Chapter 9.

He returned to awareness like he was surfacing from deep under water. Slowly at first, but the closer to the surface, the faster it went, until he cracked open his eyes. His mind, groggy as it was, began cataloguing the differences from the last time he had been fully aware. He was horizontal, he was comfortable, and he was hungover. None of these things had been as such when he had last been fully conscious.

Since becoming the Dark One, he had never been drunk. He was actually surprised at the fact that he had lost consciousness, given the fact that the darkness kept him from sleep for the last thirty years. He didn't realize he could get drunk. The few times he had tried, his magic burned off the alcohol almost as soon as it entered his system, but the amount of rum he had imbibed the previous night had bordered on obscene. Had he been anything less than immortal, he probably would have managed to kill himself with the amount of alcohol he had consumed.

Bloody shame it didn't. He sighed and summoned up a small thread of magic to soothe the throbbing behind his eyes. He gave a hiss of relief as his pain slowly faded, and he began to sit up. Once his mind was free of the pulsing of his heartbeat, he suddenly heard something that made him freeze. A quiet lullaby was whispering throughout his quarters. Was his ship singing?

"What the bloody hell?" he muttered, finishing sitting up and swinging his feet over the side of the bunk to drop them to the floor. His bare feet. Which had not been bare the night before. He braced his hands on the edge of the bed, glaring down at his feet accusingly, trying to understand their uncovered state, and how they had managed to get that way. He wiggled his toes, trying to get them to talk, as he allowed his mind to sift through the haze of the evening before.

He remembered fleeing from his guilt into his stock of rum in the hold, using his magic to drag half his store of the liquor up to his cabin. He started in his chair, cursing and taking deep draughts between his oaths. Then he made his way to pacing, muttering to the voices in his head. By that point, he had made it through about half of the bottles he had brought up from the hold. He had eventually found his way onto the floor in the corner and then he could remember no more.

He cast his eyes about the room in the morning light, noticing that despite being essentially black out drunk, his body still rose with the sun. His toes still hadn't answered him.

He tried to remember what happened after he had slid to the floor in the corner. He had yanked his jacket and vest off at one point and at another he thought he recollected whispering broken apologies and sweet nothings to the wood as he caressed the floorboards under his hand. But beyond that, he could not figure out how he had made it from the corner behind his desk into his bed- and shoeless no less.

He leveled one last glare toward his toes before standing and stretching, searching around for his vest briefly before simply giving into his disinterest and just summoning it to his hand. Putting it on leisurely, he wandered over to his desk, feeling the floorboards vibrating lightly under his feet. She was still singing.

"What the bloody hell has gotten into you this morning, old girl?" he queried, finding the numerous empty glass bottles from the night before scattered on the ground behind his chair. With a wave of his hand, he banished them to the crate in the hold where they joined their fellows, to wait until he could fill them when he next made port. "And where the bloody hell are my shoes?"

He heard her interrupt her song to chuckle lightly before returning to her quiet melody. Losing what little patience he possessed in the morning, he just muttered, "Ah damn it all," and summoned his socks and shoes onto his feet. He was about to do the same to his leather duster when he saw it pooled in a pile by the door.

Suddenly, he had the vague memory of throwing it there with a curse after he had struggled to remove it, along with a petulant promise to never oil the damn thing again.

With a light sigh of embarrassment, he picked it up off the floor and shook it out, waving his hand, applying the treatment that used to take hours to the leather in moments. Then he moodily stuffed his arms in the sleeves before yanking the cabin door open to stomp up the stairs and into the morning air, as he had ever other morning.

Another bloody sunrise in the solitu- the thought cut off suddenly as he caught sight of a figure standing up on the foredeck, looking out over the rails at the rising sun.

The bloody princess. The darkness hissed at her silhouette. The memory of his deal from the day before came rushing back, and he ran a hand through his hair as he considered the circumstances. Scratching the back of his head, he thought about just turning back around and returning to his cabin, but the wind was blowing, the sea smelled fresh, and for the first time in decades, his ship was singing to him in the sunrise. Only a bloody fool would turn away from such a glorious morning, and though the darkness ran through his veins, the sea had been his life blood for far longer, and it called to him in a summons he could not resist.

With a sigh, he dropped his hand and stepped up onto the main deck, quietly making his way up to her. He reached up to grab the rail as he ascended the steps when he caught sight of his hand. His only hand. The hand that should have been blistered and red and absolutely throbbing with pain. His perfectly fine hand.

He ended up standing there with his arm half outstretched like a fool for a few moments as he processed this latest development in his morning. First his horizontalness. Then his bare feet. And now his uninjured hand. It stirred a memory of a ghost. A being made of light. A warm touch that spread a warmth he had not felt since he had lain in Milah's arms. A fragile hand clutching at his arm, grasping at his hooked wrist as if it was whole.

He shook his head at the vision, trying to free his mind from the odd funk it had fallen into. It must have been the rum. But within, he felt the darkness read and coil as is preparing for a fight.

He finished his assent to the foredeck, pleased that she hadn't heard him approach. For a moment he just observed her. Her face was away from him, but he could read the defeat in her shoulders, the way she clutched at the rail for support. He could see how her body trembled with exhaustion. And at her quiet sniffle, he felt something in him clench at the sound.

Comfort her, dear one.

He cast a skeptical and amused glance at the main mast as he tried to shake the unsettling sensation. The bloody woman had done this to herself. He wouldn't try to make her feel better about it. The darkness radiated its approval at the thought.

Besides, he had to plan how to get her family back to the castle and way to ensure that Her Royal Evilness would not be a further problem. He was aware that he had guaranteed the on-going safety of her family, something his predecessor would have laughed at, hence why he was always insistent that he promise ongoing satisfaction for his deal makers. He didn't want to be like his forebear. But he was well aware how delicate the situation was.

But while he was busy planning and gathering information, someone had to care for his girl. And that's where his slave- he flinched internally at the thought- came in. She would do what he normally would. And since he could tell she had never done a hard day's work in her life, he was sincerely looking forward to watching her struggle in doing so. At the thought of her on her knees trying to scrub the decks had him delighted, mind painting picture after picture of her, allowing his grin to grow predatorily as the darkness took his thoughts to more unseemly places. A princess on her knees is a rare thing after all.

With his grin and newfound good humor in place, he crept up as close as he could to her form without touching her, before whispering lowly in her ear.

"Are you ready to begin, Princess?"