The sound of someone’s thundering heartbeat.
Or is that mine?
Still as a marble statue, I listened.
Jack’s voice, far away, exploded like a cannon. “Intruders! They’re on The Black Otter!”
Like the clap of thunder before a downpour, Jack’s booming voice unleashed a cacophony of clanging steel, cursing, growling that filled the sky over the sea.
I spun on my heel and let go a roar as I drove my sword into the gut of the breather behind me. The fog began to melt away like frosting from a cake, revealing a gruesome scene that played out like a bloody stage play.
Our eyes met and I tried to ignore the blade of his own that was arched to deliver a death blow and perhaps split my skull in two, had I not delivered mine first.
I yanked on the handle as I’d seen Jack do, but it didn’t budge. Instead, the man gripped the blade with his hands and whimpered. I yanked again. His turban fell off and rolled across the deck.
“Lodged in the backbone.” Solo’s voice was a welcome respite from the howls around me. “Like this.”
He pressed his booted foot next to my stuck blade and pushed hard against the man. My first kill slunk to the deck with a groan.
The blond former-prince only smiled. “Your first kill.”
I nodded. Now I’ve done murder.
“They boarded us.” He held my sword lightly in his hand and swept the bloody blade across his britches. “If you didn’t kill him, he would have killed you. And thought nothing more of it.”
“Solo! Behind you!”
The Polish prince-turned-pirate whirled and slashed the approaching pirate across the throat with my blade. He turned back to me, tossed my sword, and offered a gleaming grin before sprinting back into the melee. “Remember to slide your feet if you engage an opponent,” he called.
I spotted Jack locked in combat with a pirate near the rigging. Holding my sword before me, I made haste to my husband.
The buccaneer’s hand circled Jack’s throat, but he couldn’t seem to tighten it to a death grip. Jack appeared oblivious to the fingers that clawed at his neck as he held his rival at bay with the jeweled cutlass pressed beneath his chin. They danced beneath the rigging, each trying to gain an ounce of ground against his opponent to finish him off.
I must help Jack, but how?
With wild eyes, I glanced about.
I remembered my first training scenario with Jack and Solo aboard The Black Otter. Each were fighting each other, demonstrating proper dueling technique, before they turned and charged at me. Unsure of what to do, I had started up the rigging. The splintery ropes bit into my hands at once and my muscles burned. No London debutante’s hands were meant for climbing salty, worn rigging.
Solo and Jack both stopped cold. “Darling, you never go up.”
I let my husband pluck me from the ropes. “Why not?”
Solo laughed a throaty laugh. “Well, we can go up. But not you, Red.”
That comment hit me hard. Who are these men to say that I am part captain but unable to climb my own rigging? So when the sun went down, each night without fail, I went up. Up the rigging, more and more each night. My palms blistered and slowly callused and the climbing got easier.
The Arab pirate and Jack danced beneath the rigging in what looked to become a dance to the death. I studied the environment. The only place to go was up.
I clenched the bloody blade between my teeth and began to climb the ratlines. The coppery taste of enemy blood turned my stomach, but I fought back the swells of nausea. The ship pitched and rolled as a monstrous wave built just off the starboard side of The Black Otter. I ground my teeth onto the metal and held on to the rough rope so tightly that my fingers went numb.
The wave rose over the gory mess of pirates and crashed down like a divine hammer. My body snapped this way and that, like a water drop shaken from a dog’s fur. Finally, I opened my eyes and looked down. The force of the wave had torn Jack and his nemesis from the other’s grasp, and each lay on the deck. Jack’s jeweled cutlass lay between them.
The brown pirate moved first.
I pulled the blade from my teeth. All sense of fear had taken permanent leave. Jack was in trouble.
The rogue wave appeared to have sapped the will to fight from all the deck as his long fingers fumbled with Jack’s sword. I stared at my target and pointed my blade toward the deck.
Three—two—
The brown pirate rose from the deck and coughed as he hefted Jack’s cutlass into his grasp.
One.
“No!” The word ripped from my throat hard and fast.
My fingers unfurled from around the rope. My body cut through the salty, humid air and I landed on my mark. The blade that saved Jack’s life so many times before did its duty by my hand as it ground through the flesh of the rival pirate captain and took his life—before he could take that of my husband’s. I’d taken two lives in one day, yet I felt more like myself than ever before. My conscience, strangely enough, had been more deeply plagued when I was engaged to Sully.
•
She was crouched behind the wheelhouse when I saw her. The fog that had burned away during the fight left in its wake heavy, humid air. We’d come out on top against the Muslim pirates, though as I looked around at the piles of robed bodies, I wasn’t sure how.
“Jack,” I called.
A splash sounded as another body fell to its watery grave. A moment later, Jack appeared. “A fine opponent he was. He didn’t even have a sword. Almost bested me with just his hands.”
“Do you suppose the crew still think I’m bad luck to have aboard?”
