Page 3 of Scourge of the Shores
Her smile lived in mockery as she advanced and forced her words through tight teeth. “Harvestin’ sea dragon blood for poison? Inventin’ weaponry with its spikes?” She eyed each captain with a corded neck as she walked to the hall’s center, where a wide table had stood for generations.
A map of their families’ travels and navigation was etched into the polished wood surface. They had mapped most of the known world. She eyed their home on the map, their sanctuary island on the cusp of the West, North, and South seas. Seeing it released the tension in her shoulders. A long, slow breath whistled through her teeth in a hiss.
Hitching her flintlock back into her belt, she shook her head at the men and women in the room. Every captain there had a pirate ancestor who wanted their family to be safe, and they were safe for hundreds of years until Cain found them. Danna remembered her father’s stories of her ancestor, the first Pirate King, Chadwick, who retired to the island with his wife, his love, and his riches, and built the island’s reputation, attracting others to settle there at the end of their piracy. But even though the island took piracy out of the pirate, it never took the pirate out of the person.
She placed her captain’s leather hat on the table and outlined their island with a finger. The poor, ignorant captains in the room failed to see that their goal had not yet been achieved.
With a renewed sense of control over the rage coursing through her body, she asked in a much more civilized voice, “Tell me. We’ve saved our home from the sea dragon?”
Her questions met with mute responses. Tension raised her shoulders to her neck, the longer the silence ensued.
Shoving her hands on her hips, she turned around to face them.
“Answer me!” Her voice broke mid-yell.
A long-time captain and Danna’s closest advisor, Lucas Ervin, stepped forward. Lucas approached with his hands out to his sides, one gripping a rum bottle’s neck.
“Danna . . .” He hesitated, shifting his weight. “Cain turned tail. That outta count for somethin’.” His brooding brown eyes pleaded with her as they had always done.
A string of “Aye”s followed him.
Danna took a slow step forward, eyes locked on Lucas. Then, with one sharp slap, she knocked the bottle from his hand.
The dark amber liquid splashed from the neck as the bottle’s body hit the floor and rolled to a stop beneath another captain’s nearby foot. It left a wide arc of rum with an instant aroma of deeply steeped spiced sweetness amid the stunned faces.
The room held its breath.
“Three ships: lost to the deep!” Danna’s eyes grew wide. Her ears burned. Heat rose to her head. Control was fleeting. “Three ships. Full of crew. Gutted! Not one survivor.”
She had hoped Cain’s death would win them a relic, the kind sea myths swore carried the DeepMother’s voice. A prophecy, bound to bone. Its owner gained not only power and respect, but a legacy entangled in fate—one step closer to the divine that might bless them or doom them.
But Cain still breathed, and the promise of prophecy remained just that: a tale, a myth, as distant as the stars.
Danna shoved Lucas in the chest, sending him a few steps backward. She ignored his disappointed gaze and locked her eyes with the other captains. She removed her dagger from its sheath on her belt and pointed it at a few in their faces.
“And ye’re in here celebratin’ what? Cain’s retreat?”
Danna marched to the table and raised her dagger high, stabbing the map at the sea dragon’s supposed lair—a jut of black-silk waters near the siren’s realm in the West.
No sailor ventured into siren waters and returned. Cain’s lair wasn’t quite within their territory, but close enough to chill a man’s bones.
But Danna was no man. And if that’s where Cain curled to sleep, she’d wake him with steel. She’d make that beast pay for what he’d done.
Her nails dug into her shaking palm. Her fingers popped off the blade’s handle, and she stepped back, running a sleeve under her blood-dripping nose. Her weapon remained upright, its point buried deep in the wood.
“Make no mistake,” Danna declared with a pointed finger. All eyes were on her, watching her every move, except Lucas’s, whose gaze was on her dagger.
Her jaw loosened at Lucas’s silent disapproval. He had been a surrogate father when hers had died, a young surrogate, but still, Lucas retained his sense of advisor and role of protector for her. But celebrating when three ships were lost without winning was a perception between right and wrong—life and death. She was right. He was wrong.
She yanked her leather hat off the table, popped the dome, and placed it on her head.
“He’ll return,” Danna finally declared. “And we’d better kill him when he does,” she growled with the last of her voice.
She grabbed her dagger and, with a swift yank, freed it from the table’s grasp. Her heavy footsteps echoed through the otherwise silent one-room main hall. She threw the double doors open and let them fall behind her. Her gaze lifted to the full moon as she rammed her blade back into her belted sheath.
The lap of the shore waters would bring the dead back to the island by morning. Her jaw clenched as she dreaded the wail that would follow. She stomped off to her hut and swung the door open. Her mother lay in the cot in the back near the fire.
“Danna?” her mother asked, her voice faint.
