Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 144411 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144411 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
I have to admit, I was jealous when she first gave him that. It sounds petty, but I was so used to my older brother getting everything and it spurned me that he could use the ball and I couldn’t. Even if I held the ball and asked for the same things, it would never show me anything.
Venla would laugh when I complained about it and told me that marrying a witch gave me the upper hand. It did in many respects, including the wind in the sails, but now Thane has something of Venla’s and I don’t. It’s been a long time since Venla died, and I have come to terms with her death, but to have a part of her still would have been nice. I had Hilla, I had the book, but the sea witch took all of that from me.
“Ramsay?” Thane says, bringing me back on track.
“Do you know if any of the vessels you saw are Smith’s?” I ask, my voice automatically lowering over his name. The same name causes my brother’s nostrils to flare, his posturing stiffening even more than it was before.
He shakes his head. “If I knew, I’d have told ya.”
“Well, then we have no choice but to be prepared. I’ve already told the gunmen to go to their posts, Matisse and Sterling too.”
He nods and adjusts his hat, scanning the area. The sky is still a little hazy, the humidity clinging to my skin, and the air smells earthy and sweet with flowers as we pass close to land. On either side of the ship are islands, lush with palm trees that line the sugary white-sand beaches, the sea shifting through shades of azure and turquoise before it meets the shore. It’s a tropical paradise, a million miles away from the cold wet Scottish highlands that Thane and I grew up in. And yet people from our past, like Captain Ed Smith, can follow us here. They say the world is large and endless and uncharted, but in my opinion it’s very, very small.
“I heard you were asking if anyone had laid a hand on the princess,” Thane says.
“Who did you hear that from?”
He gives me a knowing look. The role of the quartermaster is to not just be second in command, ahead of the first mate, but to be the one the crew goes to for anything. Though Thane’s grizzled personality could make a crocodile seem charming, his studious and thoughtful nature invites others to seek his counsel. “Sam told me.”
Sam and everyone else, I’m sure.
“I didn’t actually expect any of the crew to have touched her, except for Sterling of course. I was just playing a game with her.”
“And what game was that, exactly?” he asks with a raised brow.
I chew on that for a pause. “I’m not sure, to be honest with you, brother. She compels me.”
My eyes are scanning the nearest coves as we pass but even so I can feel my brother’s focus on me. “It was your idea to take them hostage, mate. No good can come of this if this woman compels you.”
I shake my head. “Nay, it’s not like that. There’s just something different about her and I don’t know what it is. And the fact that she stays with an arse like the weasel-faced prince…”
Thane lets out a huff of dry amusement. “As if you are true gentleman yourself and not a dirty pirate.”
“Dirty?” I scoff. I hold out my hand. “You see these nails? Not a speck of dirt under them. We’re the cleanest group of pirates anyone’s ever met.”
“Yes. Perhaps we’d get a reputation if only we’d let people live long enough to spread the truth.” He leans back against the rail and tilts his head. A grave expression comes over his face, causing the lines around his eyes to deepen. “You know, one of these days there’s going to be a reckoning for us. For what we’ve done. For what we are. It ain’t going to be pretty.”
I glance at him sharply. “A reckoning? Don’t think I’ve already been reckoned with? Don’t you think I’ve already paid the price when I lost her? I was good when I still had a daughter.”
“You were never good, Ramsay,” he says gruffly. “Neither was I. How could we have been with where we came from?”
“So then the reckoning is for the sins of the father,” I grumble. “I still think I’ve paid my fair share of the price.”
I pay the price every morning when I wake up and realize Hilla is gone.
“We can’t keep doing this forever.”
“But we can,” I tell him adamantly, trying to escape this sinking feeling inside me, like I’m being tied down with bricks. “We can do this forever. There’s no other life for us, Thane. How could there be? We are safest here, together. We don’t belong in the old world or the new, so we have to create one of our own. This is our home.”