Terrible things were about to happen, for he wasn’t angry. He was deeply, spectacularly, viciously enraged.

He charged toward me with all that ire, never looking away. Around him, the battle waged, but he didn’t stop. Didn’t flinch when a blade swung close. He was too focused, too determined to reach me. He erased half the distance before someone broke from the fray and ran at him, wielding a sword.

Priest didn’t twitch a muscle to evade the attack. He didn’t need to.

Ashley came out of nowhere and struck like a thunderbolt, cleaving the assailant nearly in two with the hack of a sword. Then he turned and met my regard.

His blue eyes were the calm to Priest’s storm, the ice to Priest’s raging fire, his expression blank and smooth, his brow fraught with restraint. But I saw past that mask. Everything I felt with him, everything I wished for, spilled out between us.

I saw the man beneath the rigid armor. He was bellowing in there. Thrashing and stabbing and pounding fists into flesh. A cold, calculating man held my gaze on the surface, but underneath that severe discipline, he wanted vengeance and blood and everything Priest wanted.

He wanted me.

The bandages I’d repeatedly wrapped around my heart over the past two years peeled away. I didn’t need them anymore. God, I was so horribly, foolishly, completely in love with both of them.

Ashley looked taller standing next to Priest, and though he held fast to his stoic demeanor, his appearance was a far leap from the aristocrat I’d met on this ship five weeks ago.

Covered in blood and stripped to the waist like a common pirate, his body gleamed with muscle, flexing beneath two thick leather bandoliers that crisscrossed his torso. They held four pistols. Two more dangled from around his neck, one of which Priest grabbed and fired at someone approaching my side.

The two of them battled their way to me as fast as they could, stopping every second to fight off more attackers. I had to rely on my waning vision to follow the commotion. I didn’t know when a blunderbuss or flintlock fired until I saw the bits of black powder, shower of sparks, and pool of blood.

If Priest or Ashley got hit, I wouldn’t hear it coming. I wouldn’t know until they fell.

My chest squeezed painfully, my entire being locked on their progress as they edged closer and closer. My body wouldn’t hold out much longer. With each breath, the pain grew bigger and sharper, consuming my ability to think. I could no longer hold up my head.

When they finally reached me, Priest swept around the foremast, sawing through the rope that suspended me to the timber. Ashley sheathed his sword and held his trembling hands near my waist, hovering, as if unsure where to grip without causing me pain.