I lay close to him. I moved so we were pressed together, forehead to forehead, toe to toe. I had him there. In that moment, it felt like nothing could go wrong anywhere in the world. “I’m fine with it if she is.”

“She is.” He kissed me, and then stared at me hard.

“There’s more.”

“A bit, yeah,” he said. He sighed. He drummed his fingers on my arm. I noticed, for the first time, the pirate tattoo on his neck and the fleet mark on his chest. With skin as dark as his, you can barely see them. With skin as black as Shayat’s, you don’t see them at all. You only know they’re there if you run your fingers over her skin. I thought he was going to tell me he was a pirate. He didn’t. “Me and Shayat, it’s not just me and her. We got twins.”

I leaned back away from him. “Twins?”

“Yeah. Little girls, just over four now. Mayim and Ishkallion. Got my hair, her eyes. Beauties.”

“You have children?”

“Yeah.”

I rolled onto my back. “She was always very careful with me.” Sorcha didn’t say anything. I found his hand and held it. “Tell me about your girls.”

“Our girls. Yours, mine, and hers. Ah, they’re…they’re troublemakers, you can already tell. Sneaky little buggers. They’ve hidey-holes all over the house. They got their own language, just a private tongue ’tween the two of them. Smart as whips. Maya’s the brave one. Ishie watches everything.”

“You have children together. And a house.”

“We do, yeah.”

I burned with questions, and the questions bred doubt. Sorcha and Shayat had built a life in exile, a full life with toddlers and jobs and doors with hinges that needed to be oiled and windows that stuck in the frames. And I was in a yurt with a yak. It seemed such a perfect thing on its own, their life. Something fragile. A balance I wanted very much not to upset.

Sorcha curled up around me. I felt the slow rhythm of his heart against my chest. “Come home with me,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

“I been searching high and low for you. I joined a pirate fleet to find you, and so did Shayat. Come home with me.”

And I did.

Epilogue

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