POV: Beth
The Crooked Gull was louder than usual.
It felt like the whole port had poured into its crooked ribs—sailors shouting over cards, women laughing sharp as broken glass, someone pounding a rhythm on the bar with an empty tankard. The air shimmered with heat and smoke and the sour-sweet smell of spilled ale. I wiped sweat from my brow with the back of my wrist and kept moving, tray balanced on one palm, avoiding reaching hands and flailing elbows.
“Mae!” the barkeep shouted over the noise. “Table four!”
“On it,” I called back.
My feet knew the dance now. Pivot between the gamblers, duck the man who always swung his arm too wide when he laughed, stay out of reach of the old sailor who liked to “trip” girls with his boot. I dropped two tankards on table four, collected a couple of coppers, and turned—
—and froze.
He sat at a table in the farthest corner, where the lantern light struggled to reach. Not alone; two men occupied the chairs flanking him, broad-shouldered, hands resting near the hilts of their weapons, eyes sharp. But everything in that shadowed corner tilted toward the man in the center.
He wasn’t loud. He wasn’t drunk. He wasn’t even doing anything except existing, quietly, like a question mark nobody wanted to answer.
Still, the room bent around him.
Even from here, I could feel it—the subtle way people shifted their seats to keep him in view, the way voices dipped when they realized where their eyes had landed. Fear rippled through the air like a second kind of smoke.
“Who’s that?” I breathed, more to myself than anyone.
“You don’t want to know,” the barmaid beside me muttered, following my gaze. “Don’t stare, Mae.”
“Why?”
“Because men who drink in the dark don’t like being brought into the light.”
Her words should have made me look away.
Instead, my eyes caught the lantern’s reflection on a ring at his hand—a ring shaped like a coiled serpent biting its own tail. A symbol I’d seen scratched into tavern tables, painted on alley walls, whispered about in stories told after last call.
Silas.
The name chilled the room whenever someone spoke it. The pirate king who’d risen when Alaric fell. The one with the Kraken. The Harvester.
My breath snagged in my throat.
He lifted his head, as if he’d heard me think of him.
Even from across the room, his gaze found me. Locked. Unhurried. He took me in the way a man studied a map—carefully, with intent.
The barmaid cursed under her breath. “Idiot. Look away.”
I forced my feet to move, heart punching against my ribs. The barkeep shoved a tray into my hands, loaded with fresh mugs.
“Corner table,” he said. His voice was rougher than usual.
My fingers tightened. “Which one?”
He didn’t answer—just flicked his eyes toward the shadows.
My throat went dry. “No. Get someone else.”
“He asked for you,” the barkeep replied. “By description.”
Ice slithered down my spine. “He doesn’t know me.”
The barkeep shrugged. “He knows who he wants. And he pays better than most. Don’t spill it if you want to keep your teeth.”
I considered refusing. I thought of storm-tossed nights and blood on deck and a prince’s sneer. I thought of my father, three months from execution, and the reality that in this world, saying no to powerful men often ended with you floating face-down.
So I carried the tray.
Each step toward that corner felt wrong, like walking into a church with your shoes on backwards. The sound of the tavern dimmed around me until it was nothing but a muffled roar. When I reached the table, I set the tray down carefully, focusing on the mugs like they were the only things that existed.
“Your drinks,” I said. “Anything else?”
“Sit,” the man in the center said.
His voice was quiet. Not gravelly, not theatrical. Just calm. Calm in a way that made my bones want to obey.
“I’m working,” I replied, keeping my tone neutral. “I don’t sit.”
“You do now,” one of the men beside him said, hand brushing his sword hilt.
Silas lifted two fingers. The man fell silent instantly.
“That’s enough,” he murmured. “We don’t frighten the girl. Not yet.”
Not yet. The words slithered through me.
“Mae, isn’t it?” he asked.
I stiffened. “That’s what they call me.”
“And what do you call you?”
His eyes were strange. Gray-green, like deep water where sunlight still tried to reach. Nothing about him was loud; his clothing was dark and simple, his hair tied back. But there was something coiled beneath his skin, like a storm folded into a man and told to wait.
“I call myself busy,” I said. “Do you want another round or not?”
He smiled. It wasn’t a grin like Alaric’s, all teeth and swagger. It was small, almost polite, and somehow far more dangerous.
