A Fine Tangle: Silver Locket Origins, Book 2 by Kennedy Sutton

Author:Kennedy Sutton [Sutton, Kennedy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kennedy Sutton
Published: 2024-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

Still groggy and miserable from a restless night, I climb out onto deck. For the life of me, I couldn’t stop mourning on my lot after Stephen left me last night. Bitter doesn’t begin to cover it.

He’s right, it isn’t fair. Its unfairness matters little and can’t be changed, but I can’t seem to set it aside now that he’s pointed it out. Up until recently, the choices in my life were up to only me. If they still were, I wouldn’t be here to feel rotten over not getting to kiss a man I don’t even like that much. I’d be with Hugh whether he wanted me or not and, given how he kissed me when I left the Lass, I think he would want me there.

Climbing up the quarterdeck steps, I take the helm from the man who kept the reckoning through the night and stand beside Stephen, who knows nothing of helming or navigation, so he always sets someone else to that task while pretending to supervise.

Stephen has dark circles beneath his eyes from remaining on deck through much of the night. With a nod, he appears to mean to vanish below and catch some rest he hasn’t earned when a shot breaks apart the air.

The unmistakable sound of cannon fire shredding apart the ship sets my heart running from my chest in fright. From the mist, a ship bearing a black flag bordered with red and gold like flames emerges, flanking us. More appear out of the mists just behind it. Pirates, there can be no doubt, sitting in wait for a slow ship just like ours. An entire fleet of them.

Cannons fire in quick succession, not meant to sink us, but to leave us dead in the water so they might board and take everything.

Iron shatters our main mast and the top third of it crashes down upon the cables and lines that run our ship more than any man could. The deck rocks beneath my feet. As wood, ropes, and canvas rain down upon the deck, I drop into a ball and cover the back of my neck with my arms until the worst of the disaster has passed.

Daring to lift my eyes from the deck, ropes are still snapping under the weight of the falling mast but, for now, it is held in the air by those cables that remain. It hangs above our heads like a hammer over an anvil. A reminder of the inevitable crash.

Stephen is like a statue beside me, stunned and silent, white knuckling the taffrail, not knowing what to do next other than to look terrified. Captain Bird, a decisive man in all things from what I know of him, bellows orders that will do us no good.

Men grab muskets and begin loading them. Boarding pikes, too. We’ve got no big guns, only small ones that might keep away boarders, but not if there are a lot of them. I can already count six sets of sails

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