Page 36 of A Pirate's Pleasure

“What’s your decision, Whitby?” I asked.

“We find the captain,” he said. “We kill the harpy, and we make ourselves rich while we’re at it.”

Another cheer went up, and I offered a nod to Whitby as I climbed down off the barrel, my work for the day done.

Chapter Fifteen

Zephyr

My face was cold. Or at least the half of it pressed to the floor was. I wanted to sleep, but it was difficult with my flesh turning to ice. Why was I on the floor, anyway? I liked rum, but I didn’t normally drink it to excess like many other pirates did. It was best to maintain some sense of decorum when you were captain of a ship with close to eighty men under your command. Lief! Was it his fault? I’d like to think so. Rescuing him had messed a lot of things up. Not least the food situation.

We’d bought supplies yesterday, though, hadn’t we? There’d been an island. A tavern. Ale. A kiss. I’d kissed Lief. Not a peck either. A full on we’re-rekindling-something-here type of kiss. But we hadn’t rekindled anything. Why not? Much as I’d like to think, it had been common sense coming to the fore, it hadn’t been.

Lucretius. The harpy had found me. There’d been a chase. Lightning. A rockfall. A jump into the sea without a landing. A flight. A fist to the face. And then nothing until now.

Peeling my cheek from the icy floor, I sat up. A strange rattle had me looking down to find thick iron manacles encircling my wrists. A short chain connected them, limiting the distance my wrists could separate. Even worse, though, was the longer chain which trailed across the floor before ending at a thick iron ring embedded in the wall. Despite knowing how fruitless it would be, I tugged on it. Predictably, it held fast.

The room I was in was small, barely ten feet from end to end. Room? Might as well call it what it was—a cell. The walls comprised rough, uneven stones that glistened with moisture. There was a hole in one corner that presumably served as a latrine. It was the only thing of note, save for dust, dirt, and cobwebs. No chair. No bed. No furniture at all.

Sunlight streamed in through a high window with bars. Was it the same day? Or had I been unconscious for long enough that the night had passed and the sun had risen once more? I clambered to my feet, the chain long enough to reach the window. Standing on tiptoes made me just tall enough that I could see through the bars and drink in the details of the world outside.

Green grass swayed gently in the breeze. The sea glittered in the distance. Pink and purple flowers and a few trees and bushes. And not much else. Nothing that could give me much of a clue where I was. Apart from the fact that it wasn’t somewhere I recognized, which presumably meant I’d never been here before. Although, that was a rather dangerous assumption to make when I hadn’t visited every corner of every isle.

The sun, being low in the sky, confirmed that it was indeed the next day. How hard had the harpy hit me? I lifted my manacled wrists to probe my face, the chain heavy enough to make the simple movement cumbersome. Apart from a slight residual soreness, there didn’t appear to be any damage done.

A brief exploration of the rest of the cell yielded nothing more interesting than a heavy iron door set in the opposite wall. There was no handle, no way of opening it at all from this side. I slid down the wall and did my best to think. Lucretius had captured me. He’d presumably brought me back to where he lived. Wherever that was. Was Lief here? I didn’t think so. I remembered the splash of him hitting the sea, so it would have meant Lucretius having to go back for him, and I doubted he was that interested. His target had always been me. I was the one who’d been stupid enough to sleep with him, stupid enough to foster an obsession that only seemed to have grown over time.

What did I have that I could use against him? I mustered up magic, but there was something wrong with it, something dulling it that meant I couldn’t summon anything more than a few red sparks from my fingertips, and even they quickly fizzled out. Examination of the cuffs revealed runes scratched in the metal. Some sort of ward that acted as a magical suppressant. Lucretius truly had thought of everything. How many magic users had he captured before to possess such a thing? How old was he? His human appearance might be that of a man in his twenties, but I was starting to believe that was yet another lie.

Without magic at my disposal, I’d need to be cleverer. I’d need to think like someone who had to rely on cunning and guile rather than magic. Someone like Lief. What would happen to him in my absence? Would he make his way back to the ship? Then what? Apart from Whitby, who seemed amused by his presence for reasons I hadn’t yet worked out, he didn’t have any allies on board The Navarino. He’d made enemies, though. Garrick hadn’t appreciated Lief being able to outwit and overpower him. Without me there, it would leave him vulnerable to Garrick and his cronies. And that was presuming he’d made it back to the ship without drowning or being dashed on the rocks as he’d jumped.

