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I didn’t have to ask.

‘I don’t make deals with traitors,’ I spat. ‘Nothing could ever entice me to join you.’

Bane shrugged, gazing down the length of his cutlass, still red with Sebastien’s blood. ‘We’re more alike than you think,’ he said. ‘We both belong to the sea, but our duties to family tie us to the continent. It’s no way to live, caught in the Channel like this. I think we could free ourselves, if we worked together.’

‘What do you know about family?’ I hissed. ‘You turned your back on this one.’

‘I already had a family.’ Bane’s gaze went cold. Gone was the purring, the endearments. ‘I only ever had one goal and I never turned my back on it. I came to Whale Rock as a boy, searching the lawless north for others like me. Sebastien’s crew taught me what I needed to know to build a fleet of my own. To make Oren pay for what he did. I’ll thank them in his blood.’

I narrowed my eyes at him. Bane really believed the continent he fought for would be a better place. But it was tainted with Sebastien’s blood now. I’d die before I touched a world made in the ruin of him.

The deck quieted. I listened for Sebastien’s breathing, trying to still my frantic heart long enough to hear it. It was there – fainter than the wind.

Gods. I had to save him. But how? He was the one with magic, the one who fought and healed and bound himself in sacrifice. What good was I?

I searched the chaos for my crew. Bodies were moving on all sides, cloaked in the same mixture of leather and steel and crimson mist. Where was Golde? Where were Una, and Mors?

My heart raced faster.

Bane fixed me with a heavy stare. ‘Oren burned them,’ he said coldly. ‘My family. Now I’m going to burn down every single thing he’s ever built. I’ll watch it all crumble, watch the shackles melt. You love this life so much. Why don’t you want it for everyone? Freedom?’

I do, I wanted to say. But if freedom from Oren meant losing Sebastien, losing his whole kingdom? No.

‘We ain’t gonna make this easy fer ye,’ Aron said, raising his sword.

Bane looked right past him, at Sebastien, whose breathing had grown heavy, ragged.

‘Command the fleet to join me or I’ll make you,’ Bane said. ‘And I really don’t wanna do that, love.’

‘You won’t leave here alive,’ Sebastien growled, looking up at Bane through the curtain of his hair with such black fury in his eyes I knew even the gods would’ve feared him then.

It should have sounded like an empty threat, coming from a man whose blood was draining to the seas. But as he spoke, the sound of grating steel cut through the air.

I looked up and there they were. All of them: Aron, Golde, Una, Mors. Their eyes were hungry, their faces flecked with blood, their blades throwing echoes of sunlight across the deck. The other pirates encircling us drew back, their cutlasses casting shadows like a sundial over Sebastien’s kneeling form. The battle wasn’t yet lost – but time was slipping away.

Sebastien grunted in pain and my heart fractured at the sound. I didn’t know how long his powers would hold up against a wound so fresh and so vicious, but the sound of his struggle was enough to stoke the flames within me.

‘Leave now or you won’t leave at all,’ I warned Bane.

A smirk flitted across Bane’s face. ‘Threatening me, are you? I’ve got enough backup to stretch this fight out as long as it takes.’ He eyed the sinking sun. ‘And let’s face it. Won’t take long.’

‘You didn’t need this war, Bane,’ Sebastien snarled. ‘You could’ve just taken Ria and waited. We’ll be stone by sundown. But you just had to come – had to take out all that self-loathing on someone. Pretend there’s something noble about everything you’ve done.’

Sundown. My heart quickened. It was so soon – too soon.

‘Big words coming from a dead man,’ Bane said, his voice low, eyes dark.

Sebastien shook his head with a sharp exhale. ‘I have my crew, my people waiting back home. Must kill you to know even the Heartless King did a better job of being loved than you.’

Bane bared his teeth, clutching his cutlass tighter. ‘Shut up,’ he snarled, spittle arcing through the air. Fury rolled from his lithe body, driven from the depths of his darkness, that rotting thing King Oren had broken in him.

Sebastien glared up at him. ‘You’re a worse coward than I am,’ he hissed, spitting blood at the captain’s feet.

Bane was on him before I could react, kicking Sebastien square in the chest, sending him thudding on to his back.

I cried out as Bane leaned over him, hand fisted in his shirt, their faces a hair’s breadth apart, cutlass raised to the Heartless King’s throat.

‘Killing you now would be a mercy you don’t deserve,’ he sneered.