“She’s more valuable to us alive.”
The men eye each other.
“She’s the only one who knows how to find that ship full of gold.”
“Cursed gold,” Brus shoots back.
“Her father is cursed,” Royce says forcefully. “The gold is fine. And it could be ours.” He lets that hang in the air before continuing. “We could be the richest men on Poseidon’s ocean. Think about it. Many of you have families you haven’t seen in years. This is your ticket home, your chance to have an easy life.” Royce points at me. “She’s promised us a large portion of the gold if we help her get it back.”
I choke on the gag. I promised no such thing.
A light breeze pulls Royce’s disheveled hair across his brow. It’s the only thing about him that is not rigid, not poised to leap forward into action at the slightest movement by the men in front of him.
I don’t breathe while the men stand there and look between themselves.
“Brus,” a sailor prompts, “we could use that gold.”
“What if she curses us?” Brus hisses.
“Maybe Captain’s right. She would’ve already done it. I don’t feel any different—do you?”
Brus’s eyes drift toward me, but he’s careful not to meet mine, probably thanks to that rumor I turn anyone I look at to gold. “She’ll curse us for sure now. After all this.”
I shake my head. I’m not sure if it helps.
Brus studies Royce and the sailors standing at the ready behind him. “How much gold?” he asks Royce.
“More than you can imagine,” Royce says, his eyes gleaming and a smirk tugging at his lips. “We’re going to be very rich men, but we’ve got to be in this fight together.” He turns to the men around him, gesturing grandly. “One last fight, and then each of you can buy your own ship or your own island if you want. Don’t like King Midas? That’s fine. Start your own kingdom.” He turns back to Brus. “What do you say, Brus? Are you ready to live like a king? Are you ready to be richer than King Midas himself?”
Brus flicks his hand, and I’m roughly shoved forward.
I collide with Royce. He steadies me with one hand without breaking eye contact with Brus. I yank out the rag. Grime coats my tongue.
“Good decision, Brus,” he says.
“We’ll see about that.” Brus turns his head toward me but still not enough that our eyes meet. “Don’t you ever look at me,” he grunts as he shoves past Royce.
The hairs on the back of my neck rise.
“The rest of you get back to work,” Royce shouts. “And if any of you so much as lay a finger on our golden girl from here on out, I’ll put you in the brig.”
The men slowly disperse across the deck. Several give me sidelong glances. Others still avoid my gaze.
Royce doesn’t drop his arm from my shoulder until we stand alone.
I’m trembling, and I can’t help it. And I hate that he sees it. I direct all my anger into my glare. He may have saved me, but he’s no better than those men. He’s simply more selfish than he is superstitious.
For someone like me, that’s the worst thing a man can be.
“Check on the gold,” he says. His voice is hard, unfeeling.
“I never promised you my father’s gold, and if you think I’m just going to hand it over to you—” I start to say.
He shoves his face close to mine. “I don’t care what you did or didn’t promise. That gold is the only thing keeping you alive right now, Princess.” He says my title like it’s poison in his mouth. “So I suggest you try a little harder to find it.”
I hate him. There are no other words for it.
“The gold,” he prompts.
I ball my hands into fists and swallow down as much of my rage as I can. I’ll have to save it for later. For when his guard is down.
I close my eyes and locate the golden aura as quickly as I can.
“It’s headed west,” I say curtly, pointing in the direction I sensed it. I just want to get away from him. Now that I’ve given him what he wants, I turn to go, but he calls me back.
“There’s one more thing we need to talk about,” he says.
I whip back toward him. “I’ve told you where the gold is. I doubt we have anything else to talk about.”
“Sails.”
“Sails?” I search my brain for why he would mention them to me.
“All of these sails were fastened down last night.”
I have no idea why that matters so much. My confusion must show on my face.
“We closed and secured them,” he says, “but somehow every one of them came undone. All the ropes holding them in place had a clean cut. No fraying.” He eyes me.
