It had been a contest of pride in their earliest seasons. Now, it was a contest for the hearts of the crew. And Zane was exhausted from fighting for their attention when most days he wasn’t certain he still wanted it.

After he had shivered for hours and tossed back and forth in his hammock in a fitful sleep, he rolled to his feet to face the night. Soreness lingered in his cold bones. He dragged on his warmest coat to storm through the ship and find something to drink that might numb the pains in his muscles, quiet the voices in his head, and ease the loathing in his heart.

Fear’s cold touch dragged up his spine as he imagined what might happen to him the next time he dared to poke a toe into the snowseas. He tried not to think about the creature below the surface who claimed his blood smelled of cheap pirate-mint and anger. The creature that would follow this ship wherever it went, waiting for Zane to slip up and test the water.

The deck was nearly empty when Zane stomped up the narrow stairs, but even Brox and Mollbane went silent as the son of the prophetess clattered his way over the deck boards, kicking aside bottles and baskets of fruit until he reached the full bottles of fermented ice-berry juice.

They would consider it a sputtlepun temper tantrum, but Zane didn’t care.

“A bit early for that, don’t you think, Steelheart?” Mollbane muttered from across the deck. Zane turned to the man, taking in the pirate’s bristly beard and half-sagged eyes. A man bitten with the curse of age.

“Do you want to quarrel, Mollbane?” Zane tested, uncorking the bottle against Mollbane’s warning.

But Mollbane grunted, sizing up Zane’s youthful, sputtlepun frame. “Your lassie is on board. Flew in off the cliffs last night. Might want to stay clear headed for when you face her.”

Zane’s hand froze on the bottle’s mouth.

“Sentra…” he spit her name, wary of saying it loud enough to stir the Winter winds, “is here?”

“Consider yourself warned,” Mollbane snorted and strutted off.

For a breath or three, Zane stood under the Winter stars, staring out at the hazy horizon black with night and sleepless curses. “Bloody ashworm,” he muttered, shoving the cork back into the bottle and turning to hurl the entire thing into the snowseas. “Bloody conniving, spellcasting ashworm.”

He stormed into his mother’s cabin. And lo’ and behold, there she was—Sentra. The girl’s ink-black hair and even blacker eyes tightened the skin on his shoulders as he tried to avoid meeting the beady gaze of the rival pirate.

“What is she doing here?”

His mother lounged over her cushioned bed with her feet up.