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It seems we are different people entirely from the kids who met so long ago. I’d snuck away from my tutor, a naive soul who thought getting out to see how normal people lived would season me as a ruler. Xe didn’t last three months before my father found out and fired xem, but by then it was too late. I’d already met Maura and learned how to slip from the castle grounds.
I still remember my first sight of her, skinny and dirty and slipping between the taller adults in the crowd like a fish slips around rocks in a stream.
She stole my bracelet that day.
I met with her six times in the next few months to convince her to give it back, until it became a ritual that bonded us. I just wanted more time with her.
Take this amulet and give me my bracelet back.
That amulet is old and rusty. Pass.
Okay, then how about my dress?
What am I going to do with that dress, Princess? I’ll be hanged as a thief the moment I try to pawn it.
As time passed and we grew older, we never quite gave up that game. It hurts to remember how I felt every time I offered something new and more extravagant and impossible. It hurts even more to know how it ended, almost a year to the day after we started that ritual.
I’ll trade you the moon for my bracelet, Maura. Surely that’s a fair balance.
I can hardly carry around the moon in my pocket. And all the stars would get jealous. That’s a curse for someone who wants to navigate by them someday.
Well… What about a kiss?
A kiss?
Yes, a kiss. I’ll trade you a kiss for the bracelet.
It was my first kiss. My best kiss, even, because of how twisted up the whole experience made me. Even more so when Maura slipped my bracelet back into my hand afterward. I honestly hadn’t thought she’d kept it.
Before I left that day, I slipped it right back into her bag when she wasn’t looking.
I glance out the window just as the remains of The Drowning Maid disappear beneath the waves. An entire crew, gone at the command of the girl who traded a bracelet for a kiss. Granted, who knows what they were going to do with me, in general and once we got out to sea, but that’s a lot of what-if. What Maura did is very much real.
I know she has a fearsome reputation, of course. She’s not at the top of the list of people my father would like to hang simply because she and I lost our innocence to each other ten years ago…and were subsequently caught by my maid at the time.
Maura is a villain to the people of Skoiya.
I just never expected her to be a villain to me, too.
4
MAURA
Getting the water out of my clothes and hair only does so much. The fabric is now stiff with dried salt, and my hair has seen better days. Not that I have reason to care how I look. I don’t. I meant what I said to Juliette. I have every intention of putting her in a carriage home the first chance I get.
I’m not sure how I’ll guarantee her safety, though.
Highwaymen haunt the roads the same way I haunt the seas. Not to mention there’s nothing stopping Juliette from getting into all sorts of trouble without someone to look after her. She’s always been like that, always ready to dive into a situation without any thought to the danger involved. I don’t know if it’s a byproduct of being a pampered princess or if it’s just her, but it was a full-time job keeping her out of trouble when we were kids. It was like the dangers of the city just never occurred to her. Like she believed she was untouchable.
I can’t imagine that’s changed.
Cai stands at the helm. Ze looks steadier, zir dark brown skin less waxy. I move to stand next to zir. “Update me.”
Ze shakes zir head. “So we’re not going to talk about how you scorched that ship to the bottom of the sea despite them not opening fire on us?”
I level a look at zir that would send most new recruits scurrying away, but Cai has been with me since the beginning. We joined our first crew at the same time and worked our way to the top. Ze knows me better than anyone, which means there’s no way to avoid the question even though ze already knows the answer. “You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?”
“Yep.”
I stare out across the water for a moment. “She’s not really mine, not in any way that matters, but that doesn’t change the fact they took someone who’s mine and had to pay the price.”
“Mm-hmm.” Cai makes a minute adjustment to our course. “And if she’s yours enough for us to raze another ship and crew, why exactly are we delivering her back to land?”
