My lips pressed against her sweat-dampened forehead as I kissed her goodbye. Her body stilled, and I closed her eyelids.

Lifting my head, I bared my teeth at the silver-tailed siren. “You’re gonna die,” I said, the anger bleeding out into the words.

Her partner had helped her pack the stump of her severed arm with the seaweed coverings from her chest. She coddled it even as she licked the blood of my friend off her cheeks, relishing the taste of death. Although her fangs had shortened, they still peeked through her lips.

Rylander moved so fast I almost missed it. His thrown dagger sank into the green-finned siren’s heart. Her silver-finned, now one-armed, lover released a blood-curdling scream, harsher than the earlier lyrical shrills. A raw, animalistic release, not unlike the desperate wails echoing in my own heart over Lianna’s death.

“I want the one that killed Lianna,” I hissed. “She’s mine.”

“No,” Rylander said. The lines around his eyes carved deeper as he surveyed me.

I skewered him with my deadliest glare. How dare he?

“I won’t gamble with your life.” The muscles in his neck tensed as his jaw clenched.

The dead siren’s skin and scales turned to ashen sand that dissolved before our eyes. On the deck, it broke down further into gritty foam. The fatal blade clanked into the pile.

I stood, my clothes soiled with my first mate’s blood. “My life is mine, to do with as I please. It is not your choice, nor will it ever be.” Unshed tears threatened to crest my lower eyelids, but I refused to show that sort of weakness. “She was my first in command, my friend, my warrior. And she was lost on my watch. It is my kill. Not yours.”

Rylander moved away from the silver siren to stare me down. “A noble warrior does not enjoy killing for revenge. It is a necessary means in war, but it is not for pleasure.”

The toes of my boots kissed his. His warm breath grazed my nose. “I am not a noble warrior. I am a pirate,” I said through gritted teeth.

I heard the snap of wire and tear of rope too late to warn him. The siren leapt on top of Rylander, knocking him sideways. His head cracked against the deck, and she contorted her body to slam her tail onto his chest.

“Stay back,” Rylander ordered from the ground, spitting blood from a busted cheek.

I charged, but Smitter yanked me into a bear hug.

“Get off me!” I jerked in his hold, trying to break free.

“No,” Smitter growled in my ear. “Do not engage. Rye knows what he’s doing.”

I stilled, tilting my face up to Smitter’s. “I don’t know what you’re seeing, old man, but it doesn’t appear that way to me.”