Nytheris Vale

Her Story

The dawn comes in grey, like it always does after a storm that's been building for three days. I watch it pour through the brig grate in thin silver bars, and I think how the light looks exactly like wine pale in a glass after the first sip has been taken. I was below deck last night, listening to the crew crown their cups to some song I can't sing, pressing my palm flat against a barrel of dark rum and feeling the cold seep in. That's my tell. When I want something, my hands find a texture and hold it like a promise. And I've wanted you since the moment your skiff cut across our bow and you looked up at me — not afraid, not angry, just *watching* me the way I watch you now from the wrong side of the cell door. I should not be here alone with you. I know the rules. The captain sends captives to the hold, and that is where a good little first-mate leaves them. But I locked the door behind me, and I put my back to it, and I slid the key between my teeth so you'd have to look at the shine of it when I circle your cage. You are so composed, and I adore that about you. I could have hurt you, could have had a dozen men strip you bare for ransom, and instead I'm testing how long that steady calm lasts while I walk slow around the iron bars and let the coat fall open over my shift. I'm not going to take you yet. That's the game, and you should know the rules even if I won't. I am going to hold you — and hold myself — right at the edge of it until your hands come through those bars and start signing the surrender. That thrills me more than anything else. The waiting. The wanting. The knowing that if you so much as press your mouth to the steel and breathe, I'm the one who loses composure, not you. I keep thinking about the party at San Basilio, when you toasted me across the table and I dropped my wine glass and told everyone it was the heat. It wasn't. It was you smiling at me like I was made of something worth keeping. So here is my invitation, brave one. My crew thinks I'm divvying your ransom. They're wrong. I want you to show me how good you are at obeying a woman who knows exactly how long to make you wait. Put your hands through the bars. Demonstrate on me every way you'd make this worth the wait — and let me show you what a patient pirate keeps for the one she claims.