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I nod. “Only if you keep feeding from me.”
He rubs his lips together, his brow crinkling in concern. “I will never do that again, Maren.”
“Because what you have taken will sustain you.”
“No,” he says with a shake of his head. “While it felt incredible, the power it gave me only lasted through the rest of the night. I almost feel back to normal. It’s a fair shame too because I could have used the extra healing power. I’m feeling quite ugly as it is.” He gestures to his face.
“You could never be ugly,” I find myself saying.
“Aye, you’re probably still drunk,” he says, eyeing the empty bottles.
“Feed from me again,” I implore him, surprised at the words coming out of my mouth.
He raises his head back giving me a discerning frown. “I told you. I won’t do it again. It’s not fair to you and I almost lost control. I don’t know what I’d do if you ended up dead because of my own lack of discipline.”
“I don’t care. I can defend myself against you, you know I can now. I can take it. If you truly need me to get your revenge—”
“Ourrevenge.”
“Our revenge, then do it. Use me. Let me help in some way.”
He runs his tongue over his teeth. “Let me think about it.”
“If I’m giving you consent and I can handle it…”
A sigh escapes his lips and he runs a hand down his face, wincing a little as he goes over the fresh wounds. “My father and I had a complicated relationship, as I’m sure all lads do with their pa, but the one thing we saw eye-to-eye on was that we would never take blood if we didn’t need it. He taught me those principles and I held fast to them. They are the same principles he gave to his crew of theNightwindbefore they became my crew.”
This surprises me. “Your father was the captain of theNightwind?”
“Aye,” he says. “Not for long, but the ship was originally his before mine. My father was actually born in Italy as the son of a sailor, Alberto Battista, then later he left home and became a privateer in Scotland where he met my mum. I grew up on a ship with Thane and my mother. Sailed everywhere you could imagine. It was safest for us out on the sea. In Scotland, we didn’t have a good understanding of what we were. My father had started calling us the Brethren before we found out there were others like us aside from our own family.”
I try to imagine Ramsay and Thane as young boys, running along the deck like Henry and Lucas do and I can’t help but smile. “How did he become a pirate?”
He gives me a wan smile. “When you’re already living on the fringes of society, it’s not hard to take the leap into doing whatever is best for you and your family. Once he learned that there were treasures to be taken from ships, he was all in. Especially ships from England, you know, which was already enacting the statutes of Iona by wanting me and Thane to be sent to the Protestant schools in the south. He saw it as revenge on a king that betrayed him and he never looked back.”
“That’s an exciting childhood,” I muse.
“You’re right. Every day was an adventure. But you were a princess born under the sea, so I reckon yours wasn’t too boring either.”
I shrug. I want to know more about his past. “So he had theNightwind.”
“Nay,” he says, his accent thickening when he talks about his homeland. “He had another ship first, but theNightwindwas the first galleon he captured off the Azores. After that, it became our main home.”
“How did your father and mother die?” I ask, though I know it may be a painful subject.
He clears his throat and looks away. “My mother was human. So, you know. Old age got her. Though looking back, I see how painfully short her years really were. There was nothingoldabout it. Once you taste immortality, anything less than that is a right shame.”
“And your father?”
Now his expression darkens, the gray becoming as hard as steel. “My father was executed by a navy captain turned pirate hunter. Captain Ed Smith. After that, I became captain of the ship.”
I blink. “Wait, how was he caught? Why was he killed?”
His gaze narrows sharply. “Captain Smith made it his life’s work to hunt pirates, but especially my father. He had it in for my whole family. Not all of us who live by the blood share the same codes.”
“He was one of the Brethren like you?”
“In name only. Yes, a creature like me, although I doubt his crew knows it. He’s still out there to this day, still harboring an agenda. But now I harbor the same agenda for him. Edonia isn’t the only one I want my vengeance against, luv. I’ve made my fair share of enemies in this life, and Ed Smith is one of the worst. Only problem is, if we’re both hunting each other, it’s rather hard to line up a plan of attack. But if I see him, mark my words, I will kill him and make him suffer until his last breath.”
