POV: Alaric
Sleep didn’t come easy when the past was snoring in the next room.
The walls of the cliff inn were thin, old stone faced with warped wood, every groan of the building loud as a cannon in the quiet. Storm wind sighed outside the carved windows, but the cove itself sat calm, cradling both ships like suspicious beasts allowed to rest in the same cage. Somewhere below, I could hear the Black Tide rocking gently, her ropes creaking like an old woman’s knees.
My crew was scattered along the corridor, buried in narrow rooms that smelled of salt, damp and cheap soap. Someone snored. Someone mumbled in their sleep. Someone laughed in a dream. I lay on a mattress that had seen better centuries and stared at the low ceiling until the knots in the wood started to look like eyes.
Eyes the wrong shade of brown.
“Ridiculous,” I muttered, rolling onto my side.
The bed complained. So did my shoulder. Every bruise from the storm made itself known at once. I closed my eyes and tried to think of anything except the girl who had walked onto my deck months ago in lace and terror, and who had just sailed a half-dead merchant ship into a cove she had no business finding.
It didn’t work.
Beth’s face arrived anyway, uninvited, like everything else she did. Hair plastered to her cheeks from the rain, chin lifted, shouting at me on a stranger’s deck as if she owned it. You didn’t look for me. The words had sunk claws into my brain and refused to let go.
I had looked. Just not enough.
“Liar,” I told myself.
I’d asked at ports. I’d listened for gossip. I’d very nearly broken a man’s jaw in Blood Harbor when he made a joke about a tainted bride rotting in some brothel gutter. But I hadn’t turned the ship around. I hadn’t abandoned the sword, the throne, the war brewing with Silas. I’d told myself she was clever enough to survive or stubborn enough to die. Either way, it wasn’t my problem.
Except it was.
I could still hear her sobbing in the dungeon, even now. That first night, shaking in lace and mud, hands bruised from clawing at the cell bars. I’d mocked her because the sound scraped at something I didn’t want to feel. Easier to be cruel than to care.
And then I’d let her walk away.
Brilliant, Alaric. King of Pirates. Can wrestle a man twice his size, can charm half the coves on the eastern route, can outdrink demons. Can’t stop one furious girl from storming off the ship with fire in her eyes and death at her heels.
I flung an arm over my face and exhaled slowly.
The corridor outside shifted, boards creaking as someone rolled over in another room. I pictured Beth alone on land, the way she’d looked at me earlier—thinner, harder, something sharper in the set of her shoulders. The knife at her belt hadn’t been for decoration. There’d been blood in her eyes, and not just the kind you get from watching it spill.
How many times had she almost died while I was busy chasing a sword?
Guilt crawled under my skin like ants.
Enough.
I swung my legs off the bed.
The floor was cold, the night chill sneaking through cracks and down the stone. I dragged on my boots, not bothering with laces, and shrugged into my shirt and jacket. My fingers hesitated on the buttons, then left the top few undone. It wasn’t vanity. The inn was stuffy. That was all.
I opened my door as quietly as a man my size could. The corridor beyond was dim, lit by a single dying lantern at the far end. Shadows hunched along the walls. I padded past Finn’s door, where someone was definitely snoring like a strangled seal, and past another where low murmurs suggested two crewmen had found comfort in each other rather than in sleep.
Beth’s room was farther down, near the bend where the corridor squeezed narrower. I’d noticed earlier when we were assigned rooms. Not on purpose, of course. Just… out of habit. I always noted exits, entrances, threats.
She currently qualified as all three.
I stopped outside her door and stared at it like it might bite.
What was I even doing? Knocking like some awkward suitor in a port romance? I should go back to bed. I should drink myself unconscious. I should do anything but stand here, heart annoyingly loud, thinking words I’d never said with my mouth.
I’m sorry.
My hand lifted before my pride could wrestle it back down.
I knocked.
For a few seconds there was nothing. Then a soft thump, a muffled curse, the creak of mattress springs. Footsteps padding. My stupid heartbeat sped up like I was a boy again, stealing his first ship.
The door cracked open.
Beth stared out at me through the gap, eyes squinting against the lantern light. Her hair was a mess, dark curls spilling everywhere, one side smashed flat from sleep, the other trying to escape in all directions. Her shirt hung loose off one shoulder, collar slipping enough to show damp skin and the faint edge of her mark’s bandage. She’d thrown trousers on but clearly hadn’t bothered with boots.
And in her hand, gleaming at stomach height, was a knife.
Of course she’d open the door half asleep and half undressed with a blade ready to gut whoever stood there. Of course.
Her eyes widened when she registered it was me. Then narrowed immediately.
“Oh, perfect,” she muttered. “The storm learned to knock.”
I smirked automatically, because that’s what I do when I’m off balance. “I’d be hurt, princess, but you already made it clear you don’t care if I drown.”
She pushed the door a little wider but kept her body blocking most of the gap, as if I might try to force my way in. The knife stayed between us, point down but steady. “It’s the middle of the night, Alaric. Did you come to complain that the bed is too lumpy for your royal back?”
“Among other things,” I said. “Do you always answer doors looking like you murdered your pillow?”
Her free hand flew to her hair, then dropped when she realized she’d reacted. “Say what you want, pirate, but get to the point. I’d like to sleep at least once this year.”
Up close, I could see the fine tremor in her fingers, the faint smudges under her eyes. She was exhausted. Stubborn enough to pretend otherwise, but still human under all that new steel.
Good. Maybe she’d be too tired to stab me after I said it.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I said.
