“Let me guess, you practice your dragon roar in the mirror too?” She clutched her hands to her chest in mock swooning. “‘Oh, princess, your hair would look lovely next to my scales!’”
I bit back a smile.Focus, Reaper. You’re supposed to be intimidating.
“This isn’t the first thing she’s stolen, either!” Greybeard jabbed a finger at Patty. “My bedroll went missing three nights ago!”
Patty’s amusement vanished. “I told you, I didn’t take your stupid bedroll. Look—” She stormed to her hammock and yanked out her own, shoving it in our faces. “See this tear? This is mine. Always has been. Got it caught on a nail last month.”
“Ha! You probably did that yourself to throw us off!” Greybeard’s face scowled beneath his impressive facial hair.
“Why would I want your ratty old bedroll? It probably smells like stale rum and—”
“Enough!” My voice echoed off the wooden walls. “I don’t have time for princesses falling in love with dragons or torn bedrolls. Get to your stations. Now!”
They both opened their mouths to protest.
“Now!” I barked, my hand instinctively moving to my dagger at my waist. “Before I throw both your bedrolls overboard—and you with them.”
After they disappeared up the ladder, I leaned against the corridor wall, letting my weight settle onto my good leg. Missing supplies, stolen belongings—it didn’t add up. Pirates might be thieves by trade, but we had strict rules about stealing from each other. The crew knew better.
Food, a bedroll, and now a book? An odd collection. The food suggested someone planning to leave, but why take Greybeard’s romance novel?
A soft chittering sound broke through my thoughts. Sprocket perched on a pipe overhead, their luminous amber eyes fixed on me, so large I unfortunately caught sight of my scowling face and my mess of brown curls.
The vexling’s fur shifted from smoky gray to copper as they tilted their head, long fingers gripping the metal.
“What do you want?”
Sprocket’s pointed ears twitched. The creature dropped down beside me with impossible grace, wing membranes folding against their sides. Their long tail wrapped around a nearby railing as they stared up at me. Then, the creature chittered again, taking a few steps down the corridor before looking back at me. When I didn’t move, they returned, tugged at my boot with those nimble fingers, then scampered away again.
“You want me to follow you?” The words had barely left my mouth when Sprocket bobbed their head in an unnervingly human gesture.
I hesitated. I had about ten other jobs I could be doing. But Sprocket had an uncanny ability to know things before anyone else—they’d once led Murray straight to a cracked cooling pipe minutes before it burst.
“Fine,” I muttered. “But this better be worth it.”
Sprocket bounded ahead, their tail acting as a copper-colored beacon in the dim light. We descended deeper into the ship, to the cargo hold. The large space was mostly empty—we couldn’t dockThe Black Wraithat Embergate with stolen loot in our belly, after all.
“You’ve wasted my time, pest,” I told Sprocket, but they only chittered more insistently, bouncing from crate to crate with determined purpose.
The cargo hold stretched before us, filled with empty wooden boxes awaiting our next raid. Sprocket led me to a large wooden crate wedged in the far corner—unremarkable.
But something caught my eye. The edge of one panel sat slightly askew, a hair’s width gap between the boards. Someone had pried it open and failed to seal it properly.
My pulse quickened. Had our thief been storing their stolen goods here? I gripped the edge of the loose panel and yanked it open.
And then I saw the last thing I would ever have possibly expected to see.
A young man with ginger hair and freckles stared up at me, green eyes wide with terror. He bolted upright, attempting to squeeze past me through the narrow space between crates.
Amateur move.
I caught him around the waist, spinning him against the ship wall. My dagger found his throat in one fluid motion, the cold steel pressing against his pale skin.
“Well, well. Looks like we have a stowaway.” I pressed the blade harder, drawing a whimper. “Enjoying your free ride on my ship, are we?”
3
Kaspar
