Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 163328 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 817(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163328 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 817(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
“I loved him, too, Mother.” Agony unfurled in my breast. “Why did you leave me? I needed you.”
Blue eyes of glass stared back.
She doesn’t see me.
I tucked the boots and cutlass between us and pulled her arm around me. A trickle of blood fell from her mouth. I wiped it away and burrowed closer, burying my face in her neck.
The soft silk of her hair fluttered against my lips as I sobbed. Her delicate frame lay like twisted driftwood against me. I pulled her closer, straightening her skirts, arranging her limbs, and clinging to her embrace.
There was only so much suffering a person could endure before they broke. Sometimes, broken things couldn’t be put back together.
My body wasn’t broken like my mother’s, but I was empty all the same. And tired. So very tired.
Closing my eyes wasn’t hard. They pulled shut on their own.
When I opened them, I was greeted by nightfall.
Moonlight sparkled over my mother’s skin, giving her an ethereal glow. Eventually, someone would find us and take her away from me. Or maybe the crabs would take her. I leaned up to flick one from her hair, and a pair of jackboots stepped into my view.
Craning my neck, I looked up to find Charles Vane standing over me.
I licked cracked lips and rasped, “My father…”
“I tried to rescue him.” He crouched beside me, his expression unreadable in the moonlight. “They hanged him at dawn. Moved the gallows to the beach and did it right there to send a message to us. His crew.”
“You were there?”
He nodded stiffly. “So was she.” He glanced at the countess. “Your mother?”
“Yes.”
“She arrived as it happened and…” His brows furrowed as he gazed up at the peak of the cliff. “She went mad.”
I followed his gaze. “Did it take her pain?”
“I suppose it did.”
“This day took everything from me. Everything I loved. Everything I had.” I studied the rocky face of the cliff, wondering if I had the strength to climb it.
“Not everything.” He bent over me and scooped up my mother’s body from the rock. “I couldn’t save Captain Sharp, but I can save you.”
As he strode away with her, I pondered his words with a sluggish mind. Did I want to be saved? What was left to salvage?
Moments later, he returned and lifted me into his arms. I’d never felt so weak and lifeless. I didn’t even have the will to struggle as he carried me into the sea.
Muscles flexed beneath me as he lowered me into a jolly boat. My father’s boots and cutlass joined me.
And I wasn’t alone.
Two dead bodies lay at my feet, and the sight of them together breathed life into my heart.
“How?” I crawled toward my parents and gripped their cold hands, lacing their fingers together in the squeeze of mine.
“I stole his body from the gallows.” He climbed into the boat behind me. “Captain Sharp deserves a burial at sea.”
“Thank you.” I lay down beside them and wrapped my arms around my father’s chest. “What will happen to me?”
“That’s up to you.” He stabbed the oars into the black water and pushed out to sea. “Jade is yours. The captain was very clear on that point the night he took her.”
“I’m only fourteen.”
“I’ll captain her until you earn the crew’s trust.” He tipped his head, studying me. “I was younger than you, orphaned like you, when I chose this life. I have no regrets.”
“I’m a girl.” A broken, empty girl. I tightened my hand around my parents’ entwined fingers. “The crew won’t accept me without my father.”
“Don’t give them a choice.” His gaze flitted over me, and a smirk touched the corner of his mouth. “I saw a fearless fire burning inside you yesterday. Get that back, Bennett, and naught will stand in your way.”
I felt it. A spark of something beneath the cold, heavy weight of pain.
Something to live for.
My hand fell to the compass that hung from my waist.
When you’re ready, you will follow it and claim what’s rightfully yours.
I closed my eyes and cried.
March 1721
Port Royal, Kingston Harbor Jamaica
Seven years had passed since I lost my parents. I still felt it, the deep gnawing pain in the torments of my soul. I tried to shake it loose, tried like hell to pretend the damage wasn’t there. But it clung.
Especially tonight.
The mantle of twilight shrouded me in desolation as I stood before another corpse hanging from a noose.
Another buccaneer.
Another great man ripped from my life.
One day I might find the hempen halter around my own neck. Pirates never died in their beds. But today wasn’t my day.
A reminder that I shouldn’t be here.
I’d been on the run since I was fourteen, constantly looking over my shoulder. Even now I subtly tilted my head, probing the empty alleyways around me, my senses on alert for the one thing I couldn’t outrun forever.