I’m not sure what to say.
“Not to mention,” he continues, “no storm does identical damage like this on each sail.” He pulls on the fragment closest to us. The section is nearly as wide as my arm span and about a foot taller than me. Once he pulls it open, it takes on the ragged triangle shape I’d noticed when the men attacked.
I stare at the other sails. What I thought had been random shredding turns out to be nearly uniform shapes.
“Can you think of any reason why someone would want to sabotage our sails? Anyone who would want to slow us down?”
The way his eyes bore into me means he can only be thinking one thing. “You think I did it?”
“I heard someone moving around last night, and my room’s only a short distance from yours. I thought I heard your door slam shut last night.” He raises one eyebrow as though he’s questioning me. But there’s something deeper to his stare.
He’s challenging me.
No, warning me. He knows I overheard his conversation with Rhat last night.
I ignore the implication of his words, refusing to confirm his suspicions. “Why would I want to slow us down? In case you’ve forgotten, my father’s life is at stake. After that display, it’s more likely your own men did it to force us to turn around, to get me off the ship.”
No emotion crosses his face, no recognition of my accusation. “You wouldn’t be the first monarch to wish their parents dead to speed up their own path to the throne.”
I gasp.
“Everything all right over here?” Aris says, coming up beside us. “It looks like I slept through a pretty bad storm.” He looks calm and refreshed in a bright blue jacket. Without gold embellishments, I note with relief.
His relaxed stance is the most obvious difference between him and Royce, and it’s hard to imagine they were ever friends. Aris is everything Royce is not.
“It’s nothing,” Royce says at the same time I say, “Brus and a few soldiers tried to throw me overboard.”
Aris goes rigid. He clenches his hands into fists. “You call that nothing?”
“It’s been handled,” Royce snaps back.
“Handled how?” Aris holds his hands out questioningly. “Did you throw those men overboard? Did you lock them in the brig? Or are they still waltzing about plotting the demise of the princess?”
“They won’t do it again,” Royce says.
It’s the wrong thing to say. Aris’s face darkens.
Aris might win a fight against Royce, but he can’t beat the whole crew.
“I’m fine,” I say to appease him.
“Stay out of this, Kora,” Aris snaps.
I wince. His admonishment hurts, but I know he’s only doing it to protect me. I put my hand on his arm.
He shakes me off. “Not now.” His voice is gruff, unforgiving.
I take a few steps back, shaken by this side of him. He doesn’t know Royce is already plotting against us and would probably welcome any excuse to eliminate him now. It’s a miracle we haven’t been thrown in the brig already. And if we’re going to keep it that way, I have to stop him before he ruins every chance we have of getting off this ship.
I rush forward and step between him and Royce. “Please.”
Aris glances down at me with fire in his eyes. He’
s breathing heavily through flared nostrils. He looks like he’s about to snap at me again but doesn’t. His eyes fixate on Royce, who is leaning against the railing looking as collected as ever.
“Really, I’m fine,” I say. “Besides, we have bigger problems.”
Aris’s jaw stays clenched as he finally rips his eyes away from Royce. “What problems?”
“The sails.”
Royce pulls on the tattered sail once more. “As you can see, the ship is in shambles. We’re barely limping along. I told you she wouldn’t last at sea and that I needed time to get supplies and make repairs. Now we’ll have to stop somewhere and get what we need.” His eyes flicker to me as he says it, measuring my reaction, looking for guilt.
As much as I hate the delay, this might be the best news I’ve received in days. Tension drains from my shoulders. Stopping means land. Land means a chance to escape this horrid boat and its captain. I only need to keep Royce and Aris on civil terms until we reach it.
“Where exactly do you propose we stop, Captain?” Aris spits out.
Ignoring Aris’s tone, Royce moves across the deck toward a barrel near the helm. A map is spread out across the top, and I recognize Lagonia along one edge.
