The Siren creaked around us, timbers groaning softly under the strain of wind and sail. When I’d first gone to sea, a ship had seemed like such a foreign thing. A broad floating house where men lived belowdecks instead of upstairs. Where nothing was ever still, even though the horizon never changed. Now, I felt like this ship—my ship—and I were part of each other. She’d taken more than her share of flesh and blood as I climbed her riggings and gripped her rails, and I, in turn, had accumulated so much more than the splinters in my palms and her scent in my hair.

Hells, I was getting maudlin. It was easy enough to do in the long dark nights at sea, but still, it was something I had taught myself to avoid, just like thoughts of home when I was young and sentimental enough to miss the things I would never get back.

George sighed in her sleep, curling in on herself, and I curled with her. We had so few hours left. I couldn’t bear to spend any of that time not touching her.

Of course, she was the reason my night had turned introspective. She was the thing I had taught myself not to want most of all, and then she had blown all my careful training to kindling with her unceremonious arrival on my ship and her refusal to be anything but her beautiful, stubborn self.

When she was gone, I would have to build all my walls back up tenfold. It had been one thing to put away childish memories of a dear friend. Another entirely to try to forget the perfect, soft creature who let me hold her like something precious.

“Go back to sleep,” she said, patting my hand where it lay on her hip.

“How did you know I was awake?”

Her voice was a delicious sleepy rasp as she said, “Because you grind your teeth in your sleep, and I couldn’t hear you doing it.”

“You wouldn’t be able to hear it over the ship anyway,” I said, and she laughed, making her body shake against mine.

“Well, if you were asleep, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

My chest constricted around a glowing ball that could only be love. I would love her until the day I died, which would no doubt be soon. I’d escaped the dark reaper too many times. My luck couldn’t hold much longer, and going to Kiril would only shorten it more.

But tonight, I was alive, and George was with me, and that was all that mattered.

“Why are you awake?” I asked, kissing her bare shoulder. She hummed happily at my touch, and that, as much as anything, was a detail I couldn’t let myself revel in because I would never let it go if I did.

“Where is the farthest away you’ve been?” she asked, as if that were an answer.

Near and far were relative terms. Her home was an anchor from which she judged everything. My ship was my home, perpetually drawing nearer and farther from the places I knew.

“Norampar Island,” I said.

“Where’s that?”

“If you head south and sail for two straight months, you’ll run smack into it.” Maro and I had gone, back when we’d first made our plan to escape Kiril. Or rather, I had heard a rumor that the island might be home to a treasure greater than the wealth of kingdoms, and Maro had only shaken their head and said I shouldn’t be so foolish as to believe stories. But the chance at earning enough money to pay Kiril’s fee and escape had been too tempting to avoid, so we had gone anyway.

Of course, when we had arrived, the island was nothing more than a long sandbar, and if there had ever been a treasure there, it had long since washed into the ocean. 

“Let’s go there then,” George said, turning so she could kiss my throat. “Far away where no one will find us.”

It was too dark for her to see anything, which was a kindness as I struggled to keep my face calm. She had undone me so entirely, and with every word, she broke the pieces into smaller fragments, like rocks and shells crushed to sand over time. But let her keep her imagined happy ending. Our sunny home on a sandy beach. She would know disappointment tomorrow, when I let Kiril take me away from her, but perhaps she would find the home and the beach anyway.

“Lou?” she said. “What’s wrong?”

And I couldn’t tell her, because she would fight me, and I didn’t want our last night to be an angry one.

“Nothing at all.” I ran a hand down her side. Her skin was so soft. Alive and warm when everything inside me had been cold and dead for so long. “Nothing is wrong. Not while we’re together.”

I would never lie to her, but there were truths I would always have to keep to myself.

She founds my lips with hers, and here, at least, I could be honest. George had been a pretty child, and a beautiful girl in those last few years that we were together. But even bedraggled and blood-smeared as she’d been when Ender had dragged her on board that first day, I had never seen anyone so striking. Dark haired and clear eyed. She had a little pointed chin that I explored now, kissing the small dimple at the end. George had grown into a woman, with a woman’s curves and valleys and—for tonight at least—they were mine.

“Lou.” She twisted, tangling our legs together. “I love you.”

I fit my hands in the dark curls that she should never have to hide away. “I love you too. You’re perfect, George. My perfect princess.”

She laughed at that, a high delighted sound that I would remember forever. There was so much joy in it. She had laughed so infrequently on the ship, and I was sorry for that and for so many other little things. 

“The princess and the pirate,” she said. “We’re quite a pair.”

George brought one palm to my breast, touching tentatively, and I pressed my hand against hers, showing where to stroke and where to tease.

The bed was small, so much smaller than I would have liked, but I would take any space I could get with her in it. When I rolled her onto her back, she went willingly, arms flung overhead. The air in the cabin was stuffy, but her skin was cool to my touch. 

I slid a thigh between hers and she opened for me, making room. Her confidence made me heat. I’d expected a trembling maid, frightened of her own desires after a lifetime of being told they were wrong and immoral, but her trust in me was so absolute that she’d let me show her what we could achieve together.

Tomorrow, I would break that trust absolutely.

No. No time to think about that now. Now was only for the two of us in a dark cabin away from prying ears and the judgement of a kingdom neither of us called home anymore.

She laughed again, body relaxed and languid, as I slid down, kissing between her breasts and over her navel.

“Be gentle this time,” she said. “Last time you bit me and—” she yelped as I pulled at the thin skin along the inside of her thigh with my teeth.

