"Ow!"

"Sorry, sorry! I didn't—I mean, I was trying to—are you all right?"

"Yes, but I'm very sore there."

Ash squeezed her eyes tighter shut as the voices penetrated her haze, and with it came an awareness of a light around her. The voices tried to coax her out of her sleep's peace. They were familiar, but one felt wrong to hear.

A sigh. "He's going to fight me so much more next time I insist on helping with an attack." This came from the first speaker. A female. Her voice was the wrong one. The more familiar one. Bringing both warmth and discomfort at once.

Attack. There had been an attack. Memories teased Ash, too far to grasp but close enough she knew them to be important.

"It's a small cut. Nothing a few stitches cannot mend," the second voice assured. It was masculine, though with a higher pitch, so perhaps younger. He spoke gently, but whatever action he took elicited a sharp hiss from the girl. "It will hurt less if you don't jerk every time."

"I know, Haylan, I know, but needles give me—"

Haylan. The name was a key sliding into a locked door and allowing all the contents behind it to spill free. The kidnapping, the reveal of Roan's true intentions, Sabin's ship, the Scion, an attack by pirates. Haylan, one of those pirates, who somehow caused her to pass out. And now she was in the same room as him and the girl with the oddly familiar voice. Caspian could be anywhere, along with the horrible Terror he kept around.

She needed to stay calm. Control her breathing, keep her eyes closed. Whatever it took to convince the pirates that she was asleep until they left her alone—

"Haylan, I think she's awake."

May the nightwraths deliver her luck an unending torment.

Her breathing stilled before she could gain control of her fear, and Haylan made a small humming noise. A chair creaked, followed by light footsteps. Ash's eyes snapped open, and she scrambled into a sitting position.

She swept her gaze around the room. It looked to be one meant as an infirmary, with two cots within it. She crouched atop the one placed in the back corner. Glass cabinets held an assortment of first aid supplies, from bottles of liquid to fresh wraps to medical scissors. A wooden desk sat against the opposite wall from Ash's cot. A familiar youthful boy stood a few paces from it, his concerned eyes taking her in.

Haylan. But he wasn't alone.

The owner of the other voice sat on a stool right behind him. Ash's stomach dropped somewhere far below the wooden floor as she tried to make sense of the sight. Warm golden skin dotted with freckles, wavy light brown hair, a beautiful heart-shaped face with lips always ready to smile. Ash had seen that smile often. Taken comfort in it during her last day at Volant.

As much as Ash tried to deny the fact, she knew it couldn't just be an uncanny resemblance as her eyes fell to the girl's right arm. After all, what were the chances of both looking so much alike and both girls missing their arm below their right bicep?

Willow was here, right beside Haylan. And they were all likely on a pirate ship.

What was going on?

Willow slowly rose to her feet, her golden-brown eyes steady. "Ashlin?"

Ash startled hearing her name on Willow's lips. If possible, her heart raced even faster. "How do you know that name?"

"It's your name, isn't it?" Willow shared a quick glance with Haylan before taking a few tentative steps forward. She held her arm up, halfway extended, palm out, the gesture very much like what one would use to calm a frightened animal. Red smeared her forearm, and string hung from a nearly completed stitch. "Well, when Odella spoke of you, she referred to you more often as Ash."

"I—" The words stuck to Ash's tongue, choking her.

Willow smiled encouragingly and took another couple of steps closer. The room was relatively small. If Ash stretched out her arm, she could touch Willow's palm. "I help change you into new clothing. Your Dreamwoven mark isn't the same as hers. Its color is different, and it isn't fully completed. Roan gave it to you, didn't he?"

It would be so easy to unload the truth. Ash had desperately wanted to for days, the guilt of keeping her identity a secret eating at her. But the world swayed softly around her, creaking as it did. Because she was on a ship. A pirate ship.

She fisted her hands in the cot's covering. "What are you doing here, Willow? Did..." She licked her lips. There was one possibility she could think of that didn't lead to pain, but with the way Willow had spoken to Haylan, Ash didn't know if she could bring herself to believe it even as she asked. "Did you hire these people to rescue me?"

Willow's hesitation was all the answer Ash needed. She almost laughed. Not once, but twice. Twice she had been fooled by the people she thought she could trust. Then again, what reason had she had to believe in them? Because they'd known her sister? What absolute mindless reasoning, especially considering Odella's current state.

"You're a pirate." Blue specks of magic lifted from Ash's hand. They escaped her like needles dragged from her skin. She tried to tamp down on the surge within her, but as it had so often the past few days, it devoured her panic, letting the emotion fuel it.

"Ash." Willow spoke more sternly now, though her tone was soothing, not cruel. "If you will give me a moment, I will explain that I have had nothing but your sister's best interests at heart, but I know the pain of magic that is out of control. Please, do not subject yourself to that."

Ash didn't know why Willow wasn't reacting at all to the display of magic or how the other young woman might know anything about it. She did know one thing, though. "I don't trust you," she said.

"That's alright. I am not asking you to trust me. I am asking you to listen."

The words acted like a wave of cold water. Ash's confusion and fear hadn't vanished, but they subsided into a mere buzz in the backward as she stared at Willow. She wasn't being told what to do. Told what to believe. The hand stretched in her direction no longer seemed like a tool to calm her, but an offering.