“We’d lose less time if we stopped here.” Royce points to a dot on the map that’s been drawn in.
I notice he has the same gold coin from last night clasped in his other hand. His fingers glide across its smooth surface. The crown that should be embossed there has been rubbed down.
I suck in a breath. Is this his way of taunting me? Does he think handling gold around me will cause me to react? To show him what I can do?
I hold my ground, thankful for Aris’s presence at my back. I slide my hand into his, and he offers me a distracted smile. I force my gaze back to the map.
“There’s no island there.” I may not have had tutors that stuck around, but I can still name the islands and countries surrounding Lagonia thanks to my extensive reading. And there has never been an island there.
“The Island of Lost Souls,” Aris says, leaning forward to get a better look at the map. “You want to take the princess of Lagonia to the Island of Lost Souls, the festering wound of Poseidon’s ocean?”
“We have no choice,” Royce says. “The thieves are heading in that direction anyway.”
“Don’t you have some spare sails in the hull?” Aris says.
“Only one. I’ve never seen a storm take out all the sails like that.” There’s an edge to his voice that I fear will set off Aris again. “We’ll be lucky to make it to land as it is, so I’ll gladly take the Island of Lost Souls over the alternative.”
Aris glares at Royce. “We can’t go there.”
“It’s there or back to Lagonia.” Royce weighs the coin in his cupped palm. “We can’t catch up to anything in this shape.” He throws his arms wide and gestures to the ship once more. “And if we tried, the thieves could lead us days from port. If we hit another storm, we’d be done for. It’s better to stop now and lose a few days than to sink in the middle of the ocean.”
I lean forward to inspect the dot. It’s easy to miss, but there’s no way I’d forget such a name if I’d ever come across it in the books I’d read.
“What is the Island of Lost Souls?” I ask.
Both men turn to look at me.
“It’s a hideout for pirates and thieves.” Aris drops my hand to run his fingers through his hair. “A lawless place, a safe haven for anyone on the run. No self-respecting citizen would go there.”
“No self-respecting citizen knows about it,” Royce chimes in from across the table. “It’s a miniscule island, but it does receive supplies on a regular basis. And it means continuing forward instead of turning around.” He closes his fingers tight around the coin he’s holding. I feel like his words cast just as strong a hold over me. He knows I’ll never go back. Not without the gold.
Aris scoffs. “After what your own sailors just tried, you think it’s a good idea to take her there? No—we’re heading back to Lagonia.”
As much as I want to agree with Aris, I can’t. Because going back to Lagonia means losing at least another four days. Four days I can’t afford. My only hope is to find another boat on the Island of Lost Souls.
“If it’s faster than going back to Lagonia, then it’s our only option,” I say. I look away from Royce’s closed fist.
Aris shakes his head. “Kora, you don’t know what you’re talking about, what you’d be getting into.”
I duck my head, feeling as useless as when I attended a few council meetings where Uncle Pheus and visiting dignitaries discussed treaties and trade agreements I knew nothing about. Except I do know something about this. Something Aris doesn’t. If he was aware of what I overheard last night, he’d be just as eager to get off the ship.
“We’ll only be staying a few hours to resupply,” I say, afraid to meet his eyes, afraid he’ll be angry.
Aris sighs and takes my hand, drawing my gaze toward him. “It’s not safe there.” His eyes plead with me.
It’s not safe here, I want to say.
I look to the waves. “We have to.”
“It’s settled then,” Royce says from the other side of the barrel. He tucks the coin away.
“It’s not settled, Royce.” Aris leans on the rim toward Royce, his anger rising again.
“I’m still captain,” Royce replies, matching Aris’s position from the other side of the barrel. The wood groans under the weight of both men. “I asked you as a courtesy where you thought we should go, but I make the decisions.” Royce eases away from the barrel. “We’re going to the Island of Lost Souls.”
