Boots, Blood, & Bad Ideas

The first cannonball hit just above the galley, punching a neat hole through the pantry and turning the rum into airborne shrapnel.

I ducked — instinct, not strategy — and still caught a wedge of smoked ham to the eye, slammed as if fired from a gun.

“Cassian!” I shouted, blinking grease, rum, and regret. “We are officially out of rum — and dignity!”

Cassian Sinclair, captain in all but name and idiot in every other regard, swung down from the rigging with a cutlass clenched between his teeth, like he thought he was starring in a tavern ballad about better men.

He hit the deck hard, boots skidding across blood-slick planks, sword rattling into his hand like a tragic theater prop.

“I was low on both already,” he said, flashing that damned grin that could charm a shark out of its kill. “Might as well balance the ledger.”

Another cannonball punched through the mainsail. The Grackle groaned under us like a drunk losing a fistfight.

We were taking on water.

The crew was half-dead, half-mutinied, and a hundred percent over it.

Meanwhile, Cassian chased revenge like it was a ship full of naked duchesses and free whiskey.

I pressed my back to the mast, heart hammering against cracked ribs.

“This?” I rasped. “This was your master plan?”

“Nope,” Cassian said, grinning wider. “This is my contingency.”

He yanked off his boot and waved it like a flag.

Carved into the sole, in frantic letters:

ABANDON HOPE. STAGE LEFT.