to enjoy a rare delicacy.
Goddesses, I was about to die.
There was a bunch of jeering and shouting as Pretty Eyes pulled me along, but I was too terrified to pick out what the others were saying.
I tripped over the ladder and almost faceplanted, but my pretty-eyed murderer caught me, set me on my feet, and snapped, “Keep up.”
This time, I kept my eyes on the ground so I didn’t lose my footing, and I noticed the man had a prosthetic left leg.
With how strong he was and how easily he moved about the airship, I was a little surprised by the discovery, but I shook my head at myself because that wasn’t important right now.
Who cared about any of these pirates when I was about to die?
“Please, sir… please don’t kill me. I’ll do anything. Please. Please, Mr. Pirate, I’ll do anything you want.”
He glanced at me with a strange expression on his face that I couldn’t decipher. Maybe contemplative? Whatever it was, he loosened his hold for a moment and moved his face close to mine to whisper into my ear.
“Listen, boy, I’m not the one you need to beg.”
Cold dread seeped through me. It was now obvious where he was taking me—to the captain. To the Viper.
“Just…” My captor sighed. “Just be… sorry, and you might have a chance.”
“I am. I’m so sorry,” I said eagerly, nodding my head.
He let out a long sigh, closed his eyes for a moment, then met my gaze. “Why are you on my ship?”
Even though horror and panic filled my veins, I still kept eye contact as I spoke.
“I didn’t have a choice. I… they were going to take my life away.
” Not a lie, even if I did my best to make it sound like they were going to kill me.
Honestly, death was a better fate than what fluxweavers faced in the Sunada Kingdom.
They would plug me into a machine and drain my power until the day I died.
And once I was hooked up to the machine, there would be almost no hope.
I’d never heard of someone surviving being unplugged.
He searched my eyes for a long moment, then gave me a small nod. “Okay.” Then he went back to pulling me along the main deck to what I assumed was the captain’s quarters.
This pirate, my captor, was… scarier than a sea serpent, but that simple okay made me feel like maybe he was on my side.
As soon as I had the thought, the man practically threw me through the door into the captain’s office, making me tumble and catch myself on my hands and knees, crying out as my knee hit the floor.
Okay then. Maybe not. Maybe he wasn’t on my side.
“Found a stowaway in the hold, Captain,” Pretty Eyes said, eyeing me and nudging me with his boot as if telling me to get off the floor.
I didn’t want to. I wanted to sink right here and melt into the floor, just so I didn’t have to face the most terrifying pirate captain in the entire world.
But… if I wanted even the slimmest of hope of getting out of this, I needed to stand up on my own two feet and look fear in the eye… or something like that, anyway.
Plus, I had to survive. If not for myself, then for my sister and nephew.
For years, we’d been talking about getting out of Sunada, traveling to Asteris.
Things were better there, or so we’d heard.
My powers being discovered was the worst thing that could’ve happened to us, but I supposed it’d done one thing—given me the courage to get the hellfire out of there.
I needed to get to the Asteris Kingdom and send for them.
I needed to find them a better life than the one they had.
We lived in the slums in Sunada, so I’d always hoped we could find a better home.
Aside from my own job, Kayla apprenticed for a seamstress, and Cody had to work at the bakery after school just so we could pay the bills.
Without me there to help, things would be even more dire, but at least we’d saved for emergencies, so they’d be okay for a while.
So I took a breath, stood to my full height—which wasn’t all that impressive, if I was being honest, but it was what I had to work with—and met the eyes of Captain ‘Viper’ Van Jagger.
And then I flinched, and the cruel man smiled.
But I couldn’t help it. I’d never in my entire life seen eyes as cold as his. There was absolutely no warmth there, and in one look, I could tell why he was so feared.
His long black hair under a tricorn hat and wild and bushy beard only made his cold eyes seem worse somehow, and that skull tattoo on his cheek added to the creepy factor.
He looked exactly like he did on his wanted posters, although nothing could capture the pure… malice coming off of him in waves.
The man stood and walked around his desk, a strange grin on his face making a gold tooth reflect the light coming in through the door.
“Well, well, well, what have you brought me, Reaper?”
Reaper?
Oh, unicorn horns, the pirate beside me was Reaper? The Reaper?
I jolted with the realization, and then I wanted to laugh at myself for thinking the first mate of The Black Wraith—the Wraith’s Reaper—could’ve ever been on my side.
Reaper said, “Stowaway. He stole some food from the galley and a bedroll. Figured we could have him work it off—”
“I have a better idea.” The captain’s grin turned malicious, his gold tooth almost teasing me, and he gestured to the wall on my left. “See that there, boy?”
I glanced at the wall and jerked back, a surprised yelp fell from my lips. And then I got a better look. I wasn’t about to be eaten by a hydra, but there, sure as hellfire, was a group of giant hydra heads mounted on the wall. It wasn’t alive, thank the goddesses.
Holy phoenix tails, he’d had a hydra taxidermied and hung on his wall.
The monster had four huge heads, took up the entire wall, and each one’s face was scarier than the next.
One had its mouth open and looked like it was coming right at you, ready to bite off your face.
Another was somehow sly-looking, as if it was going to snake around and get you from behind.
Yet another was showing its teeth in a way that indicated it hissing.
And the one in the center had its jaws around some other kind of creature, perhaps a lusca—an octopus-shark-like creature that was large in its own right.
What in the holy goblin claws?
My gaze moved across the room, and I realized with horror that the crazed man in a tricorn hat had… monster trophies all over the place. It made it feel crowded in what would’ve otherwise been very large quarters without all the…taxidermy. Blech.
There was a sea serpent head and partial neck on the wall across from the hydra, a griffin head beside it, a mermaid tail flipped upside-down and bent in half to be used as a small table between two armchairs—armchairs made out of two dragon clawed feet—a tooth that was likely taller than me sitting in the corner like a statue, and goddesses, was that a… a dragon wing on the wall behind him?
And fuck me, the desk was covered in scales… dragon scales? Sea serpent? Siren? Who knew?