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He probably thinks I’m here to kill him.

I take a deep breath, lift the knife, and bring it to my chest, down toward my heart in a sharp, stabbing motion.

Just as Abe yells from behind me to stop.

But he didn’t need to.

Because Priest is faster than I thought he would be.

In the time the knife tip presses into the skin of my chest, Priest has gone from sitting at the table holding a bunch of cards to holding the blade of the knife itself, the cards still falling in the air, a delayed reaction to his speed.

“Don’t,” he growls at me, gripping the blade so it’s cutting into his own palm, its blood trickling down onto my chest. “Don’t.”

“Larimar,” Abe chides me from behind. “I didn’t say for you to kill yourself. Good heavens.”

“I wasn’t trying to kill myself,” I practically whine. I let go of the knife’s handle, and Priest brings it away from me. “I was just trying to make Priest choose me.”

“Choose you?” Priest asks as Ramsay takes the knife from his bloody hand.

“To be yours forever. To become a Vampyre.”

“Larimar,” he snaps at me. “We’ve been over this.”

“And Abe knows something you don’t.”

“For my part, I don’t know what the devil is going on,” Ramsay says. “Larimar wants to become a Vampyre? Surely, you jest. You know what would happen to you.”

“Explain, Abe,” I say.

I expect Abe to let out a despondent sigh, but instead, he tells the others what he told me in the crow’s nest. All the while, Priest is silent, his expression guarded as he takes all the information in. Finally, at the end, he quietly says to Abe, “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“You never asked,” he says. “I didn’t think this would come up.”

“So…” Ramsay begins, “that means Aragon could turn Maren into a Vampyre too.”

“You’re not seriously considering this,” Priest says to him, his eyes flashing.

Ramsay shrugs. “I love my wife. I want her for all of my days. Why wouldn’t I want her to become a Vampyre? Why wouldn’t I bring her immortality if I could?”

“Ramsay,” Priest says, warning him.

“What? I never considered it because, as we all know, she would be destroyed in the process. But if what the doctor says is true…”

“And it is true,” Abe points out. “But I must reiterate that it was hardly a controlled study. It happened once. It might not happen again.”

“Is that a risk you want to take?” Priest asks the captain.

“Everything is a risk,” Thane mumbles, speaking up. “Even immortality isn’t a guarantee. We have to take chances, or we die anyway.”

Silence falls over us. We all know he’s talking about Sam.

“You can do what you wish with Larimar,” Ramsay says to Priest. “But my wish, my request, is that you grant us a lifetime together. I want you to turn Maren into a Vampyre.”

Priest shakes his head. “The responsibility if something goes wrong…”

“Is mine to bare,” Ramsay says determinedly. “And Maren’s too. This will be her choice in the end.”

“What’s my choice?”