Page 26 of Bloody Black

X andretta and Prudence bring coffee, strawberries, and baked bread to Robb’s stateroom. All fresh, with no mold nor maggots. As the first sip of liquid touches my tongue, I close my eyes, savoring the earthy bitterness.

Xandretta prowls around the room, touching things randomly. Robb’s coat–a rich royal blue damask– hangs on the back of his chair. The bed is unmade, rumpled, but with white silk sheets. A wall of windows overlooks the sea.

Everything is wood paneled, obviously expensive, polished. It reeks of him, vanilla and musk and clove soap. The scent invades my lungs, intrusive and intimate. I curse him for forcing me to absorb him against my will.

“William takes good care of his soldiers.” Xandretta huffs.

“Too bad he wasn’t nearly as good to his wife.” I set aside the mug and tug on one of the desk drawers .

Locked. Of course. I jiggle the handle again, as if sheer will might undo it. A breath hisses between my teeth.

What secrets are you hiding, Robb? My fingers find Mercy’s toolbelt, and I whisper a silent thank you.

Meanwhile, Prudence thumbs through a stack of papers, settling onto the low, leather couch. A couch, because of course, when William’s lieutenants tire of lying in bed or sitting at their desks, they must have a couch to lie upon!

“What are you looking for?” Xandretta asks.

“Clues. Maps. War plans.” Prudence keeps reading. “So far, it’s all drivel. Poetry. Samson will be thrilled.”

“Probably some sort of secret message. Let me take a look.” Xandretta puts out a clawed hand.

“Aye…” Prudence hands her some of the pages.

I dig a lockpick out of the toolbelt, squinting to study its width, then select a different, smaller one.

“We’re still on schedule. Making good time.” Xandretta sips her own coffee and makes a gruesome face, all teeth and eyes. “Although now we’re in a ship that almost every sailor will recognize.”

“If they recognize it, they’ll know not to approach us… I’m sure the dead man hanging from the mast will scare off any visitors.”

There’s a soft popping sound as the lock disengages. Ah ha! I yank the drawer open.

It is full of Robb’s possessions: crude maps of uncharted waters, strange, polished shells that once belonged to creatures of the deep, salt-cured journals, their pages curled from humidity. An expensive pocket-watch .

I rifle through everything. Idle and unhurried. Much of what’s inside the drawer is useless, sentimental. Unable to help myself, I run my fingers over each item, studying them as if they were written in some old language that I never learned. As if touch would translate them.

There’s a jar of shark teeth. White, gray, black. Large and small. At least a hundred of them, he must be collecting them. I shake it, pleased by the rattling sound against the glass, wondering how he found all of these. What he intends to do with them.

“Hmm.” I shove the entire jar into my satchel.

“You’re stealing shark teeth ?” Xandretta chuckles.

“Eh. The Celestian throne is mine. Which means this ship is mine, and his men are mine. And the lieutenant is mine, paid for with my money. As there is only one rightful ruler, me, everything he has, I paid for. Including the time he spent finding these.” I pat the velvet bag. “Finders keepers.”

Xandretta clears her throat. “Not to point it out, but technically, you did die, ergo…”

“No need to say it. I remember.”

Since I died, that would mean William truly is king. But I was only dead unofficially and temporarily, so it shouldn’t matter.

“Once you’ve gotten all you need, you’ll get rid of them? Lieutenant Maynard and his crew?”

Distracted, I pore over the objects in the drawer.

There are letters from a woman who loves him and misses him dearly, begging him to return home.

Gold coins, a vial of stardust, a ruby that rests heavy in my palm, as big as an egg.

An old brass compass, engraved with a kraken.

Its needle spins in circles, never pointing true .

“... He’ll be treated the same as everyone else. Swim and die, or stay and live.”

“So you’d put into a cozy harbor somewhere and let him walk away.”

“Hmm?” I glance over at Prudence. “I didn’t say that.”

“No, but you didn’t not say it. You spare him, it costs us. He’d run straight to William, tell him where we are, that Blackbeard isn’t a man… he can easily describe what you look like.”

