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She gives me a sympathetic smile. “No. It can’t. And I know Bones has made peace with her death. It’s been a very long time, Maren. He’s let her go. He’s moved on.” She sighs. “But the book, he has not. His daughter he has not forgotten. His grief for her runs deep. For he knows that he can’t get Hilla back, but he can get the book back and he thinks that it’s the same thing. The book to him is his past. He needs to learn to let that go, too.”

“And you haven’t voiced this to him?”

Sam laughs. “Good heavens. You think he listens to me at all? He thinks the only reason I married his brother was to annoy him for the rest of his life.”

“And that wasn’t the case.”

“No, just a bonus, if you will,” she says with a smirk that causes a dimple in her cheek. “Though I will tell you, Thane wasn’t my first choice.”

My brows go up. “No? You wanted Ramsay?”

She nods. “Aye. I did. I had a wee crush on him, as did all the girls in Port Royal. Every time theNightwindwould come into port, I hoped I’d get Ramsay alone. I was a bar wench at one of the taverns, only came from Scotland a few years earlier. Had no idea that they were the same as me, the Dearg-Diulai, I only suspected it, the way you can sometimes tell where a person’s from. We have this sheen, ya see? One night I stole upon the ship, thinking I would seduce Bones in his bed. I got the wrong bed.”

“No,” I exclaim in a hush, looking back over at Ramsay and Thane. They both share the same strong jaw, thick hair, build and height, but Thane is an inch or two shorter and a little more square in the face. Here Ramsay’s hair is long and a deep dark brown, but Thane’s is a little lighter and short, cropped close to the head. Though they both remain frozen at age thirty-five, Thane does somehow look a couple of years older, though perhaps it’s just his mannerisms.

“One thing lead to another and bam,” she says, pointing to Lucas who is talking to his father about something. “I was with child. Soon as Thane found out, we were married and I was the newest member of theNightwind.”

“And you never told Ramsay this?”

She tips her head back to the sky and laughs. “Oh, he knows. I remind him all the time. He was with Venla at the time anyway, it was a fool’s game for me, but I was young and,” she shrugs, “it all worked out, didn’t it? Yet another reason I was grateful for the ship. You could get pregnant out of wedlock here and not be shunned and condemned. Can’t think of a better place to raise our boy to be honest with you.”

“He does seem like a good lad,” I tell her. “Very polite.”

“Aye and we all take turns schooling them too. Ramsay’s especially taken a liking to Henry.”

“I can see that,” I comment, remembering the look on Ramsay’s face when Aerik was threatening to kill him.

“So,” she says, drawing out the word as she fixes her green eyes on me. “What are your plans for the near future? Since you don’t seem to be a hostage anymore.”

I run my fingers over the tooth on my necklace. “I don’t know. To be true with you, I’ve never felt this free in my whole entire life, and yet…”

“And yet you feel a calling to this ship. You feel a calling to the captain.”

I can’t help but nod, wishing I could tell her the whole story. “I do. But…I had a family and a life before I met Prince Aerik. A life that I haven’t been a part of in ten years. I’d like to go visit it while I can.”

“I’m sure Bones will take you there.”

I weigh that. “I think he would. Eventually. But what if I end up going where he can’t follow?”

“Then it sounds like you’re going to have to make a choice when that time comes.”

Yes, but it’s a choice that I can never come back from. If I get the spell reversed and my fins back from Edonia, I won’t ever be able to live on land again. I won’t have legs. I’ll have to live under the sea and even though Ramsay can survive under there for a short time, I would never make any human—anycreature—live that way in order to be with me. It would be cruel. Plus, to take Ramsay away from his ship, I could never. And he’d never choose that either.

You don’t even know if he’d choose you at all, I remind myself. There’s no point even entertaining the idea. Just because you bedded him a couple of times and he’s had some of your blood doesn’t mean the two of you are destined for something more than lust. Besides, he has a thing for witches and perhaps it’s no accident that the gorgeous Nerissa is caged in his quarters and you’re the one sleeping alone.

Suddenly I spot a movement of orange fur on the deck and I’m grateful for the distraction.

“Skip!” I call out to the feline who is padding along the base of the rail.

“Oh that cat never listens to anyone,” Sam says under her breath.

But Skip looks at me, meows, and then starts sauntering over in that easy way of his. He’s starting to remind me of Ramsay, self-assured and inclined to make you wait.

“Well I’ll be,” Sam says as Skip comes right under my hands and I lightly rake my nails over his back.

“Animals love me,” I tell her, beaming, running my hand up the cat’s silky tail.

“And that includes the captain,” she says.