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“Now?” She pushes to her feet and comes around the small table, then sinks to her knees before me. I’ve never seen her look like this, her expression fully open and hiding nothing. Not her guilt over how things fell out. Not her frustration over the past couple of days. And not her love for me. Maura takes my hands slowly, almost as if she expects me to jerk them away. When I don’t, she smiles. “Now, Jules, I just want you. We have so much lost time to make up for. I can’t give you the life you’re accustomed to, but—”
“If I wanted that life, I would’ve married that old monarch in the north.” I grip her hands tightly. “All I want—all I’ve ever wanted—is you. Just you, Maura. You when you were a penniless orphan. You when you had just joined your first crew. You as pirate captain of The Kelpie. It doesn’t matter to me as long as we’re together.”
“It won’t be easy.”
“Life never is. But if I have you, it’s worth it. Don’t you feel the same?”
Maura’s smile goes a little wobbly. “Yeah, Jules. I feel the same.” She takes a deep breath. “I love you. Some days, it feels like I spent my entire life loving you.”
It’s hard to speak past the thickness in my throat, but I manage. “I love you, too.”
A soft knock on the door breaks the moment. Maura frowns and rises to her feet. “That shouldn’t be Seiko.” She draws one of her longer daggers and holds it point down close to her thigh. She presses a single finger to her lips, but I don’t need her to tell me to be quiet.
I scoot my chair back just a little bit, so I won’t be immediately visible when she cracks open the door. Maura takes a visible breath, straightens her spine, and opens it.
The only warning I get is a muffled curse from her. Then she’s shoved back by a bigger body, and the door’s thrown open. I stare at the man revealed there. He’s tall, and fearsome, and wearing a distinctive crimson cloak. Just like the Cwn Annwn back in my father’s court.
“Oh, no.”
Maura springs forward, her knife raised. I haven’t seen her fight properly in a very long time, but she was fierce even when we were children.
She’s no match for him.
He leans back just enough to miss her swipe, and he catches her elbow before she can recover, then pulls some nasty-looking move that makes her fingers splay open and the knife fall to the ground. “That’s enough of that.” His voice is low and rough. This is no toothless hunter, easily distracted by the charms of others. I would never have dared steal from him.
He kicks the door shut behind him. Maura tries to attack again, and this time he doesn’t even bother to dodge; he just plants a hand in the center of her chest and shoves her. She stumbles back and lands on the bed.
He points a blunt finger at her. “Stay down, or next time I really will hurt you.”
“If you want to kill her, you have to go through me.” She sits up and shoves her hair back from her face.
“Whether anyone gets hurt relies entirely on you.”
I jolt a little when I realize he’s talking to me, not Maura. “What are you talking about?”
He casts a long look at her and then takes a step back so he can keep both of us in his field of vision. “First, you will give back what you stole.”
“Who says she stole anything?”
I sigh. “I think we may be past that.” I grab my bag off the floor and feel around inside it until I come up with the piece of eight I lifted from the last Cwn Annwn. I hold it up. “Is this what you’ve come all this way looking for?”
“It’s a start.” He holds out one of those big hands expectantly. I almost throw it right out the window, but I’m not entirely certain he would leave us alone to go chase it. And pulling a shitty move like that will exterminate whatever little goodwill we have from him. It can’t be much, but he hasn’t killed me yet. That’s something.
I hope.
I swallow hard. “And the rest?”
“You have crossed the Cwn Annwn. Normally that is a death sentence. However, in this scenario, because you came to Atlantis, which sits between realms, there’s a little leeway. As a result, you will now be offered a choice.”
“No,” Maura whispers.
If this choice put that tone in her voice, I’m not going to like it. But I don’t see a way out of this in our current position. “What choice?”
“The same choice we offer all those who end up in our territory.” He draws himself up, suddenly seeming much larger than he was before. “You may join my crew. Or you die.”
