Jake walked forward while Grevik struggled against the serpent-binding, his own breathing heavy with exertion and energy depletion. He looked at the first mate held immobile by shadow constructs and raised one fist.
"Yield," Jake said.
"Or I finish this."
Grevik looked at him for a long mont, still straining against the binding, then let out a breath and stopped struggling.
"I give up," he said.
"Queen was right. You are interesting."
Jake dismissed the shadow serpents and let Grevik slump to the deck, the big man sitting with his back against the railing and working feeling back into his limbs as the venom wore off.
Around them, the broader fight was winding down—Windrunner’s crew had fought well, but they were outnumbered and outpositioned, and Jake’s shadow serpents had tipped several engagents in their favor, but there were simply too many pirates for six adventurers and one Class II heir to handle without taking serious casualties.
Jake raised his voice across the deck, pushing authority into it that his Serpent King title seed to amplify.
"Enough!"
The command carried weight that surprised everyone, sothing in his bloodline making the word resonate in ways that regular speech didn’t.
Pirates and adventurers both hesitated, turning toward him, and Jake used the mont to pull at every shadow on the deck simultaneously, manifesting serpent constructs in a ring around the entire fighting area.
Twenty of them. Thirty.
He pushed past what should have been his limit, burning through reserves recklessly, the shadow serpents rising until they ford a living barrier that separated the two groups and made it very clear that continuing to fight would an fighting through constructs that had just demonstrated their effectiveness against Grevik.
"Stop fighting," Jake said, his voice carrying clearly in the sudden quiet.
"Both sides. This accomplishes nothing except casualties neither of you can afford."
It would have been different if she were just so random pirate, but she was Maureen’s sister, and it had beco complicated. Jake could sense that there was unresolved tension between the two, and fighting about it wouldn’t lead to any conclusion.
The pirates looked at Elisabeth.
Windrunner’s crew looked at Maureen.
Both won were still engaged in their own fight, steel ringing against steel as they circled each other near the ship’s center, and neither had stopped when Jake called for the general fighting to end.
Maureen attacked with a rising slash that Elisabeth deflected with a block that sent both swords wide, creating an opening that Maureen exploited with a grappling attempt that caught Elisabeth’s coat and pulled her off balance.
Elisabeth rolled with the pull and kicked out, catching Maureen in the knee hard enough to buckle it, and both won went down in a tangle of limbs and blades that resolved into them kneeling five feet apart, both breathing hard, both weapons ready but neither imdiately attacking.
"You destroyed our family," Maureen said, and there was sothing rawer in her voice now, the professional fighter giving way to the younger sister who had lived with unanswered questions for decades.
"You killed our father and blad it on Mother!"
"You murdered him and left Mother to take the bla, and she was executed for your cri, and I’ve carried that for all these years, knowing my sister was a murderer and a coward who let an innocent woman die in her place."
Elisabeth’s face went very still, sothing behind her eyes shutting down in the way people shut down when words hit too close to wounds that hadn’t healed.
"Is that what they told you?" she asked quietly.
"That’s what the soldiers said," Maureen said.
"That’s what Uncle said, that’s what people said and that’s what everybody talked about!"
"That’s what the investigation concluded. Mother killed Father and Elise ran away, except everyone knew Mother wouldn’t have done it, and people talked, and the truth ca out that you’d been seen leaving the house covered in his blood."
"And you believed them," Elisabeth said.
"I had no reason not to," Maureen said.
"You were gone. Mother was dead. Father was dead. What else was I supposed to believe?"
Elisabeth stood slowly, her sword lowering but not sheathing, and sothing in her posture was different now—the confident pirate queen had been replaced by soone younger and more damaged, the armor of decades cracking enough to show what was underneath.
"You were supposed to believe your sister," Elisabeth said, and her voice carried an edge that wasn’t anger but sothing closer to grief.
"You were supposed to know I wouldn’t have done it without reason. You were supposed to trust that if I ran, it was because staying would have destroyed worse than leaving did."
Jake stepped between them before Maureen could respond, his shadow serpents still holding position around the deck, but his attention entirely on the two won who were having an argunt that had been waiting for years to happen.
"Stop," he said.
"Both of you. This isn’t working. You’re fighting and arguing and neither of you is actually listening to what the other is saying because you’re both too angry and hurt to hear anything except what confirms what you already believe."
Maureen looked at him with an expression that suggested she was about to tell him this was none of his business, but Jake continued before she could speak.
"You need to talk," he said.
"Like real mature people, don’t fight with words while you’re fighting with swords.
Sit down.
Tell each other what actually happened. Listen to the whole story before deciding you know the truth."
He looked at Maureen specifically.
"You’ve been hunting your sister based on what soldiers told you when you were a child. Don’t you think you owe it to yourself and to her to hear what she has to say before deciding she’s a murderer and a coward?"
Maureen’s jaw tightened, and for a mont Jake thought she was going to refuse, but sothing in her expression shifted—exhaustion or curiosity or maybe just the accumulated weight of carrying anger for this long making her willing to set it down temporarily to see what was underneath.
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