“It’s their blood,” he said. “Their family. Two thousand years and more of not-quite-life, feeding off the great monsters of the deep. Two thousand years of recruiting sucker refugees kicked out of their homes by torchbearing lifers, two millennia of converts and dark miracles. All that power, all that hunger in a single package.”

“It’s a drug.”

“It’s a religion. It’s more than a religion.”

“You take it, and they own you. Like the dreamdust.”

“They don’t own me,” he said. “When I take this, I can use their power. All the family’s hunger is mine, as I need it. And when I’m done, when the power recedes, the dregs of my soul drain out into the ocean with theirs. I’ll have to go there to fill myself. And what I get back won’t be me. It’ll be one drop of my blood to a million of theirs. I’ll be a faint flavor. Most of what’s left will be them.”

“You’ll die.”

“You need help, and so does Seril, and so do Abelard and Tara. I’ve lived a long time already.” He sat on a chair before his writing desk. “You’re going to tell me to let it go.”

“No.”

“What, then?”

This was the part she’d had to get drunk for, and she wasn’t drunk anymore. But then, if being sober made some things hard to say, maybe the things said were better for it. “You’re not doing this because of some half-assed sense of civic duty to a place you don’t live. You like Tara, and Abelard, and the others, but you’re not doing it for them. You’re doing it for me. Because Seril helped me get unfucked in the head, and you’re afraid if she goes, I’ll slide back to the way I was before.”

“And this is the part where you curse me out for presuming to live your life for you, where you say you can handle yourself—”

“Listen to me.”

He stopped.

“We keep second-guessing each other. I don’t think we’ve been on the right foot two days running since this thing started.”

“Maybe if you hadn’t broken my neck that one time.”

“Shut up,” she said softly. “Please.”

Water slapped the ship’s side. A dockside drunk sang a warbling Talbeg song.

“Tomorrow I’ll do something dumb for my goddess, and I might die. Tomorrow you’ll do something just as dumb for me, and you might die. Tonight we deserve each other’s honesty. This isn’t my habit talking. I want to be with you now. Do you want to be with me?”

He said the word she was afraid to hear.