Chapter 6: Betrayal at Breakfast
The morning smelled of brine, damp wood, and the oily perfume of a lantern that had burned too low. Leona stood on the quarterdeck, one hand resting on the recently splinted mainmast. The scar on his forearm, that silvery lightning bolt gift, caught the dull dawn light. He flexed his fingers, feeling the weird, smooth pull of the tissue. No pain. Just a permanent reminder.
Below him, the deck of the Savanaclaw was a slow-creaking orchestra of recovery. Hammers tapped with tired persistence. Salt-crusted ropes were coiled with methodical, swollen-fingered care. The storm had taken its pound of flesh, but the ship lived. He watched Ruggie moving through the crew with a keen eye and a sharper tongue, directing repairs with an efficiency Leona couldn’t be bothered to muster himself.
He felt the change before he saw it. A shift in the air, a quieting of the gulls. Leona’s gaze slid to the starboard rail.
Vil stood there, a solitary figure in borrowed trousers and a loose linen shirt that did nothing to diminish his otherworldliness. He was staring out at the calm, glassy water of the hidden cove, his profile sharp against the peach-colored sky. The defensive chill from yesterday was gone, replaced by a pensive stillness. Leona remembered the feel of Vil’s lips yielding to his in the silenced room, the way his hands had finally clutched at Leona’s shirt, not pushing away but pulling close. Just friends. The lie sat between them now, fragile and enormous.
“Healing up nice, boss,” Ruggie’s voice cut in, dry as dust. He’d materialized at Leona’s elbow without a sound, following his captain’s gaze to Vil. His hyena-smile was all knowing edges. “The arm, I mean. Looks like someone used the good salve.”
Leona grunted, not taking his eyes off Vil. “Something like that.”
“Mhm.” Ruggie leaned against the railing. “Quiet morning. Even the sea’s sleepin’ in. Think our navigator’s got us a clear path?”
“He’ll have one when I tell him to have one,” Leona said, but there was no bite in it. His mind was still half in that warded cabin, the world shrunk to the space of a breath.
A soft splash below drew their attention. And Jack’s.
Jack Howl was by the portside rail, hefting a bucket of debris overboard. His ears, always the most expressive part of him, twitched forward at the sound. He peered over the edge, his stern expression softening into something else entirely. Leona followed his look.
In the clear, shallow water, Epel Felmier floated on his back, his purple-and-red tail fanning lazily. His lilac hair splayed around him like a halo. He waved a webbed hand, a small, private smile on his face, directed solely at the big wolf-eared pirate above him.
Jack glanced furtively over his shoulder. The crew nearby were preoccupied with knots and planks. Ruggie was up with Leona. Seizing his moment, Jack leaned so far over the rail he was practically bisected by it. “Mornin’,” he murmured, his voice a low rumble meant to travel only a few feet.
Epel’s smile widened. He flipped in the water with an easy grace and swam closer, until his face was just below Jack’s. “Hey,” he whispered back, the word bubbling up with a faint, musical resonance.
What happened next wasn’t grand. It was quick, almost clumsy. Jack dipped his head. Epel rose up out of the water on his hands, braced on the ship’s hull. Their lips met—a chaste, fumbling, sun-dappled kiss that lasted maybe two seconds.
Jack pulled back like he’d been shocked. Epel dropped back into the sea with a soft splash, a furious blush staining his cheeks the color of his tail’s red accents. He gave one last, wide-eyed look at Jack before diving deep, a flash of purple vanishing into the blue.
Jack straightened up, his own face a spectacular shade of crimson. He turned around, attempting to morph back into the stoic, dependable crewman. He failed utterly. Every line of his body screamed ‘caught.’
The deck hadn’t gone silent. But it had developed a certain… focused quality. A dozen pairs of eyes, previously fixed on tasks, were now very casually, very obviously, not looking at Jack. A suppressed snicker came from near the water barrel.
From the quarterdeck, Leona let out a single, sharp snort of laughter. It wasn’t cruel. It was the sound of pure, unadulterated amusement at the universe’s ongoing comedy. He shook his head, a slow grin spreading across his face.
