I wished I could stand and fight with them.

May the sins of Thanatos grace their hearts and bloody their swords.

Aboard Blitz, they immediately met resistance from the Madwulf’s pirates. But his soused bastards weren’t prepared to thwart the ambush. As they pawed through their weapons chest, my men fell upon them with blades, flintlocks, and boarding axes.

Through the blur of my one working eye, I spotted Reynolds and Jobah as they cut down every brute in their path. I searched the throng, fighting to stay conscious, desperate to glimpse the two men I loved.

More and more of my crew joined the fight, parrying enemy bayonets, cutlasses thrusting, flintlocks firing, blades clashing in the air, and bodies falling and thrashing in death. The smoky aroma of spent powder stung my nose, and the reverberation of so many boots shook the deck beneath my feet.

I experienced it all in chilling silence.

Were Priest and Ashley calling my name? I wouldn’t know. I couldn’t make out the faces of the men storming across the planks between the ships. The fog made it impossible to identify those who remained on Jade to repel unwanted boarders.

Then, amid the noiseless chaos, the haze of smoke and mist shivered, parted, and a beast of a man emerged from the cloud.

His shirt was shredded and filthy, the lacing gone and front edges hanging open to his belts, revealing a wall of rippled brawn from throat to waist.

Skeins of his hair, the color of chestnut, were braided and adorned with shell beads, the top half scraped away from his face and caught in a seaman’s queue. The rest curled around his loose collar and thick neck, and I longed to feel it sliding between my fingers. I missed my husband dearly.

He held his arms stiffly at his sides, fisting two cutlasses. I recognized the brass grip on one. It belonged to me, and my father before me. I’d taken it off the beach the day he’d hanged.

Head lowered, chin to chest, Priest set his silver eyes on mine. Eyes that glared from beneath a darkly savage brow, the depths blackening like rain-heavy clouds as they took in my appearance.

It must have been difficult for him to see me like this—a half-naked corpse tied to the foremast with bones exposed in my arm and every inch of my flesh beaten and swollen in various colors.

When his gaze finally returned to my damaged face, his demeanor had taken on so much pain something inside him seemed to have snapped. His arms bulged with tension, his shoulders lifting and spreading out. He opened his mouth, lips curled back, teeth bared. Then he roared. I couldn’t hear it, but I felt it with my entire body. His torment. His intensity. The feral eye contact. The foreboding. I got chills.