If we had more time, I could show her so much. The line where pleasure and pain met. The ways the women of Yagrad used a special blend of spiced oil and glass implements to bring themselves pleasure that lasted for hours.

But all we had left was tonight, and all the might-have-beens would remain locked away for me to build into dreams that would someday feel like memories.

“If you need to cry out, Princess,” I said, “Feel free. No one will hear you.”

The shipped rolled and bucked, just as she did, when I dragged my tongue over her hot, wet center.

“Lou.”

I would never get tired of hearing my name on her lips. At first, when she had arrived, I’d hated it. That child was gone, beaten and bruised until there was nothing left of her. What remained in her stead was Captain or Cinder. Steel and ash.

But George, as she had with everything in her time here, had brought me around to the special thrill that came every time she spoke the single syllable and called me back to the times when life had been sweet and—if not easy—more carefree.

The way George still was. I had no doubt her years in Redmere City under her brother’s roof had not entirely been a life of pampered privilege. But she still carried hope with her like a beacon, and it was contagious.

She moaned, a delicious sound, as I licked at her core, spreading her wider so I could taste more, remember more. George wrapped fingers in my hair, tugging at my braids.

“Lou. I love you.”

I hadn’t cried in close to eight years. There was enough salt in the ocean without me adding pointless self pity to it, but the way she held onto me and trusted me was almost enough to break me. Instead, I did my best to break her open, so that her love would shine, even in the dark space around us.

“Princess,” I said, hissing on the last syllable, making her tremble as the air hit too-sensitive flesh. Before she could relax, I found the little nub between her thighs, flicking at it with the tip of my tongue, before pulling it gently between my lips. I couldn’t see her, but it was easy enough to picture her, hair spread wide as she tipped her head back. The slender column of her throat would be arched as she said my name again, forcing her small breasts upward, while she bent her knees and curled her toes into the bunk’s rough sheets.

She was so responsive to my touch. Once upon a time, we had been made for each other.

As I continued to tease her, George began to trash, arms and legs moving restlessly. The first time we had done this, her orgasm was sudden and powerful, taking us both by surprise. When I asked, she said she’d never touched herself when she was alone. I was not a possessive woman, and would not have cared if she had, or even if she had found someone to share her bed in Redmere from time to time. But the idea that everything she knew now had come from me, and that every time she touched herself in the future, she would think of us like this together, was a treasure I would guard jealously every night I was back in Kiril’s service.

Because he would ask for it. My service. You couldn’t ferry a princess—or a woman who would have been a princess—to safety without paying handsomely. When I had finally been free of him, Kiril promised me I would be back, and I had ignored the cackling goblin in the back of my head that said he was right.

But now, I had no other choice. George was the only choice. Her escape. Her safety. Her survival, long after the name of Captain Cinder was only a distant legend.

She came apart, her whole body going still as she spasmed against my mouth. Her slick juices coated my tongue, and I lapped at her long after she stopped shaking, trying to catch all of her that I could.

Finally though, she pulled me up alongside her and didn’t hesitate to kiss me as we settled together again.

“What do you think it’s like?” she asks.

“What is what like?” I say. We are ten years old and lying under a tree watching the late summer sun sink beneath the horizon. The day has been a swarm of insects and waves of heat, and we are grateful to have a few minutes to escape outside where the world doesn’t stink of sweat and air that won’t move, no matter how many windows are opened in George’s big house.

“Kissing a boy.”

I laugh. “Why would you want to kiss a boy?”

“I saw one of the groomsmen kissing Cook’s assistant yesterday. She looked like she enjoyed it. She was smiling when she went back to the kitchen.”

I roll my eyes. The groomsmen are kissing different girls every week. I’ve seen the way they look at George when we cross through the stable yard. She’s too young for them to be watching her like that.

“You don’t want to kiss a boy,” I say.

“Then who am I supposed to kiss?”

Overhead, the clouds are turning pink and orange. I turn my head toward George, and she’s braiding a crown of flowers, brow furrowed as she holds the stems overhead so she can work lying down.

“You can kiss me,” I say.

She laughs so hard she drops the crown. “You? Why would I want to kiss you?”

The idea seems reasonable to me. We do everything else together. Why shouldn’t we kiss? But as she rolls, holding her side while her laughter echoes across the grass, a sting of shame makes me wince. Of course she would never want to kiss me. She’s going to grow up and marry a rich husband and live in a bigger house than the one she has now. And I will—

Whatever the future holds in store for me, I hope it doesn’t include a husband.

A shadow blots out the last of the sunlight, and a pair of lips mashes down on mine in a clumsy ten-year-old kiss. It lasts just long enough for me to curl up my arms and legs like a dried-out bug, before George rolls away. The sun returns, the birds continue their song.

“What did you do that for?” I ask, pulse pounding.

She shrugs, picking up the crushed remains of her flowers. “I wanted to see what it was like.”

“You’re beautiful,” I said, running my fingers through the dark hair I didn’t need to see. I hoped, in the days and months and years ahead, she remembered everything I’d taught her, because every moment she’d spent on the ship, every second she’d clung to me in this bed...I would never forget any of those. However long I had left, I would carry the memory of George with me as the most precious thing I had.

“I can’t wait to see what our life will be like,” she said, nuzzling against my neck, even as her voice took on the heavy quality of sleep. When her limbs went slack and her breathing against my chest slowed, I buried my nose in her hair, mapping her scent. 

I did not sleep while my ship carried us along its groaning path.

We had so few hours left.