Carina and Elodie were fetched sometime the next morning by Hawkins's enforcers. They were brought out onto the sand of the beach, where there was another ship and a party disembarking—dressed in the signature turquoise and gold uniforms of the Manoans guard. They were brought along with Captain Hawkins and a chest.

Elodie wasn't entirely sure what was going on until the two parties met, midway in the beach and she saw among their numbers a young man she'd only caught a glimpse of in the pink house in New Aubrais.

Carina gasped as she saw him too.

Her brother—King Alcor of the Manoans. He was stoic, regal in his dress and the way he held himself, his voice quiet and silky, yet carrying—just like a poet's might. "Captain Hawkins. Have you brought what I asked?"

The parties stopped, and Captain Hawkins gestured to one of his enforcers to open the chest. The man did as he was told, revealing the crystal keys inside. Not just the ones that Carina and the Albatross had accumulated, so many more than Elodie had known were out there.

How many keys did a city need?

"Exactly as promised, I have your sister in good health, the remaining keys, and the Fleetwood girl to lure her mother out." Captain Hawkins gestured first at Carina, then the open chest containing the crystal keys, and then Elodie herself. "I've proven my word to be as good as the gold in your city."

"Indeed, you have." Alcor surveyed the party. "Let us reiterate the terms of our tentative contract."

"Yes, let's."

Alcor nodded, folding his arms behind his back. "You will hand over the keys and my sister, and aid in the retrieval of the kind key from Keira Fleetwood in exchange for gold from Limuria once the city is raised."

"Aye." Captain Hawkins eyed the youth warily. "My fleet will have first pick of the treasure."

"Treasure that is not to do with our crystals," Alcor amended.

Captain Hawkins nodded. "It sounds suitable enough."

"Are you mad?" Carina cried out, and Elodie wasn't exactly sure which of the two men she was addressing. With the wild panic in her blue and green eyes, Elodie suspected that Carina didn't entirely know, either.

Still, Captain Hawkins was the one who turned around. "Many have called me a madman, lass, for far less."

He then looked to Alcor, no, at the gold dripping from his personage. "But perhaps Manoan gold can buy Libertalia something more than a house of cards on the sand, ready to crumble away at any second."

His eyes flitted to Elodie when he mentioned Libertalia.

To her eyes. The eyes she'd inherited from her father.

The man who had once been his closest friend, who he had avenged so thoroughly after his execution by the Albionese crown.

Was that the real reason he'd been after the treasure all this time? More than greed, it all came down to her father.

It was the reliving of an old adventure otherwise lost, with those who had once embarked on it dead or retired like Baptiste and so many other members of the Flying Gang, men and sailors whose names Elodie never learned.

It was a protection for the place that they had founded, an island with no emperors, with no divine right of kings.

It was grief, not greed, that had driven Captain Hawkins to everything.

It didn't change anything that happened.

It shouldn't have.

But Elodie would be lying if she said that it didn't change her mind, at least a little, about what Captain Hawkins had done in his Black-Sail Fleet's search for her father's treasure and the keys to Limuria.

"Then we are agreed." King Alcor's voice drew Elodie back to the present, out of her meandering thoughts. "Rigel!"

"Yes, sire?" One of the older advisors hobbled over.

"Please ready the documents at once, my fellow monarch, the Pirate King, and I have an agreement."

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"Are you sure this is a wise course of action, Your Majesty?" Rigel's pale blue eyes darted nervously to Captain Hawkins before deferring back to his king. "While I am sure this. . . man of great reputation is appreciative of your magnanimous nature in acknowledging his self-proclaimed title, he is still a pirate."

"Not self-proclaimed." Captain Hawkins examined the rings on his hand nonchalantly, as if they were merely discussing the weather. "Elected, by a council of peers. Not that you'd know anything about that."

Rigel looked rather uncomfortable by this, but King Alcor merely met his gaze, calmly.

"You will address our ally as a King in the same right as I." King Alcor glanced at Rigel. "Now, if honesty is your concern, this is why I am asking for your help drawing up the documents."

He looked back to Captain Hawkins, tilting his head ever-so-slightly, a small sly smile curling up his full lips.

"After all, I do believe our friend here is a businessman as well as a pirate and a King?"

Captain Hawkins nodded, but there was something stormy brewing in his eyes, something in the way he stiffened.

Was it a threat, against his well-to-do family in Yorkhaven?

For all his flaws, for the times he had strayed, for the call of the sea and glory and gold that he could not resist, he did love Mrs. Hawkins. It was evident in the party itself, when he let Elodie and the rest go despite their obvious clumsy attempt at theft, merely because he did not want to bring his troubles into her world.