Beside him, Vil watched the entire exchange. He didn’t smile. But the severe line of his mouth softened. He looked from the spot where Epel had vanished to Jack’s rigid, embarrassed back, and a faint, almost imperceptible sigh escaped him. He closed his eyes for a second, as if praying for patience, or perhaps remembering his own recent, less-public indiscretion. When he opened them, he just gave a slight, weary shake of his head, his expression a mix of resignation and something perilously close to fondness.
Jack cleared his throat, the sound like rocks grinding. “Right,” he announced to no one in particular, his voice too loud. “Gonna… check the bilge pump.” He stomped off towards the hatch, his ears flat against his skull, the very picture of a man trying to evaporate.
The crew slowly went back to work, the snickers blooming into full-blown, whispered conversations. Ruggie elbowed Leona gently. “Well, ain’t that sweet. Our honorable Jack, corruptin’ the local wildlife.”
Leona’s grin remained. “Let him be. He’s got better taste than I gave him credit for.” His eyes found Vil again, who was now looking back at him. The shared glance held the weight of the unspoken—their own complicated, hidden thing, and the almost painful innocence of Jack and Epel’s tiny rebellion. Vil’s lips quirked, just at the corner. It wasn’t a smile, but it was an acknowledgment. A secret shared in a crowded room.
The moment stretched, tethered between them by the memory of a silencing spell and a kiss that had rewritten the rules. Then Vil’s gaze shifted past Leona, towards the mouth of the cove and the open sea beyond. The softness vanished, replaced by a familiar, calculating sharpness. “We should sail with the tide,” he said, his voice once again that of the navigator, the asset. “The path to the next marker is… clear, but it won’t stay that way.”
Leona nodded, the captain sliding back into place over the man. The laughter faded from his eyes, replaced by a focused intensity. “Ruggie,” he called, not raising his voice, but carrying across the deck. “Make ready. We move in an hour.”
The ship erupted into a final flurry of activity, the brief interlude of romance swallowed by the practical rhythm of departure. As Leona began barking orders, his mind was already plotting the course ahead, navigating the dangers both on the charts and in the depths below. But a part of him, the part that still felt the ghost of cool, healing magic on his skin and the warm press of a kiss in a silent room, kept one eye on the starboard rail, where a beautiful, complicated siren watched the water, and on the port side, where a flustered young man had just tasted something sweeter than salt.
That part of him, the one that catalogued the ghost-touch on his arm and the taste of salt and surrender, was a liability. Leona shoved it down as the anchor chain roared through its hawsehole, the iron links chewing into wood. "Make sail!" His voice cut through the morning, all business. "Ruggie, take the helm. Jack, stop looking like a gutted fish and haul that line."
The ship groaned to life, timbers protesting as canvas climbed the masts and caught the indifferent breeze. They slipped from the cove's green embrace into the open blue, the jagged teeth of the coastline shrinking behind them. Vil remained at the starboard rail, a statue now, his eyes tracking unseen currents below. His earlier softness was gone, locked away behind that flawless, unreadable profile.
Leona gave the deck one last sweeping glance. Everything moved as it should. He jerked his head towards his quarters. "Navigator. We need a bearing."
Vil followed him without a word. The door shut out the deck's clamor, leaving them in the damp, chart-strewn silence of the cabin. Leona leaned back against his desk, crossing his arms over the new scars. "So," he said, the word flat. "Which way to damnation?"
Vil didn't answer immediately. He walked to the large, brass-chased porthole, watching the wake foam and dissolve behind them. "Due east," he said finally. His voice was quiet. "For now. The markers are… specific."
"Markers you can't see from up here." Leona stated it as fact, not question.
A slight, tense dip of Vil's head confirmed it. "I'll need to be in the water. Tonight. To read the stars from below, to feel the pull. It's not a map you look at. It's a song you listen for in the deep."
Leona watched the tense line of his shoulders. This wasn't the arrogant siren boasting of his power. This was a prisoner explaining the mechanics of his own cage. "And your fan club? The eels?"
"They'll be watching." Vil turned from the porthole. His amethyst eyes were dark in the cabin's gloom. "Always watching. What happened on the beach… with the storm… Azul will have questions. My usefulness is my only currency."
