Page 47 of A Yulean Sister’s Guide to Getting Kidnapped

My cheeks turned red hot. So because I wasn’t messing everything up everywhere I went, I was being starved?

I looked around, hoping for some ounce of support—I’d even accept pity at this point. But there was nothing but side eyes and others in the line grabbing their food and passing me, as if I was invisible.

“Thanks,” I mumbled, stomping out of the hall and towards his door.

I banged, hard enough to shake the entire wall.

“Get out here!”

Chapter 15

Adrian

Iflopped down on the bed, my back making loud, painful noises. Today had been right shit.

After my argument with Sage this morning, Anne found me and told me one of the ballasts was acting up. So I spent the early afternoon holding it in place while she mended it. Then there was a hole punctured in one of the sails. I always kept extra, but putting one up was tedious, and put us behind at least a day.

Moons, I wasn’t as young as I once was. I remember being a mate; Coltar and I could change a sail on our own and drink into the night as if it never happened.

I took the pocket watch out of my breast pocket where I always kept it. It was worn and scuffed, definitely in need of a good polish. When opened, the tick of the time was still strong, if not accurate any longer. After Tungesten was gone, I just never had the heart to recalibrate it, as if I could use it to hold us in time for a little longer.

I shut it, trying to force away my anger along with it. The two people I’d held most dear slipped away from me within months of each other, for reasons I may never come to know. Thinking about these things never ceased to put me in a foul mood, reminding me control was a fickle as the ocean.

A pounding on my door jolted me, the watch almost slipping from my hands. A groan came from me, almost involuntary. What emergency was there for me to fix now?

I got up and snaked my way over to the door. With how hard the knock was, the ship had better be on fire.

Yet when I opened it, I was met with a very angry princess, one I truly didn’t have the patience for right now.

“Are you trying to kill me?” she accused.

“That would be one way to take the necklace,” I conceded. “But it wasn’t in the current plan.”

My comment didn’t land well, obviously. “I mean you’re trying to starve me.”

I leaned my body against the doorframe. “I’m not starving you. I told you the rules. You’re lucky I didn’t just throw you off, since the rule is you live and sleep if you work.”

“It’s not my fault everyone keeps kicking me out,” she said.

“But I told you I’d assign you something else, and you didn’t listen. There’s a job for everyone.”

That was another thing Tungesten used to say.

Everyone is good at something, and there’s a job for everyone.

He was always taking in strays, giving them a place to work and live, to eat. Sometimes for a short while and sometimes for a lifetime. I did my best to follow those same steps. It had never steered me wrong before.

“You’re just setting me up to fail,” she continued.

“No, I’m setting you up for possible success.”

“I don’t know why you’re being so unreasonable.”

I don’t know why you’re being such a brat.”

She huffed. “Whatever, fine! If you want a dead princess on your hands, that’s on you.”

“Maybe I really will get the necklace then.”