His Uncharted Heart

The first sound was a lie. It was a dull, hollow thud, like a crate of wine being dropped in the hold. I was in my cabin, tracing the patterns on the damask wallpaper with my finger, thinking about how little I wanted to marry the Duke. Then the world tore itself open. The second sound was the truth, a violent crack that split the air and the timbers of the ship simultaneously. The floor bucked beneath my feet, sending me stumbling against my writing desk. Ink sloshed from its well, a dark stain spreading across an unfinished letter to my sister.

My father’s sailors were shouting on deck. It was a panicked, desperate sound, nothing like the coordinated calls they made when hoisting the sails. Then came the splintering of wood close by, the heavy, rhythmic thud of an axe against my cabin door. It gave way with a scream of tortured timber.

Two men filled the doorway. They were grimy, bearded, smelling of sweat and something metallic, like old blood. One of them grinned, showing gums and a few brown teeth. He looked at my dress, a pale blue silk I’d worn for luncheon, and then at me, and his eyes were greedy. He took a step forward.

“Leave her,” a voice said from the passageway. It was not loud, but it cut through the noise. The man stopped.

They pulled me from the cabin. My arms were grabbed, my fine slippers scraped uselessly against the deck, now littered with debris and the still forms of men I had known. The air was thick with smoke, stinging my eyes and catching in my throat. The chaos had a focal point, a man who stood near the helm of our captured ship as if he owned it. And now, of course, he did.

He was tall, dressed in dark, practical leather that seemed to absorb the light. His hair was black and pulled back from his face. He wasn't looking at the fighting, which seemed to be mostly over, or at his men securing the prize. He was looking at me as I was dragged toward him.

His gaze was the colour of the sea before a storm, a flat, cold grey. There was no heat in it, no lust, none of the animal hunger I’d seen in the eyes of the man at my door. There was nothing at all. It was an assessment. The way my father looks at a bolt of cloth or a barrel of spice, calculating its worth, its potential for profit. I was an object to be appraised. My silk dress, my soft hands, my parentage—he was adding it all up on some internal ledger. The thought was more chilling than any threat of violence.

He turned his head slightly, speaking to a man beside him without ever taking his eyes off me. “Take her to the Serpent.”

The name of his ship. The words were quiet, a low rumble that carried with absolute authority. He didn't speak to me. He had appraised the asset and was now giving instructions for its storage.

Rough hands pushed me toward the railing, toward a plank laid between the two vessels. My world, the solid, predictable world of my father’s wealth, had been reduced to a single, precarious bridge of wood stretching over a churning, indifferent sea. I looked back at him one last time. His expression had not changed. He watched me go, his face unreadable, as if I were already just a line item in his logbook, a ransom to be collected.

The cabin they put me in was little more than a closet. It smelled of brine and old wood and something vaguely sour, like spilled ale. A narrow cot was bolted to the wall, a single thin blanket folded upon it. There was no porthole, only the solid, dark wood of the walls and the heavy door through which they had shoved me. The sound of the bolt sliding home was absolute. For the first hour, or perhaps it was three, I did not move. I stood in the centre of the small space and felt the slow, constant roll of the ship under my feet, a rhythm that was all wrong. My body was a taut wire of fear.

Twice a day, the bolt would scrape back and a man would appear. He was younger than the others who had taken me, with a nervous energy and eyes that wouldn't quite meet mine. He would set a wooden plate with a piece of hard bread and a tin cup of water on the floor, just inside the door, and then retreat as if I might bite him.

“I won’t eat it,” I said the third time he came. My voice was a dry croak.

He just shrugged, his gaze fixed on the wall behind me. “Captain’s orders. To bring it.”

“Take it back,” I said. “Tell your captain I don’t want it.”

He didn't take it back. He left it on the floor and locked the door. It was my only rebellion, this small, pointless act of starvation. It was the only thing I had left that was mine to control. I would sit on the edge of the cot and stare at the bread until it became an indistinct shape in the gloom, my stomach twisting into a hard knot of hunger and defiance.