He would not take well to any implicated threats.

"I look forward to reviewing the details with you, Your Highness." He bowed with a flourish, almost a mockery.

But King Alcor ignored it. Even though, given his expression, so startlingly like his sister's, he'd seen it and recognized the game Captain Marius Hawkins was playing.

----------------------------------------

Then the hunt for Keira Fleetwood began.

Through the jungle they tramped, Captain Hawkins himself holding onto the rope that bound Elodie's wrists. He pulled her along, muttering about this-and-that, following clues that Elodie herself did not know how to recognize.

She did not know how long they had wandered through it all, racing sometimes and trodding slowly the others, all drowning in the heat of it. Elodie began to wonder how they even knew her mother was there at all, for she seemed as tangible as a ghost. Still, she dared not say a word and Captain Hawkins and his crew continued on.

They were somewhere on the south part of the small island, where some of the trees gave way to mud-tinged clearing.

There her mother was, bent over a patch of mud, frowning and muttering something to herself.

Captain Hawkins pulled Elodie close to him, and drew his cutlass. "Make some noise, Miss Fleetwood. Otherwise, I'm afraid I'll have to make you scream."

His cutlass, nicked and scratched with the scars of war, caught a deadly ray of sun, a gleam that reminded Elodie that she was on the wrong end of the blade.

"Mother!" Elodie cried, hating herself for it.

"Elodie?" Keira's head shot up, and she drew her cutlass. She pointed the end at Captain Hawkins, while he raised his to Elodie's neck.

It did not cut into her—not yet anyway. But the cold steel chilled her to her very bone, the razor's edge a promise of what was to come if Keira Fleetwood did not comply.

"Let her go, she has nothing to do with all of this." Keira stepped closer. "She knows nothing of the treasure or anything in the ways of piracy."

At this, Captain Hawkins laughed, a booming sound that came from his chest. "Oh, Keira, it seems even you underestimated your daughter."

"What are you talking about?" Even now, Elodie could hear a note of hope in Keira's voice, one that she understood now more than ever. Now that she had met the selkie, the Lady of Desolation.

"Your daughter managed to escape one of my men's ships, join aboard Captain Jennings's ship, and has been an active participant in the hunt for the keys to Limuria, the final of which lies within the treasure Felix forsook." Even so, there was a strange sort of pride in Captain Hawkins's voice.

Then again, he too had once been her father's friend. He knew of her parents' legacy as pirates of legend.

Why wouldn't he be proud to see her father's ghost, living through her in her exploits?

"You what—" Keira shook her head. "Still, you fired the first shot. And she's still a child, nothing like myself or her father. She has no place in this world, Marius."

"You and I both know better than that." Captain Hawkins's voice went low. "Not that it matters, Keira. You and I both know that I'm not above harming the innocent if the innocent are standing in my way."

There was defeat in Keira's green eyes—but her expression was still resolute, as she lowered her blade. "Fine, do it then."

Elodie blinked, eyes wide. She hadn't expected that she was such a disappointment to her mother, to be so easily sacrificed. Or perhaps her mother's loyalty to her father was still more powerful than her loyalty to his last living child.

"And kill the last remnant of Felix Vance on this earth?" Captain Hawkins sneered. "I don't think so."

With that, he began to raise his blade to Elodie's throat. She screwed her eyes shut, dreading and anticipating what would come next—

"Stop!"

Her mother's blade fell to the jungle floor with a clang and her hands were raised in the air.

"I'll do what you want." Her tone was low, resigned.

But her eyes were on Elodie.

"I knew we wouldn't have to come to such unpleasantness." Captain Hawkins removed his blade and let Elodie go, stumbling forward into her mother's arms. "I thank you, Keira, for seeing sense."

Keira looked up from Elodie. "If you call this sense, then mad-men must be sane."

"That may be, but no blood was shed today." Captain Hawkins sheathed his blade.

"There's still time yet."

Hawkins's enforcers loomed closer.

"Mother, don't," Elodie hissed. "It's not worth it."

Keira frowned, and Elodie could see it in her mother's eyes, she was sizing up the threat. But she came to the same dire conclusion that Elodie did.

"Fine," she spat, shooting one last glare at Hawkins. "I'll come quietly. For now."

Captain Hawkins laughed again, a sadder sound. "I wouldn't expect anything different."

He then turned to one of his enforcers. "Take them back aboard the Golden Drake, make sure they are treated well. Understood?"

One of the brutes grunted a "yes" and Elodie and Keira were escorted away.