“Looking out for me.” Fynn said. “I know.”
His Quartermaster raised her chin and offered the Captain her hand. “Family?”
Fynn gripped her forearm and squeezed. “Always.”
A narrow footway thumped against the Refuge’s ornately carved hull. The bounty hunters’ ship was small, its patchwork hull obscured beneath multicolored barnacles. A wooden serpent was carved to strike from the bowsprit.
Fynn exhaled sharply through his nose, and with it came a guttering ocean breeze. “Here we go.”
The gangplank bowed beneath the bounty hunter’s weight as he thundered between the two ships, his hands braced on his hips. He was a head taller than Fynn, his dingy red shirt nearly bursting at the seams as it stretched over the expanse of his shoulders. The sleeves had been torn away to not only reveal the muscled swell of his arms, but the thin black lines that were inked from his wrist to his elbow—a mark for every bounty he’d collected.
Fynn swallowed thickly as he dropped to the deck of the Refuge.
“Who’s the Captain?” the hunter asked. He cracked his tattooed knuckles.
Fynn flinched at the sound as if it were his own bones breaking. “I am.”
This man could crush him without trying, could grind his bones to dust between the calloused pads of his fingers. His top lip curled over rotting, gold-capped teeth as he sneered, “You’re awfully young, boy. You expect me to believe that this here vessel is yours?”
He did not rise to the challenge, did not fall for the bait that was meant to get him killed. “Is there something I can do for you?” Fynn asked instead. “Or is there a reason you’re crowding my ship?”
Six more hunters crossed over the gangplank, their weathered faces as ugly as creatures from the deep. The kind that Fynn saw in his nightmares, the ones that raged in the waters off the coast of Dyn. It was most of their crew, by the looks of it.
Riel bristled as they spread across the deck. She reached for her own weapons, her fingers wrapping around the hilt of her father’s old sword, but Fynn nudged her with his boot. Not yet, he meant to convey. They could not fight them yet. An attack thus far wasn’t warranted, and he would not risk the safety of his crew by provoking them.
“This ship’ll be mine soon enough if you’re hiding anyone I’m looking for.”
Fynn raised his chin with a sense of indignation, his heart near bursting through his chest. “There’s no one here with a bounty.”
“Are you sure about that, boy?” He surveyed the deck with a milky, mud-colored eye. His left eye was covered by a tattered black patch, one that did not hide the scar from the knife that must have gouged it from his skull. “I don’t suppose you’ll let me take a look around and see for myself if you’re lying.”
“No,” Fynn agreed. “I don’t suppose I will.”
The bounty hunter—the Captain, Fynn realized with dread—drew his sword. He traced an appreciative finger along the dented iron blade, his nail as black as the tangled hair piled on top of his head. He thudded towards Fynn and said, “Rumor has it that a long lost Princess of Sonamire was kidnapped from her castle in Tavynea last week.”
Every muscle in Fynn’s body stiffened. “And?”
“And,” he scratched at a dried patch of blood. “I was offered my weight in gold to find her. She’s a special thing, don’t you know? Plenty of people out lookin’ for her.”
“Good deal,” Fynn said dryly. “But the Princess isn’t on my ship. You’ll find that we’re all a bit worthless.”
“Isn’t she?” The Captain quirked his head. “The men from a stranded ship in Valestorm say that they saw her sail away on a ship with a siren prow, and a man that matches your description.”
Fynn snorted. “Roguishly handsome?”
His mouth twisted with a smirk. “And don’t you have the ego to match.”
This time, when Riel reached for her sword, Fynn did not stop her. The waters were deep here, and even if Riel had wanted to call upon her Magic, she couldn’t.
“I am rather confident,” Fynn mused. He tucked his hair behind his ears, wishing he’d taken the time to pull it back. “But I’m sorry to say that I’m not currently harboring any Princesses.”
“Then who’s the bitch you whisked away into your cabin?”
Riel swore as Fynn raised an open palm.
A sharp gust of wind speared for the bounty hunter’s chest. He did not have the time to deflect, to defend, to do anything at all as the Captain’s Magic struck him hard. It would not hold out, not for long, but this man who had threatened Sol Rosebone… Fynn would make him suffer.
The bounty hunter staggered into the railing, his arms flailing wide. He could not breathe against the icy wind that Fynn was shoving down his throat. It filled his lungs, his chest, every space inside his body that Fynn could find to smother. He would not leave this ship. He would tell no one where the Princess of Sonamire might be headed or who it was she traveled with.
“Fynn, look out!”
It was the unabashed fear in his Quartermaster’s voice that had him whirling on his heels, his Magic still bursting from his palms.
Fynn turned in time for the rusted blade of an old sword to pierce through his open left side. It shredded through the fabric of his tunic, but he did not have the time to dwell on the pain as it cut through the space between his ribs.
He slid free the dagger that he’d hidden up the sleeve of his shirt. Fynn skirted around the hunter’s blade and plunged his knife into his chest. The boy gaped, ruby blood bubbling from the corners of his mouth. Fynn did not look at him as the light faded from his eyes, as he tore the blade free and as the hunter crashed to the deck.
The Captain’s heart skipped a beat. Two. His Magic sputtered out inside of him.
He had not killed since the day he’d found Arden in Valestorm. Since the day he’d found her keeper beating her to near-death in that alleyway. Fynn had not thought twice about it then, and he did not regret having saved her. But this boy, this corpse now lying dead at his feet, perhaps he could have saved him, too.
The clash of steel and the heat from Arden’s flames drew him from the musings of his guilt. Fynn turned, his frantic eyes scanning the deck for his crew. Riel was engaged with the Captain of the bounty hunters’ ship, sparks flying from the blade of her sword as she parried his every blow. She did not need Fynn’s help as she bared her teeth and swung her father’s sword.
Amael had not been so lucky.
He’d been forced to one knee, blood gushing from a deep cut across his thigh. Three of the seven hunters had gone for him, for the door he would die to defend even if he didn’t know why he was defending it. But Amael didn’t have the training that Fynn had, that Riel had, and he was the biggest man on this ship. The hunters had targeted him, pegged him as the largest threat, and it would be their last mistake.
Fynn would slaughter them all for drawing the boatswain’s blood.
He drew his sword and wove through the battling deckhands, through the hunters pouring onto the Refuge. He’d take care of the gangplank soon, would shatter it if he had to, but Amael needed him now.
Fynn drove his sword between the shoulder blades of a hunter poised to strike Amael his death blow. He did not let himself feel, not sorrow nor regret nor satisfaction, as the hunter’s corpse crumbled to the planks at his feet.