Chapter 50
Logan swallowed his heart back down as Henri lifted Nia into his arms, Robin helping a limping Zanta to stand as they made their way belowdecks.
“Is that…Nia?” John took a hesitant step forward, and this time it was Logan who stopped him from butting in where they didn’t belong.
“What on earth is going on here?” John’s usual confidence seemed shaken now, and Logan’s heart gave a pathetic little stutter. He cared about Nia, they both did, but had Logan misjudged their dynamic? Did John have stronger feelings for her than he’d let on?
“I could ask you the same thing,” Logan said. John’s explanation of how and why he was here didn’t fully make sense. After learning what Rowan had kept from him…he felt like he didn’t know anything anymore.
John opened his mouth as if to reply, but a commotion rose from the deck where pirates and mercenaries who had been fighting moments ago suddenly remembered that fact.
“Oi!” Logan barked, nerves finally snapping. In the absence of the other three captains, it was him and John holding everything together now. “Your leader is dead; lay off!”
The mercenaries froze, adrift without Shaw.
John stepped in as pirates from the Sweet Mercy arrived, fresh and untainted by battle.
“Round up the mercs,” he ordered. Pirates from every crew obeyed.
And so did Logan. He didn’t want to think.
He simply followed the directions of the only captain left on deck, and pushed away all the thoughts that tried to force their way into his brain.
He regrouped his crew and took stock of who was left.
Members of Gael’s team started to reappear on the Lonesome’s deck after routing what remained of the mercenary crew.
The other hostages appeared alongside them, looking battered but whole.
Fox was still missing, but Gael had gone after him.
They would be okay if they were together.
Right now Logan had to focus on his people aboard the Kraken. He had to pick up Rowan’s slack.
By the time he got his crew sorted and the pirates rallied to round up the last of the mercenaries, Doe had arrived with the damaged, but sailable, Siren Song.
“Looks like you’re doing just fine here,” Doe exclaimed, taking in the situation at a glance.
She ruffled Logan’s hair in an overwhelmingly motherly gesture, and all at once Logan missed his own mum terribly.
She would’ve known what to say to help him sort out this jumble of feelings he was patently ignoring.
Or maybe she wouldn’t. He hadn’t seen her since he was nine, and she’d died while he was in the navy.
Maybe she wouldn’t have been the mother he remembered.
Now this was a whole new spiral. He clamped it down, and graced Doe with a half-hearted smile.
“Tried my best. You got here just in time.”
Doe nodded and looked around again, her almost jovial demeanor dampened slightly. “Where are the captains?”
Right, the captains. “Zanta is attending to Nia.” He realized Doe wouldn’t know who that was.
“Her lover, who almost drowned. Rowan and the Demon…” Nausea curdled again, some of the dark thoughts succeeded in bubbling to the surface.
He took a deep breath to steady himself. “The Demon is…not human.”
Doe’s face performed a complex maneuver before settling on an expression of understanding. “Ah.”
“What, you knew too? Did everyone know but me?” Logan’s voice rose with anxiety, and several nearby crew members looked at them askance.
“I didn’t know till you just told me,” Doe reassured him.
“But back when we were first sailing together, when the crew was full of Talvan sailors who didn’t want to follow him, there were rumors.
They insisted they’d killed Yves when he first took the ship.
Stabbed him right through the neck, and watched him bleed out.
And there were times…” Her expression grew distant with memory.
“He protected me from them, and there were times when it seemed like a darkness overtook him, and he was stronger than he should’ve been.
” Doe refocused on Logan, a gentle smile tugging at the lined corners of her mouth.
“So no, Logan, I didn’t know. But after everything, it makes sense. ”
A shout from the bow interrupted Logan’s next words.
John’s men dragged Selby Baird from the knot of captive mercenaries.
She’d changed back into her uniform, with its strange mix of Kefryean and Marran insignia.
The crossed unicorn horn and claymore of Kefryean nobility sitting right beside the Marran laurel and sun.
Despite her days surviving the wreckage of her ship, and night in the brig, she seemed calm and in control.
She was Shaw’s second in command, commander of the mercenaries in her own right.
Had she escaped before the Lonesome arrived? Or had the mercenaries let her out?
Pushing aside their conversation, Logan and Doe hurried over, flanking John. Despite Logan’s resentment, John was the only captain they had right now, and they had to present a united front.
John gazed at the woman coolly, taking in the insignia, and what they meant.
“Colonel Selby Baird, I presume.”
Baird cocked her head to the side, assessing him right back. John’s old navy uniform, with its red replacement sleeve standing out starkly against the black. Her eyebrows rose.
“The Beast, I presume.”
Did they know each other? Or was Baird as infamous as John?
“Your leader is dead. Your crew and ship are captured. I think now is the time for you to offer your formal surrender,” John said.
Baird’s eyes flicked over the three of them, then to all the pirates amassed at their back.
“I don’t see any captains to surrender to.”
John smiled politely. “Oh, didn’t you hear? I’ve been elevated.”
His words were undercut by the door to the captain’s quarters opening. Every head whipped around to look, even John’s.
“Speak of the Demon,” Baird muttered under her breath.
Rowan and the Demon emerged, the Demon looking none the worse for wear. Logan’s heartbeat ratcheted up. There wasn’t even a mark where the bullet had penetrated the Demon’s skull.
Instead of retreating up to the quarterdeck where he could lord over his ship like the tyrant he was, the Demon stepped onto a shallow crate, just high enough that he could see the faces of all those gathered on the Kraken’s deck.
Rowan took up a position by his side, and the chains still at the Demon’s wrists rattled as Rowan squeezed his hand.
The crowd remained deadly quiet, waiting.
“You all saw what you saw,” the Demon began, his voice steady.
Not at all like a man who had been drowned and shot and gods knew what else in the last few hours.
“Your eyes did not deceive you. I was shot in the head, and I lived.” Murmurs broke through the crowd, but not one of them dared challenge him.
“The name Deep Water Demon is not just a name. The kraken symbol is not just a symbol. I am not fully human. I am a demon.”
The men and women at the front shrank back. The Talvans made their sign against evil, touching eyelids then lips. The Yarenens encircled their serpent tattoos with shaking fingers.
“I handpicked each of you for my crew, not only because of your strength, but your ability to withstand the fear I elicit. You came to me as desperate rogues and refugees. I gave you a home and a purpose. I would ask that you continue to follow me, despite my deception.” He splayed his hands in front of him, displaying the manacles that bound him. “I am at your mercy.”
Logan held his breath, waiting to see what the Kraken crew members would do.
None of this was up to him. The Demon had kept his true nature from the men and women who owed him loyalty.
Rowan had hidden the fact there was a monster in their midst, even from the people who were like family to him.
Logan didn’t know what the others would do.
But he didn’t trust the Demon, and now it seemed like he couldn’t trust Rowan either.
Before any of them could answer, an arrow streaked through the air and embedded in the wood between the Demon’s feet.
Logan whipped around as figures appeared on the clifftops, bare-chested with gray speckled seal pelts over their heads and backs.
Two dozen arrows trained on the ships below.
A pirate shouted from the rail, and Logan rushed over to see the water around the ships crowded with seals and more warriors armed with spears swarming up the sides.
The Selkies had found them.