Lunars of the Caribbean

Rule 1: The Captain Lies(23)

The Rampion sailed on its own, leaving little to nothing for the current crew to do. Wolf and Scarlet watched the waves roll around the ocean, standing against the rail of the ship. Jacin kept Winter from leaping into the water to swim with the fish. Thorne plotted their course in the Map room.

Cinder sat on the plank floor by the helm, used a weld stone to sharpen her sword, and pondered.

She new much more now than she'd been informed of a week ago. She knew the reason had convinced her to break him out and journey with him was because he saw her tattoo. The fact that she was the missing princess of Luna was the reason Thorne was letting her tag along. It was why he was helping her.

He wanted to take Sybil down. For what she did to him and Crescent. The best way to do that was to cut off Sybil's power and resources. To do that, he would have to separate her from her position as Lieutenant to Queen Levana.

By dethroning Queen Levana and replacing her with the missing heir to the Lunar throne, Sybil would lose her power, and Crescent would be freed. Cinder knew exactly what that meant. Thorne had been using her from the beginning.

But they were going to rescue Crescent before they took down Levana. Maybe it was just about revenge, Thorne wanting to dethrone Levana. Either way, he couldn't do it without Cinder. He needed her, and she knew it.

What she didn't know was if she was ready to be the Queen of a country. A country with a horrible reputation based on unjust punishments, tyranny, and torture. A place that people were trapped and never allowed to leave. The island was practically a gigantic prison.

Cinder was all for helping Thorne rescue Crescent, and truly desire to set the inhabitants of Luna free from Levana's cruelty. Still, she wasn't thrilled about becoming their ruler. Maybe there was another way. A plan that could end with Levana locked up, Luna freed, Port Royal safe, and Cinder still free to do as she chose.

For hours, Cinder tried to formulate a plan with a conclusion close to that. All of them had one of two endings. One, Cinder would end up a Queen anyway. Two, they'd fail and Levana would win. The ladder was definitely not an option. So, that left Cinder having to hope for the first choice, even if she didn't want it.

There was one part of Thorne's plan that didn't fit. How had he planned to find the heir in the first place? If this had been his plan all along, had he been searching for Cinder since Crescent's kidnapping? Had it been an idea that popped into his head the moment he found she was the heir? Why had Thorne even been in Port Royal?

Million and millions of questions like that entered Cinder's head. There were no definite answers. Thorne was the man of a thousand mysteries. Cinder bet Thorne himself didn't know all of them. Then again, that wasn't saying much.

While Thorne could seem like a drunken fool at times, he was one of the most brilliant men Cinder had ever met. Most of his ideas sounded like the workings of a mad man to her. Yet, when he played them out, step by step, they slowly made sense. And they all worked out in the end.

She prayed that this plan would as well.

Another thought troubled Cinder. If Thorne had planned on finding the heir, and they – like Cinder – had second thoughts about ruling over Luna, what would Thorne have done? Would he force the heir to become the new ruler so he could get revenge? Would he do whatever it took to get them to do as he said?

Gah. This is all speculation, Cinder thought. Thorne would never do that to anyone ... unless their name was Sybil Mira or Levana.

Stars, all of the sea travel and talk of fighting and dethroning a queen was getting to Cinder's head. Thorne would never commit such heinous acts against his friends.