The night air off Bloodstone was thick with salt and smoke. The raid had gone well—too well. The Westerosi cog still burned in the shallows below, its mast jutting like a snapped bone from the waves. On the deck of The Widow’s Smile, the spoils were being sorted: casks of wine, a chest of silks, and one very confused nobleman, damp and fuming in his torn doublet.

Captain Lysara reclined in her high-backed chair beneath a canopy of red silk, a goblet of plundered Arbor gold in hand. Her bare feet rested on a chest stamped with a lion’s head. The prisoner was ushered before her, his wrists bound, his face pale beneath the torchlight.

“Relax, my lord,” she drawled, her smile slow and feline. “You’re not just a prisoner. You’re my guest during your stay here.”

She tilted her head, the beads in her hair catching firelight. “I’ll have you treated well. Wine, food… a view of the sea. We respect noble blood here, no harm shall be done to those worthy of a handsome ransom.”