But she had thought Roan was giving her the same.

Gods above, how she hated this. Hated how fractured her ability to trust had become. And this revelation about Willow only took another swinging blow to that. But she wanted to know. She wanted to understand.

That didn't mean she'd have a way to verify the truth of Willow's words.

Something in Willow's expression broke. "Oh, Ash." She retreated a few steps and leaned toward Haylan. Ash had almost forgotten he was there. "I think it would be better if you brought Lorica here."

Ash's guard went back up, even if not as high as before. She had heard that name before. "Who?"

"Let me finish stitching your arm first," Haylan insisted before Willow could answer. He didn't give her time to argue before pulling the stool toward her and guiding her into it.

Willow scrunched her nose at the boy as he worked the end of the thread back into a needle. "So be it, doctor," she said, though the tone was all tease, no bite. She didn't look at Ash, but her next words were directed at her. "Lorica is the captain of this ship. I will explain some, but she thinks it best to provide you with the..." Her head canted to the side as she searched for the right word. "The bigger details."

Ash said nothing, mostly because she didn't even know what to say anymore.

When the moment stretched, Willow finally sighed. "My brother and I are both pirates, as you have figured out. The Nightwrath Pirates, to be exact."

So, Ash had been right. She knew little about pirating ways, but the naming mechanism of the crews was spread wide. The most formidable of pirate captains earned themselves a deadly moniker, a title that others feared them by. Their crews inherited the same name. This Lorica, then, was not one of the greater spirits, but had simply earned the title of one.

Probably, at least. Ash had not forgotten the Terror that had frequented the boat alongside one of her underlings or the tense familiarity a Scion of all beings had with the pirate captain.

"We had been for a couple of years before Lorica trusted us on a mission to accompany your sister disguised as Terror hunters wanting to assist her," Willow went on. Her eyes flicked to where Haylan neared the end of his stitch job before darting away. Her parlor noticeably paled. "Our intent was always to watch over her. Keep her safe."

"And why would that be the concern of pirates?" As much as she tried, Ash failed to keep the venom from the last word. It wasn't that she wished to spare the other's feelings as much as protect her own wellbeing. They had shown no hostility yet, but she saw no reason to test those limits.

Willow shook her head. "That is one of those bigger details better answered by Lorica. Who you"—she batted her eyelashes up at Haylan—"can now so kindly go get for us now that you're finished."

He rolled his eyes, but he smiled the entire time. "Yes, yes. But be gentle with her while I'm gone."

"As if I would be anything else." She pouted. Again, though, it was all so easy-going and good natured. The opposite of the atmosphere Ash would expect upon a pirate ship.

Sabin's boat had been nothing like this. Except for the earth encrusted rotund man, she had only met rough men on Roan's ship as well.

It tried to tease her into a state of ease. She resisted.

"I was scared, you know." Willow stared at the closed door where Haylan had left. Her hand pressed against a free space on the stool, her fingers curled hard beneath it. "Odella was a mission, but in the near sol of company, we became friends of a sort. You can't not like that. Then, for two lunes, she was gone, and we had to rely on Roan to bring her back. The only reason we believed him was because the target was in Volant. But then on that beach, when Linden and I found Sanford's body, and neither you nor the priest were anywhere to be found..."

Willow choked, and a wet line ran down her cheek. She swiped at it. Ash gaped. Willow was crying. And even while looking away, the sheen of more unshed tears was unmistakable, as was the pain hidden beneath their shimmering pool.

Even Roan, in all his theatrics, had never been able to draw upon such a display.

"We believed that Roan had his eyes on someone in Volant. With the priest and Roan gone, we decided it must be him. But if he had what he wanted... There was no guarantee that he still needed you. But then Lorica received a tip that a ship had requested a Scion's presence to pick up a rogue Dreamwoven that they had received from pirates, and I hoped..."

Again, tears slipped out, and they ripped at the walls Ash tried so desperately to keep up. She didn't want to trust this girl, who was just another person who had lied to her.

But hadn't Ash kept secrets from her as well?

Her head throbbed. She dropped her face into her hands. Everything had started out complicated enough. How was it that with every step forward she took, it only got worse?

When Willow added nothing else, Ash said the words that had been weighing on her for so long. "I'm not Odella."

The laugh that bubbled from Willow came out wet. "I know that."

"Then why are you crying?"

Willow's pause lasted long enough that Ash lifted her head. The pirate studied her. Red rimmed her eyes, but the tears had ceased. "I don't want you to die either, Ash, and lest you forget, because you are the one here, I still don't know what has become of Odella."

"I, too, would love to know about that."

*****

Midnight readers who were wondering why Willow (and Carnell-now-Linden) were not with the pirates... Now you know!  But for new readers, yes >:D It seems like the only one not keeping secrets in the group was Sanford.  Though maybe he hid things, too.  We'll just never know.  It looks like Ash still has a lot to learn, so hopefully whoever this new arrival is can help her out!

Let me know your thoughts on the chapter down below, and if you enjoyed it, don't forget to vote and comment! I also have a discord open to anyone who wants to join, and we have a section there to discuss the book :D Let me know if you want to join!