55 pages • 1 hour read
Daughter of the Pirate King
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Chapters 10-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary
Alosa wakes in Riden’s arms, and he tells her about the time that his current crew—most of whom are sons of the original crewmen—ended up in manacles. His father, Lord Jeskor, used to command the Night Farer, and his original crew was lazy, consisting of careless drunkards and abusers. They starved and beat their sons often, and eventually, Riden and the other sons of the crew members attempted a mutiny. When they failed, Jeskor chained them up, locked them in the brig, and decided to kill them one by one. He attempted to start with Riden, the son he despised for being so different from him—unlike Draxen—but Draxen fought off several men to save Riden’s life. When Jeskor turned on Draxen, Riden did the same, killing him. Thus, the two brothers successfully took over the ship. Riden explains to Alosa that Draxen has protected him since childhood; now, because he chose Riden over their father, the bond between the brothers is “the strongest thing [Riden has] in [his] life” (144). His loyalty to Draxen is unbreakable as a result. Alosa then relates the brutal methods that her father used to train her. Afterward, Alosa becomes angry when she suspects that Riden has been using the guise of emotional intimacy to pump her for information. As her rage begins to boil over, Riden decides to leave the room.
When Riden returns, he brings her to Draxen, who claims to have received word from Byrronic, agreeing to negotiate a ransom once Draxen names an amount and a location for the exchange. However, convinced that the pirate king will stage a full-scale attack at whichever location he chooses, Draxen interrogates Alosa on the location of her father’s stronghold. When she refuses to give up this information, he resorts to physical blows, but it is only when he threatens to cut Alosa’s hair off that she gives up a location: an island two weeks’ sail northeast of Lycon’s Peak. When Alosa returns to Riden’s room, she is satisfied that her mission is going according to plan; she has provided Draxen the location previously discussed between her and her father. However, if she cannot locate the map before Draxen meets with her father, Byrronic will be displeased with his daughter, and she knows that “bad things happen when he’s not pleased” (152).
Chapter 11 Summary
Alosa remains in Riden’s room, where the close quarters continue to frustrate his growing attraction to her. His frustration mounts into passion one night, and he kisses her. Although her father wouldn’t approve of her dalliance with the enemy, Alosa cannot help but feel thrilled by the act of rebellion when she kisses Riden back. Eventually, she pushes him away, and Riden quickly exits the room, avoiding her until late into the night. Desperate for him to sleep so that she can continue searching for the map, Alosa risks using her siren song to sing him into a deep sleep once again.
Chapter 12 Summary
Because Alosa is half siren, using her siren song causes her to feel the need to replenish her strength in the sea. However, she avoids the urge because if she were to give in to this inclination, she would risk losing touch with her human side and “becom[ing] something else” (161), something dangerous that she cannot trust. After searching the ship with no luck, Alosa returns to Riden’s room at sunrise. When Riden wakes, he expresses confusion about the events of the night before. Alosa toys with him by implying they slept together, which he assures her that he would remember. The conversation flusters him enough to drop the questions.
The next few days follow a routine. Riden periodically checks on Alosa throughout the day before officially interrogating her about her father. He also keeps her at a distance after their kiss, but Alosa finds it more entertaining to toy with him than to search the ship for the map. Eventually, the ship passes Lycon’s Peak and begins sailing northeast toward the pirate king. With the days counting down, Alosa becomes more desperate to fulfill her mission for her father. To gather clues to the map’s location, Alosa probes Riden for stories about his father and his childhood with Draxen. To gain his confidence, she tells him a story about the hidden room on her father’s ship and admits that she once was put in a dark cell for an entire month for attempting to break into this mysterious room. When Riden tells her that his father always kept his secrets directly on his person, Alosa wonders if the same might be true of Draxen.
