The pretty palomino seemed to be in some sort of makeshift wood and rope sling, secured toward the back of the approaching ship’s deck. I couldn’t see its owner. I didn’t have to.

“We should run,” I announced, lowering my telescope.

Someone snorted right behind me. I jumped, then jumped again when I saw Roxy appear next to me.

Bastian scoffed in agreement. “Did that other boat scare you?”

I met his eyes evenly. “Daf Carter’s on that ship.”

Bastian frowned. Roxy cocked her head. Morrissey snapped his mouth shut and watched me with a dead serious expression.

“Can you see that far?” Roxy asked.

“I can see the Navy flag,” I said. “And there’s a horse on deck.”

“Do you even know what Carter’s horse looks like?”

Who else would be chasing us down with a horse on a boat? Aloud, I said, “Tan fur, white mane?”

Morrissey nodded, a complicated look taking over his face.

“Sounds like the horse we saw at the top of the Red Cliffs,” Bastian admitted. “How in the world did Daf Carter get the Navy out here?”

Morrissey clapped his hands. “We run,” he announced, and beelined for the helm. “Zacharia, straight ahead! We need as much speed as we can get!” He rounded on me. “Rhotar, stay right here.”

I frowned.

“Rhotar!”

“Yes, Sir.”

The deck was a flurry of sailors, ropes and wind. I watched with progressively more panic as the Navy ship continued to gain on us. Violet sails shimmered in the sun. Black-painted wood sliced through calm water without resistance. My hands gripped the bridge rail as the Starwatch picked up speed, wind whipping my hair into my face.

Sheriff Carter was working with the royal Navy. Sheriff Carter was working with the royal Navy.

Everything was too fast and too loud.

“Those Navy cannons are nasty,” I heard Bastian call to Morrissey. “We need to avoid them-”

“They won’t fire,” Morrissey interrupted.

I twisted around to see Bastian pause, nod, and go back to ordering people around. Morrissey’s eyes flicked to mine for half a second.

We weren’t fast enough. Wind filled the Starwatch’s sails, and yet the Navy ship was now close enough that I could see the people on it with my bare eyes. I scanned the deck, and there he was. Chestnut brown hair, muscular build, a brown vest and pants instead of the stiff Navy uniform.

Morrissey thought they wouldn’t fire. To keep us alive, despite the threat we posed to them and others? Or because the Sheriff wouldn’t let them? He couldn’t have that much authority over Chrysanthean soldiers.

Why was Morrissey so concerned for my safety in particular?

They needed us alive.

Or at least, they needed one of us alive.

And Morrissey had figured it out before I had.

“At arms!” he shouted nearby, and the crew raced for their weapons.

A bang ricocheted off the water, and a hook smacked into the deck, sliding backward and sinking its barbed claws into the wood. The Starwatch lurched, sending me stumbling to my hands and knees. Sails cast their looming shadow over me in an all-too-familiar way as the ship pulled up beside us. Uniformed Navy soldiers crouched in the masts like shiny violet crows, waiting to swoop down and pluck away my freedom.

The sun was still high, but I swore I felt the wind turn cold. Someone shouted a command, and soldiers swung out on ropes, dropping toward me through the air.

I scrambled to my feet and bolted for the stairs.

Metal clashed somewhere nearby. Then again, and then the air was full of ringing, shouting, and further away, the high-pitched whinny of the horse. My crewmembers swarmed around me in a blur, charging the Navy soldiers with knives or cutlasses. The loud smack of a plank cracked the air, and more soldiers rushed onto the Starwatch.

A Navy soldier set his eyes on me. I didn’t have a knife, and the fact that he wasn’t allowed to kill me did nothing to steady my nerves. With a shaking hand, I reached for Carter’s revolver.

The man’s face softened for just a second, and he charged at Kienna instead.

Great. I was so useless I was getting pity from the enemy.

I wasn’t a pampered nobleman. I was a pirate, and I was going to act like it. I charged after the soldier, tackling him before he got to Kienna. I was too light to take him off his feet, but he still yelped in surprise, stumbling and grabbing my arms. I swung my knee into his groin, loosening his grip enough to wriggle backward.

A knife flew into his forehead. A clean, familiar, sickening shot.

It was exactly the sort of thing we needed right now.

Another Navy soldier turned my way, sword twirling in her hand. I stumbled back, nearly knocking Kienna over, who had to steady me with her still-injured arm while fending off her own opponent. The soldier looked me over, then actually sheathed her sword and beckoned.

Yeah, right.

“Rhotar!” Morrissey bellowed.

I twisted around, locating the Captain pushing his way toward me. “Sir!” I shouted.

“Come this way.” He beckoned with one hand as the other stuck his knife through a Navy soldier’s stomach.

There was a strange look in his eyes. Desperation, anger…cunning.

‘Or do you not think you deserve a place here?’

I did deserve a place here. But it felt like I was actually here because of something else.

And in a crushing second of betrayal, I figured it out.

“Rhotar!” he insisted, eyes turning wary.

Everything I’ve done for this ship, Captain, and I’m nothing but a bargaining chip?

