Page 42 of A Yulean Sister’s Guide to Getting Kidnapped

Adrian

My finger tapped the top of my hat sitting next to me as I went through the documents Bramwell had managed to gather for me.

Octavio Kalfin

Age twenty-seven

Set to take over the lordship of the Kalfin house in stead of his ailing father. Considered to be fun, and the life of the party, yet at the same time responsible. Most find him to be very charming.

“I don’t know why you’re so interested in our host,” Bramwell said, going through his own stack of books, mostly about magical and cursed items. We needed to learn something about this necklace. There had to be some comparable item, some record of a necklace that looked to be hand crafted by someone talented, but we kept coming up short. With his immense speed, Bramwell was much better equipped to do this research than I was.

“There was just something… off.” I said. He had a weird aura I couldn’t quite put a finger on, and I was typically good at reading people.

“Maybe because he was talking to our new captive so closely?”

He didn’t even raise his eyes from the book as he made the accusation.

“She’s not a captive. And it has nothing to do with that.” Why would it? Who Sage talked to was her business. And it made sense. An up-and-coming lord trying to court a princess? Basically a match favored by the goddess. When I brought her back, they would probably court, maybe even get married. They deserved each other after all…

“Adrian,” Bramwell said, ripping me from my thoughts.

“Yes?”

“Can you please stop that racket? I can’t concentrate?”

“What?”

“Your tail.”

And sure enough, the tip of my tail rattled against the floor. I froze and tucked it between the rest of me. This was the second time I’d done that today. A nervous habit I picked up as a child, one I thought I’d gotten rid of long ago, but seemingly not.

The door swung open and Connie strode in, sitting at the table and kicking her feet up, getting dangerously close to my cup of coffee that I slid away from the bottoms of her boots.

“The crew’s all set on work.”

“Good,” I said.

“I saw our new stowaway in the hall.”

I tried to resist the question on the tip of my tongue, but it poured from me anyway. “How is she?”

Connie looked at me from under her hat, but I didn’t even glance up, trying to come across as casual.

“You taking a personal interest of some kind?”

“No,” I shot back. “Just checking in on everyone working on my ship.”

“Right,” she said. “She seemed fine. Anne had it handled.”

“Good.” I put Anne on it because though she was responsible, she also hadn’t been on the ship for very long, so she was a bit softer than a lot of other crew members.

My coffee slid as we passed over a particularly heavy wave. “Damn tides,” Bramwell said. He wasn’t so quick, his cup clattering to the ground.

“Landlubber,” Connie said under her breath.

“Zip it,” Bramwell said as he moved to clean up the mess.

I smirked. Though we were a strange bunch, we were the heart of this ship, keeping it running in our own ways.