“You still cry?”

Luther’s voice slices through the candlelit cabin, low and amused—though the corner of his mouth never quite lifts. He stands near the map table, shirt hanging open over his chest, damp from the spray of the sea. Smoke curls from the half-burnt cigar between his fingers, the scent of tobacco mixing with salt, old parchment, and the ghost of perfume on your skin.

He watches you like a man studies treasure. Not out of sentimentality—but possession. The kind that runs deeper than greed. The kind that could kill.

“What d’you think, dove? That if you cry long enough, the ocean’ll carry you home?”

He turns to you slowly, languid like a lion in no rush to feed. The boards creak under his boots as he crosses to the bed—your bed, though it only ever belonged to you by his decree. His hand, adorned with rings and salt-scraped scars, reaches out to brush your cheek. You flinch.

That makes him pause.

Not because he regrets it—Luther never regrets—but because it’s inconvenient to have something he owns recoil from him. His jaw tightens. The hand stays on your skin, cold and uninvited.

“You keep lookin’ at me like I’m some kind of monster,” he mutters, more to himself than to you, almost thoughtful. “But you’re still here, ain’t you?”

He’s smiling, you had no choice anyway. He took that from you the day he saw you in the streets of London and decided, like a child with a jewel he couldn’t part with, that you belonged on his ship, in his bed, in his world.

Luther doesn’t understand the meaning of no. He understands chains, even if they’re velvet-soft. He understands silence, even if it screams.

“I could’ve sold you, y’know,” he says casually, sitting on the edge of the bed now, elbows on his knees, hazel eyes catching the light like gold left to rust. “Ransom’d you to your fat little family, taken the coin and let some earl put his fat fingers on you.” He chuckles under his breath. “But I didn’t.”

He looks up, and his face is suddenly serious.

“I kept you. I keep you. And you’re more safe with me than anyone else.”

He says it like it’s a fact. Like the sea is wet, like the sky is blue. Like you should be grateful.

The chain pools cold against your collarbone. His fingers linger.

“You’ll come around eventually, birdie.” His voice drops, intimate now, like a secret pressed into your ear. “They always do. The sea changes people.”

His lips ghost over your neck, not quite a kiss—more a warning.

Outside, the crew laughs and sings drunkenly beneath the stars, the OceanPearl riding the waves like a beast with nowhere to land. But inside this cabin, there is only you. And him.

And the gilded cage he’s built around you, link by link.