Bad sign. Best get to it. “I’ve come to ask you to remove your curses.”
She crossed her arms, brows rising. “You waste my time, Captain.”
He swallowed. Of all the times not to be able to lie and charm her. Cressida’s crew in port only complicated things. They were friendly—most of the time—but further angering the merfolkwouldn’t do any favors for him with them either. If the laughter and frolicking on the beach were any indication, the merfolk were quite enamored with Cressida’s crew.
“It was my error,” Tink said, stepping closer to the queen. Hook shot her a sharp look, but she ignored it. “I heard him boasting of the theft, and I believed he stole it from you, but that was wrong. Captain Blackbeard stole the Heart of Fire from you. Captain Hook took it from him.”
Titania slid her sapphire gaze to Hook. “Still a thief.”
He should have known Tink wouldn’t keep quiet. Did she have no idea how thin the queen’s patience was? “Tink stole the necklace from me shortly after I acquired it.” Hook straightened, doing his best to keep his tone calm and easy. “I couldn’t return something no longer in my possession.” Not that he would have, but she didn’t need to know that.
Tink’s cheeks flamed. “And if not for me stealing it fromhim,” she accented the word, “I could not have returned it to you as you asked of me.”
Titania tilted her head this way and that. “Whatever shall I do with you two thieves? Both of you ask favors of me.”
Both of them? Hook glanced at Tink from the corner of his eye. She’d said she traded the necklace for their trust. What could a pixie want from the merfolk so badly?
The queen’s tail flicked an arc of water toward their boots. “And yet, you both made offenses against me. You,” she said as her sparky gaze slid to Hook, “boasted of your theft instead of vowing to return our sacred treasure. And you, little pixie, caused us to turn the sea against the wrong pirate.”
Tink stiffened next to him. “We beg your forgiveness for our errors. What can we—”
Hook grabbed her hand and squeezed. Offering anything to a mermaid was risky. The queen already had her decision. He could see it in the glimmer of her eyes and the hint of a grinon her lips. How had Tink survived a prior encounter with this vicious queen?
The queen’s attention slid to their joined hands. Hook released Tink, lest the mermaid get the wrong idea. It took everything he had not to wipe his hand on his coat. Though even that might not remove the memory of her soft skin against his.
“I would ask a favor of you both,” the queen said. “Do what I ask, and I will reward each of you. For the pirate, the sea will no longer rage against you. For the pixie, you will have the pearl you seek, with no further payment required.”
A pearl? All this nonsense for a bloody pearl? He had at least a dozen of them somewhere in his cabin, not to mention the long necklaces he’d acquired years ago. She could have taken those. Theywouldlook stunning draped around her neck.
Tink swayed on her feet. Whatever it was, it was valuable enough that not even the Heart of Fire had been sufficient payment. Or Queen Titania was taking advantage of her naivety, as she was known to do. Still, it couldn’t be any normal pearl, but he’d get to the bottom of that—later.
“What favor?” Hook asked. To offer such a prize, it wouldn’t be simple. No, the queen was crafty as a pirate. Craftier.
Titania’s fangs glinted in her serpentine smile. “I want the scale of Leviathan returned to me.”
Bloody hell. The thing was no more than a legend. A myth. The dragon god Leviathan was said to be so large it could swallow a ship whole or stir up a tidal wave with a flick of its tail. Hook had lived on the sea most of his life and never seen anything like it or met anyone who had. There were worse monsters on the sea that occupied his thoughts—namely the old, bastard crocodile who’d taken his hand.
“I already vowed to return it to you in exchange for the pearl,” Tink protested, her voice cracking.
His head snapped her way. This pixie planned to find a mythical treasure. He nearly laughed. She was bold, all right. And desperate. So very desperate to attempt something like that. If he hadn’t known her, he’d say daft, but there was too much cunning behind her crystal blue eyes for that.
A pixie in human lands, alone, desperate for help from the merfolk… There was much to her story he didn’t know and couldn’t guess at. Curiosity tugged at him like a pulled thread. Something else too: an ache in his chest he studiously ignored.
“And now you’ll have help.” Titania grinned, exposing her fangs.
“Where is this scale?” Hook asked, turning his attention back to the queen.
Water splashed in an arc from a flick of her tail. “If I knew, I’d have it already.”
So, it existed after all. Hook rubbed his jaw. All he had to do was find something most of Neverland didn’t believe existed. But just as Titania could taste a lie in the air, she couldn’t utter one herself. No merfolk could.
Legend said that long ago the dragon god Leviathan had come to Neverland. There, it fell in love with a human woman—or a mermaid, as the merfolk liked to claim. Duty called the god away, but it left behind with its beloved a scale from its body, a way to call it to aid if ever she or her descendants needed. The legend was true, it seemed, or at least part of it.
Tink looked between the two of them and swallowed. “I was told it’s hidden in a cave, somewhere normal folk don’t go.”
“Determined.” Titania leaned back on the rock, her breasts proudly displayed in the sunlight that glimmered across her pearlescent skin. “And bolder now. You should have asked me more about it the last time we met.”
Tink’s cheeks flushed.
