Chapter 3
Chapter Three
"Are you sure you don’t want to join me again?" The whore warming my bed swirled her finger along the sheets. She had no shame in trying to tempt me with her nakedness.
I turned the rum glass in my hand, watching the liquid catch the lamplight, before draining it and savoring the burn down my throat.
Boards creaked beneath my feet when I crossed the room.
I wasn’t in a hurry, torn between my want for company but my need to be alone.
Maybe tonight would be different. Maybe this was the whore that could spark something inside that had long since been buried.
The mattress sank under me as I sat on its edge.
Her weight settled behind mine, the warmth of her breath heavy at my neck a moment before her hands found my shoulders.
"Maybe," she crooned, tongue teasing my ear. "You could even take your shirt off this time."
I froze, jaw locked and teeth pressing together until I could feel the ache climbing into my skull.
The warmth of her hands, the soft press of her lips at my ear—all of it sent a skittering down my spine.
Her breath on my neck became a crawling thing, her palms on my shoulders no longer hands, but legs.
Dozens of them. Threading through the fabric of my shirt toward the skin beneath.
"Out," I spat.
"Captain?" Her wounded tone only pissed me off more.
"Out!" I repeated, my voice sharp and commanding. I dug my fingers into my thighs to keep from reaching back and doing something I’d regret.
The mattress shifted as she drew away. "Did I do something wrong?"
I tossed another coin purse onto the bed without looking. It hit with a soft, heavy clink. "Keep it and get the fuck out of my quarters." The skin under my shirt burned, a fire spreading that I couldn’t tame until she was gone. “I said get the fuck out, you ripe cunt!”
She fumbled into her skirts and I could feel her eyes fixed on me, like she was trying to see past the cloth of my shirt to whatever lay beneath.
Done. I was done.
I was on my feet before I’d decided to move, fingers closing around her arm in a bruising grip as I dragged her to the door. I shoved her out, then slammed it shut behind her.
As soon as it was shut, the burning dulled but the itch remained. It was deep beneath the tissue and no matter how hard I scratched, it refused to lessen. That didn’t stop me from digging my fingernails into every inch I could reach, though.
A low knock came at my door.
"I swear to Davy Jones, wench, I’ll send you to the locker myself." I yanked it back open.
My quartermaster, Finch, leaned in cautiously. "Cap’n Draven, sir? What’uh, what should we do with the wench?"
"Put her in the dinghy and send her to shore."
That should have been the end of it. As I stomped back to my desk and threw myself into the leather chair behind it, though, I wasn’t surprised that he followed.
My Quartermaster was the most loyal deck dog on the black seas.
While I appreciated the loyalty, I fucking loathed his inability to read the room.
"Cap’n?" he asked, as if I’d spoken in tongues when giving my order.
"Put her in the goddamn dinghy and point her toward land. She’ll be fine, Finch."
He hesitated, and then answered, "Yes sir, Cap’n." Yet he still stood there, staring at me like I would change my mind. I wouldn’t. We weren’t turning this goddamn ship back to land that taunted me with greenery just for some whore who never learned how to listen.
"C-c-cap’n?"
My nails carved lines in the wooden desk top.
"Finch," I growled, all of that boiling rage inside my gut threatening to spill over. Red blinded my vision. "Get. Out!"
Glass shattered as I wiped rum bottles from my desk and paper fluttered all around. When it all settled, I was alone in the room, breath leaving me in heavy gusts. Ink ran in slow drips down the back of the door.
He knew. That motherfucker knew why I didn’t want to turn back, and yet he pressed me until I had no choice but to force him out.
Trees, lush grass, the fragrance of summer blooms with unfiltered sunshine on my skin…
I crossed to the washbasin and splashed water on my face like it could wash away the salt coating my skin, though I knew it was a feeling that would never go away. I could scrub until my fingers bled and the sea would still have left its mark.
When I looked up into the mirror, I barely recognized the thing staring back. The angles had sharpened from years out on the ocean. Skin tanned, toughened by salt that blasted like sand on the wind, and blue-grey eyes as tumultuous as the eye of Calypso’s storm haunted its face.
I stared it down, waiting for it to flinch away like everyone else did who looked at me for too long. I was the man mothers warned their daughters about and priests cautioned young men they would become if they strayed too far from the gods.
Cursed.
I yanked the dirty shirt over my shoulders, turned my back to the mirror and stared over my shoulder at the raised landscape of my skin.
The scars there turned to flashes of jagged rock in my mind, and the soft lap of waves against the hull of the Mourning Star morphed into angry crashes.
Black holes plagued my memory of the night I was cursed, leaving me with more questions than answers.
Like why I couldn’t feel the grass but once every seven years, or revel in the warm touch of a lover.
A gust hit the cabin wall and a sudden burst of rain rattled the porthole. It was followed by a firm knock on the door.
I pulled the shirt back on, shaking the thoughts away before answering, "Enter."
Finch slipped inside again, hat in his hands. "Wench is gone, Cap’n. Pointed her toward the docks and let ‘er go."
"I’m glad you can follow simple directions, Finch."
"And we got word from shore, sir." Finch took a half step forward, the corners of his lips twitching into a smile. "The Crown and Compass ships are in port."
A smile of my own crept up.