When I wasn't staring at the bread, I was listening. The ship was a living thing, and I learned its language. The groan of the timbers was its breath. The sharp snap of canvas high above was the flexing of its wings. I learned to distinguish the heavy tread of men hauling rope from the lighter, quicker steps of someone on watch. I heard their laughter, rough and sudden, and their arguments, low and guttural. The sounds created a map of a world just beyond my door, a world I was part of and yet completely removed from.

And then there was his voice. Dimitri’s. It was infrequent, but it always carried. A sharp command from the deck, a low instruction that cut through the wind and the work. It was never raised in a shout, yet it silenced all other noise. There was a cadence to it, a calm authority that was more menacing than any yelling. Every time I heard it, the hairs on my arms would stand on end. I would press my ear to the cold wood of the wall, straining to hear, to understand the man who held the key to this box and the deed to my life. I catalogued the sound of him as a naturalist might catalogue a predator.

The terror was a constant, a low hum beneath the surface. But after the third day, a hot, potent fury began to burn through it. The sheer injustice of it. I was not a sack of coin. I was a person. My life had been a carefully constructed thing, and he had simply smashed it for profit. The anger was a relief. It was active, while fear was passive. It gave my mind something to do other than tremble.

My thoughts turned to escape. At first, the plans were almost practical. I would wait for the wary crewman, overpower him when he brought the food. I imagined striking him with the tin cup, grabbing his keys, slipping out into the night. But I was weak from hunger, and he was a man who hauled ropes for a living. The fantasy dissolved.

So the plots grew wilder. I would feign a sickness, a desperate, writhing illness that would force them to bring a doctor, to open the door wider, to be distracted. I would use my silk dress to start a fire, create a panic. I would find a loose board in the floor, pry it up with my fingernails, and crawl through the bilge, emerging like a rat onto the deck in the dead of night. I imagined myself sliding over the railing, the cold shock of the water a baptism back into freedom. I would swim. I didn’t know where I would swim to, but in my mind, the open ocean was preferable to this box. Each plan was a small, desperate prayer I would build and then dismantle, only to begin building the next. It was all I had.

It was on the fourth day. The bolt scraped, a familiar, ugly sound. I didn’t look up from my hands, which were clasped in my lap. I waited for the clink of the tin cup on the floorboards, the soft thud of bread, the hasty retreat. Instead, the door swung fully open, hitting the interior wall with a solid thwack. A shadow fell over me.

I looked up.

It was him. Dimitri. He had to stoop to enter the doorway, and even then, his presence seemed to warp the dimensions of the room, making the ceiling lower, the walls closer. He held a wooden tray, the same kind the boy brought, but his hands were different. Larger, the knuckles scarred, a dusting of black hair on his fingers. He shut the door behind him, and the sound of the latch clicking into place felt different now that he was on the inside with me. The small space was suddenly airless.

His eyes, that same flat grey, scanned the cabin. They took in the untouched plates of food I’d pushed into a corner, then me, sitting on the edge of the cot. He didn’t seem angry, or even annoyed. It was that same look of assessment, as if he were observing the behaviour of a strange animal. He stepped forward and placed the tray not on the floor, but on the cot, right beside my thigh. I flinched away from the proximity, pressing myself against the wall.

He straightened up, his head nearly brushing the low beams. He smelled of salt and clean air, a scent so alien in this stale box that it made me dizzy.

“A dead hostage has no value,” he said. His voice was exactly as I had heard it from a distance, a low rumble that vibrated in the small space. It wasn’t a threat. It was a statement of fact.

The cold pragmatism of it ignited the fury I’d been nursing. I looked from the fresh bread on the tray to his impassive face. “Is that what I am? A piece of cargo to be kept alive until delivery?”

He did not answer immediately, just watched me, his expression unchanging. It was unnerving.

“You’re a parasite,” I said, my own voice thin but sharp. “A common thief who preys on the work of better men. You steal and you kill and you call it a profession. There’s no honour in it. You have no honour.”

The words felt good to say, a small, hot release. I wanted to provoke him, to break through that infuriating calm. I wanted him to yell, to hit me, to do anything other than look at me as if I were a column of figures he was adding up.

“You speak of honour,” he said, his voice still quiet. “The honour of a father who sends his daughter across the sea to be sold in marriage to a man she despises? Is that the honour you miss?”