“You smell of salt and stubbornness,” he said. “And something older.” His gaze dropped, not to my chest or legs, but to my wrist where my sleeve hid the mark. “You hide what you are. Everyone else here flaunts their sins. That makes you interesting.”
I swallowed. “I’m a tavern girl. That’s it.”
“No,” he said softly. “You’re not.”
The certainty in his tone cut through me.
His fingers tapped the table once. “Rumors travel faster than ships, little shore-girl. I hear many. About a governor’s daughter who went missing on her wedding day. About a prince who rages over pirate blood in royal ceremonies. About a girl with a mark on her wrist who escaped with a ghost-king.”
My heart lurched.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied.
He tilted his head, eyes never leaving me. “Then you won’t mind if I check, will you?”
His hand moved toward mine—slowly, giving me time to pull away.
I didn’t.
I should have.
He caught my wrist with surprising gentleness and pushed the sleeve back.
The pirate mark glared up from my skin, dark and undeniable.
The world didn’t end, but it felt like it should have.
For a moment, nobody at the table spoke. His men watched, ready, tense. Silas studied the mark the way a scholar studied an ancient script.
“Saltblood,” he murmured. “I thought so.”
My voice felt thin. “If you call the guards, you’ll lose your drinks.”
He barked a short laugh. The sound made the hairs on my arms rise. “Guards? No. I have better uses for tainted blood.”
I yanked my hand back. “I’m not tainted.”
“Oh, but you are.” He leaned back, arms folding loosely. “Tainted by truth. By power. By whatever foolish pirate put that mark on you when the world still thought you were theirs.”
“I didn’t ask for it.”
“No one asks for what makes them dangerous,” he replied. “Tell me, do you know what the mark says?”
“It says you’re all insane,” I snapped.
He ignored that. “It says your blood is claimed by the sea. By us. That your fate is tied to our wars whether you like it or not.”
I clenched my fists. “I don’t belong to anyone.”
“That defiance,” he said, almost admiring, “will either crown you or kill you.”
He reached for his mug, took a calm sip, then met my eyes again. “I know who you ran from,” he said. “Alaric. The Black Tide. The ghost who refuses to stay dead.”
Heat flared in my chest at the name. Anger. Hurt. Something else. “He’s nothing to me.”
“You say that like you want it to be true.” Silas studied me. “He wants his throne back. I want to keep it. Our game is older than you, girl. But you…” He smiled again, slow, thoughtful. “You’re a new piece on the board.”
“I’m not playing,” I said.
He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “You already are.”
Silas’s voice softened to a murmur that threaded under the noise of the tavern. “I can help you.”
I flinched. “With what?”
“With your father.”
My breath vanished.
He had my full attention now. He knew it. His eyes warmed, like a hunter pleased his prey had stepped into the trap on its own.
“I hear everything that happens in British waters,” he said. “Adrian’s Bastion. Execution timetables. Guard rotations. Ship movements. I can find out precisely where your father is and how tightly he’s being watched.”
My voice shook. “Why would you do that?”
“Because it amuses me,” he said lightly. “Because it might harm my enemies. And because you will owe me.”
There it was. The hook.
“What would you want?” I asked slowly.
He swirled the liquid in his mug, watching it catch the dim light. “Nothing… yet. A favor. One day. When I call for it, you say yes.”
I thought of Alaric’s blade opening that sailor’s throat. Of Adrian’s sneer as guards dragged Rowan away. Of my own empty hands.
One man offered power with cruelty. The other offered information with quiet poison.
Both terrified me.
“If I say no?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Then you keep serving drinks and stealing bruised fruit while your father rots. Your choice.”
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. But fairness had left my life at the church altar. I stood there with the tray between us, heart pounding so loud it drowned the tavern.
“Think on it,” Silas said when I stayed silent. “Come to the cliffs west of the port tomorrow at dusk if you’re curious. I’ll show you why people whisper my name like a prayer and a curse.”
He tipped an imaginary hat. “Mae.”
I took a step back on unsteady legs.
“Don’t take too long,” he added softly. “Time runs faster when men sit in cages.”
I fled the table then, pretending my tray was too heavy, that other customers needed me. But all night, even as I scrubbed spilled ale from warped wood, his voice coiled around my thoughts.
A favor for information. A future debt for a chance to save Rowan.
I hated that I was considering it.
I hated more that part of me already knew I’d be on that cliff.