The Merman and the Barbarian Pirate Read Online Free PDF Page B

away with it, the devil knows. Now, you." He turned back to Raef. "Do you have a name, boy?"
    "R-Raef." His cheeks burned with embarrassment, setting the rest of his body quivering all the harder.
    Kemp placed his hands on his hips. "All right, lad. Seeing as you found our secret harbor, we must set sail now, on the night tide. Obviously, you cannot go back to your master tonight, so we'll set you ashore farther up the coast, probably at your lord's town of Lilhaven. 'Til then, you can enjoy our hospitality."
    Raef's heart, already racing, lurched. Gods, he had to try to get out of there. He knew the rules of shifting well enough now—remaining too long in human form sickened all merfolk, with the exception of maids with babes in their bellies. They were able to remain in their human form for the duration of their pregnancy if they chose, usually nested in semiaquatic caves. Eventually, any others would die, shriveled up like old seaweed. Those with little experience of shifting, like Raef, would sicken fastest. When dawn came, he needed to dive back into the sea and transform into his merman shape.
    "You must let me go right away," he demanded, striving to keep the tremor from his voice. "I cannot raise a warning yet. I'm so tired after my swim that I will never make it back to the castle before dawn."
    "You probably speak truth there." Kemp rubbed his lantern jaw then shrugged. "Take him below anyway, boys."
    "Aye, aye, Captain Kemp," chorused George and Peffy as one.
    "And clap him in irons," added Kemp. "We can take no risks with such prizes at stake for us."
    "Irons?" Raef's heart jolted. "No, please don't chain me. I can't. I don't want that!"
    His cries went as unheeded as his plea for freedom had, and George and Peffy hauled him from the cabin. Captain Kemp regarded him with an apparent thoughtfulness, obsidian eyes twinkling, before sitting back down on his bed, swinging up his legs, and reclining to read his book once more.
    A breeze nudged the door shut, eclipsing Kemp from Raef's view. Raef struggled and kicked, but George and Peffy manhandled him down a ladder and into the black hole of the deck below, sending his terrors ratcheting up a notch. While Peffy restrained him, twisting his arms behind him, George struck a light. This revealed a murky chamber: the ceiling even lower than the cabin above. When Peffy pushed him forward, Raef had to stoop. A bunch of hammocks hung from the beams, several bulging with the dozing forms of inmates. One of them lifted his sallow face to leer in Raef's direction. Barrels, pales, and jumbles of net and rope were jam-packed in every corner.
    "'Ere." George grabbed a blanket from one of the empty hammocks and threw it at Raef. It landed on his bare feet. "Wrap yourself in that, pretty boy. It's chilly down below."
    What, farther down below? So they were going to force him deeper into this wooden netherworld. Peffy let him pick up the threadbare blanket; Raef stared at it in despair. George then shoved him toward another ladder and pressed him to descend into the bowels of the ship. Here, the pirates thrust him into a compartment too small to lie flat. Raef hunched into a ball, hoping to be allowed to just sit there. It wasn't to be. Peffy fastened manacles about his wrists and shackles about his feet, the heavy chains clunking between. He draped the coarse blanket about Raef's shoulders, clanged the barred door closed, and departed with his cohort up the ladder. A trap door slammed shut.
    Raef shuddered and gasped into the blackness, inhaling the tang of tar and dead fish. How did it all go so wrong, so fast? Had he been a fool? Maybe if his mother hadn't died when he was still so young, he'd have understood life better. He'd not fitted into Galyna's realm, so he'd pursued beauty and love in the human world… and his actions had brought him lower than ever before.
    The rusted chains rubbed against his skin. While the blanket offered scant warmth, it scratched and stung like a