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“Not really,” I admit. “I just wanted to punch you again.”

“Feel better?” he asks, wiggling his face around, grimacing in discomfort. He notices the small smile on my lips. “I guess you do. Well, Princess, perhaps we can be considered even now.”

I give him an incredulous look. “You going to let me brand you on your rear, then?”

He gives me a salacious grin. “If that’s what tickles your fancy.”

Oh, rats. He’d probably just enjoy it, wouldn’t he?

He removes his hand and wipes a bit of blood from under his nostrils.

“How is my nose?”

“Still there, unfortunately,” I mutter.

“All this sleep seems to have put some pep in your step. That’s a good sign, darling. You’ll be one of us before long.”

“I’ll never be one of you,” I tell him in an icy tone, my gaze matching it.

“But why be a princess, when you could be a pirate?” He pauses, bringing me so I’m pressed right up against his chest. His chin dips as he peers at me, his voice becoming rich and husky. “Think about it, luv. No society to adhere to, no rules to be beholden to. You’d be a free woman, free to do what you want, when you want. Act any way you wish. No matter how…dark or depraved.”

I feel myself falling forward into his eyes, like a maelstrom at sea.

I have to close them forcefully, severing whatever strange pull he has on me.

“I’ve fallen for lies once before and I’m still paying for it,” I admit, keeping my eyes shut. “There is no freedom for a woman, especially a woman like me.”

“A woman like you? The very one that’s struck me in the face twice, tripped me up, and driven her nails into my flesh so hard that she’s drawn blood? I think that woman is a force to be reckoned with. She just needs someone to set her free.”

“And it won’t be you,” I whisper, because he’s right. He’s so very right. I feel my past clawing up through me, wanting more than anything to be set free again. Free to become what I once was. I may not be a force to be reckoned with now, only because he doesn’t know the monster I was before. That Syren, she’s the one he’s talking about. He just doesn’t know the half of it.

“Well,” he says, clearing his throat, his grip loosening slightly. “Whoever sets you free, I hope I’m around to see it.”

I can’t help my acidic smile as I open my eyes and gaze up at him. “If you are, I’ll be sure to kill you first.”

He nearly beams at that, as if I’ve given him the greatest compliment. It makes his eyes dance. “Even over your husband? Yo-ho, I consider that high praise. Now come on before Sam decides she needs to use the privy too.”

He pulls me along, though not as roughly as before, perhaps because I’m not being as obstinate as usual. I do have to use the facilities, badly now.

He takes me out of the quarters and to a room just outside. It’s built into the side of the ship and consists of a seat with a hole in it. There’s a row of narrow windows that are open, the sea breeze flowing inside and I’m trying to calculate if I can break through them and escape. I believe him when he says there’s no land around to swim to, but it might be worth the risk.

But the individual windowpanes are too small to fit through, especially with my ample chest and rear, and fastened by metal bars that I’m not strong enough to break.

The captain closes the door behind me and leaves me to my business and I wish I could stay inside here all day and just hide and ponder, but I know the captain is waiting outside, giving me as little privacy as possible by rapping on the door every few minutes.

When I finally emerge he gives me a look of exaggerated impatience and grabs my arm just when someone runs halfway down the stairs and yells, “Bones! You better come look at this!”

He looks at the door to his chambers, probably calculating how long it will take to put me away, then decides against it and brings me over to the stairs and up them to where Cruz, his first mate, is.

“What is it?” the captain asks as he brings me up to the deck and Cruz hands him a spyglass.

“We spotted them,” he says.

“Spotted who?” I ask, but no one is paying me any attention. Instead, most of the crew are all huddled on the foredeck passing another spyglass around.

The captain takes me over there and the crew parts for him. They all give me a passing glance as we slip through, not unkind, just curious. I’m suddenly very aware of how awful I must look, dirty and smelly, apparently, and how clean and well-put together they look by contrast.

“Where are they?” the captain asks the man already looking through the spyglass. He lets go of me and rests his elbows on the rail beside the man and puts his own spyglass to his eye.