Page 69 of Pirate Witch

My muscles tense, and he notices—of course he does. We’re so close he’d have to be blind not to.

“What?” he asks.

“The last time I was there…” I was chased into exile. Banished. I watched two people I cared for die horribly in front of me.

“It won’t be like that again,” Nos promises, plonking onto his ass on the deck beside us. “You’ll be pleasantly surprised with your homecoming, I promise.”

I reach over and press a soft kiss to his lips. “Thank you. I take it your meditation was productive?”

Nos’s lips purse shut, and his expression becomes stormy for a fraction of a second. He leans back on his arms, staring sightlessly at the horizon. “I’m curious about what it will be like,” he muses. “I’ve never been in a coven of Lunars before.”

My smile doesn’t reach the corners of my eyes. He’s avoided talking about his visions since we left Isablis. Every time I ask, I’m shrugged off or ignored. I respect the boundary, but I’m beginning to become concerned.

The last time he kept things from us, Cirio’s Cove was destroyed. I’d rather the same didn’t happen to Coveton.

“It’s home. As crazy and chaotic and wild as home can be. Or it was.” I look back at the two of them. “Home is where my pirates are now.”

“We can visit as much or as little as you want,” Cas promises. “None of us really have a family, but you do. Don’t abandon them.”

“Whatever happened to your pack?” I ask, cocking my head to one side. “They weren’t captured too, were they?”

“No.” Nos sighs, and seems to make a decision because his jaw sets. “The people who took us didn’t want a whole pack. It would have been too much hassle to contain one. They were a travelling shifter circus who circumvented the law about imprisoning shifters by providing the Eagle with all the shifter blood she wanted, in exchange for her soldiers looking the other way.”

Goddess, I had no idea. “So they…”

“They used me as a fortune teller, no matter how many times that I tried to tell them my visions didn’t work on demand.” His eyes fall closed, and Cas leans against his brother in silent support. “They beat Cas whenever I failed to convince a customer that I could tell them the future, and he was the crown jewel of their precious routine.”

“You got us out,” Cas growls. “Youwere the one who got Val to help us.”

Nos snorts, “It took me too long. Almost fifty years passed before Ry and Kier walked into my tent to ask me if theDeadwoodwould win against theLittany-Anne. The captain was pissing Val off, stealing their cargo and outbidding them at the ports, but he was another mage, and a powerful one at that. I told them I could help them win if they got my brother free.”

“And they weren’t stupid enough to leave you there either.” Cas shoulder-bumps his twin, affectionately. “They torched the fucking place, and Ry ripped the throat out of the ringmaster himself. To thank them, my beast and I dragged theLittany-Annedown to the bottom of the seabed to rot.”

“Of course, the Eagle wasn’t happy to lose her supplier,” Nos continues, almost like he’s forgotten we’re here. “So we brought her wrath down on our saviours for their trouble.”

“And that’s how the bargain happened,” I whisper. “Oh, Nos, that wasn’t your fault.”

“No,” Rysen interrupts, making all three of us whirl. “I said the words. I created the bargain. And I would do it again to save your ungrateful asses. Crew is crew. Now, stop making our mate sad with your sob story and get your asses down into the hold. We’ve got cargo to shift at these docks.”

His words have a clear effect on the twins, who clamber to their feet, but I stop them with a hand on Cas’s knee. “Wait, you never did say what happened to your pack.”

Cas grimaces. “If a leviathan dies, it’s our people’s way to leave the place they called home and start fresh somewhere else. Our pack must have assumed we died because when I went back, they were gone.”

“It’s for the best,” Nos adds. “Imagine what the Eagle would’ve done if she’d discovered we could lead her to a whole pack of leviathans that she could enslave.”

Left unsaid is the fact that they must miss their family.

“You could find them now,” I whisper. “Once the Eagle is dead, we could search…”

Both of them look down with soft, sad smiles. “Don’t you think sometime during our twenty years of freedom we would’ve run into them?” Cas mumbles. “They’re gone, princess. Probably swam out to the endless sea in the west…”

“We’ve learned to live without them,” Nos promises. “Like you said, this is home now.”

They leave without saying anything else, pushing past Ry to the open hatch in the lower deck and jumping down into the cargo hold and out of sight.

I turn back to the horizon to find the smudge from before has become a definite grey shape. I think I can even make out the silhouette of the Solar Temple’s towering spire.

“What about your family?” I ask the vampire. “Are they…?”