Page 38

Her eyes are wide and she’s gone so completely still that I fear she’s had a stroke.

“Princess?” I prod.

She swallows hard. An odd look of indignation comes over her features. “You’ve captured them before?”

“I thought that was apparent. It’s what we do.”

“You’re pirates!”

“We’re the Brethren of the Blood and we plunder the high seas. We take what we can and we use it or trade it. No different than any other pirate.”

“But what do you need a mermaid for?” she cries out.

“I reckon you ought to calm down, your ladyship,” I tell her. “We aren’t hunting kittens and puppies. Mermaids aren’t the delicate beautiful women of the sea that you’ve heard about. They’re predators. They eat the hearts of men. They seduce them, fuck them, and tear them apart. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. You’d find more mercy with a lion.”

Her nostrils flare as she breathes heavily. “You’ve seen it?” she asks, her tone strained. “You’ve seen them kill?”

I nod, not particularly wanting to talk about it. “Only once, but it was enough. Comrade of mine slipped into the sea while we hauled one on board. The mermaids that had been trying to free her attacked him. In only seconds he was shredded finer than this meat.” I tap my fork on the pork on the plate.

She doesn’t look disgusted in the least. Instead she still wears this look of passion on her pretty face. “Why do you hunt them? That’s…barbaric.”

“They’re barbaric if you ask me.”

“It sounds like they kill in order to survive!”

I shake my head. “No. I know the difference between killing to survive and killing for fun, believe me. There are plenty of fish in the sea, as they say. There are things for them to eat. Instead, I think they hunt men out of sport, much like men hunt the fox with their hounds.”

“So you take them out of revenge.”

“We take them because they are valuable.”

“Butwhy?”

I’m not sure how best to answer this. I guess the truth is often the easiest.

“Mermaid blood is potent. It’s magic. It gives you magic, for lack of a better word.”

“You drink their blood?”

I grin at her. “Does this displease you?”

She scrunches up her nose, looking disgusted, then that disgust levels out into fear. Silence falls between us and a strange thread of tension dances in the air. Oddly enough, I don’t want her to think any different of me, but it’s inevitable when you tell a human you drink mermaid blood.

Sedge breaks up the tension by coming into the cabin with another bottle of wine, very much-needed too.

He leaves and I uncork the new bottle, pouring us both a glass. I push hers toward her. “Here. Drink up.”

She gives me a sullen look in response.

“You might hate me less if you’re drunk,” I add.

“I couldn’t hate you more,” she says stiffly.

“Good to know there’s a threshold,” I say. I drink down half my glass before I turn my attention back to the pig. I don’t need to eat anymore, I wasn’t hungry to begin with, but the taste is too good to abstain.

“So it gives you magic,” she finally says. “Like a witch.”

“Something like that,” I tell her.