Page 34 of Crossbones
He studies my face and when my mouth creases with annoyance, his grin simply widens.
“I’m sure after the ordeal of letting nobility slip through your fingers and your unfortunate capture, you’re quite abashed.” He pulls out a key and tosses it to me. “Don’t worry, Captain, I’m about to make it all better.”
He waves his hand at me and makes his way around the desk.
“Take those off and have a seat.”
I watch him sink into his chair and throw his feet up on the corner. I unlock the manacles, letting them drop before sitting down in one of two armchairs facing him. The crackling of the fire is the only sound for several long moments as we stare at each other.
“I hope the accommodations have been satisfactory.” I look at him in annoyance and he just grins. “Not in the mood—fine, this might put a smile on your face: I need your help.” He sighs out the sentence like it costs him to speak the words.
“My help?” I ask incredulously. “You’re the reason I’m about to hang and you want my help?”
“Oh, you won’t hang.” He waves his hand and makes a face like it’s no big deal.
“The King—yourfather—” I grind out. “Was pretty clear—”
“You won’t hang because you won’t be around for themtohang. If you accept my offer of course.”
I run a hand over my face and shake my head. “Enough with the fucking riddles and questions on top of questions. Just tell me what you want.”
“I came across some information recently that needs to be handled delicately.”
My eyebrows jump up at the irony. “And you think asking a pirate for help is the way to go about that?”
“I do—because it involves gold, and by delicately, I mean I don’t need my father or brother catching wind of what I’m doing.”
I settle back in my chair, regarding him with curiosity. “Go on.”
“I need a ship and a crew with the ability to sail the Straights.”
“That’s Kraken territory.”
“Aye,” Caspian nods once. “Through pirate-infested waters, Kraken territory—” He looks at me slyly. “—then further north.”
“The Stormwrack? No one sails up there.”
“That’s why I need the best,” he says. “I needyou, Captain.”
The way he says those words causes fire to curl inside my veins, but I shove it down and regard him with a tilt of my head as my hunger and thirst-addled brain thinks over why he’d want me to travel some of the most dangerous seas in the world.
“I’m not some privateer you can hire for your amusement—” I trail off as I watch him shake his head and a gleam of hunger settles on his face.
“I know I seem like a degenerate, but humor me for a moment and think bigger, Captain.”
I run a hand over my jaw, realization hitting me. But he can’t be talking about what I think he is—
“It doesn’t exist. You know that right? Whatever information you’ve come by is probably fake.”
The prince shrugs, but he’s obviously enjoying the buildup to whatever storm he’s about to drop on me.
“I heard a rumor you’ve sailed up there before,” he says instead.
“Aye—and I didn’t find anything.”
My tone makes it very clear that if I didn’t find anything, no one was going to find anything. I’d sailed the Stormwrack on multiple occasions, searching for the lost city, and never turned up with anything but a lot of false information, dead ends, and close calls with death.
“Maybe you just didn’t know where to look,” Caspian says.
