They say my name with a shudder in Port Regal.

“Captain Flynn Finnegan,” they whisper, over foaming mugs of bitter ale and the creak of splintered barstools. “Scourge of the Seven Seas. He once sank a warship by glaring at it. Punched a kraken straight in the beak. Made the Governor of Eastwick cry blood!”

I’ve never even seen a kraken. I once cried at the ending of a children’s puppet play about a brave potato. But I digress.

I am—technically—Captain Flynn Featherfingers Finnegan, feared pirate, terror of the tides, and unfortunate owner of The Saucy Wench, a ship whose sails flap like drunken laundry and whose deck planks squeak no matter how much oil we dump into them.

We were in the middle of a raid on The Gilded Grasper, a pompous merchant vessel so gaudy it practically stole from itself. Our objective: retrieve stolen food stores, a crate of candied lemons, and maybe find a treasure map if it fell into our laps.

I leapt aboard with a mighty “Ha!”—and immediately caught my coat on the railing, somersaulted forward, and somehow landed in a barrel of pickled turnips. My hat stayed behind, stuck on a decorative hook. I was trying to extract my boot when the merchant captain spotted me.

He took one look at the dripping man in the barrel, screaming “I meant to do that!”, and dropped to his knees in surrender.

Apparently, The Gilded Grasper had heard of me. Rumors of the infamous “Turnip Gambit” must’ve made the rounds again.

Thus concluded another wildly successful, utterly accidental raid.

Back aboard the Saucy Wench, my crew gathered around the haul. Bumbles Buttercup, my first mate, squinted at a lemon like it owed him money. Slippery Skelton emerged from behind a barrel where he had, in his words, “stealthed aggressively.” Penny O’Malley crushed a crate of stolen sugarcubes with one hand and called it a workout.

They’re not exactly the picture of bloodthirsty cutthroats—but they are my heart, my chaos, and my family. We divvied up the loot—sixty percent for the townsfolk, twenty for ship repairs, and the sacred twenty percent for the snack fund.

Our course was set for the Whispering Isles, that mythic place of treasure and/or tranquility. Personally, I was hoping for a nice view and no one shooting at us for once.

The Coral Teeth Archipelago glittered around us when it happened.

From the cargo hold: a thump, a gasp, and then—her. Soaked, barefoot, eyes wide with a kind of tired terror that said she’d seen too much and hadn’t stopped running. Princess Elara of Aethelgard. I recognized her from the stamps on public wanted posters—though she looked nothing like the polished portrait.

Penny dropped her sword, which landed squarely on Slippery’s foot. Bumbles tried to growl but hiccupped instead. I heard someone whisper, “Play it cool,” before knocking over a barrel of crackers. We were, in a word, doomed.

I cleared my throat, took a confident step forward—and my left boot squeaked like a startled duck.

Still, I knelt as best I could, doffed my hat (now retrieved from the turnip barrel), and offered the most gallant smile I could muster.

“Good madam,” I managed, kneeling. My hat fell off. “I am Captain Flynn Featherfingers Finnegan—scourge of the seas and, uh, part-time knitter. May I… offer you tea? A towel? Perhaps a new pair of dry socks?”

She didn’t speak. Just stared at me like she wasn’t sure if I was a joke or a hallucination.

Honestly? Fair.

I smiled anyway. “Welcome aboard. We, uh… help damsels. Respectfully. And only with permission.”

Pause.

“Sorry about the mess. We’re usually… worse.”