CHAPTER 12
I manage to pull Aris away before he and Royce come to blows. I steer him toward a section of the ship mostly cleared of debris and therefore mostly devoid of sailors.
“I’m sorry.” His shoulders slump as we turn to face each other at the edge of the ship. “I don’t know why he would act that way. He hasn’t been himself lately.” He moves closer until one hand cups my cheek. “I shouldn’t have fought with Royce that way. I just want you to be safe.”
I put my hand on his arm. “I know, but I think it’s part of a larger problem.”
“What problem?” He drops his hand from my cheek and looks around the deck.
I recount what I overheard, focusing on Royce wanting to use me for my powers and marooning or killing him.
Tiny muscles contract around his jaw as he clenches it. He slams his fist against the railing. “I trusted him. We grew up fishing with one another, playing pranks on our siblings, competing to see who could climb to the top of the old oak the fastest. He was the one who carried me back to my house when I fell out of that tree and nearly broke my neck.” His knuckles whiten as he grips the rail. “I let those memories get in the way of what everyone was telling me, of what was right in front of my face.”
“I don’t understand,” I say, lowering my voice as Phipps and Thipps hoist a broken beam over their shoulders and carry it off, each one complaining that the other isn’t carrying their fair share.
“I didn’t want to tell you this before because I didn’t think it could be true.” He finally meets my gaze. “There have always been rumors about what happened when we lost the treaty. I’m sure you heard some of them yourself.”
Toward the end of the wars, I’d overheard some noblemen say Royce Denes had only been promoted to captain because of his father’s influence and that he wasn’t qualified for such an important mission. And Aris had reminded me Royce was the one who’d lost the treaty, but beyond that, I hadn’t heard any mumblings about the true cause of the mission’s failure.
Aris sighs as he continues. “Only Royce and I knew the treaty was on board. How did Captain Skulls find out? And how could one small woman move a barrel full of oil all by herself in order to blow up the ship? Someone on board must have helped her.”
“Royce,” I breathe.
Aris drops his head. “He�
�s been to the Island of Lost Souls before too. After months of searching, he traced the pirate woman there. I tried to tell him not to go, but he said he wanted to find out how they knew about the treaty.
“I went with him because I thought I could help prove his innocence. That was only a few weeks before I sailed to meet you.” He chokes on the last word, on whatever realization he’s made. “While on the island, we split up to search for the woman, and he could’ve met up with Skulls there, especially since he was trying to gather money for repairs. This could all be my fault. I—I told Royce about you, about what I knew of your family, about why I wanted to meet you.”
My body goes cold. I cling to the railing to stay anchored to the world as everything crumbles around me. Could Aris be responsible, even by accident, for the theft of my father’s gold?
But how would Royce and Captain Skulls have known about the gold, about where to find it?
Archduke Ralton. The thought bolts through me. He easily could’ve shadowed my father or bribed a guard to figure out where the gold was.
“Do you think your uncle may have been the one to tell Royce and Captain Skulls where the gold was?” I ask.
Aris’s eyes go wide as realization dawns in his face. “I knew he wasn’t happy with the monarchy, but if I’d thought . . . if I’d known . . .” He trails off, shaking his head.
“You couldn’t have known,” I reply. “It’s not your fault. Your uncle has probably been a part of this scheme from the beginning.” He likely planned the whole thing.
“Kora, I have to warn you.” His voice wavers. “My uncle may not only be after your kingdom. If he’s working with Royce and Captain Skulls, he may be after you too.” He takes a deep breath. “I know it might be difficult for you, but will you tell me what it is they could be after? There have been so many stories over the years, but perhaps if I know the truth, I can protect you.”
I open my mouth to reply, but the words don’t make it past my constricting throat. I’m paralyzed by the memory flooding back.
It happened a day or two after I was turned back from a statue, when I was seven. Alongside my father and uncle, I entered the tower room where they stored the gold. It was the first time I’d seen the other golden objects.
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