“Mm,” she said, stretching like a cat, the sheet shifting lower. “You seemed perfectly content a few hours ago.”
I kept my eyes on the rippling water, one look at her and I would change my mind. “Things change.”
She pushed herself up on one elbow, silver hair falling forward like a challenge. “So does the tide.”
I almost smiled. Almost. “This is different.”
“How?” she pressed, mock innocence lilting in her tone. “Because it's daylight and you’re the big, brooding vampire pirate captain again? Should I be afraid?”
She meant it as a jab, but it scraped something raw. “Yes. You should be,” I said, my voice harder now. “Because nothing good survives here. And if you stay, neither will you.”
Her smile faltered. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” I said, finally turning toward her, “that every day you’re here, you get closer to ending up like everyone else I’ve ever loved—dead, gone, or ruined beyond recognition.”
Her brows drew together. “So you’re pushing me away?”
I gave a low, bitter laugh. “I will ruin you, Nerina.”
Her eyes widened, the faintest flinch betraying how deep it landed. “You don’t mean that.”
“I mean every godsdamn word,” I said—but my eyes betrayed me. For half a heartbeat, they dipped, drawn to the sunlight tracing the line of her bare hip beneath the sheet. My fingerstwitched with the urge to touch her, to pull her back into my arms and keep her there until the world forgot we existed.
I forced my gaze back to her face, hardened my voice to steel. “You think this ship is a home? It’s a curse. And I’m its anchor. You can't stay here, Nerina.”
She shook her head, anger cutting through the hurt. “That is not your choice to make.”
“There is no place on a pirate ship for a mermaid,” I bit out.
I’d rather her hate me for the rest of her life than love me for the last few days of it.
She wrapped the bedsheet around herself like a shield, gathering what little distance she could in a room suddenly too small. She stared at me for a long, unblinking moment, searching for truth beneath my silence. When she finally spoke, her voice was quieter—but colder than I ever heard it.
“I wish you would have left me in the ocean.”
The words hit harder than steel as she crossed the room and the door slammed closed.
For a moment, I swore I felt the pull of the tide in my veins, dragging me under.
Couldn’t.
I sat there, gripping the basin until my knuckles blanched, salt-stained air burning my lungs. My reflection in the water looked like a stranger—hollow-eyed, teeth bared in something too bitter to be a smile.
This was the right choice, I told myself. I’d made selfish choices in my life, but this couldn’t be one of them. She deserved more than the shadow of a man bound to a cursed ship. She deserved sunlight, freedom, days unmeasured by tides.
Night had fallen.
The sea was a sheet of black glass, moonlight fractured across its surface. TheBlack Marrowcut through it like a shadow with teeth, sails full but silent in the wind. I stood at the rail, the salt air biting in my lungs. The crew kept their distance; they could sense the mood on me. I hadn’t spoken to Nerina since this morning. And the ache had twisted into something else. A restless, gnawing hunger. I needed to bleed it out.
“Wreckage off the port bow!” the lookout called from the foremast. The air on deck shifted—sudden focus, all quiet chatter cut short.
I strode forward, boots heavy on the planks. “How far?”
“Half a league, maybe less,” the lookout shouted down.
Lantern light caught on the debris ahead—broken timbers, a splintered hull, something pale drifting in the water like a corpse face-down. No sails. No flag.
Boots approached from behind. Garen. “Want the boarders roused, Cap’n?”