"There's more to it than that," Leona said. It wasn't a guess.
Vil's gaze dropped to the floorboards between them. He was silent for so long Leona thought he wouldn't answer. When he spoke, the words were scraped raw. "There was a sailor. Before."
The air in the cabin thickened. Leona didn't move, didn't breathe.
"His name was Neige." Vil said the name like it was a shard of glass on his tongue. "He was… different. Kind. He sang to himself while he worked the lines. Not a siren's song. Just a human voice, horribly off-key." A faint, painful ghost of a smile touched Vil's lips and vanished. "I would listen for it every evening."
Leona saw it then, the depth of the wound. It wasn't just a story. It was a scar that never healed.
"I broke the first rule," Vil continued, his voice hollow. "I showed myself. Not to drown him. Just to… listen closer. He wasn't afraid. He called me beautiful." Vil laughed, a dry, shattered sound. "A hundred men have called me beautiful before they died. It meant nothing. From him, it was a curse."
He looked up, his eyes meeting Leona's. The pain in them was naked and immense. "Azul knew. Of course he knew. He made me watch. He consumed Neige's soul, right there on the deck of his own ship. Left his body… empty. Just a shell."
Vil's hands, usually so still, twisted together. "The crew threw him overboard. A burial at sea." His breath hitched. "I followed him down. I could have… I could have held him. Given him some grace. But I didn't. I let him sink. I watched him vanish into the dark, because touching him would have been a confession. And Azul would have consumed me next."
The confession hung between them, a dirge in the quiet room. Leona felt the weight of it, the unimaginable loneliness of that choice. Letting the one thing you cared for fall into the abyss, just to survive.
"He was your friend," Leona said, the word feeling inadequate, but probing for the shape of the thing.
"Yes." The answer was immediate, desperate. A lifeline. "Just a friend." Vil looked away again, building the walls back up, brick by painful brick. "A stupid, tragic friendship. It's why I know this arrangement of ours is… manageable. A physical transaction is clean. It has boundaries. Friendship… friendship is a vulnerability Azul exploits."
Leona absorbed this. The logic was icy, self-preserving, and born from a specific, brutal pain. It made a terrible kind of sense. Vil was drawing a line from Neige to him, classifying them in the same safe, tragic category. Just a friend. It was a shield Vil needed to believe in. Leona, staring at the raw grief on that beautiful face, found himself buying into the lie for both of them. Easier. Safer.
"Manageable," Leona echoed, pushing off the desk. He walked to the porthole, standing beside Vil, looking out at the same endless water. "Right."
He understood walls. He had his own. The lazy prince playing pirate, the strategist hiding in lethargy. "I had a brother," he found himself saying, the words unfamiliar in his mouth. "Older. The golden heir. I was the spare. The shadow."
Vil went very still beside him, listening.
"I wasn't just second-best," Leona continued, his voice a low rumble. "I was negligible. A decorative afterthought. So I left. Stole a ship. Became my own damn problem." He glanced at Vil. "They call me a king-scholar back home. It's not a title. It's a joke. Means I'm educated enough to know my place, and too much of a bastard to stay in it."
It was the most he'd ever said about it to anyone. Ruggie knew pieces, assembled them through childhood loyalty. But this—this was the outline of the hole he'd crawled out of. He offered it now, a piece of his own armor laid next to Vil's.
Vil studied him, seeing not just the pirate captain, but the shaped space where a prince had been. "You built a kingdom of your own," he said softly.
"Call it a floating prison," Leona corrected, but there was no bitterness in it. "With a crew of outcasts and a first mate who'd sell my boots for a profit." He paused. "And a friend who's a terrible navigator with a tragic past."
A faint, real smile touched Vil's lips this time. "I am an excellent navigator."
"Debatable. The tragic past part, though… you've got that locked down."
The fragile moment was shattered by a sudden, raucous cheer from the deck outside, followed by Jack Howl's loud, flustered shout of "It's not funny!" and the unmistakable, mischievous cackle of Ruggie Bucchi.
Leona sighed, the shared vulnerability dissolving back into the reality of his ship. "Sounds like your fan club’s president is causing trouble."
