“A woman. I think she’s the captain,” she said. “They nabbed me on the beach and dragged me down here. The key is probably with her.”
Amaris prevented Adelaide from seeing the twitch of her eye. Great, now the captain was thrown into the mix. But with her knife still in hand,she assessed the lock. Maybe she wouldn’t have to track her down. She slid it into the hole, twisting and listening for the tumbler.
“Amaris, I don’t—”
“It’ll work,” Amaris said, wiping a bead of sweat from her nose. It had to. She couldn’t face a soldier, let alone the captain. Twisting her knife, she prayed. Amaris hadn’t been one to take part in religions after Gran had passed, but apparently, Magoria would make a churchgoer out of her again. She had to get Adelaide out of there.
“Is that how you got out before?”
Amaris gave Adelaide a shrug and a small smirk. “No one ever checked my boots for weapons.”
“It won’t work here.”
“It has to.”
“But it won’t!” Adelaide snapped, dropping back on her heels. “You need the key.”
Amaris slid down the bars in defeat. Adelaide was right. The lock was too complex. “I’ll find it.”
“How?”
Amaris gripped the bars. “I’ll come back for you.”
“You better.” Adelaide dragged the back of her hand under her nose, smearing the blood across her face. “Gods, I spent my whole life training, only to be bested on my own beach. How humiliating.”
Amaris pried herself from the cell, leaving the lantern by Adelaide’s side as she raced toward the ladder. Gripping the rung, she flinched. A frustrated scream erupted behind her, and Adelaide pounded against the bars. There was no questioning. Amaris would either find that damn key or end up next to Adelaide.
She scaled the ladder, counting as she retraced her steps with the imaginary map she’d configured in her mind. She took each turn faster than she should’ve, running toward the sounds, the fighting, the screams. She reached the deck housing the cannons, stopping only a brief momentto catch her breath. The soldiers’ laughs infuriated her as they lit the fuses and watched as they fired on the manor. She tried prying into their shouting matches, but they were speaking a language she couldn’t understand. That was until she heard someone whispering ahead of her. Slinking through the shadows of the ship, she forced herself to shrink behind a barrel of gunpowder.
“This is getting out of hand. Why are we taking orders from a filthy pirate.” A dark voice sounded ahead of her.
Amaris’s eyes grew wide as she gripped the edge of the barrel.Pirate?
“Shut it, Tedric, or she’ll hear you,” a deep voice said, his accent thick.
She?Amaris leaned closer, maintaining her stance in the shadows.
“Without us, she has no ship,” Tedric snipped. “The captain never should’ve given her command.”
“Now that our end of the bargain is complete, he’ll resume control when we return.”
With her pulse escalating, she followed the voices as they moved down the hall and kept in time with the heavy steps of their boots. They climbed to the next deck while she sat at the bottom of the ladder, waiting for their footsteps to fade. She released a breath and poked her head up. Their shadows turned down the hall.
What if the woman who locked Adelaide up is this pirate?Amaris stifled her groan. Not only was she crazy for boarding the ship, but now she had to find a deadly pirate. They were a thing of cinema or olden sailors swindling merchants for their own gain. She didn’t want to know what pirates from Magoria implied. She peered around the corner as their shadows disappeared into a brightly illuminated room.
“How much longer?” the deep voice asked.
“You ask as if you have somewhere more important to be,” a woman spoke.
“No,” he stammered. “It’s only we’ve suffered heavy losses, and a retreat would be ideal—”
“These casualties are only the beginning. I’m your captain tonight, and you all have your orders.” Her voice carried into the hall.
“Captain Hornley may have given you command of his ship for your crusade, buthe’smy captain, not you,” Tedric’s voice cut in.
A shuffling of steps pursued. “You’re a sailor on this ship, are you not?”
“Yes—”
