Daughter of the Pirate King

I FEEL THE EXPECTED longing of the ocean. I always feel it after I use my song. My chest aches. It burns, yearning to go under the water where it can be soothed and nourished. I don’t need the strength of the ocean to survive, though, only to replenish my song—to strengthen the part of me that I try to keep hidden. But replenishing my abilities has its own consequence. That other part of me tries to take over, something I can’t risk until after I’ve completed my mission.

I am mostly human. But when I allow myself to use the gifts my mother gave me, I become something else. And it kills me a little inside each time I have to fight it back off.

*   *   *

I slip back into Riden’s room right before the sun starts to rise. I’ve got to put the key to the door back into his pocket.

But Riden groans as he sits up in bed. I quickly move away from the door and jump into the chair at his desk.

“What happened?” he asks, putting his hand to his head.

“Do you have a headache?” I ask. “You were groaning something fierce in your sleep.”

“No, it doesn’t hurt. It feels…”

I’ve sung to many men in the past. Those whom I’ve allowed to keep their memory of the experience have tried to explain to me what it feels like. I’ve heard it’s euphoric. That it’s pleasure and happiness all rolled into one. When I make them sleep, they dream about me all during the night. While I was growing up, there weren’t many men who let me practice my songs on them. But I practiced anyway. It wasn’t as though my mother was around to teach me. Father was eventually able to keep my abilities known to only a select group. He didn’t want his rivals to know just how powerful I am. The fighting skills he taught me alone make me dangerous. And being half siren—well, that makes me deadly.

“It feels what?” I ask.

“Nothing,” he says quickly. He’s retreated into his mind, searching through memories or dreams. Waking is usually disorienting for my victims.

While it’s amusing to watch him fumbling with his thoughts, I need to get this key back on Riden before he notices it’s gone. “Did you sleep well?” I ask. “Good dreams?” I know he dreamed about me, but that doesn’t mean I know what I was doing in his dream.

Of course, I don’t expect Riden to be honest.

He looks dazed for a moment more. Then he seems to compose himself. “Yes. What happened yesterday? I can’t…”

I look at him sternly. “Were you drinking?”

He sits up, puts his bare feet on the floor. “I don’t drink that often. Never enough to get drunk. Especially not when I’m watching you.”

“But you don’t remember our night together?” I’m thinking fast here. I need to get rid of this key. I have to find an excuse to get close to him.

“Our night together?” Riden looks beyond confused.

I move to sit on his lap, making myself comfortable as I wrap my arms around his neck. Riden freezes in place.

“You really don’t remember?” I whisper seductively into his ear. My hands are at his shoulders. I move one down his chest. He’s solid as a rock, but his skin is smooth and warm. When I reach his waist, I drop the key into the pocket of his breeches.

It’s really just thieving, only backward.

Riden exhales and puts his hands on my hips. “Why don’t you remind me?”

I slide my hands down his arms until I can entwine our fingers. “There was some of this.”

“Mmm hmm.”

“And this.” I press my lips to his and kiss him gently. He returns in kind.

“Then what happened?” he whispers when I break away and trace my lips along the edge of his ear.

“Then—” I pause and lean farther into him. “You promised to help me get off the ship.”

He leans me back as if to lay me on the bed. Then he drops me. I hit the sheets with a soft plump.

“I think I would remember that,” he says, shoving my legs onto the bed as well.

“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’m sure everything will come back to you soon enough.”

“In the meantime, Draxen will be expecting me.” He walks over to the closet and rummages through the clothes I’ve left in heaps on the floor, grunting in displeasure as he searches.

Once he finds what he’s looking for—a pair of breeches—he starts sliding off the pair he has on, watching my reaction as he does so.

“Stop that,” I say, turning around quickly.

He laughs softly.

I should have kept calm, and I shouldn’t have turned around. If I had simply shrugged as though it didn’t bother me at all, Riden wouldn’t have been so amused. He would have taken his clothes elsewhere, I’m sure of it. But it all started so suddenly that I was unprepared with a response. There’s nothing to do about it now.

“When you’re confined to this room,” he says, “how do you expect me to be able to change into clean clothes?”

“Go get dressed in Draxen’s room!” I snap.

“Where’s the fun in that?”

I exhale angrily as I wait for him to finish. I listen to the rustling of cloth, the cinching of a belt, the thud of newly adorned boots smacking the floor—and I wait for it all to stop.

I’m listening so hard that I don’t even register that the boots are moving toward me until I feel a hand at my lower back.

His lips are at my ear. “It’s safe to look now, Alosa.” He brushes his lips across the side of my head before leaving.

I don’t realize how tense I am until my whole body relaxes.

*   *   *

I suppose I should be bored out of my mind during the next few days, but I’m not. Riden comes into his room often to check on me. We talk until he tries to morph the conversation into an interrogation. He wants to know things, like the layout of my father’s keep, how often supply ships deliver shipments, how many men guard the keep, and so on and so forth. I tell him none of these things. I will die before I give that information up. Well, actually they’d die, since I wouldn’t allow them to kill me.

