Chapter 8
Ashford stepped in close, his cold breath smelling of clove oil and sour wine.
"Every Sterling heir carries the ancestral cipher seal," Ashford whispered, his eyes gleaming with triumphant malice. "The signet of Danvers. Hand-carved from meteoric iron, bearing the private Latin motto granted only to the family patriarch. The High Admiralty registers require that very imprint to validate any royal commission."
Ashford smiled, exposing neat, predatory teeth.
"You will present the genuine Sterling seal to the board at dawn," Ashford said. "Or I will string you up from the *St. George*’s yardarm by midday, and hang every single pirate on this deck alongside you for high treason."
Ashford turned sharply on his heel, his cloak flaring like a raven’s wings.
"Do not attempt to weigh anchor," Ashford called over his shoulder as he descended toward his longboat. "My thirty-two-pounders are primed with chain-shot. If this tub twitches half a cable’s length before sunrise, I will blow your masts out of the water and drown you where you lie."
The marines retreated. The longboat pushed off into the mist.
Evander stood frozen on the quarterdeck. The silence that followed was suffocating.
He didn't look at Milo. He didn't look at the crew, whose terrified, questioning faces were turned toward him from the waist of the ship. He turned blindly toward the companionway hatch, stumbled down the dark stairs, and slipped into his aft cabin, locking the heavy oak door behind him with trembling fingers.
The moment the lock clicked, Evander’s knees gave out.
He collapsed against the wood, sliding down to the floorboards. His bicorne tumbled from his head, clattering across the cedar planks. He buried his face in his hands, his breath coming in ragged, hyperventilating sobs that tore through his throat.
*It’s over.*
The terror that he had kept locked behind charming smiles and stolen finery came rushing over him like forty fathoms of black water.
There was no seal. There had never been a seal.
When Evander had salvaged the battered hulk of the *Cynthia* from the shoals five years ago, he had found dead men, broken timbers, and empty sea chests. He had found uniforms, logbooks, and commission papers bearing a legendary name. But the private belongings—the signet, the jewels, the hereditary artifacts of the great Sterling family—had gone to the bottom of the sea with the *Vanguard*.
At dawn, Ashford would demand the iron seal.
At dawn, the lie would die. And seventy innocent men, men who had trusted Evander to keep them fed, would swing from the yardarms for his hubris.
"Evander."
A shadow fell over him.
Evander lifted his head, his vision blurred by hot, shameful tears.
Fin was standing there.
He had remained locked inside the cabin during the confrontation, per Evander’s strict orders. He stood tall in the dim glow of the stern windows, his broad shoulders squared, his linen shirt hanging loosely over his massive frame. His storm-gray eyes were wide, fixed entirely on Evander with a fierce, burning alarm.
Fin sank to his knees. He didn't hesitate. He reached out, his large, calloused hands closing firmly around Evander’s trembling shoulders, pulling him forward until Evander’s head struck his chest.
"What happened topside?" Fin asked, his voice a low, vibrating rumble against Evander’s temple. "Who was that man?"
Evander choked on a bitter, broken laugh. He tried to pull back, tried to shove Fin away, but Fin’s arms tightened like iron bands, holding him fast against the steady, thundering beat of his heart.
"Let go of me," Evander rasped, his voice cracking with self-loathing. "Let go of me, Fin. You’re holding a dead man."
"I’m holding you," Fin replied fiercely. He shifted his grip, his large palms coming up to frame Evander’s face, forcing Evander to look directly into his storm-gray eyes. "Tell me. What did he say?"
"He knows," Evander whispered, a hot tear spilling over his lashes and tracing down to Fin’s thumb. "He knows I’m a fraud."
Fin’s jaw clenched, the muscle jumping against his cheek. "You are the captain of this ship."
"I am nothing!" Evander cried out, the truth finally bursting through the seams of his five-year cage, loud and ugly in the quiet cabin. "I’m not a captain! I’m not an earl! I’m a gutter rat from the Bristol docks! My father died in a debtors’ cell, and my mother scrubbed tavern floors until her knees bled!"
Fin didn't flinch. His gaze remained locked on Evander, unwavering, steady as an anchor in stone.
"Five years ago," Evander sobbed, the words tumbling out in a desperate, shameful rush, "I found this ship drifting in the aftermath of the hurricane. The crew was dead. The real Captain Sterling—the hero, the Crown’s darling, the brilliant naval god—drowned with his flagship forty miles away. I was starving. My boys were starving. I put on his blue coat. I forged his signature on the commission. I stole his ghost so the Admiralty wouldn't hang us for salvage piracy!"
Evander grabbed Fin’s forearms, his fingernails digging into the linen.
"I built an empire on a corpse’s name!" Evander whispered, his chest heaving. "And now Ashford is here. He knew Rafael. He wants the ancestral seal—the meteoric iron signet of Danvers. At sunrise, if I don't produce a seal that has been resting at the bottom of the ocean for five years, he will hang me. And he will hang Milo, and Billy, and you."
Evander slumped forward, his forehead pressing against Fin’s broad shoulder, weeping with the raw, hollow exhaustion of a man whose execution date had just been carved into the wall.
"I’m sorry," Evander choked out. "I saved you from the reef just to get you strangled on a royal gallows. I’m sorry, Fin. I’m so sorry."
For a long moment, the only sound was the lap of the harbor water against the hull.
Then, Fin moved.
He didn't pull away in disgust. He didn't look upon Evander with the cold betrayal Evander had anticipated for five long years.
Instead, Fin’s fingers tangled into the damp, curling hair at the nape of Evander’s neck. With an unbearable, possessive tenderness, Fin tilted Evander’s face upward.
"You fed those men," Fin whispered, his gray eyes blazing with a dark, terrifying heat. "You took a broken ship and navigated through gales that would have shattered an admiral’s fleet. You pulled seventy orphans out of the mud and gave them a flag to sail under."
"It was a stolen flag—"
"I don't care about the cloth," Fin rumbled softly. "I care about the man who held the helm."
Fin lowered his brow until it rested gently against Evander’s, his breath warm and shallow against Evander’s parted lips. His gray eyes searched Evander’s face, dark with an unspoken, reverent hunger, waiting—not demanding, but offering an anchor in the dark.
Evander’s breath hitched in his throat. Looking into those steady, devoted eyes, the crushing shame in his ribs cracked wide open, replaced by a desperate, aching need to be held, to be known, to be forgiven.
He didn't turn away.
Instead, Evander lifted his trembling hands to Fin’s broad shoulders, his fingers curling into the rough linen of Fin’s shirt, actively pulling the larger man closer.
