Page 126 of The Sun King's Noon

Richard busied himself with peeling a boiled egg.

“Well?” Flint nudged at Richard’s knee with his foot, ignoring Kaelen’s splutter.

“Six gold pieces,” Richard muttered.

Flint’s jaw dropped. “Six gold pieces?” He threw his head back in a roar of laughter. “Six? Whoever sold it to you must have thanked all their gods!”

“She said there is only one of the like. And she provided service on the house.” Richard’s scowl deepened as Flint continued to chortle. “Had you not left me, you could have helped me haggle.”

Flint snorted. “Aye, I’d only have needed to flash her my large cock to coax her price down. Especially for a cheap trinket like that.”

“Well, I think it beautiful.” Kaelen bristled. “And would you stop speaking of your ‘large’ cock. You mention it so often one begins to wonder whether you are hiding some insecurity.”

Richard rolled his eyes. “Unfortunately, it is not insecurity. Flint’s length truly is of a sizeable nature.”

The words were out of his mouth before his mind had quite caught up with his tongue. As two heads jerked towards him—Flint with waggling brows and a wicked grin, and Kaelen with his bulging eyes—Richard felt a sudden urge to fling himself into the sea.

“Of sizeable nature,” Kaelen said lowly. “Is he indeed?”

“Is he indeed?” Flint echoed, looking delighted.

“And how, pray”—Kaelen stomped to his feet, squaring his shoulders—”came you by such knowledge?”

“I—” Richard gawked up at Kaelen, then at Flint. “I—I saw it in a dream.”

It was the truth. The dream he’d had at Vale’s manor all those months ago, when Galdran had dressed in Flint’s naked body.

“A dream,” Kaelen repeated flatly. He levelled a glare at Flint, seeming ready to throw the man overboard.

Flint winked at Richard. “Well now, handsome. Dreaming of my cock, are you?”

“It was not—it was not in that fashion—” Richard sprang to his feet and pointed east. “Look! The—the horizon has, um, changed. We—we should check whether we still hold the correct bearing. Kaelen?”

Kaelen shifted his glare to Richard, before grumbling an assent, and heading to the ship’s wheel. Flint stretched his arms and sniggered.

“By the gods, handsome, you do make me laugh.”

“Oh, quiet, you.”

* * *

The sun had begunto set when Singers’ Teeth came into view. Richard watched the smudge on the horizon sharpen. Jagged cliffs soared from the water, white surf breaking at their feet. Further inland, there was greenery, tall trees forming a forest.

Richard stayed close to Kaelen by the wheel. They’d all plugged their ears with beeswax an hour earlier, but uneasiness rankled him. What if the siren was what guarded the isle? What if the siren could scale the ship’s walls and attack them head-on? What if the siren’s song killed immediately?

Eight-legged, the Nightbourne Queen had said. It had to be a creature of some size. A large arachnid, perhaps.

Flint is powerful, Richard reminded himself, watching the bandit sling an arm over Kaelen’s shoulder. They needed only to summon the Tower to squash the siren flat. Should the ship sustain damage, they had a rowboat.

Kaelen shrugged off Flint’s arm and made a crude gesture. Flint grinned in reply and mussed his hair.

Richard clicked his fingers between them and glowered. He mimed with his lips, “Focus?—”

A single high note reverberated through the earplugs, so pure and clean that Richard mistook it for the wind whistling. But soon, what had begun as one voice unfolded into a weave of voices, rising and falling in a haunting tune.

Richard cocked his head, removing the useless earplugs. The song echoed all around him, sweet and yet sorrowful, akin to the lullabies his mother had once sung to him.

Beautiful. And it seemed harmless thus far?—