“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t gut you right here and feed you to the sea kraken.” The man pressed in farther, his breath ghosting across my face as the steel blade dug into my skin. If I moved even a hair, it would draw blood.
I tried to swallow around my fear—and around the blade—but my mouth was dry even as my eyes threatened to fill, a mix of terror, regret, and hopelessness. A week in, and I’d been caught. I should’ve known that vexling would give me away.
I’d just wanted to get away. I wanted to live, not be stuck in a dungeon in a waking coma. How was that fair to me? Didn’t I… didn’t I deserve an actual life?
And now I was going to be killed by some… some… pirate with a brown curl hiding one of his pretty brown eyes. Goddesses help me, of course I’d noticethatright now. My murderer had pretty eyes and a nice body under his leather coat, so obviously that made all of this okay. What in the holy dragon’s breath was wrong with me?
My mind was gone, completely disappeared in the face of danger.
“Answer me, boy!” He pushed even harder, the steel slicing my skin, a drop of blood dripping down to my collarbone.
“I-I… I… I’m s-s-sorry. I…” A whimper escaped me. “Th-they were going to…” I stopped that sentence, unsure how to finish it when I couldn’t very well tell a stranger, let alone a pirate, that I was a fluxweaver. I’d be sold to the highest bidder before I could blink. “I… I didn’t… have a choice.” The words came out barely above a whisper, but I had no doubt the pirate heard me.
He grunted, and his hold loosened, just a hair, enough to let me take a breath and swallow without cutting myself further.
“There’s always a choice,” he murmured before releasing me completely.
I barely had a moment to catch my balance before he grabbed the back of my shirt and started hauling me across the hold.
“Wh-where are you taking me?”
He grunted again, his nostrils flaring in anger.
“Please… please, I didn’t have a choice. I’m sorry.” I sniffled as tears started to roll down my cheeks. “Please. I-I can work. I can… do anything. I’m a quick learner. I…” I sniffled again. “Please. Please don’t kill me.”
He ignored me, dragging me along until I was stumbling up the ladder to the lower deck. He didn’t release my shirt, dragging me around to the next ladder. There were a few pirates sitting or lying around, and one man with an eye patch called over, “Well, what’da we have ‘ere?”
The pirate holding me grunted. “Stowaway.”
Every single pirate there stared at me with this horrifying… glee on their faces. They were looking at me like I was one of those water pixies, and they were about to enjoy a rare delicacy.
Goddesses, I was about to die.
There was a bunch of jeering and shouting as Pretty Eyes pulled me along, but I was too terrified to pick out what the others were saying.
I tripped over the ladder and almost faceplanted, but my pretty-eyed murderer caught me, set me on my feet, and snapped, “Keep up.”
This time, I kept my eyes on the ground so I didn’t lose my footing, and I noticed the man had a prosthetic left leg. With how strong he was and how easily he moved about the airship, I was a little surprised by the discovery, but I shook my head at myself because that wasn’t important right now. Who cared about any of these pirates when I was about to die?
“Please, sir… please don’t kill me. I’ll do anything. Please. Please, Mr. Pirate, I’ll do anything you want.”
He glanced at me with a strange expression on his face that I couldn’t decipher. Maybe contemplative? Whatever it was, he loosened his hold for a moment and moved his face close to mine to whisper into my ear.
“Listen, boy, I’m not the one you need to beg.”
Cold dread seeped through me. It was now obvious where he was taking me—to the captain. To the Viper.
“Just…” My captor sighed. “Just be… sorry, and you might have a chance.”
“I am. I’m so sorry,” I said eagerly, nodding my head.
He let out a long sigh, closed his eyes for a moment, then met my gaze. “Why are you on my ship?”
Even though horror and panic filled my veins, I still kept eye contact as I spoke. “I didn’t have a choice. I… they were going to take my life away.” Not a lie, even if I did my best to make it sound like they were going to kill me. Honestly, death was a better fate than what fluxweavers faced in the Sunada Kingdom. They would plug me into a machine and drain my power until the day I died. And once I was hooked up to the machine, there would be almost no hope. I’d never heard of someone surviving being unplugged.
He searched my eyes for a long moment, then gave me a small nod. “Okay.” Then he went back to pulling me along the main deck to what I assumed was the captain’s quarters.
This pirate, my captor, was… scarier than a sea serpent, but that simpleokaymade me feel like maybe he was on my side.
