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F or three days, the Ghost was caught in a storm that thrashed it from wave to wave while lashing it with great sheets of cold rain.

From the first terrible rock of the ship, Rebecca was sick to her stomach.

Her guts sloshed one way, her brains another, and her eyes couldn’t fix on anything that wasn’t moving.

It was nausea worse than she had ever experienced—overwhelming and enduring—mixed with cold sweats and, when she tried to move, a weakness in her muscles like fever.

If they had met this storm before the battle, Rebecca would have tried to rise above it. She would have insisted on doing her duty even if she couldn’t stand up straight, because she was a part of the crew just like anyone else.

She didn’t care anymore. When Sharkhead saw her retching over the side of her hammock, he ordered—in that gruff tone of his as if she were nothing but a member of his crew—“Stay below until you feel better.”

Rebecca didn’t argue. She got out of her hammock and crawled to sit beside Mrs. Adams, one hand plunged into the goat’s hair and the other holding a blanket around her shoulders.

When the nausea overwhelmed her, she leaned into the animals’ pen and left her mess with them.

Mrs. Adams nudged Rebecca’s cheek every now and then, and even the pig came to sit by her, as if they all believed that if they touched each other, they would be protected from the storm.

Rebecca didn’t know how long the pig had been sailing, but she knew Mrs. Adams remembered as well as she did the hurricane that had wrecked the Primrose .

That had begun in dribbles of hot rain, then whipped into a terrible fury before the crew could even adjust the sails.

In a matter of hours, the ship had been torn asunder, its top deck on fire, the air full of screams, and Rebecca and Mrs. Adams and five sailors had been numb on the longboat, rowing themselves to shore.

Now, with her body revolting, Rebecca wondered why she had not sworn off ships altogether after that terrible hurricane.

She had been stranded on an island, alone except for Mrs. Adams. She hadn’t had any way to look after herself there, not in a place where the households kept slaves instead of servants.

If Rebecca had refused to ever get on a ship again, she would have had to become a whore.

Instead, she had become a murderess.

She had known, of course, that was what pirates did.

They pillaged, raped, and killed people.

Even the crew of the Ghost did more than just destroy slave ships.

From the very first moment that Rebecca considered joining the crew, she had known she would be among men who had done unthinkable things.

She had known she would have to do some of those things, too. She had been ready to do them.

She hadn’t been ready for what came after doing them.

The fear that she had refused to feel on the Whimsy gripped her now, filling her with a helplessness she could only express as fury.

And remorse—she hadn’t expected remorse.

But she could feel her arm shuddering from the impact of her machete on a sailor’s arm; she remembered the sensation of its tip slicing a red, sputtering line across the other’s neck.

She had thought they were evil men without an ounce of redemption—and they were evil, if they had ever come within one step of the slave trade!

—but what if they had been like her, stranded on an island with no good option?

They were dead now. Sunk to the bottom of the ocean along with the remains of the Whimsy. Whether they had been guilty or not, whether they had deserved it or not, they were dead now, and Rebecca had killed them.

She wished those feelings would disappear the way her seasickness did when the storm finally calmed.

Her body righted itself, her muscles renewed their strength, and with a few hard biscuits fueling her, she climbed to the top deck without a single wave of nausea.

The sky was clear, the sun strong, the air warm.

Sharkhead found her as she was tying up her skirts to help swab the deck.

He had checked on her every few hours, never saying much except asking after her health, and even now, he watched her with that old, wary gaze from before they had become husband and wife.

As if she were some kind of foreign creature who might bite his hand.

Rebecca might bite his hand. She hadn’t decided. Yet she hated that he looked at her like that.

“Glad to see you feeling better,” her supposed husband said.

She didn’t feel it necessary to reply to that.

“Sometimes storms are hard to take.”

She hadn’t anything to say to him. She didn’t want to ask if he was fatigued from working the bilge pumps all night.

She didn’t want to tell him he looked like he needed a good meal—and a shave, haircut, and bottle of rum, to boot.

She wanted him to take back what he had said.

She wanted him to stop her from going on the Whimsy.

“Captain says we’re headed for Pirate Island.

” He stepped a little closer, his voice lowering, as if this were privileged information for her only.

“That’s where we’ll leave the slavers. Then we’ll land at the Azores.

It’s a respectable port with trade ships of all kinds.

If you want to leave the Ghost and book passage home, you can do it there. ”

Internally, Rebecca’s body revolted. A sharp spike of anger displaced her stomach and heart and mind so that all she could see was red.

Externally, she skewered this supposed husband with a glare. “Why would I want to leave the Ghost ?”

“If you don’t want to be a pirate anymore—”

Rebecca cut him off before anyone could hear him.

“ I am not the one making apologies for slavers. I am the one who boarded the Whimsy and disabled the captain before battle even started.” Her stomach turned at the memory.

“If you don’t want to be a pirate anymore, then by all means, disembark at the Azores and find yourself a ship back to your precious Northfield Hall. ”

He raised his hands, palms facing her, as if in surrender, and backed up a step. “Swab the deck, then.”

“I will, if you would only stop bothering me.” She nudged the bucket with her foot so forcefully that water sloshed over its edge. Sharkhead stepped even farther away, avoiding the puddle.

Avoiding her.

“Your captain needs you,” she snarled, as if she hadn’t bitten his hand hard enough.

Sharkhead turned away, but not before delivering his own punch, the kind that had earned him his nickname in the first place: “He is your captain, too.”