“If you’re worried that I won’t kill him, I’ll let you dispose of him.”

“Now?” Prudence adjusts the strap at her shoulder and taps on the butt of her pistol.

“Once I’m done.” Moving on from the first drawer, I break into the second. “I’m confident he’ll provide valuable information. If I can just pry it out of him.”

“Once William is dead, what a fine pirate queen you shall be.” Xandretta nods, but seems pensive as she eyes the marks on my throat.

“Though I do worry about that bargain you bear. The marks are growing and changing, which means her magic is burning through you. There’s no way to know if, or when, it will kill you. ”

Without thinking, my hand drifts to my throat. The skin pulses faintly beneath my fingertips, and the newest mark throbs in rhythm with my heartbeat, a curling black glyph I don’t quite remember earning. “It was either make a deal or die, and you know which I chose.”

In the second drawer, there are stacks of parchment. The first item appears to be a poem, written in a firm, neat hand .

My heart. It breaks.

It throbs and aches.

For you. Always you.

This must be the poetry Prudence was speaking of.

Written for him by a lover, I presume. A memento of their failed relationship.

He’d likely replaced her within days. Annoyed, I move on.

The other papers are records of ship maintenance and costs, and underneath it all is the one thing I truly wanted, and yet didn’t hope to find.

My breath catches as I pull it free, fingers tightening around the parchment.

A message from William.

Dearest friend,

Oh. So they ARE friends. Terrific.

How pleased I was to receive your letter.

With the storms in the south and the rough seas, it is a miracle that it only took ten days to reach Venedria.

By now, you are quite far along on your quest for the pirate scourge, Blackbeard.

It is maddening how he thwarts us and evades us – murdering our citizens and raping our women.

Surely, he must have a home somewhere, a port of call.

But I leave it up to you, Robb, to sort out the challenges with our trade routes.

I want his head on a platter, his heart on a plate.

“Funny, I’ve said the same thing about you,” I mutter aloud. “Swine.”

Too long has he made our people suffer, and he must be stopped.

I scoff. I have done nothing to his people, only to his military, and even those I am quite lenient toward. His men are the ones who rape and pillage, take slaves. He pins those acts on pirates, pretending as he always has.

You are the perfect man to catch him, loyal to the core, and I cannot express how much I appreciate that.

Here at the castle, the leaders of Rivelle and Sinder are quite anxious to resume negotiations. They’ve hinted that these are somewhat contingent on my accepting one of their daughters as a wife. Which, of course, I will never do. Not just because they are not trustworthy–

“Untrustworthy! As if he is one to talk!”

But because I have fallen in love. Most unexpectedly, my relationship with Genevieve has grown over these past few months.

And though it may be unseemly, I am planning to propose.

She is the last of her line, and if she’d been born a boy, would have ruled Celestia.

I can think of no one better to stand at my side, thus restoring the crown to its rightful place.

, I know this will please you, given your worries about the relations between Celestia and Rivelle.

I await your reply, dear friend. Go forth and good luck,

W.

The pages flutter from my fingertips down to the floor, and I have to step back from the drawer and put my hand over my mouth to keep from vomiting.

“What? What is it?” Prudence growls, alerted by the look on my face .

My eyes close as I sway on my feet. “He’s getting married.”

Married. To Genevieve.

All part of his plan. Likely, he’d been wooing her since the day I died.

Genevieve, lovely and soft as sunrise. My half-sister had miraculously survived the coup, found huddled in a broom closet.

I could not imagine how she must have felt, listening to everyone she knew die around her…

could not fathom the lies he must have told her in the years since.

Panic, rage, dismay, resignation; emotions storm through me, swirling like a hurricane.

That lying bastard probably couldn’t wait to sully her, mark her.

If she gives William any difficulty, he’d have her poisoned or kidnapped, or arrange for an unfortunate fall.

My kingdom, my friends, my family had all paid the price for me falling in love, for me trusting a man. And now she would too.

Xandretta scoops the pages off the floor and skims them, including the royal wedding invitation. “That great and terrible bastard,” she murmurs. “Shockingly thorough in his lies, completely convincing.”