The accuracy of the guess struck me dumb for a second. Of course, he would have known the ship’s manifest, its purpose. He knew exactly who I was, and who I was being sent to.

“That is none of your concern,” I spat. “It is a world away from your understanding. My life was my own.”

“Was it?” A corner of his mouth lifted, a fractional movement that was not quite a smile. It was amusement. He was amused by me. The realisation was more insulting than any blow. “Your defiance is a pointless waste of energy. Eat the bread, Lady Ella. Or don’t. The outcome is the same for me. It is only a question of how long you wish to feel hungry.”

He looked at me for a moment longer, this flicker of humour in his grey eyes, as if we were sharing a private joke at my expense. He saw my rebellion not as a threat, but as a curiosity, a bit of theatre. He had taken everything from me, and now he was taking my anger, reducing it to a childish tantrum.

Then, without another word, he turned. The small space immediately felt larger again as he moved toward the door. He unlatched it, his movements economical and sure, and stepped out into the passageway.

The door bolted shut. The sound was the same as before, but the silence that followed was different. It was heavy with the echo of his voice and the clean scent of the air he had brought in with him. My face was hot with shame. He had not just dismissed my defiance, he had found it quaint. A pointless waste of energy. The words circled in my head.

My eyes fell to the tray on the cot. The bread was there, and the water. But there was something else, something dark and rectangular nestled beside the tin cup. It was a book.

I stared at it. It was not a new book. The leather cover was dark brown, worn smooth and soft at the corners, the kind of texture that comes from being held by the same hands for years. There was no title on the front, but when I leaned closer, I could see the faint, faded gilt lettering on the spine. Meditations.

I did not move for a long time. I looked from the book to the door and back again. It made no sense. It was a piece of a different puzzle, one that did not belong in the picture of my capture. A pirate, a man who had appraised me like livestock, did not carry a copy of Marcus Aurelius in his coat. It felt like a trap, though I could not imagine the purpose of it. A test of some kind. Or worse, a mockery. A way of telling me to endure my fate with quiet dignity, an instruction he had no right to give.

My anger, which had been a clear, hot flame, now felt smoky and confused. I reached out, my fingers hesitating just above the worn leather. The object felt dangerous. To touch it was to engage with him on a level beyond captor and captive. It was to acknowledge the gesture.

Finally, I picked it up. It was heavier than it looked, solid and real in my hands. The leather was cool. I thought of his hands, the ones that had held this book. The same hands that could steer a ship through a storm or, presumably, end a life. I ran my thumb over the softened spine. The book fell open in my lap to a page near the middle, as if it had been opened there many times before.

The print was small. A passage was marked with a faint line in the margin, drawn not in ink but with the pressure of a fingernail. The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.

I read the line again. And again. The words were stark and simple. They were also a profound contradiction to the man’s entire existence. His whole life was an act of revenge, of taking what he believed the world owed him. What did he see when he read this? Did he not see himself? Or did he see the man he was before, the man he was taking revenge for?

My stomach growled, a low, painful cramp. My gaze shifted to the bread on the tray. It looked different from the hardtack the boy had brought. It was a thick slice from a proper loaf, the crust dark and the inside soft. Without thinking, I broke off a piece. I put it in my mouth and chewed. The taste was plain, wholesome. It was the first thing I had eaten in four days.

I kept chewing, my eyes fixed on the open page of the book. The fear had not gone away. I was still in a locked room on a pirate ship in the middle of an ocean I did not recognize. But something had shifted. The clean lines of my situation, of my hatred for him, had been blurred. He was no longer just a monster, a brute, a simple villain from a story. He was a man who held a book of philosophy in one hand and my life in the other.

The contradiction was a splinter under my skin. I could not reconcile the two images: the cold-eyed captain and the reader of Stoic thought. I spent the rest of the night like that, sitting on the cot in the dark, the book open in my lap. I ate the rest of the bread, piece by piece. The words on the page blurred until they were meaningless shapes, but the question of him remained, sharp and clear and deeply unsettling. A sliver of curiosity had found its way through the fear, and I knew, with a sinking feeling in my gut, that it was a far more dangerous thing to harbour than anger.