From her perch on a fallen log, Vice grinned at her crewmates and gulped from a hollowed-out coconut shell. The damn slice across her ribs hurt too much for dancing and when she’d checked the bandage, it was already spotted with blood. No sense opening the thing up even more. At least the drink dulled the pain, warmed her cheeks, and frayed her edges like old sails.

Saba’s rowdy song about a handsome shipwrecked sailor and a mermaid drew to an end with Aedan silencing his drum and Perry bowing a last high note on her fiddle.

Laughing, Vice raised her cup and clapped her free hand against her thigh. “More,” she cried, “more!”

Knigh appeared from the cluster of dancers, his cheeks pink in the sunset. He crouched beside her, catching his breath and held his hand out.

She cocked her head. “What?”

Eyebrows raised, he nodded at her cup.

Chuckling, she handed him the palm wine. “Got a taste for the stuff, eh?”

He scoffed. “Something like that.” He took a sip, the lean lines of his throat rippling as he swallowed.

She shouldn’t stare at that movement or the way his forearms gleamed where he’d rolled up his shirt sleeves. But, damn, they were nice to look at.

“What do they call it?” He thrust the cup back into her hand. “Dietsch courage?” He flashed her a smile close to that true, unguarded smile he’d worn as they’d fled the Sovereign.

Lords, her stomach flipped. Was she a sixteen-year-old girl at her first ball again?

She shook her head as he strode over to Perry and Aedan. They had a brief conversation, and Perry produced the guitar they’d found on the Covadonga. Knigh nodded and took it before settling on a barrel.

Vice frowned and rubbed her eyes. Maybe she’d had more palm wine than she’d realised. The stuff did keep fermenting, so it could have grown stronger over the past couple of hours.

“Can you believe it,” Saba said, coming and sitting beside her, “straight-laced Captain Blackwood is going to sing?”

Vice shook her head. “I thought you’d slipped something in my drink and I was seeing things.”

Laughing, Saba took the cup and gulped from it. “No, see? No special additions.” She winked. “But you do need a top-up, I’ll—”

A cascade of notes drifted across the sand, sending a shiver across Vice’s shoulders.

Saba raised her eyebrows. “Wow, maybe he actually knows how to play that thing.”

From the way he frowned, adjusting the tuning keys before strumming and nodding, Vice would’ve bet her cut of the Covadonga’s prize that he knew exactly how to play that thing.

“Well,” she breathed, “wonders will never cease.”

Even the crowd who’d been dancing and had continued stomping into the silence, clapping their own beats, fell quiet, throwing curious looks at Knigh.