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When I looked up, Aron was there, pulling Una away, their figures nothing more than receding silhouettes. I blinked a few times, letting my eyes readjust to the room. The glow of the embers was warm on my face, battling with the caress of darkness, the King’s creeping shadows.

I could feel him watching me as I rose to my feet, sparing a glance back at the table. Screeches of laughter punctured the air as drunken pirates fell over themselves, slapping the table, shoving one another from their seats. The din receded as Sebastien stood and headed towards me.

‘I suppose you have a question for me.’ He paused at my shoulder, overshadowing the flames.

I didn’t need time to think. Everything new I’d learned, every bit of it bleeding a thousand new questions, it was all tied to one dark truth, one impossible fact.

‘Tell me how old you are,’ I said.

‘Twenty-one,’ the King responded, something like amusement lighting his words.

I gritted my teeth. We’re playing games, then? ‘Let me rephrase that,’ I glowered. ‘How many years have you been alive?’

‘I already answered—’

‘I wasn’t asking before. Answer me.’

Shadows swelled as Sebastien inhaled. ‘I won’t lie to you.’

I recognised his words for what they were – a warning. ‘Good.’

The sigh that fell from his lips made my stomach flip, because I knew what was coming. Knew, yet I needed to hear it from him.

‘I’ve been alive for almost three hundred and twenty-one years,’ he said. ‘Is that what you wanted to hear?’

I nodded, my heart racing too fast to respond, to breathe. I stared into the flames, wishing their heat could ease the goosebumps from my arms.

I could practically feel Sebastien’s gaze slide across my shoulders as he stepped closer. ‘Three hundred years I’ve been without a heart.’ Coals burned in his words, too. ‘Three hundred years I’ve roamed the seas, spilling blood and inspiring the legends that make your people cower from the coasts.’

Biting chills crept through my veins, chasing back the warmth of the hearth. Three hundred years without a heart. Did he mean . . . ? My lungs faltered at the thought that his moniker might mean something more. More than just cruel; more than just a man with a little magic.

‘Why are you telling me this?’ I whispered, unable to look at him.

His cloak brushed against my skirts as he leant closer. ?Because I?m a monster,? he said, his voice rough in my ear. ?And you?re naïve enough to believe that I?m more ? that I could change.?

‘I’m eighteen years old,’ I managed. ‘If you can’t understand hope, maybe you should bother someone as old and cynical as yourself.’

His breath of laughter grazed my shoulder. ‘Hard to find anyone my own age these days.’

My urge to laugh was swallowed by the pit of dread churning in my stomach. I should be running, I thought. I should’ve run a long time ago. But my feet were fixed to the floor, eyes entranced by the flames, my body thrumming like the air between us. I wanted him to touch me again.

‘The sea – she did this to you?’ I breathed. Why, when . . . How? The questions felt endless, their answers barbed like thorns. I didn’t know if I could handle the truth of it all, but not knowing was worse.

When he answered, the amusement had vanished from his tone. ‘I did this to myself. Aron and Golde followed, but I never asked them to. It was me who wrought these shackles of eternity around our wrists.’

‘How could you choose such a thing?’ I asked, knowing an endless life didn’t mean a good one. Golde and Mersey’s hearts no doubt bore the scars to prove it. Maybe Aron’s, too.

‘We’re all ruins, blackbird,’ he said softly. Firelight flickered against the line of his jaw, playing into the shadows of his hood. ‘We don’t get to choose the things that destroy us.’

15

By the time the sun crested the horizon the next morning, most of the pirates had already said their farewells and returned to their duties. But as the gangway was lowered for Mersey, a note of finality rang through the sky. I moved among the crowd, trying to stay within earshot while keeping myself hidden.

‘Forgot to mention,’ Mersey was saying to Golde and the King as I crept closer. ‘Saw masts a few leagues off. Only a couple o’ days out if these winds keep up. Left them alone so as not to keep you waiting, but you might wanna expect company.’

‘Thanks,’ Golde said, her voice unusually soft.

Mersey turned to the King, her cane tapping the planks. If he said something to her, I didn’t hear it. But the ancient – younger – pirate looked up at him and said quietly, ‘Prove me wrong.’