Vil’s smile faded, but the tightness around his eyes had eased. "Epel lacks subtlety." He turned from the porthole, the navigator’s mask settling back over his features. "We should maintain this heading until sunset. I'll need to enter the water after the second moon rises."
"Fine," Leona said, his own captain's facade sliding back into place. Friend. It was a word that felt both too small and dangerously large. He walked to the door, hand on the latch. "Try not to get consumed before you give us our heading."
A spark of the old defiance flickered in Vil's eyes. "I have no intention of being anyone's meal."
Leona nodded, a silent understanding passing between them—a pact built on shared scars and very bad ideas. He pulled the door open, the daylight and noise of his chaotic, living ship rushing in to claim them both once more.
He pulled the door open, the daylight and noise of his chaotic, living ship rushing in to claim them both once more. Leona squinted against the sudden sun, his mind already calculating sail tensions and water barrels. The easy rhythm of the deck soothed the raw edges left by Vil’s story. Ruggie was by the helm, arguing with a crewman about the proper knot for a repaired staysail. Jack was studiously scrubbing a section of deck that was already clean, his ears still faintly pink.
For two days, they sailed east under Vil’s silent, watchful direction. The sea was a flat, metallic grey, the sky a wide, empty bowl. The tension was a physical thing, a wire strung taut between the need for speed and the fear of what watched below. On the morning of the third day, Leona stood at the bow, tasting the air. It was too still. The silence felt deliberate, like the world was holding its breath.
“We’re low on decent timber for proper repairs,” Ruggie said, appearing beside him as if summoned by the thought. He leaned on the rail, following Leona’s gaze to the unnaturally calm horizon. “And the cook’s complaining about weevils in the last of the biscuit. A bad storm now would pop these temporary fixes like blisters.”
Leona grunted. He’d been thinking the same thing. Letting the ship get caught in another squall in its current state wasn't laziness; it was suicide. He looked past Ruggie, to where Vil stood amidships, his blonde hair the only bright spot against the grey seascape. He was staring east, towards their doom, with the resolve of a prisoner walking to his cell.
“Chart says there’s a cove about four hours north-west,” Leona said, his voice low. “Small port. Ragtag place, but they’ll have a market. Lumber, nails, tar. Maybe some food that doesn’t move.”
Ruggie’s nose twitched, his mind already calculating prices and potential for light-fingered supplementation. “A market means other ships. Eyes.”
“Eyes see a battered merchant schooner making repairs, not the Savanaclaw,” Leona countered, a slow plan forming. “We fly different colors. Keep the crew contained. You and Jack handle the supplies. Get what we need to make the ship whole, not just seaworthy.”
“And you?” Ruggie asked, a knowing glint in his eye.
Leona ignored him. He pushed off the rail and walked across the deck, the wood solid under his boots. Vil didn’t turn as he approached, but his posture stiffened minutely, a sail catching a new wind.
“Change of course,” Leona announced, his tone leaving no room for debate. “Port call. Four hours north-west.”
Vil finally looked at him, confusion etching a line between his brows. “Port? This is a delay. Azul—”
“Azul can swim in circles for a day,” Leona cut him off, his voice flat. “The ship won’t survive another blow. We need real repairs.” He paused, watching a gull wheel overhead against the featureless sky. “The town’s got a market. Trinkets. Fabric.” He shrugged one shoulder, aiming for nonchalance. “Might be interesting. For six hours.”
The shift in Vil was subtle but profound. It wasn’t in his face, which remained carefully neutral. It was in his eyes. The flat, resigned amethyst depths suddenly sparked, catching an internal light. A thousand questions seemed to flash there: Could I? Is it allowed? What would it be like? The spark was instantly veiled, but Leona had seen it. It was the same hungry flicker he’d seen when Vil looked at a bolt of silk weeks ago, quickly smothered.
“I… have no use for human fripperies,” Vil stated, but his gaze had already drifted towards the imagined horizon where the port lay.
“Didn’t say you did,” Leona replied, already turning to give the new heading to Ruggie. “Be ready to go when we dock. Don’t dawdle.”
