“When you’re confined to this room,” he says, “how do you expect me to be able to change into clean clothes?”

“Go get dressed in Draxen’s room!” I snap.

“Where’s the fun in that?”

I exhale angrily as I wait for him to finish. I listen to the rustling of cloth, the cinching of a belt, the thud of newly adorned boots smacking the floor—and I wait for it all to stop.

I’m listening so hard that I don’t even register that the boots are moving toward me until I feel a hand at my lower back.

His lips are at my ear. “It’s safe to look now, Alosa.” He brushes his lips across the side of my head before leaving.

I don’t realize how tense I am until my whole body relaxes.

* * *

I suppose I should be bored out of my mind during the next few days, but I’m not. Riden comes into his room often to check on me. We talk until he tries to morph the conversation into an interrogation. He wants to know things, like the layout of my father’s keep, how often supply ships deliver shipments, how many men guard the keep, and so on and so forth. I tell him none of these things. I will die before I give that information up. Well, actually they’d die, since I wouldn’t allow them to kill me.

I’ve noticed that Riden’s been keeping me at a distance. Still, he can’t help it when I bait him during the conversation. It’s fun watching him struggle, trying to find a balance with me. Toying with Riden is certainly more entertaining than scouring the ship. I become a little more anxious each night that goes by without the map turning up. I check our heading frequently, gauging how much time is left before I have to present the map to my father. We pass Lycon’s Peak and start sailing northeast.

It won’t be long now.

* * *

I wake early, even though I made it to bed late. I’m too worried to sleep anymore, so I stare at the ceiling, thinking it all over in my head. I go over every spot I checked, searching for anything that may have been overlooked. My two weeks are almost up. The checkpoint could show up on the horizon at any moment.

“You’re up early,” Riden says from where he lies next to me.

“Couldn’t sleep,” I say.

“Are you worried about something?”

“Actually, it was your snoring that kept me awake.”

He smiles. “I do not snore.”

“My ears beg to differ.”

He rolls onto his back, staring upward with me. “Tell me what’s worrying you.”

“Aside from the fact that I’m being held hostage by enemy pirates?”

“Yes,” he says simply, “aside from that.”

Well, I can’t very well tell him that either Draxen or his father hid a map somewhere and I can’t find it. Instead, I ask him, “What’s the most reckless thing you’ve ever done to try to impress your father?”

He’s quiet.

“Does it pain you to talk about him?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “No, that’s not it. I try not to think about him because I hated him so much.”

“I understand.” I wait to see if he’ll still answer my question.

He sighs. “It’s difficult to say. I did many reckless things.”

“Tell me one of them.”

“All right,” he says pensively. “Once, when we were sailing far out at sea, we pillaged a ship before burning it down. My father dropped a chest of jewels into the ocean while trying to haul it over to the ship. I dove in after it.”

“I think perhaps we should go over the meaning of reckless.”

“There were acura eels in the water, finishing off the sailors that survived the initial attack on their ship.”

I turn my head in his direction. “Now that was reckless.” Acura eels are more feared than sharks. They’re faster and more sensitive to human blood. In some cases, they’re even bigger and toothier. Most of the time, they stay near the ocean floor, but if they sense a disturbance at the surface, they’ll come to investigate.

“Were you able to get the chest back for him?” I ask.

“No. An eel headed for me. Draxen saw it and lowered me a rope. He hoisted me out of the water just in time.”

“What did your father do?”

“He tried to toss me back over to get the chest, but Draxen was able to talk him out of it.”

“Sounds to me that if you hadn’t killed him, someone else would have eventually. He sounds awful.”

“He was.” Riden turns to look at me. “I’m guessing that question wasn’t random. Are you doing something reckless to impress your own father?”

“I do reckless things for the fun of it.”

“I have no trouble believing that.”

“Do you feel like you knew your father well?”

He shrugs. “Well enough. Why?”

I have to be careful. I need to make the conversation seem harmless. He needs to think it’s all about me. “My father trusts me more than he does anyone else in the world, yet I can’t help but feel like he keeps secrets from me.”

“Everybody has their secrets. We would all feel too exposed if we weren’t able to keep things to ourselves.”

“What are—” No, I can’t ask Riden about his own secrets. I need to keep the conversation focused. “But this feels different. Couldn’t you tell when your father was keeping things from you? Big things?”

“Yes, usually.”

“My father had a hiding place on his ship, a loose floorboard in his rooms. He would keep important things there. When I felt like he wasn’t telling me everything, I could usually find his plans and secrets there.” I’m making this all up quickly. I hope Riden can’t tell.

In truth, my father has a room he alone enters at the keep. His private getaway. I’ve been tempted many times to sneak in. I even made an attempt once. When Father found me outside fiddling with the lock, he said if I was so interested in his locked doors, he’d put me behind one.

And he did. In a cell deep down. For a month.

“But then one day,” I continue, “the space below the floorboard was empty. And nothing has been kept there ever since.”

“He found you out.”

“Or suspected what I was up to and didn’t want to take any chances.”