Zane stared after Sentra until she moved to the edge of the boat and hopped off, her wide, dreadful wings ripping out from her back to take her over the snowseas, scaring some of those white birds away. He envied how easily the girl could come and go. And he imagined what a battle between his crew and hers would look like—with her crew able to fly and land on their deck at will.

He shook the thought from his mind and eyed the birds wreathing the pink skies as he stormed across the deck, deciding he did not care for sunshine anymore.

Bloody, frostbitten Sentra. It seemed even she wanted to use him for something.

No marriage, then. It seemed he would not be forced to wed the enemy after all—but her price was his ship and crew. He was not sure he could stomach the idea, even after how they had turned on him. And Sentra would probably turn him back into snow after anyway.

“I can show you how to handle that.” A voice like a river filled Zane’s head and he snapped his eyes over to the middle-aged man—Mikal Migraithe.

The man rested on the bench in his cage. Zane looked around in surprise and tried to remember why he had come down here. “Your anger,” Mikal clarified.

The man pinched a tiny, white flower with a gold centre between his fingers—a fragile thing in comparison to his muscular frame. There were no flowers at sea apart from frostlillies. Zane might have asked how the man had come by it, but it looked as though there were garden pieces hidden in one of the many pockets of his black jacket.

“I used to be angry too,” Mikal said, plucking the last few petals from the flower and dropping them into the pile already scattered over the floor.

Zane eyed him and allowed another step toward the cage doors. “How did you deal with it? How did you make your anger go away?” He could not help but notice that the way this man spoke, and stared, and observed; it was all rather…quiet.

Finally, the man raised the petal-less flower, and pitched it to the floor where Zane’s eyes followed it. “Verses.” Mikal brushed his hands clean of the flower’s remains. “Wisdom,” he then added.

Zane made a face. “Wisdom?”

“I can teach you some, if you’d be willing to listen.” Mikal’s gaze flickered up.

But Zane folded his arms. If the kohl lining his eyes was not evidence enough, he was sure the snarl upon his lips would be. “I have better things to do than listen to an old man ramble on about a thing or three.”