Introduction
The sea might be his mistress, but Shereen is the queen of his heart.
Known as the Iron Pirate, Darius has been sailing the treacherous seas for a decade now. It might be time to settle down before the monsters he’s been fending off finally get their tentacles on him.
But any plans for a quiet retirement walk the plank when he discovers the Princess Shereen has stowed away aboard his ship.
A pretty princess with a price on her head.
A woman who has only one dangerous choice if she wants to be free.
If Shereen can prove she inherited her father’s power, she might just survive.
Problem is, what’s a pirate to do when she asks him to be her king?
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Prologue
The oceans have always been the most wondrous of places, full of mysteries and monsters. Ruins, too, like the fabled Las Vegas with its flashing lights and gaudy wasteful displays, seen in very old preserved videos from the past.
The excessive use of energy and the fanciful shapes fascinated and appalled those living on New Earth hundreds of years after the cataclysmic event most commonly known as the Fall. Think lots of meteors shattering the Earth and basically killing it.
Not quite everything died, but entire species were wiped out. The very soil and rocks, even the waters and air currents, were forever tainted in some places.
But the Earth was healing. The humans didn’t need to hide underground anymore.
These days, their reality was an unforgiving land that struggled to give them the bare necessities to survive. The kind of waste seen by humanity’s ancestors was not only unheard of it was maddening. Living was much harder now. Given the difficulty in building machines and other fancy electronic parts, due to a lack of the metal ores needed, practical items took precedence over things considered frivolous like video screens and even cameras. Images could be taken in the cities by professionals with a license from the Enclave and purchased for a premium. Because not just anyone could take pictures.
Just like not just anyone could make the rules or deliver important news.
The Enclave controlled it all. But they actually had their own version of sound reasoning behind their tight-fisted regime. The Enclave had risen from the ashes of humanity. During their time underground, the founders had researched the past and studied its nuances. By picking apart the culture and events that led to certain outcomes, they came to a conclusion of how they would not fail as a species again.
To succeed, they had to control a few things. The main one being restricting the flow of knowledge. It meant few books survived from the ancient times. Few images too. The Enclave wanted its citizens living in the here and now, obeying the rules. And it worked. There was order for a long time. A few generations of peace and a system that worked, especially for those highly placed in the Enclave. Those on the lower end...everyone served a purpose.
The world marched on, and as humanity began to get more comfortable on the surface, the more the less difficult areas to live in thrived. Citizens far away from the power and influence of the court made their own rules, elected their own leaders.
As of the last few decades, even the luxuries once limited to the highest ranking became available to everyone. Contraband thrived as the populations grew.
And grew. It became harder to enforce some of the stricter rules. Some kingdoms doubled down on punishment in an attempt to keep order.
Others like the Marshlands and Sapphire Kingdom—most famously known for Port City, the biggest trading focal point on the ocean routes—loosened or outright got rid of some laws.
But the one regulation that always remained, no matter how archaic or actually stupid, was the one deeming that only the strongest Aunimaa could be considered queen or king. Aunimaa being someone with a type of psionic power. Or, as the non-Enclave called it, magic.
Strength decided who was recognized by the Enclave court. Families constantly vied to get ahead, usually by offering to pair genetics to see if it produced a child worthy of the court. The ruling class was ever conscious of who they bred with. Love wasn’t why someone mixed their genes. They did it in the hope of creating the one that would rule.
An heir to their empire.
Because power was everything, and when these rapacious individuals saw weakness …then you had the situation in Port City.
Chapter 1
Shereen dropped like a rock into the water. She sank like one, too. For a child born by the sea, Shereen had little affinity with water, and since the nightmares started, she even feared it.
It pressed around her, trying to force its way past her lips, wanting to fill her mouth and flood her lungs. The water weighed down her clothes and dragged at her limbs. As she continued to sink, her chest got so tight she thought it might burst. Not exactly something she wanted to experience.
She thrashed and kicked, turning her head from side to side to find the surface, but everywhere she looked there was only murky fluid. She had no idea what direction was up or down. When she slammed into something hard, she pounded on it, but the strangely smooth surface didn’t crack, and in it she could see a cheering crowd. People roaring and clapping and jeering as she drowned.
Her lungs spasmed. She couldn’t hold it anymore. Her lips parted—
Boom! The thunder hit hard. Just once. It proved to be enough.
The jolt from sleep to awake, not drowning in water. She wasn’t even wet. She remained safe and snug under the duvet on her bed, in her room. The filmy toile of the canopy overhead glowed softly as the lights from the city, filtered through the window, caught the silvery thread weaved through it.
I’m not dead. Maybe if she kept repeating it while lying still, her heart would calm. Knowing she was caught in a nightmare didn’t stop her pulse from racing each time. So many times now she’d drowned. The dream kept happening over and over. Yet it wasn’t the reason she couldn’t fall back asleep.
There existed an agitation to the night. The quivering calm before violence. She’d only ever experienced it a few times in her life, like the night her oldest brother died and father took it poorly. The taste of it stuck with a person.
People would die this night.
It occurred to Shereen to check on her father. Her poor father, sick in his bed for weeks now. They both knew he was being poisoned. They just couldn’t seem to stop it, and not for lack of trying. She had brought him food that she tasted first and had him drinking only from sealed containers. In spite of all the precautions, he got sicker. The doctors tried all kinds of remedies from liquid medicines to the more esoteric rituals that involved chanting. It all failed. They declared themselves baffled, but Shereen wasn’t about to give up.
She slid out of bed, feet automatically slipping into the slippers by it, and wrapped a robe around herself. Her hair lay long and loose down her back. She took a shuffling step before whirling to reach under her pillow for the dagger she’d taken to keeping there. Not that she’d had much practice with it. A princess had guards to defend her, but what if those guards turned against her?
With her father dying, she’d heard whispers. People eyed her and talked about her fitness to rule. Mostly her lack of it.