“And horribly dangerous specimens?” Kit asked.
Oscar pointed at me. “Those stay with Rose.”
“That seems fair,” I said.
We laughed. All of us. Even Oscar.
The kind of laughter that rises only after surviving the worst storms of your life.
Night settled. Stars bloomed overhead. The sea glowed faintly with bioluminescence, as if applauding our ridiculousness.
Bash wrapped his arm around me, pulling me into the solid warmth of him.
“Rosamund Smith,” he said quietly, using the name London never quite knew what to do with. “Did you ever imagine this would be our life?”
I smiled. “I imagined the sea. I imagined freedom. I imagined… something more.”
“Am I the something more?” he asked with mock offense.
I rose on my toes and kissed him. “You’re everything more.”
Beside us, a gray ball of fluff jumped up, running up against Bash and me.
“Hello, Beasty,” Bash said.
“I’ll never get used to him liking you. It makes me jealous.” I said.
All the same, I scratched behind Blackbeard’s ear, earning a deep purr.
Below deck, Kit was arguing with Dilly about whether jellyfish counted as “monsters.”
Above us, Oscar traced constellations that Inu had once taught him.
Emille muttered at his instruments like they were sentient.
We were a family.
Messy. Scarred. Strange.
But a family.
Below us, in the waves, sang our Koinu. A beautiful song that followed us wherever we went.
And the Wraith, once a nightmare, was now a legend of a different sort.
A ship that sought truth in the deep.
A ship with a future.
Our future.
I placed my palm against the warm wood of the railing. The water pulsed beneath it—gentle, steady, welcoming.
The sea had chosen me once.
And now?
Now I chose her back. Over and over.