Chapter 13 Summary
Alosa decides to search Draxen’s body for the map. The quickest way to do so is through seduction, so she asks to be brought onto the deck to work. She asks for Riden to procure her green outfit for her belongings, certain that the more provocative clothing will capture Draxen’s attention. However, Riden hands her a more modest purple outfit, refusing to allow her to wear the green one. She accuses him of acting out of jealousy, but he warns her that the green outfit would gain her unwanted attention from the crew.
Though she loathes her siren form, she Alosa taps into it in her attempt to influence Draxen. With her siren side, she can “sense exactly what men want” and can become “that for them in order to get what [she] want[s]” (177). Her siren form also allows her to see their emotions by the color of their aura, but she cannot read their thoughts. The change in Alosa’s demeanor effectively captures Draxen’s attention, and she is able to project an image of herself that obscures her innate intelligence and stubbornness, allowing him to perceive her as he wishes: a submissive and innocent woman. He loves being in control and corrupting innocence, and thus, it is not long before he calls Alosa to the helm. Draxen teaches Alosa how to navigate a ship, and although she is the captain of her own ship, she feigns ignorance and allows him to lead her.
Chapter 14 Summary
Draxen tells Alosa a love story about the one constant constellation in the sky, which is made up of three stars—two cursed by a jealous third to remain forever apart from one another. When Draxen retires for the night, he suggests that they continue their talk of constellations in his room. Draxen wastes no time laying Alosa on his bed and kissing her, but she is unable to endure his amorous attentions for long and soon knocks him out with the hilt of his sword. The action is a risk, for she doesn’t have enough siren-song power left within her to erase his memories. She hurries to undress him, checking every hidden pocket as she does, but she is disappointed to find that the map isn’t in his possession.
Riden comes to check on her and asks about Draxen’s welfare. Alosa admits that she knocked Draxen out, claiming that he overstepped his bounds, but she pulls Riden away before he can check Draxen’s room and behold his brother’s naked state. Back in Riden’s room, Alosa wonders whether the map is hidden on his person. To encourage Riden to show his vulnerable side, Alosa mixes lies with truth, telling him that she fears what her father will do with her once she is returned because he’ll be angry with her for getting captured. In reality, she worries what her father will do to her if she returns without Jeskor’s third of the map. Using the limited siren power she has left, she reads Riden’s foremost desire, which is to kiss her. She uses this to her advantage and kisses him. Once he is more in tune with her, it becomes easier for her to lull him to sleep with the last of her siren-song powers. She undresses Riden as well but does not find the map on him. She has already checked everywhere on and inside the ship, so she suddenly wonders if the map might be hidden on the outside of the ship instead.
Chapter 15 Summary
Alosa decides to check the bowsprit, which contains a wooden carving of a siren. She finds the map hidden in the siren’s eye, but when she giddily returns to the deck with the orb, Draxen and Riden are waiting for her, along with the entire crew. The brothers admit that they did not know the map’s location and were relying on Alosa to find it once they discovered her nighttime explorations. They also reveal that their motive for capturing her is to acquire the pirate king’s third of the map. Riden takes the map from Alosa before she is dragged away and deposited in Draxen’s room. While she awaits Draxen’s arrival, Riden visits her and asks if she still has her dagger, which he has allowed her to keep hidden in her boot. He’s willing to ready a boat for her escape, and although he tells her to use the dagger if she must, he begs her to leave his brother alive. When Draxen returns, she uses her inhuman siren strength to incapacitate him but refrains from killing him because of her feelings for Riden.
