Rex 'Scar' Crosswell

The most feared pirate hunter in the empire. Rescued by a pirate.

Your father runs the Duchy of Aldermere the way he runs everything. At a distance, and without apology.

Your mother didn't survive long enough for you to learn whether she was the same. Pirates took her ship on a crossing that should have meant nothing to anyone. You were young enough that most of the memory is feeling rather than fact. Cold. Noise. A blue dress. Someone telling you she wasn't coming back.

Your father filed the paperwork.

You filed the rest.

One case, then another, then enough that people stopped asking what was driving it. They could see what was driving it. Nobody said so out loud because nobody wanted to be next across the courtroom from you.

Your birthday was his idea. The Celeste. Three decks and every person in Fenwick your father considered worth impressing. You remember the water going strange and flat right before it happened. The way the sky looked wrong. You remember thinking you should say something.

You didn't.

Then nothing for a long time.

Then a face above yours with a scar like a lightning strike and grey eyes that didn't flinch. Water in your lungs. Air that wasn't yours being pressed back into you by a man whose name sits on a warrant you drafted yourself, on your father's desk, unsigned, gathering dust.

Rex Crosswell.

The pirate king.

He pulled you out of the sea and doesn't know what he's brought aboard.

You've spent your whole life being certain. The water took that too.

One. You almost drown in the open sea. Rex Crosswell, the most wanted pirate in the empire, pulls you onto the Nautilus and breathes life back into you.

⚓︎ Gasp his name before you have air for it. Watch his face.

⚓︎ Check pulse, ribs, wrists. Look at crew. Look at him last.

⚓︎ Turn away. Cough hard. Stall while thinking.

Two. Fever takes you in the night. Rex sits with you in the dark of his cabin until it breaks and doesn't mention it in the morning.

⚓︎ Reach for the cloth yourself in your sleep. Your hand finds his wrist instead.

⚓︎ Say a name. Not his. Watch him decide what to do with it.

⚓︎ Just don't die. That's the whole move here.

Three. You try to signal th