The Crown and Compass crest didn’t belong to the Royal Crown. It belonged to a man who bought its favor, feeding coin and information like a king’s patron who believed he owned the sea and everyone on it.
"How many?" I asked.
"Two merchant brigs and a cutter with a private guard on deck. And well-armed sir."
"Well-armed my ass," I grumbled.
The scars on my back prickled in anticipation. I rolled my shoulders and Finch’s eyes went toward the movement, as if he could see the itch crawling beneath the cloth. They flicked away just as fast.
"Word is… they got cargo that ain’t listed, Cap’n," he said. "Crates that didn’t go through the harbormaster proper. And men say there’s a prisoner."
I stilled.
"A prisoner," I echoed.
"Aye.”
Men transported prisoners all the time: debtors, deserters, traitors. It was common enough not to warrant a whisper.
"A woman,” he added.
My ship creaked again, low and displeased, as if she heard it too. Women on ships were an omen, and not a good one. It should be known by now, though, that I was worse.
No woman could torment ship or sea the way I could.
"Dock rats been talkin’. Said she ain’t… normal. They’re callin’ her—" He hesitated. I could see him weighing superstition against my temper, deciding which was more dangerous.
"Say it," I ordered.
"Witch," he whispered with a gulp. "They say she reads the sky.”
My spine went rigid. A witch who could read the stars?
I’d been bleeding for this godsdamned map for decades, dragging astronomers and geographers alike aboard my ship only for them to fail me.
A sort of hope born of hunger sparked in my veins.
If she could decipher thousands of stars, then perhaps she could decode an ever-changing map. If they wanted her, then I did too.
The scars on my back burned again, pulsing with my heartbeat and pulling me toward land. I hadn’t been on land in nearly seven years. I couldn’t step onto a dock without the sea punishing me. But I didn’t need to be on land to take what I wanted.
I looked at Finch. "Which ship?"
"Cap’n?"
"The Crown and Compass ship," I repeated, each word clipped. "Which one holds her?"
"Dock rats ain’t sure,” he said with a quick shake of his head. “They say the cutter’s just the escort, though."
A cutter. Too small to hold much gold, one-masted, and fast enough to be a decoy for any pirates.
Or… perhaps that was the point.
"No, Finch," I shook my head, a plan already forming. "They’ve got her on the cutter. Any pirate would go after the fat ships for their cargo holds. If the girl is important, that’s where she’ll be."
That sort of ship was perfect for moving a prisoner without questions. No cargo, no need to go through the harbormaster to document what’s on board.
"Cap’n," he started carefully, "with respect, how d’you know that?"
Because I had hundreds of years to study how men like those in the employ of penny pinching merchants like the Crown and Compass worked. If I’d wanted to smuggle something more precious than gold, I’d put it on my fastest ship.
"I know—" I said, voice low, "—a man going through the trouble of chaining a woman beneath his deck is not moving her like common cargo."
"Ship’s leavin’ with the tide," Finch reported.
I stared out of the porthole. Harbor lights smeared like stars through the rivulets of rain, shifting with the ship as she rocked back and forth on a restless sea.
She always was restless when someone tried to cheat her, steal from her, or pretend they could cross her without paying.
And when something important moved through her waters.
I chewed my bottom lip, the tang of copper coating my tongue after a minute of thought.
"Tonight," I murmured.
To Finch’s credit, he answered, "Aye," without hesitation.
"Did they say her name?" I asked, and hated how tightly the question came out.
"Cap’n?"
"Her name," I repeated. "The witch."
"Corynne," he said and cleared his throat before repeating, "Corynne Godwin."
Heat licked along my spine, the sound of her name striking my skin like a match.
The map of scars tightened and pulled, and I had to brace a hand on the edge of my desk to keep from swaying.
It was like the fucking curse had been waiting for that name.
Ragged screams echoed so suddenly through my mind I had to press my fingers to my temples to quiet them.
I didn’t know what it was about the mystery woman, but just the sound of her name was putting something inside of me on edge.
"Say it again," I ordered.
Finch swallowed. "Corynne… Godwin."
A second pulse rolled through the raised flesh between my shoulders, slow and insistent. I’d traversed to the ends of the world to break this fucking curse, and nothing had ever called to me like her name did.
That was all the proof I needed.
I forced a controlled breath through my nose. "Ready the boarders," I said.
"Aye, Cap’n!"
The door slammed shut behind him. A chorus of shouted orders rose above deck.
I reached for my coat and breathed deep before opening the door and making my way through the torrent of rain onto the helm. Around me, the crew scurried like rats to ready the ship.
"Cap’n," came a voice from the deck. Hale, my master-gunner, grinned with two silver teeth shining. "Shall we lay in wait? Net and board her when she passes?"
We could. It would be the most efficient sweep.
I could tie up their men and leave them aboard to cut themselves loose after I was well out of dodge.
As fate would have it, I wasn’t in the mood for efficiency.
My back prickled when Finch spoke her name, black magic rippling over my skin as if it yearned for her presence.The rush that flooded my veins chilled the night air.
Bloodlust was a raging beast inside. It wanted death, and it wanted her.
"Prepare the men and let her pass, Hale. I like a challenge."
"Aye, Cap’n," he grinned wider.
Finch stood at the rail, eyes on the distant lights of port. "Cutter’ll clear within the hour."
"Good," I said. "Bring me Corynne Godwin."