Maybe it was stupid to goad her, but there’s only so much she can do to me if the captain wants me. She’ll push me around and rough me up, but it’s all posturing, like Reckoners do sometimes when they’re starved for attention. And the easiest way to put a beast in its place is to snap back.

They wrestle me out of the closet and down the ship’s narrow passageways to a pair of elegant wooden doors at the aft. I can hear voices on the other side, voices that stop when Varma knocks.

“Come in,” someone calls.

Varma pushes the door open, and Swift shoves me in before her. She twists her fingers viciously around my wrist and gives my hair one last yank before she releases me, and my skin burns. I wince, but do my best to brush it off. Another rule of Reckoner training: you can’t let them see if they hurt you.

The room is vast, probably once a bar or a lounge before it was torn out of whatever yacht it came from and repurposed. Now it’s a throne room, choked with the pirate crew. They throng around a dais in the back of the room, where the captain lounges in an ornately carved chair.

So not only have I been captured by pirates—I’ve had the misfortune of being taken in by theatrical ones.

And their queen seems to have fully embraced her flair for the dramatic. She’s wearing a crimson evening gown; I almost fail to recognize her as the woman who killed Durga. Gone is the wide-brimmed hat and long coat that cut her intimidating silhouette, but she’s intimidating now in the same way that bonfires are. When her eyes meet mine, I can’t help but shrink back a little. Looking at her is like looking into hell itself.

“Welcome aboard the Minnow, Cassandra,” she says. She must have searched the Nereid ’s file system, must have pulled data to find out exactly who she’s taken prisoner. “I’m Santa Elena. You can call me that, or Captain. Swift here is a big fan of ‘boss,’ but I don’t think we’re quite on those terms yet.”

Everyone in this room could kill me, and most of them look like they want to. Swift and Varma have joined their captain on the dais. They stand next to three others at Santa Elena’s right, and I start to understand the hierarchy on this ship a little more. The pirates that crowd the room are the regulars, the muscle. On Santa Elena’s left sits a child. He can’t possibly be more than ten years old, and I’m stumped about his role until she ruffles his hair, a soft smile breaking over her cruel features. He has to be her son—by blood, it looks like, given the golden brown skin and wide nose they share.