Chapter one
Sofie
ThereIwas,tryingand failing to sleep off the truly terrible day I was fleeing from, when the ship shuddered almost to a stop.
My eyes popped open, and I thought a single word:Pirates.
Why in the name of Aestas did it have to bepirates?
Judging by the colorful language filtering through the cabin door,Valiant Striderwas being boarded by vile privateers, not the royal navy of Endergeist. And how I would’ve preferred the navy! Even with a bounty on my head, I could’ve negotiated with them. Eventually.
Probably.
But pirates? They wouldn’t care whether I lived or died…or understand just how dangerous I could be.
More shouts, creaks and the dancing light of torches when there should have been little else but a pale half moon and a dark sea had me jumping out of bed. I’d never dressed so quickly inmy life. From the clomping sound of boots outside the captain’s cabin, the pirates were already aboard.
And since I’d relented when the captain insisted I take his quarters, that meant they’d be bursting throughmydoor any moment now.
“Curse my dratted luck,” I muttered, wincing at the word choice as I scrambled for my cloak, magic practically sizzling at my fingertips. I wasn’t about to wait for these wretched pirates to intrude.
I didn’t relish the thought of inflicting more harm today. But if they thought they could collect King Venet’s bounty on me, they were mistaken.
I swung my fur-trimmed cloak over my shoulders and threw open the door to the deck ofValiant Strider. I didn’t even make it a step. It was chaos out there. Complete and utter chaos—and not the fun kind.
Swords clanged, wood splintered under steel, and a faint haze of weak magic hung in the air. A man I recognized from the crew stumbled forward, clutching his side as blood darkened his shirt, his face instantly as snow-pale as mine.
But I was a balancer, and I was trained to manage moments like this.
I cupped my hands around my mouth, amplifying my voice with magic as I said, as very calmly as possible, “I am Sorceress Sofie Dar’Vester. Who is in charge here?”
All eyes turned to me at once. One pirate froze with his hand at a crewmember’s collarbone, her locket suspended in his hand just before he could yank the chain from her neck.
Pirates are fools. Lockets like that had barely a lick of gold to coat them, and nothing inside but a clipping of hair from a sweetheart back on land. And I highly doubted these pirates knew what to do with a lover’s lock. The only potions these louts cared for was the cheap, fermented kind.
I cleared my throat, about to ask again, when a new figure climbed over the ship’s rail.
So. The pirate captain had finally deigned to join his crew. A cowardly move, if you asked me, sending his men to boardValiant Striderand take the brunt of the attack.
Loose curls of hair, dark as the sea, framed this smug captain’s face as he regarded me, the muscles on his bare, tattooed arms rippling as he hung onto one of the lines. I didn’t like the looks of him one bit. For one thing, he was smart enough to stay well back from me, as if he sensed my true nature.
“Fine night to flee from a kingdom, isn’t it, milady?” he asked me in a silky, accented voice, sizing me up in a way that had me shivering.
I lifted my chin, unafraid to meet his eye. “I suppose you should know better than I would.”
“This is her,” he informed his crew, never taking his eyes off me. “A woman whose heart is as black as ours. Maybe more. Cursing an infant princess?” He tisked at me. “Do you have any heart at all?”
“Test me and find out.”
“Sharp words, from a defenseless girl.”
“Girl?” My nostrils flared, my eyes hooded. “I’m downgraded with every utterance by you. First I’m a lady, then a mere woman, and now a girl? What will I be next?”
He ran a hand down his short beard, woven with thread of a dark color I couldn’t make out in this light.
Was this Blackbeard? Silverbeard? Pirate lords liked to color-code themselves like the indexes in Dewspell Academy’s Grande Library. To have such a name was some kind of honor.
“I know exactly what you’ll be next,” he said, his voice pitched even lower so that only I could hear. His teeth flashed in the torchlight, ivory and lacking the stains and rot I expected.
