Chapter 2
Evander waved Milo out with a flick of his wrist. “Go help with the anchor. Not a word to the men about his state. If anyone asks, he’s a cousin of mine picked up from an unrecorded wreck.”
Milo nodded, slipping out and pulling the heavy oak door shut behind him.
Evander stood in the center of his cabin, studying the intruder.
Stripped of his torn, sea-shredded rags, the man was wrapped in one of Evander’s spare wool sweaters. He was built like an oak timber—broad in the shoulders, with a deep chest and arms corded with heavy, rope-hardened muscle. His hair, damp and curling in dark waves, hung low over a brow that was carved with aristocratic severity, contrasting sharply with the rough, sun-darkened skin of his throat. He looked perhaps thirty-two or three, carrying himself with an odd, heavy stillness that felt less like exhaustion and more like a slumbering tempest.
“Can you hear me?” Evander asked, stepping closer.
The man lifted his head slowly. His eyes were startling: an intense, storm-cloud gray that seemed to catch what little lantern light flickered between them. But within those striking irises, there was an empty, echoing vastness.
“Yes,” the stranger murmured. His voice was a rich, low baritone, rough from sea salt and screaming wind, yet possessing an undeniable resonance that vibrated through the floorboards.
“Do you know where you are?”
The man’s gaze drifted toward the curved wooden ribs of the hull, then to the chart table where brass navigational instruments lay scattered beside a compass rose. He looked at the charts, his eyes narrowing slightly as though trying to decipher a language he had forgotten how to speak.
“A ship,” the man said slowly. “Three-masted frigate. Heavy in the draft.”
Evander’s eyebrows ticked upward. “Sharp eye. Do you have a name?”
A terrible, agonizing shadow crossed the man’s face. He brought a large, scarred hand up to his right temple, his fingers pressing into the angry bruise. His jaw worked, teeth grinding until the muscle at his cheek pulsed. He searched the empty recesses of his skull, his breathing turning fast and shallow.
“I… I don’t…” His hand began to tremble. A drop of fresh blood seeped from the cut on his brow, slipping down the bridge of his straight nose. “Nothing. There’s… only dark water. Cold. Just… cold.”
Panic was beginning to fray the edges of the stranger’s voice. In another second, a man of that size could become dangerously violent out of sheer disoriented terror.
Without thinking, Evander crossed the cabin and sank onto the bench beside him. He caught the man’s trembling wrist, his fingers curling firmly around the calloused bone.
“Easy,” Evander commanded, softening his tone into the warm, hypnotic cadence he used when pacifying skittish investors or unruly sailors. “Stop digging for it. If the sea swallowed your memories, pushing against the tide will only drown you twice.”
The stranger froze at the touch. His gray eyes snapped to Evander’s face, wide and searching. Up close, the stranger’s presence was overwhelming; he smelled of ozone, kelp, and something clean and male beneath the brine. There was an uncanny familiarity to the line of his jaw and the high arch of his cheekbones that made the hair on Evander’s arms stand up, though he could not for the life of him think why.
“Look at me,” Evander said gently. “You’re aboard the *Cynthia*. You are safe. You’re on dry timber, and nobody is coming to throw you back in the drink.”
The man stared into Evander’s hazel eyes. Gradually, the violent shudder in his frame subsided. His pulse, which had been hammering frantically under Evander’s fingers, began to steady into a slow, rhythmic thud.
“Who… are you?” the stranger asked softly.
Evander hesitated. The lie sat on his tongue, heavy and rehearsed, ready to roll off as it had a thousand times before. *I am Captain Rafael Sterling.* But looking into those raw, hollowed-out eyes, the forged name stuck in his throat.
“I’m Evander,” he whispered, offering the truth he rarely gave anyone outside his immediate crew. Then, recovering his poise, he added, “I hold the command of this vessel. And until you remember who you are, we’ll call you Fin. Short for finding you half-drowned on a reef.”
“Fin,” the man repeated, testing the syllable against his tongue. He let out a long, shuddering sigh, his broad shoulders dropping slightly. “Fin. It… will do.”
His hand did not pull away from Evander’s grasp. Instead, his thumb moved slightly, brushing over the soft leather of Evander’s cuff, as if using the solid reality of Evander’s touch to keep from slipping back into the void.
A sharp jolt shook the hull. From above, the shouts of the rigging crew drifted down, followed by a metallic screech.
“Blast it,” Evander muttered, rising to his feet and reluctantly releasing Fin’s wrist. “The wind’s shearing against the harbor shoals. Stay here and rest. I have to see us safely into open water.”
Fin stood up abruptly. The motion was so sudden and fluid that Evander took an instinctive half-step back. The man towered over him by half a head, his physical mass filling the small cabin.
“Let me come,” Fin said.
“You took a blow to the skull that would have cracked a cannonball,” Evander scoffed, gesturing toward the bunk. “Sit down before you faint on my rug.”
“I don’t faint,” Fin stated, entirely devoid of arrogance, simply delivering a fact of nature. He stepped past Evander toward the cabin door, moving with a seaman’s roll that was so balanced, so effortlessly adjusted to the sway of the deck, that he seemed anchored to the very timber beneath them. “You’re caught in a cross-current. If the foresail isn't trimmed two points to the leeward, the harbor spit will take your rudder.”
Evander blinked, stunned. “How do you know what the current is doing from inside a windowed cabin?”
Fin paused with his hand on the brass doorknob. A brief flicker of confusion crossed his features, followed by a dark, brooding concentration. “The creak of the hull. The angle of the lantern sway. The weight of the drag.” He looked back over his shoulder at Evander. “It’s wrong.”
Before Evander could argue, Fin twisted the latch and stepped out onto the companionway.
Evander swore under his breath and hurried after him. “Fin! Get back here!”
When Evander burst through the hatch onto the main deck, the ship was indeed pitching uncomfortably. A sudden squall was rolling over the outer reef, kicking up white-capped chop that fought against the outbound tide. The crew was shouting, struggling with the mainsheet tackle that had jammed in an upper block.
“Milo!” Evander yelled through cupped hands over the howling wind. “Clear that block!”
“The line’s fouled, Captain!” Milo bellowed back from the middeck, hauling on a rope with three other men to no avail. “If the wind catches the canvas full-broadside, we’ll sheer onto the shoal!”
Fin moved.
He didn't run; he flowed across the deck with terrifying efficiency. He didn't ask for permission, didn't look for guidance. He sprang onto the pin-rail, caught a ratline with one hand, and swung himself upward into the shrouds with the effortless agility of a man who had lived his entire life suspended between sky and sea.
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