8. The Lowest Rise #3
Morgyn gaped, taken aback, her lips thinning as she considered whether Cecily might be telling the truth. Cecily’s smile widened as she waited, even as her insides grew uneasy at the admission of her own guilt, laid bare for all to witness.
A mass murderer. Six men killed in cold blood.
“You’re a liar,” Morgyn finally said. “We all know what you were in for.”
Cecily pointedly eyed the dead around them—the men she had killed to save Hester. For them, she had no pity or remorse. Bringing her gaze back to Morgyn, she asked, “Am I a liar?”
As though seeing them for the first time, Morgyn blanched at the sight of the bodies, the blood on the sword in Cecily’s hand, Hester cowering nearby.
Thoughts churned behind those horrible, dead eyes, trying to determine if Cecily was truthful, or if this was simply another game of prison politics and power she could somehow win.
Morgyn’s eyes hardened to flinty pits of black, and she said, “They would’ve hanged you.”
Cecily snorted, acutely aware of the silence on deck. “Oh, they tried. But then a nobleman paid a fortune for my life. He said death was too merciful after I butchered his friends.”
She stood then, looking down on the fear creeping into Morgyn’s face.
“You’ve called me a monster, but I’m so much worse because I never asked for what I got.
” Her lip curled, true disgust leaking into her words.
“Someone else forced my hand. They made me this way. And if you believe it’s a worthy use of your time to mock me, I assure you that nothing you say will descend far enough to hurt me.
If you think you will get me killed, death never bothers to come for me—and I’ll kill you long before it ever does. ”
Her fingers tightened around the hilt of her sword, but the tip of the blade remained firmly on the deck, its presence a warning for Morgyn and a boon for Cecily.
Morgyn’s lips twisted into a sneer, a glimmer of fight still burning in her eyes. “If you were truly such a terrible murderer, you’d’ve killed half of us in prison. And yet you were a coward.”
A scornful laugh burst from Cecily. “A coward! Fine—I’ll tell you what happened, and you tell me how cowardly I was.
” She lifted her sword from in front of her, only to jam it into the boards on her right, the blade ringing with the force of it.
It grounded her and, newly emboldened, her voice rose, sharp with venomous contempt.
“After my father died, my cousin took my home and sold me because he thought a bag of money was worth more than my life. I was ripped from my bed in the middle of the night and taken to a brothel. The owner brought out a bottle of wine to welcome me, perhaps to calm my nerves for what he had planned. I shattered it and shoved the broken glass through his neck.”
The memory rose, as clear and visceral as the night it happened.
Hazy candlelight, fireplaces, pipe tobacco, and thin walls with wooden doors.
A choking fear had rendered Cecily silent while a man spoke to her like she was a spooked horse.
She had watched the reflection of the hearth’s flames in the green bottle to ignore the expectation in his hungry gaze.
When she reached for the bottle, she had hardly known what she was doing—only that she wanted him to stop looking at her.
“I didn’t know there could be so much blood in a body,” Cecily said, flames dancing in her mind.
“It came out so fast. I was covered in it, and I remember it was so warm—but not nearly warm enough. Losing the only person in the world who loved me left me cold and dead, and that man’s blood hardly helped at all. So I found more.”
She could smell the iron tang of it, and this time she wasn’t sure if it was real or not.
This part was a lie—yes, she’d killed the men, but not because she craved their blood.
They died because they tried to stop her, to keep her there.
They’d even laughed at her, until they noticed the blood, and then they thought she might be easy to restrain. She never gave them the chance to try.
“There were five other men there that night,” Cecily went on, remembering the blinding, desperate panic and rage that had driven her.
“I ran them through with a fire poker or slit their throats with more broken glass. I might’ve gotten away with it, but there was another man I never had the chance to kill.
He summoned the constables.” She laughed harshly to drown out the memory of the shrieking women who’d stood behind her as she stumbled over the threshold into the night.
Though it had been late spring, she’d been so, so cold.
“He was the one who gifted me this fate instead of letting me dangle at the end of a noose. He paid a judge to make prison records show I’d been executed, and then he gave me a new record that reduced my crime to the very situation I had killed to spare myself from so that I could go to Bridewell and spend my days being called a whore.
” She longed to shout the last bit and shook with the effort to control herself.
To keep that sword pointed at the boards beneath her feet.
Around them, pirates nervously waited for her to strike as she fed the growing tension and let them see the truth that had carved away so many pieces of her.
Cecily was a girl with a rotten heart, a shattered soul, and a past she didn’t deserve.
And she’d be damned if she let anyone take anything else from her.
Jack had disappeared from the quarterdeck and now stood next to his father, his eyes cool. But there was no anger or irritation, no shock or pity. He was listening, wholly focused on every word she said.
Morgyn shook her head, her face white. “Cecily—”
“Spite and revenge spared my life,” Cecily spat.
“Now they sustain it. I’m sure you killed today, driven by coin and your own benefit—but I kill for conviction.
I didn’t even need a sword the first time, but to save my friend, it was merely a convenience.
I would have done it just as easily with my bare hands. ”
The truth of it struck her so hard that she paused. She’d really only said it to scare Morgyn, but how monstrous she would become to protect herself and her friend…that was true, and she was glad for everyone to know it.
“I am still cold,” she said with quiet fury. “If I seek to warm myself with blood, then I shall. And even if I should find warmth in the first mate’s bed, I am no one’s whore.” She took a second to catch her breath and let the declaration settle. “Now tell me. Where is my cowardice?”
Morgyn only turned her face away, and Cecily knew she’d won. The women wouldn’t look at her, and the men stared in shock. Copson remained cool and impassive.
Beside the captain, Jack suppressed a smile.
Cecily was the first to move, turning from Morgyn like she wasn’t worth any more of her time. The moment she did, and others began to shift, heading for the lower decks and carrying loot back to the Fortuna Royale. Greyson pulled Hester back toward the pirate ship, and she followed, her head bowed.
And then only Copson and Jack remained, waiting in the middle of the deck. Cecily came to stand before them and let her sword clatter to the deck with a tinny rattle.
“I broke your order,” she told the captain, already missing the weapon in her hand. But in this she must yield. She’d risen over one to win fear, but now she had to bow to another in the hope she might earn his respect. “Hester would’ve died if I hadn’t.”
Copson’s eyes were stormy gray as he assessed her. She weathered his gaze, resolutely ignoring Jack.
Even if I should find warmth in the first mate’s bed, I am no one’s whore.
She wouldn’t be able to look him in the eye for at least a week.
“Where did you learn to fight?” Copson finally asked.
“My father was a master swordsman,” she answered. “He sparred with me daily.”
She hadn’t spoken of him since his death, and doing so was like an arrow to the chest. The edges of her lips dipped, and she drew in a steadying breath.
Copson asked, “And your mother?”
“Dead, sir.” Thankfully her voice didn’t waver. “Since I was a child.”
He eyed the bloody sword at his feet, appearing as cruel and withholding as always.
After a moment, he stepped forward and brought his head next to hers.
The crew nearby cast uneasy glances their way, but whatever scolding it might’ve seemed she was getting was fabricated entirely by their imaginations.
The captain spoke so quietly that she barely heard the words, “I’m terribly sorry for your loss.
” When he pulled back, his tone was cutting.
“You attacked a fellow crew member and broke my law. It’ll come out of your wages.
Don’t defy me again, Miss Shoard. Second chances are rare, and there will not be another. ”
She nodded once. “Aye, sir.”
Jack’s gaze bored into the side of her face and, eager to be free of it, Cecily turned away and disappeared below deck to do as she’d been told.