I rested my head back against the wall and tried to come up with a plan of action. The first thing was getting out of this cell. I could achieve nothing in terms of escape from behind a locked door and iron bars. And I did intend to escape. I’d never had it easy. From growing up in poverty, to being orphaned at thirteen and making my way to Glimmerfield with dreams of one day owning my own ship, I was used to overcoming insurmountable odds.

And I had my ship. The Navarino was my pride and joy. Lief might use it as ammunition, mocking me mercilessly about caring for nothing and no one as much as I did for that ship, but there was a truth to it. My friendship with Dax, and his complete apathy toward the sea and anything more strenuous than standing behind a bar and serving slop, had paved the way for me taking his place. And I’d never taken Livingston’s faith in me for granted. If I hadn’t left it for Lief, a man I’d loved with all my heart, then a harpy would not keep me away from it either.

Things had gone too far, though, for antagonism to get me anywhere with Lucretius. I had to make him believe I’d changed my mind about him, earn his trust, and maneuver myself into a position where I’d be able to escape. It had to be gradual. He wouldn’t buy me waking up and suddenly falling in with his plans. I needed to play him. I needed to take the deluded feelings he claimed to have for me and use them against him. Just thinking about needing to fight him on a psychological level was exhausting. It was far easier to zap him with lighting. Although, if yesterday’s exploits had shown anything, it was that Lucretius was far too formidable an opponent for that to be successful, so perhaps it was as well that I was being forced to seek alternative methods.

And there was no time like the present to get started. Better than sitting here and rotting. I took a deep breath. “Lucretius!” Nothing, save for the cry of seabirds and the distant splash of waves from outside the window. “LUCRETIUS!” A pause and then faint footsteps. They grew louder until they came to a stop outside the door. A key turned in the lock and then the door creaked open to leave Lucretius framed in the doorway.

He was back to being fully human, dressed in a pair of silk black trousers that hugged his thighs like a second skin, and a ruffled white shirt unbuttoned deliberately low to show off the tanned skin beneath. His dark hair was swept back from his brow, and he held a golden goblet in his hand so full to the brim that liquid dripped on the floor when he moved. It gave the impression that he’d been having a party for one.

Unless, of course, there were other harpies here. My heart sped up as I considered the notion. It would be naïve not to consider that he might not be alone, that I might find myself thrust into the middle of a thriving harpy community.

Most striking of all was the smile on his face, though, like he was genuinely pleased to see me, like me hitting him with lightning bolts and burying him under a fall of rocks had barely been a blip on his day. Could it be that easy?

“Zephyr,” he said, his smile only growing wider. “How wonderful that you have awoken from your little snooze!”

My snooze! Like it hadn’t resulted from a fist to the head. I wasn’t stupid enough to point that out, though. “I was quite tired. Life at sea can be… taxing.”

Lucretius nodded. He brought the goblet to his lips and took a sip, his eyes never leaving my face. “I’m sure it can. You must be thirsty. Hungry as well probably after your long sleep. You must come and eat.”

Come and eat! That sounded promising for getting out of the cell. I lifted my hands and rattled the chains. “I’d love to, but I’m a little tied up right now, and not in a good way.”

Lucretius laughed, his eyes shining. He really was handsome in his human form. No wonder I’d been so taken by him. He took another sip of what I assumed to be wine, given the red sheen the liquid left behind on his lips, as he continued to study me. “You must understand, Zephyr, that you have damaged the trust between us, that I had to ensure you wouldn’t immediately awake with thoughts of escape on your mind.” He tilted his head to one side and just like that, he was back to being bird-like, the metamorphosis staggering. “Do you want to escape?”

How to answer that? No, would be too much of a lie, but yes, would only have him closing the door and refusing to let me out. It was a delicate tightrope I was walking. “Not on an empty stomach,” I said eventually. “I haven’t eaten for over twenty-four hours.” It wasn’t a lie. Lief and I had been more interested in drinking ale than we had in eating. We might have gotten around to it before the evening was over, but Lucretius had happened before we’d had time to.

Lucretius strode forward, his fingers coming to rest on the iron ring in the wall. “You should know, Zephyr, that there is no way off this island unless you can fly. No boat. No islands within swimming distance. Although, the last man I gave that piece of information to didn’t believe me. He soon found out the hard way that I wasn’t lying, bless him.”