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“Hell hath no fury like a lover scorned,” he chuckles.

“It’s woman scorned,” I correct him. “Shakespeare.”

“No. It’s actually the playwright William Congreve,” he says. “And it’s applicable to all genders.”

“Regardless,” I say, giving him a steely look, “that is how I feel.”

“And you realize how unjustified these feelings are, yes? The monster took over your body. You tried to kill the woman you love. You ended up burning down the church. She fled into the night and disappeared into the sea because it was the only way she would survive against you and the villagers who turned on her. Then, you ended up setting the entire village on fire, burning most of the people alive, and drinking the blood of the ones you didn’t. Yet somehow, you feel scorned that she left you…”

“I never said it was fair,” I grumble. I don’t need the events of that night brought back up, but they seem to come up every day. I scan the horizon again, anxiety prickling the back of my neck. “Are you certain the ship is supposed to arrive today?”

“That’s what the boy from the next village said. He saw the ship with his own eyes.”

“But how do you know it’s the Nightwind?”

Abe looks at me, a twinkle in his eye. “The boy said it was moving under full sail and fast as lightning.” He wets his finger and sticks it in the air. “Yet there’s no wind.”

“Just what I need, a damn magic ship,” I mutter.

“Speaking of magic, I haven’t told them much about you. They know you’re a Vampyre, of course, and one of sound mind and constitution.”

I let out a sour laugh.

“But I haven’t mentioned you were a priest,” he says. “Nor have I mentioned that you were, at one point, a witch. Or that you were turned. Best not to rock the boat, so to speak, before we’re integrated with them. You know how Vampyres can be around witches, even former ones. And, well, they tend to thumb their noses at the monsters, think they’re beneath them.”

“Who can blame them?” I say under my breath.

“I did mention that you knew a thing about Syrens.”

I balk. “What did you do that for?”

He shrugs with one shoulder. “I figured it would be extra incentive for them to make the stop and pick us up.”

“Or it could be the reason we’ve been waiting here for six months,” I point out, trying to control the rage bubbling up inside me. “They might not be coming here at all. You might have ruined everything.”

He fixes a steady eye on me. “Or I may have made them curious. I assume they already know a thing or two about Syrens, since they hunt them. They’ll likely want to know how you happen to know a thing or two as well. We always have much to learn from each other. I am sure they will see it that way too.”

“They’re pirates,” I point out. “I don’t think they care much for learning. All that matters to them is raping and pillaging.”

Abe laughs. “Come now, even you know better than to believe rumors and legends. Besides, you slaughtered an entire village of innocent people, the very flock you were sworn to protect. I don’t think you have a moral leg to stand on, Aragon.”

He doesn’t need to remind me. I reach for the rosary around my neck, the only thing I saved from my previous life. Somehow, even in the darkest parts of my insanity, I managed to go to my cottage and grab the rosary that had last bound Larimar’s wrists together before I burned it and everything else to the ground.

That’s why I can never fully blame the beast for what it did. There was a part of me in there the whole time. The beast wasn’t sentimental—I was. I had the ability to push through every now and then, which meant, deep down, I was an animal too. Part of me thinks that I let the beast in and let it stay for as long as it did simply because I didn’t want to confine myself to society’s norms anymore, and certainly not the rigid teachings of the church. I want to be a lewd, hedonistic, primal being and not be bombarded by guilt for it.

As such, I am no longer a priest. My relationship with God, whoever that may be, hasn’t changed much, but I can’t, in good faith, be a man of…good faith. I can’t be a willful hypocrite preaching from the pulpit. I slaughtered my own congregation. I am not fit to spout God’s word.

You also nailed Larimar to the cross and drank her blood, I remind myself. Truth is, I was never fit for the job, but we all knew that.

“Ah, do you see what I see?” Abe says excitedly. He points up the bay toward the port of Quintero, where a black ship appears jutting out from around the coastline. “That’s the Nightwind.”

“It’s a ship…” I say, not entirely convinced. Our eyesight is better than a human’s, but it has its limitations. But even as I say the words, I see how fast the ship is moving, despite how the seas are calm and the air is still.

And as it gets closer still, white sails full of magic wind, I begin to feel excited for the first time in a long time. There’s a perverse sense of hope too, as if this will actually lead me to Larimar. I have no idea if she was with the colony before I found her or if she returned to them after—she was quite secretive about her whereabouts, which often made me wonder what she was hiding—but either way, this will do more than I did on my own. Even with wings, I could only do so much flying over the icebergs of the southern seas. Syrens don’t need air, and there’s no reason for them to come to the surface.

Which is also why I find the idea of Syren hunters intriguing. How exactly do they find them when the oceans are so large and deep?

I suppose I’m about to find out.