The port town was nestled in a crescent-shaped bay, its buildings painted in faded blues and ochres that bled color onto the slick cobblestones. It smelled of fish, wet rope, and, from the open market stalls near the quay, of baking bread and exotic spices. The Savanaclaw, now sporting a drab green merchant flag, was tied up between a fat-bellied cargo hauler and a sleek, suspiciously clean schooner that Ruggie eyed with professional interest.
Leona went ashore with Ruggie and Jack, leaving a skeleton crew. Vil followed a few paces behind, a hood pulled up to shadow his remarkable face. It was a useless gesture. His grace was innate, his posture too perfect. He moved through the crowded, muddy quay like a ghost moving through a pantomime, untouched and separate.
Then they entered the market proper.
The spark Leona had glimpsed on the ship ignited into a quiet, radiant blaze. Vil stopped dead just inside the first row of stalls, his hood falling back without him seeming to notice. His eyes, wide and unguarded, swept over the riot of color and texture. It wasn't the produce that caught him, or the metalwork. It was the cloth.
A stall to their left was a waterfall of fabric: velvet the color of crushed wine, raw silks that shimmered like oil on water, delicate laces as complex as sea foam. Vil drifted towards it as if pulled by a tide. His hand, usually so still, rose. His fingers hovered just above a bolt of amethyst silk, not touching it, as if it were a holy relic.
“The weave is… imperfect here,” he murmured, more to himself than to Leona. He pointed to a nearly invisible flaw. “But the dye… they extracted this from a sea snail. The Tyrian method. It’s almost correct.”
The vendor, a sharp-eyed woman with ink-stained hands, watched him with fascination. “You know your cloth, sir.”
Vil didn’t seem to hear her. He had moved on, drawn to a display of finished gowns and tunics. He analyzed a man’s embroidered waistcoat with a critic’s eye, tracing the stitching of a floral pattern with a fingertip. “The tension is consistent. This was done by a master, not a machine.” He sounded genuinely awed.
Leona watched him, a strange warmth curling in his chest. This wasn't the calculated seducer or the tragic prisoner. This was pure, unadulterated fascination. Vil appreciated the craftsmanship, the human struggle to create beauty from nothing. He saw the art in it.
At a jeweler’s stall, Vil stared at a simple necklace—a teardrop of polished moonstone set in silver filigree. He didn't look greedy. He looked… reverent.
“See something you like?” Leona asked, his voice quieter than he intended.
Vil started, glancing at him as if remembering he wasn’t alone. He withdrew his hand from where it had been reaching towards the stone. “It’s… proficient work. The setting mimics the natural facets.” He turned away, his mask of indifference hastily reassembled. “We should find your timber.”
Leona didn't move. He kept looking at the necklace. The moonstone caught the diffuse light, glowing with a soft, internal fire. It was the exact shade of Vil’s eyes in certain lights. A ridiculous, impractical thought took root. He signaled the jeweler, a gnarled old man with a magnifying lens screwed into his eye.
“How much for this one?”
The haggling was brief. Leona wasn't in the mood. He passed over a few silver coins from the ship’s coffers, a transaction that felt bizarrely lawful. The jeweler wrapped the necklace in a scrap of blue velvet.
Leona caught up to Vil, who was now pretending to examine a rack of utterly plain woolen cloaks. He shoved the small, soft package into Vil’s hand.
Vil looked down at it, confusion knitting his brows. “What is this?”
“A trinket,” Leona said, already walking towards the clanging sound of a blacksmith’s forge where Ruggie was likely arguing over the price of nails. “Don’t make a thing of it.”
Vil stopped walking. He carefully unfolded the velvet. The moonstone lay in his palm, cool and luminous. He stared at it, then at Leona’s retreating back. The spark in his eyes wasn't just curiosity now. It was something softer, more disarmed. He closed his fingers gently around the stone, the velvet soft against his skin.
He didn't say thank you. He just stood there for a long moment, in the middle of the bustling, unremarkable human market, holding a piece of crafted beauty that was now, inexplicably, his. When he finally moved to follow, he slipped the velvet-wrapped necklace into an inner pocket of his borrowed shirt, directly over his heart.