Daughter of the Pirate King

Alosa is terrified of losing her humanity when she connects with her siren abilities, but she has no choice but to comply with Vordan’s demands in order to spare Riden pain. Before beginning his experiments, Vordan eliminates every possible advantage that she might have over him and his men (Theris, Cromis, and Niffon); he equips them all with earplugs to avoid her siren’s call, ensures that water reaches her in carefully measured quantities, threatens Riden’s life for leverage, and confiscates her dagger. She is forced to comply for several hours as Vordan studies all three branches of her power: her siren song that enchants men to her will, her ability to affect a mind by altering memories or perceived reality, and her ability to physically transform into an individual man’s ideal woman. Meanwhile, Alosa finds that even though she loses her humanity to her siren nature when it takes over, Riden somehow manages to bring her conscience back to the surface.

Alosa is unsuccessful in coming up with an escape plan overnight, but when the men return for another day of experiments, bringing Riden with them, she is surprised to find that Riden is smiling. As the men are distracted by discussing their plans, Riden dives for the water bucket, but Theris shoots him in the leg. When they turn away once again, Riden foolishly tries for the bucket a second time and is rewarded with another bullet to the same leg. His face lands in the bucket, and Niffon drags him out. When Riden comes close enough to Alosa’s cage, he spits water into her waiting hands, giving her enough power to place three of the four enemy men under her control. She uses her siren power to compel Theris to unlock her cage and forces Niffon and Cromis to fight against Vordan. After being freed, Alosa shoots and kills Vordan and steals Jeskor’s third of the map. She searches Vordan’s body for his own piece of the map but finds nothing, and her power runs out before she can deal with the remaining three men.

Theris runs to gather reinforcements from the ship, leaving Alosa to battle both Niffon and Cromis. She quickly kills both men before escaping with Riden to the shoreline. Alosa fears that she will succumb to her siren half and drown Riden rather than saving him. With his injuries, he cannot swim without her, but she knows that escaping into the water is the only option. When she enters the water and begins swimming, her body changes, her hair lengthening and skin paling to the complexion of a siren. Her humanity flees with the change, along with her memory of Riden, and her siren half convinces her to keep him underwater even when he attempts to swim upward for air. It is only when he kisses her before going unconscious that Alosa remembers her humanity and brings him to the surface. When she finds that Riden is not breathing, she hurriedly swims to Draxen’s ship while simultaneously using her siren song to send out a long-distance distress call to her crew aboard the Ava-lee. Meanwhile, Draxen’s crew pulls Riden and Alosa aboard, but before they can attempt to restrain her, she keeps them at bay with her siren power while she revives Riden by using her ability to absorb water from his lungs. Despite the fact that she has successfully saved Riden’s life, Draxen returns her to the brig.

While in the brig, Alosa drifts in and out of sleep, cycling through happy dreams of Riden and nightmares of her father yelling at her for failing to deliver him the map. She wakes to the sound of fighting and picks the lock of her cell just as two women from her Ava-lee crew—Niridia and Sorinda—enter the brig. Sorinda hands Alosa her treasured cutlass—gifted to her by her father—before they join the battle up top. Alosa spots Draxen battling a few men and losing but hesitates to leave him to his fate, for she knows that “Riden will hurt from the loss” (281). Before she can intervene, the pirate king arrives on deck and does not look pleased.

He asks if she has the map, and Alosa hands it over. She describes her journey, including her capture at the hands of Vordan, but when she describes Vordan’s appearance, her father declares that the man she met was not the true Vordan but merely an impostor. Byrronic then describes Vordan as an average-sized man with a habit of flipping a coin over his fingers. From this description, Alosa immediately recognizes the man she knows as Theris and realizes that “Theris” is really Vordan Serad. She becomes enraged by this double deception, for “Theris” first disguised himself as one of her father’s spies and then masqueraded as a crew member on the Night Farer. When Byrronic attempts to kill Draxen, Alosa requests that he allow her to hold him captive in order to “return the courtesy [that his crew has] shown [her] while [she] was aboard their ship” (287). Byrronic agrees, instructing her to capture who she wants and kill whoever remains before delivering the Night Farer to him. After he departs, Alosa spares the children on board, whom she plans to release at the next port along with Keagan, Enwen, Draxen, and Riden. Her assassin, Sorinda, executes the remaining crew members.

Niridia informs Alosa of her crew’s losses in the last battle—Zimah and Mim. Alosa grieves for them both and then instructs Mandsy to tend to Riden’s injuries. She then ventures down to the brig, where she recruits Keagan to replace Zimah as her navigator and Enwen to become her thief. Back on deck, Keagan takes interest in Sorinda and requests that she supervise him while he’s on probation; Alosa grants his request. Alosa visits Riden last. Mandsy claims that he will recover from his wounds nicely. Riden thanks Alosa for sparing Draxen and tells her that while he was initially afraid that she had been using her siren powers to make him feel affection for her, Vordan’s cruel experiments—in which she was forced to test her powers on Riden—forced Riden to realize that his feelings for her are real, not fabricated. He asks about her unique birth, and Alosa tells him the story that her father has always told her.

Alosa tells Riden that years ago, after Byrronic followed his section of the map as far as it would take him, he came upon an uncharted island inhabited by beautiful women. When he and some of his crew jumped in with less-than-honorable intentions, sirens dragged the men beneath the surface to their deaths. Instead of fighting his own captor—whom the pirate king later claimed to be the siren queen herself—Byrronic gave in to her seduction. Because he returned her affections, the siren queen brought him back to land, where they conceived a child, for “a child who is conceived by a siren on land will be more human than not” (308). Afterward, her father boarded his ship, and he and his remaining crew sailed home. As Alosa concludes her story, Riden falls asleep, and Alosa allows herself to be intrigued by him before turning toward her next mission: completing the map.