“That sounds like a you problem,” she replied. “We have storms, Silas and Adrian for that.”
“I was thinking,” I continued, ignoring the jab, “about how long you lasted on shore without getting yourself killed.”
She frowned. “Is that supposed to be an insult or a compliment?”
“Both,” I admitted. “You’re good at dragging both out of me.”
Her lips twitched like she was fighting a smile. She won. “If this is your way of saying ‘nice work surviving,’ your delivery needs work.”
I blew out a breath and leaned one shoulder against the doorframe, pretending I was comfortable. My insides twisted.
“I’m not good at this,” I said.
“At what? Standing? Talking? Existing?” she asked sweetly.
“At…” I grimaced. “The thing. The… words.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You have plenty of words, Alaric. You use them to insult me daily.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Those I’m good at.”
She tilted her head, watching me carefully now. The knife didn’t lower, but her grip on it loosened a fraction. “Then why are you here?”
Because I let you walk into a world that would eat you and told myself it wasn’t my fault if you got chewed.
Because I’ve been replaying the way you said you thought I didn’t care and every time it feels like someone shoved a blade under my ribs.
Because when the ship came through that storm today and I saw you on the deck, something in my chest that I didn’t know was clenched finally breathed.
None of those seemed like wise options.
“I came to say you’re still alive,” I said instead. “Which is… impressive. For you.”
She rolled her eyes. “Wow. I’m overwhelmed. Truly. Go away.”
“Beth,” I said, and my voice cracked just enough on her name that it made her pause.
I swallowed.
“If you’re about to tell me I did everything wrong again,” she warned, “I’m closing this door and throwing the knife after it.”
I huffed a laugh. “Tempting as that is, no. I’m…” The word stuck. My tongue wanted to curl into a joke instead. I’m hungry. I’m bored. I’m annoyed you stole my cove. Anything but what I actually felt.
“Spit it out,” she said softly.
I met her eyes fully. Let the masks slip just a little.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Her knife hand stilled.
“For what?” she asked slowly, like she assumed it was a trap.
“For being an ass,” I said, because I didn’t know how to dress it up. “In the dungeon. On the island. On the ship. Every time I laughed instead of listened. Every time I called you weak instead of remembering you were learning a world I was born into. For letting you walk off the deck when I should’ve… stopped you. Or gone with you. Or something less stupid than what I did, which was nothing.”
The corridor fell quiet.
The smug tone faded without my permission. Underneath it was something rawer, unfamiliar in my own voice.
“I told myself you were your own problem,” I went on. “That you’d either grow teeth or die and that was the way of it. But when you said I didn’t look for you…” I shrugged one shoulder. “You weren’t wrong. Not enough. Not like I could have.”
Beth stared at me, eyes wide, mouth parted just a little. The knife drooped toward the floor.
“You’re apologizing,” she said at last, as if testing the words.
“Don’t sound so shocked,” I grumbled automatically. “I am capable.”
“I’ve never heard you apologize,” she said.
“That’s because I’m rarely wrong,” I replied, reflexive smirk flickering back for a heartbeat. Then I sighed. “But this time… I was. I thought pushing you would make you stronger. Maybe it did. But I pushed you off the ship instead of standing beside you. That’s on me.”
Silence again. Her gaze searched my face like she was looking for the joke hidden behind the words.
“No one forced you to say this?” she asked.
“Just my conscience,” I said. “Annoying thing. Should’ve drowned it years ago.”
A ghost of a smile finally touched her mouth. She looked down at the floor, then back up, something complicated in her gaze.
“I’m not a crybaby anymore,” she said quietly. “If that’s what this is about.”
“I know,” I said. “Believe me, I noticed. The girl who threw up at the first sight of blood doesn’t kill bounty hunters in alleys and steer ships through storms into secret coves.”
Something like pride slid into my tone. I didn’t bother hiding it.
She swallowed. “Good. Because I don’t need your guilt on top of everything else. You don’t have to feel sorry for me, Alaric. I chose to leave. I chose to survive. Without you.”
“I’m aware,” I said dryly. “You remind me every other sentence.”
“I don’t care,” she added, and this time there was steel behind the words. “About what you did or didn’t do. I don’t have room for it. I have my father to save, a prince to kill, a curse to figure out. Your… feelings are your own problem.”
Ouch.
I nodded once, jaw tight. “Right. Of course.”
“For what it’s worth,” she added after a heartbeat, “hearing you say it… doesn’t completely suck.”
High praise, from her.
A breath I hadn’t realized I was holding eased out of me. Some knot in my chest loosened, not gone, but less strangling.
She stepped back, the knife now completely at her side. “I’m going back to sleep,” she said. “Try not to drown in guilt in the corridor. It’d be annoying to trip over your corpse in the morning.”
I snorted. “Yes, your concern is touching.”
Her eyes softened for just a flicker. “Good night, Alaric.”
“Good night, Beth.”
She closed the door before I could say anything else.
The latch clicked, leaving me alone in the dim corridor with a dying lantern and the echo of my own words bouncing around my skull.
I stood there for a long moment, staring at the wood. Part of me wanted to knock again, make another joke, demand she admit she had missed me at least a little. The smarter part turned around.
On the walk back to my room, the building creaked, the storm sighed against the cliffs, and my mind replayed the look on her face when I said I was sorry.
Shock. Disbelief. And something in her eyes I didn’t dare name yet.
I reached my door, went inside, and lay back on the terrible mattress. This time, when I closed my eyes, sleep came slowly—but it came.
For the first time in a long while, the past’s voice in the next room was quieter.
Slightly.