Chapter 30: The Fury of a Failed Hunter
"I thought I was a scavenger, Elena began to say. "Maybe I was in a past life." Elena said. "But I am a Locke. I was born to be a pirate."
Lux let out a jagged, hysterical laugh, his face contorting into a mask of pure fury. "The treasure is gone. The vault is empty. My informants tell me the mountain is a hollow shell." He drew his rapier, the thin, elegant blade singing as it left the scabbard. "I spent a fortune chasing this ghost. I lost men. I lost time. And you... you let a scavenger sit on the throne?"
"She isn't sitting on a throne, Lux," Kai said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, low register. "She is the throne. And if you want the gold, you’ll have to beg her for it."
The deck erupted into a chaotic dance of Kai's crew engaged Lux’s lieutenants, the air filling with the scent of gunpowder and the screams of the dying. But for Elena, the world narrowed down to the two men in front of her.
She felt the darkness in her chest swell, a cold, exhilarating power. She didn't run. She didn't hide under the bed. She drew the obsidian dagger, the black stone drinking the light around it.
"Is this what you want, Lux?" she called out, her voice steady and chilling. "The blood of a King? Come and take it."