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I go still.

“Only?” I repeat, feeling the stillness fade as a wave of strange emotions crashes over me and I hold her closer. “Only your heart? Your heart is everything to me, luv.”

Is she saying I own it? That she’s giving it to me freely?

She swallows hard, her lip pouting. “You know what I mean.”

“I don’t,” I tell her, my chest growing hot. “You have my heart, Maren, but do I have yours? Do I truly claim you in that way, more than just a brand on your hip, more than my possessiveness, more than just the way I join with your body? Are you willingly claimed? Do you give your heart to me in return?”

She reaches up and touches my face lightly, a sweet smile on her lips. “Yes, I give you my heart, Ramsay.”

“Truly?” I whisper, afraid the truth is no. I pull her hands to my mouth and kiss her knuckles.

“Truly,” she says.

“Because I’ve fallen in love with you, cearban,” I tell her, holding her hands tight. “I’ve fallen for you, drowned in this pure delirium of what you are, this fever dream that won’t let me go. Your heart, soul, body, and spirit. Oh, how I love you fiercely.” I kiss her delicately, passion rising up through me like a spring. “I love you as fiercely as the fierce little creature you are.”

She grabs hold of me, kissing me back, and I feel like we’re both being pulled to the stars above.

“And I love you,” she whispers against my lips and I feel like the stars are raining down on us now, sinking into my veins. “My feral pirate lord.”

My god, how I love the sound of that.

Then we break apart, her chest rising and falling, and her eyes are defiant.

“But though I give you my heart and my body and my soul, though they now belong to you,” she goes on, breathless, “my blood is still mine to give. Let me give it to your crew. Let me help in some way.” She pauses and gives me a heartsore look. “They’re my family too.”

I shake my head. “I’m a stubborn man, Maren, you know this by now. You can do what you want, but they won’t be drinking it. Your blood is yours and mine and that is it. I do not share, not in anyway.”

She lets out a huff of disappointment but frankly I don’t care because she had just told me that her heart belongs to me. She just told me she loves me. After all that I’ve lost—my father, Venla, Hilla, Henry, I still found someone that loves me for me, and someone that I love back deeply. I love her and I’m never letting her go.

Nothing else matters now.

* * *

When I wake up in the morning, I find that Maren is gone. Again.

I immediately panic, springing out of bed, the image of Sterling forcing himself on her last night still ingrained in my head. There’s been so much violence and horror as of late that I don’t trust the world anymore. I’m waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under me every second of the day.

I slip on my breeches and rush out of the room, calling her name, then hear her answering from down the length of the main deck, so I hurry along past her room and the officer’s quarters until I find her in the galley. She’s sitting on the wood counter with Nerissa standing beside her, looking like two peas in a pod at this point. Beautiful creatures of the sea.

But then I’m looking at Maren’s arm which is bandaged up, then I’m looking at Sedge standing to the side of her, holding a roll of gauze.

“What’s going on here?” I ask. “What happened to your arm?”

Maren gives me a faint smile and I realize she looks paler than normal. “Nothing. I just nicked myself while I was helping Sedge chop onions for the pages’ breakfasts.”

I try to swallow down the lump in my throat that comes with the fact that Henry won’t be having breakfast as usual. I dissolve the sorrow with a shake of my head and look back at her arm, then at Sedge who just shrugs innocently. Finally I eye Nerissa, who also shrugs, although she’s doing it with a demure smile.

I squint at them. “If I find out there’s been some misbehaving…” I warn them.

“Then I volunteer Maren for the spanking,” Nerissa says wickedly.

“Hmmphf.” I make a disgruntled noise. “Well, you’re up terribly early considering the night that we—”

“Land ho!” Thane’s voice booms from above on the deck above. “Land ho!”

We all exchange a look of shock, this moment coming sooner than I thought, and then I’m running out of the galley and flying up the stairs to the top deck. The crew is gathered along the rail pointing to the distance where the sun has just risen. I run over and follow their direction. I don’t even need a spyglass to see it, there’s a line of low haze on the horizon and just beyond that, the peninsula that sticks out at the north of the Bay of Banderas.