I spun around to face Kienna, just as her knife found her opponent’s neck. “Hold me.”

“Wha-”

I grabbed her free hand and put it on my shoulder. “Hold me.”

She turned beat red. “Why-” she started to ask as I spun around, pulling her arm across my chest and backing into her.

“Put your knife to my throat.”

No response.

“To my throat, Kienna. Now.” My heart was hammering against my ribs.

Her arm tightened over me, and metal tickled the skin of my neck. My breath stalled. It’s just Kienna, I told myself. She’s bluffing. We’re bluffing.

I sucked in a breath, then screamed.

Maybe it was the adrenaline shooting through my blood, maybe it was the blade next to my windpipe, but my scream sounded pretty damn convincing. At least half of the combatants on the deck paused to look my way, and when the Navy soldiers saw the situation, they stopped dead.

Well. That had worked better than last time.

Captain Morrissey met my eyes with a look of raw fury—and growing panic. “Farsing, let go of him!” he roared.

I squeezed Kienna’s hand, and she sucked in a shaky breath but didn’t let go. At the Captain’s voice, the rest of the crew ceased fighting, until the entire deck of the ship was suspended in a standstill, waiting for someone to make the next move.

I didn’t know what to say. There wasn’t anything I could say; Kienna was the one who needed to speak, and I hadn’t explained the plan to her. For as clever as I’d felt a second earlier, I was utterly useless now.

Ten feet away, someone took a single step toward me, causing a few Navy soldiers to flinch. Sheriff Carter’s movements looked unnatural with the rocking of the ship, but his face was focused.

He knew what the plan was.

His eyes flicked to mine, behind me, back to me. In the bar, they’d appeared brown, but in the sun they had a golden tint that made his gaze more piercing. “They’re bluffing,” he stated quietly. His voice stood alone with the gentle bashing of waves on the hull.

“I’m not bluffing.” Kienna’s voice shook behind me.

Carter’s revolver shifted in his grip. A shiny, glaringly regular silver one.

I held his gaze. Forced him to hold mine. She’s not bluffing, I tried to convince myself, channeling all my anxiety into my expression. I let my hands shake at my sides. She really will kill me. I’m terrified, Sheriff.

And I was terrified. Because the Navy didn’t just want to avoid hurting me. It was so much worse than that.

I’m fucking terrified, Sheriff, of where you’re going to take me if I get captured today.

His brow furrowed. His jaw clenched.

The knife trembled against my throat.

“We can’t risk it.” The speaker was a tall woman proudly sporting a Captain’s pin on her lapel. “It won’t do a lot of good to bring the Rhotars’ kid back to them if he’s dead.”

Carter shook his head.

Captain Morrissey raised a hand toward me and clenched his fist, grasping for the bargaining chip I’d stolen from him. “Farsing, if they don’t stand down in ten seconds, kill him,” he growled finally. “If you don’t, I’ll hand you over with him, and you won’t be headed for a mansion.”

In the corner of my eye, I saw Roxy slowly raise her gun in Carter’s direction. No one seemed to notice.

Foreign panic shot through me. It was disorienting, completely out of place, completely different from the battle nerves or the sting of betrayal. Daf Carter had done nothing but make my life harder, yet my terror at his impending death refused to be swallowed down.

I watched his eyes. Eyes that regarded me with genuine wariness as his mind assessed the situation faster than everyone else had. Eyes that didn’t underestimate me. That looked at me with respect.

I flicked my eyes in Roxy’s direction.

“Five seconds.”

Carter didn’t follow my gaze, but I saw the shift in his stance, the way he angled his feet and twisted his shoulders to bring his own gun that much closer to Roxy. It was crazy—no one ever beat Roxy Cinder to the draw—but the Sheriff’s expression stayed dead serious.

My lungs refused to breathe. The knife tickled my skin.

This is possible.

The Navy Captain’s voice rang out—Carter moved before I’d heard the words, pivoting as his arm shot upward and the gun bucked in his hand—“Stand down!”

Bang.

Roxy shrieked, and her pistol clattered to the deck. People ducked for cover, and to my horror, I felt Kienna duck away behind me.

Hands grabbed my arm. I swung a punch at the sailor’s face, but he blocked, dragging me toward the Navy ship in an iron grip.

“Take them alive,” Carter shouted. To my shock, most of the soldiers actually obeyed, grabbing my crewmembers and tying their limbs with small pieces of rope. It didn’t look like most of them were even trying to fight back anymore.

I saw Captain Morrissey get tackled by a group of soldiers and forced chin-first to the wood. He didn’t look at me.

Someone was looking at me, though. As I was dragged toward the plank, I found golden eyes drilling into my skull. Carter looked more conflicted than I’d expected. Conflicted, but not guilty.

Roxy’s shrieks pierced over the rest of the noise. I was able to catch a glimpse of her and see that she was cradling her gun hand and writhing in the grip of the soldier holding her.

As I was forced over the plank and onto the clean, polished wood of the Navy ship’s deck, I had to wonder. Had Carter actually managed to aim for her hand? Or was she lucky to still be alive?