Chapters 10-15 Analysis
In this section, the author uses Alosa’s increasingly desperate actions to reveal the details of her siren nature even as the protagonist attempts to keep her powers hidden from her enemies. Just as Alosa despises using her siren power to seduce and manipulate others, Alosa also avoids leaning too much on using her Appearance as a Weapon until she becomes truly desperate, and thus her more blatant attempts at manipulation only surface as an attempt to fulfill her sense of Loyalty as Familial Duty and avoid failing her father and suffering his wrath. In accordance with this dynamic, her early interactions with the Night Farer crew allow her to play upon their own faulty assumptions while retaining her sense of agency and personal identity. By the latter half of the novel, however, Alosa determines that emphasizing her physical appeal and skills at seduction might be the only way to fulfill her mission and avoid her father’s anger and brutal punishment as the ship draws ever closer to the rendezvous point. This sense of urgency grows continually stronger until Alosa becomes desperate enough to overuse her siren powers, singing Riden to sleep once again so that she can search the ship. This decision inevitably forces her to confront the consequences of using her siren powers; not only does she risk losing touch with her humanity, but she also risks exhausting her powers entirely, as she has no opportunity to replenish her strength in the sea, as all sirens must.
While Alosa’s willingness to use her Appearance as a Weapon is the most prominent example of this ongoing theme, Enwen’s character provides another interpretation of the concept of weaponizing appearances, for despite his reputation as a harmless, superstitious fool, he displays considerable cunning and intelligence in his ability to steal one coin at a time from his own crew. Enwen’s deception in this matter is intentional, as he admits to overdoing his role as the fool in order to lower crew members’ guard and confirm their misconceptions about him. In this context, it is significant that when Alosa begins using her siren ability as her search for the map becomes desperate, Enwen is the only man “shaking his head and smiling” (183). Though he does not know the truth about her siren half, he recognizes her skill at manipulation just as she acknowledges his own skill with thieving. Thus, Enwen “sees right through” her ploys because “he knows a fellow actor when he sees one” (183). These key moments of characterization foreshadow Enwen’s importance within the overall series; his kind and empathic interactions with Alosa prove him to be a sympathetic character who later becomes worthy of joining her crew in the sequel.
Within the overarching conflict of the plot, Loyalty as Familial Duty takes on particular significance as Alosa and Riden each divulge information about their pasts. While their interaction is a mutual ploy to gain insightful information to use against one another, it also brings them closer together in a romantic sense, especially as their admissions reveal the deep traumas lurking within their respective pasts. Both Alosa and Riden have absent mothers and pirate fathers. Before Jeskor’s death, Riden accepted the fact that his own father never loved him, and this outlook is emphasized when he claims that “there are different kinds of fathers. Those who love unconditionally, those who love on condition, and those who never love at all” (48). Likewise, Alosa’s intense loyalty to and reverence for her father confirms to Riden that the pirate king’s love for his daughter is conditional, “for if he never loved [her], [she] wouldn’t hold him in such high regard” (48). Alosa has admitted that she has been compelled to lie, cheat, and steal in order to earn her father’s love, but she remains unaware of how unhealthy such a relationship dynamic truly is. When Draxen sets sail toward a meeting place designated by Alosa to discuss her ransom with the pirate king, Alosa fears what her father might do if she doesn’t deliver the map. With their arrival drawing closer, Alosa becomes more and more desperate to find it, and her recklessness risks danger from both Draxen and Riden, but in her mind, the consequences of failing to hand over the map to the pirate king would be even more dangerous.
Though Alosa willfully weaponizes her appearance to seduce Draxen and manipulate Riden in order to find the map, the novel still maintains its focus on criticizing the uneven dynamics surrounding The Treatment of Women in Male-Dominated Spaces, as Alosa consciously uses her appearance and her siren nature to take advantage of the predatory instincts of the male pirates aboard the Night Farer. When she does so to seduce Draxen to search his body for his piece of the map, it is telling that he “sees [her] weakness as his strength. […] [S]omething to be dominated. Something to be controlled” (179). In this moment, Draxen’s own internalized misogyny prevents him from acknowledging that Alosa has already proven herself to be none of those things. Instead, her act and appearance play into his faulty assumptions about women. As a man who is used to taking whatever and whomever he wants, Draxen cannot see past her manipulations and suffers the consequences of his own prejudices.
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