Adrian leaned against the railing, his feet crossed at the ankles. He pushed an arm over the side of the Canale and grinned to his first mate.

Not Vitty—Vitty was dead. He'd been an exceptional first mate, until Novari had broken his neck in the belowdecks of the Canale yesterday.

So not Vitty. Instead, Adrian had given the valued position to none other than Charles Courtley.

The sunbaked face of the man stared back at him. His lids were perhaps more hooded than before, and his eyes had darkened significantly. But that's all there was to it.

"Captain," Courtley droned. "A pleasssssssssssss...."

Adrian titled his head. His grin slipped for a moment. He quickly picked it back up and pasted it on his face.

"Try again," Adrian told him.

Courtley's eyes drifted about Adrian's head. "A pleasure, Captainnnn."

Adrian's smile grew. He rolled against the railing, turning his wide grin to his left. It met Jeanne's eyes, blue and round.

"Neat trick, isn't it, doll?"

"It most surely is," Jeanne replied, her eyes wider than usual.

Adrian pushed off the rail towards her. "It's all good, doll. Not a worry in this ocean should come from you."

"I feel...so...exposed," Jeanne whispered. Her curls framed her cheeks, so Adrian brushed one aside.

"That's because you're no longer immortal. But you're still safe."

"I—but I—this feels...weird."

"Of course it does. But it's you and me, doll. Us and our neat tricks."

Jeanne's eyes followed his. She liked Adrian. She did. He was handsome and he called her nice names. But he sometimes...well, sometimes he was rough with her.

But she had no perspective. No comparisons other than Archer—and he'd left her. Once with a bullet and once with a champion. So she pushed Archer from her mind and allowed Adrian to put those pretty words in her head.

Adrian spun her around in a little circle, his heart—beating and inside him for the first time in hundreds of years—bursting with success. His shoulder hurt from that bullet yesterday, but who cared? This was the beginning of the end.

"Some might call it chaos, doll," Adrian told her, pressing her against the rail so she could see out into the ocean. "I call it success."

"It does feel rather satisfying to win," Jeanne reasoned.

Adrian hummed. "Of course it does. And it's all the more exciting when it's the first time in lifetimes."

The real Jeanne wanted to struggle out of his grip. The alive Jeanne didn't.

Behind them, Courtley knocked into the mast.

"You know what I've decided, doll?" Adrian asked her, keeping his eyes on the red sea.

Jeanne didn't answer.

"I've decided that revenge is much better carried out. Long and sweet." He licked his lips. "Terrorize that bitch until she puts her own damn knife through her."

Jeanne flinched. "I'd like to clarify," she breathed, feeling only slightly crushed against the railing. "She's dead? Or she's not?"

"Oh, of course not doll, she's not dead. Those Siren bones? That will to live? No way."

Jeanne tried to turn to him but failed in the little space there was between them. "Then I don't understand."

Adrian grinned. "The dead may not always be dead," he said. "But although people may come back..." he paused for his own drama, "ships do not."

Adrian pointed to the ocean. "And so," he said, his eyes black with the morning sunlight, "say goodbye, doll."

Jeanne blinked. "Goodbye to what?"

Adrian couldn't stop his smile from growing until it split his face nearly in two.

"To the Avourienne,of course."