Ambrose Beake, Potioneer First Class in the Queen’s Royal Navy, hated the ocean.

As a sensible man of the magical sciences, he kept this particular emotion to himself, but there was no getting around it—he hated it. He hated how cold it was, how unpredictable it was, how big it was.

But most of all, he hated the people that sailed on it. The pirates, specifically.

So when three toothy-grinned buccaneers forced him across the gangplank at sword-point, with the cold and swirling and vast ocean whipping meters below his feet, he could easily say he was having the worst day of his life.

“Get a move on!” The man behind him jabbed his cutlass deeper into the back of Ambrose’s coat, its point threatening to bite.

“I’m going, I’m going!” Ambrose snapped back, glaring until he stumbled onto the planks of an unfamiliar deck. The kidnapper in front of him grabbed his arm and dragged him to a towering, scruffy pirate near the mast.

“Take what you can and bring it to Sherry for inspection!” this new pirate shouted as their crew clamored to board the Navy fighter. “Banneker, that includes you!”

“You’re no fun!” one lanky, red-haired man yelled back, then grabbed a rope and swung over Ambrose’s head, whooping and hollering over to the Navy ship. Before Ambrose could twist back towards the gunshots and sabres rattling behind him, his captors shoved him forward.

“Got the potioneer, Grim.” The kidnappers stepped aside so Grim could survey him. Their gaze was quick and efficient, lingering only briefly on Ambrose’s potion bandolier and silver armband before waving him off.

“Good,” they grunted. “Keep him in the brig until Valenz gets back.”

Ambrose’s body went cold at the name. He had wanted the Navy sailors to be wrong. He had hoped, rather desperately, that they had misread the lettering on the ship, or mistook the figurehead for something else.

But they had been right, and now Ambrose was aboard the Griffin’s Claw, the ship of the notorious Captain Elias Valenz.

As the pirates pushed him belowdecks, his mind spun frantically through the stories he had heard of the man. He was ruthless, the sailors had whispered over their flasks. Keelhauled a man just for looking at him, then used his body as cannon fodder.

His red coat was dyed with the blood from his conquests, his breakfast bowl filled with kraken meat…

But that wasn’t even the half of it. They also said that he entranced men and women in every port. That he once seduced a governor out of hanging him. That his smile could make his victim forget about their deadly fate, right up to the moment they—

“In you go,” the pirate in front muttered, yanking open the cell door and tossing Ambrose inside. Ambrose fell to his knees on the mildewed planks, the wood draining the remaining warmth from his fingers. The metal door clanged behind him, and it was then that Ambrose realized—the brig was empty, save for him. And the deck above had held none of his Navy counterparts.

“Wait!” He scrambled over to the door. “You took no others from my ship. What does the captain want from me?”

The pirates didn’t answer, leaving Ambrose alone in the swaying, creaking darkness.