I’ve noticed that Riden’s been keeping me at a distance. Still, he can’t help it when I bait him during the conversation. It’s fun watching him struggle, trying to find a balance with me. Toying with Riden is certainly more entertaining than scouring the ship. I become a little more anxious each night that goes by without the map turning up. I check our heading frequently, gauging how much time is left before I have to present the map to my father. We pass Lycon’s Peak and start sailing northeast.

It won’t be long now.

*   *   *

I wake early, even though I made it to bed late. I’m too worried to sleep anymore, so I stare at the ceiling, thinking it all over in my head. I go over every spot I checked, searching for anything that may have been overlooked. My two weeks are almost up. The checkpoint could show up on the horizon at any moment.

“You’re up early,” Riden says from where he lies next to me.

“Couldn’t sleep,” I say.

“Are you worried about something?”

“Actually, it was your snoring that kept me awake.”

He smiles. “I do not snore.”

“My ears beg to differ.”

He rolls onto his back, staring upward with me. “Tell me what’s worrying you.”

“Aside from the fact that I’m being held hostage by enemy pirates?”

“Yes,” he says simply, “aside from that.”

Well, I can’t very well tell him that either Draxen or his father hid a map somewhere and I can’t find it. Instead, I ask him, “What’s the most reckless thing you’ve ever done to try to impress your father?”

He’s quiet.

“Does it pain you to talk about him?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “No, that’s not it. I try not to think about him because I hated him so much.”

“I understand.” I wait to see if he’ll still answer my question.

He sighs. “It’s difficult to say. I did many reckless things.”

“Tell me one of them.”

“All right,” he says pensively. “Once, when we were sailing far out at sea, we pillaged a ship before burning it down. My father dropped a chest of jewels into the ocean while trying to haul it over to the ship. I dove in after it.”

“I think perhaps we should go over the meaning of reckless.”

“There were acura eels in the water, finishing off the sailors that survived the initial attack on their ship.”

I turn my head in his direction. “Now that was reckless.” Acura eels are more feared than sharks. They’re faster and more sensitive to human blood. In some cases, they’re even bigger and toothier. Most of the time, they stay near the ocean floor, but if they sense a disturbance at the surface, they’ll come to investigate.

“Were you able to get the chest back for him?” I ask.

“No. An eel headed for me. Draxen saw it and lowered me a rope. He hoisted me out of the water just in time.”

“What did your father do?”

“He tried to toss me back over to get the chest, but Draxen was able to talk him out of it.”

“Sounds to me that if you hadn’t killed him, someone else would have eventually. He sounds awful.”

“He was.” Riden turns to look at me. “I’m guessing that question wasn’t random. Are you doing something reckless to impress your own father?”

“I do reckless things for the fun of it.”

“I have no trouble believing that.”

“Do you feel like you knew your father well?”

He shrugs. “Well enough. Why?”

I have to be careful. I need to make the conversation seem harmless. He needs to think it’s all about me. “My father trusts me more than he does anyone else in the world, yet I can’t help but feel like he keeps secrets from me.”

“Everybody has their secrets. We would all feel too exposed if we weren’t able to keep things to ourselves.”

“What are—” No, I can’t ask Riden about his own secrets. I need to keep the conversation focused. “But this feels different. Couldn’t you tell when your father was keeping things from you? Big things?”

“Yes, usually.”

“My father had a hiding place on his ship, a loose floorboard in his rooms. He would keep important things there. When I felt like he wasn’t telling me everything, I could usually find his plans and secrets there.” I’m making this all up quickly. I hope Riden can’t tell.

In truth, my father has a room he alone enters at the keep. His private getaway. I’ve been tempted many times to sneak in. I even made an attempt once. When Father found me outside fiddling with the lock, he said if I was so interested in his locked doors, he’d put me behind one.

And he did. In a cell deep down. For a month.

“But then one day,” I continue, “the space below the floorboard was empty. And nothing has been kept there ever since.”

“He found you out.”

“Or suspected what I was up to and didn’t want to take any chances.”

Though he seems natural, relaxed—Riden has to be holding on to my every word. There’s no chance he isn’t hoping I’ll tell him some of my father’s secrets. But that’s not the purpose of this conversation. I’m trying to learn Lord Jeskor’s secrets.

“What about your father?” I ask. “Did he have a place where he kept secrets? Did you ever learn something you weren’t supposed to?” Do you know where he hid his section of the map?

“Honestly, I was never curious enough to care. When we were younger, Draxen would coax me into helping him find secret panels belowdecks. It never turned out to be profitable, though.”

I can relate. I’ve already been through all of those panels.

I can’t deny I enjoy talking with Riden, but I was really hoping for something useful to come out of the conversation. Something that would make me realize exactly where the map is.

I should have known better.

“Besides, if there was anything so important to my father, he probably wouldn’t have let it out of his sight. He likely would have kept it on him at all times. And Draxen and I were never foolish enough to try stealing something off him.”

Oh.