“Your half-sister? Isn’t she a child?”

I think about it, calculating. “Seventeen.” Seventeen, and he was planning to marry her.

Would Robb, reading this, know that William was not a good man? That he lied and killed to get the power he craved? That Genevieve would be yet another pawn in his scheme?

Probably not. William was charming as ever, even on paper, with just the right amount of informality and camaraderie.

There’s nothing else of value in the drawers, so I take my coffee and go to the couch.

Curling my hands around the cup, I stare out at the starry night, at the constellation Libra and her scales of justice.

The letter is bad news, worsening the situation in many ways.

Robb and William seem to be friends , a complication I hadn’t expected.

If I couldn’t figure out how to get more information out of him, I’d likely have to kill him. Keeping him aboard would be too risky.

But going through the drawers did give me an idea. “Do you think you could copy a royal wedding invitation?” I say, as Xandretta considers the document in her hand.

The djinn seems mildly offended. “I’d wager my calligraphy skills are unmatched by even the highest-paid forgers.”

“That can be our way in. Their wedding will throw everything in disarray, which is good, but we’ll still need an excuse to be inside, something to say if we find ourselves stalled at the gate.”

“I’ve never been to a wedding,” Prudence mutters.

I almost reply with, me neither, and then I remember my own. William kneeling at my feet, gazing at me adoringly. Isn’t my wife a beauty, he’d say, as we walked past each guest. An angel, only for me?

Prudence peers at me, at my drawn expression, my trembling hands. She’s on her feet and at my side.

“Hey. Captain. We’re going to kill him. Okay? He’s going to pay for what he did. They all will.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever get over it,” I admit.

“You will. You’re too strong to let one man break you.”

“But he did break me– ”

“Nay. He wounded you. But your heart, your spirit, is healing. And once he’s gone, you’ll finally be done with it.” Prudence is emphatic, her brown eyes staring into mine.

In spite of myself, my eyes grow misty, and I blink.

Despite what she says, the truth is, I’m not sure. Sometimes I think that I survived him and lost myself. That Anne, and whoever I might have been, died that night. Permanently.

Xandretta, stone-faced and unemotional, is obviously thinking more about the plan than my reaction. “Even if you told Robb the truth, he wouldn’t believe you. Unless…”

“Unless?”

“If he fell in love with you, he’d probably believe anything.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I argue. “No one is that gullible.”

“Except you.” Xandretta’s voice is crisp. “ You believed it. Despite all training and preparation, even though you’d been told from birth that you’d be lied to, taken advantage of.”

“Stupid people do stupid things. Thanks for rubbing my nose in it and reminding me.”

Prudence defends me. “You weren’t stupid. You were in love. There’s a difference.”

True enough. Mute, I sip my coffee.

“Is that our grand plan? Make Robb Maynard fall for her, and turn him against William?” Prudence rubs the back of her neck with one hand, face full of skepticism.

“Honestly, I’m not sure she’s capable of it. He seems like he’d be very…” Xandretta paces, her feet leaving little pools of slime on the floor. “Affectionate.”

We all know what a problem that would be. My fingers massage my temples, and I think about the bargains now creeping around my neck. Rokhur’s magic is actively taking over me, and I don’t really want to add Robb Maynard to my list of worries.

“We might need that last wish after all, if we expect Anne to be near that man without killing him.”

“Hmph.” Xandretta stares out at the sea.

“She’s joking,” I say. “Obviously.”

We all know that Xandretta swore never to use her powers as a djinn again—namely, because as soon as she does, she’ll die. Allegedly.

Sighing loudly, I finish my coffee and set the cup aside. “How would I manage to seduce him, if I can barely manage a handshake?”

“Easy. Don’t let him touch you.” Prudence begins picking through Robb’s things again.

My brows furrow. “You want me to make him fall in love without me, with... what? My radiant personality? Without letting him put a single hand on me?”

“Sure. You’re pretty. Cunning. You’ll think of something.”

Think of something. Salty, I stare out the window. What she’s suggesting is impossible. No woman is that pretty. Or that cunning.

Especially not me.