“And I can’t come up with anything.” A breath of laughter, self-deprecating. “Every scenario I construct—every ship I picture boarding, every coast I picture reaching—they all feel empty. Wrong.”
I stay quiet. Let her work through it.
“It’s terrifying.” She finally turns to face me. Her eyes are bright—not with tears, but with something more complex. Fear and hope and determination woven into something I can’t quite name. “Wanting to stay. Choosing to stay. I’ve never done that before. Not since Finn. Not since I learned that putting down roots just means giving the world more ways to hurt you.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m doing it anyway.” She steps closer, presses her palm against my chest. “Because you’re here. Because what we’ve built is worth the risk. Because—” Her voice catches. “Because I’m tired of being too scared to want things.”
I cover her hand with mine. Draw her closer until we’re standing chest to chest, her face tilted up to mine.
“You’re thinking about staying.” Not a question.
“I’m thinking about staying.” A smile, small but real. “That’s scarier than leaving, Zoric. I don’t know how to do this. Don’t know how to build something instead of running from it.”
“Neither do I.” I frame her face with my hands, hold her gaze. “I spent years convinced I didn’t deserve anything good. That the best I could hope for was dying in a way that mattered, serving penance for sins that would never be forgiven.” My fingers trace her jaw. “Then you washed up on my shore, and I started wanting things again. Started believing I might deserve them.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m willing to learn.” I draw her closer, our breath mingling. “If you are.”
She kisses me.
When she pulls back, her eyes are shining.
“Teach me.” The words tremble against my lips. “Teach me how to stay.”
I kiss her again. Deeper this time, pouring everything I am into the contact—the pirate who became a guardian, the monster who learned to protect, the man who never expected to love again and found something stronger than he knew how to name.
“I’ll teach you,” I murmur against her mouth. “And you’ll teach me. That’s what we do.”
“Is it?”
“It is now.”
The sunset fades around us, painting the sky in shades of rose and gold. The Wrecktide glitters below—safe water, the kind that sailors trust instead of fear. Somewhere in the keep, I can hear voices—Brek laughing at something Margit said, Thorne giving orders, the sounds of a community learning to live instead of just survive.
This is what we’ve built. This is what we’re choosing.
Not because fate demanded it. Because we decided it mattered. Because we looked at everything we’d lost and everything we’d done and decided that maybe, despite all of it, we deserved something good.
“Come on.” Aviora takes my hand, threads her fingers through mine. “It’s getting cold.”
“Back to the keep?”
“Back home.”
The word lands in my chest. Home. I haven’t called anywhere that since the Saltblood Reaches burned. Haven’t let myself believe I deserved a place that felt like belonging.
Now I have one. Now we both do.
The knock comes an hour later.
We’re in my quarters—our quarters, I suppose, though neither of us has officially acknowledged the change. Aviora is sprawled across the bed, reviewing salvage reports by candlelight, her bare feet hooked with mine. I’m cleaning my cutlass, the repetitive motion soothing, the blade gleaming in the flickering light.
Domestic. That’s what this is. The kind of ordinary evening I never expected to have.
The knock shatters it.
