Elodie could not shake the vicious feelings stirring in her chest as she sat with the rest of the young pirates off to the side in the dining hall. With the way that Ventus’s teal-gray eyes lingered on Carina, or how Kas was chatting her up, taking her hand constantly, she couldn’t help it. 

“Were they that obvious when I joined?” Elodie pushed around the rations on her plate with a fork. Watching the three of them made the tuna stew much less appetizing. 

Jade shrugged, stealing a spoonful off of Elodie’s plate. “I mean, I didn’t exactly know Ventus before you joined. But Kas—well, Kas is like that with pretty much every lady we run into.”

She paused and glanced up at the ceiling. “Some of the gentlemen too, come to think of it.”

She shrugged again, returning to her own rations. “Honestly, I thought you’d be glad to be rid of Kas.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Jade snorted. “I think everyone knows that he gets under your skin. I mean, that’s what he does, and he likes that you put up a fight about it. But if she enjoys his charms, let her.”

Elodie supposed that Jade had a point. 

“Besides—” Jade gently jabbed her elbow into Elodie’s rib, a teasing gesture—“that means I’m not having to fight them to talk to you. Competition was getting a bit heavy.”

“You were competing?” Elodie raised an eyebrow.

For a second, something darker shifted in Jade’s eyes. Something forlorn, like the way that Elodie’s mother would look out at sea. But like that very sea, Jade’s eyes shifted again, jovial once more to the point that Elodie wondered if she’d imagined it. 

“With the way that they were crowding around you? Of course.” Jade was quiet again for a moment. “That poor girl, though. The Manoans usually take care of their own and don’t cause problems like that.”

“Do you think she did steal?” Elodie dropped her voice low, so Carina would not hear her. 

“No.” Jade tilted her head, considering Carina. “No, I can tell you right now that girl is no thief. She’s too shy for it, even more prim I’d argue than yourself.”

“Is that even possible?” Elodie joked, thinking of her arguments with her mother. 

“You might’ve been looking at high society, but there’s pirate in you.” Jade looked to her with fiery admiration. “I think with more time at sea, we’ll make a buccaneer out of you yet.”

Elodie laughed, but quickly sobered. Once they found her mother and her father’s treasure and did whatever had to be done with it, she wouldn’t be a pirate anymore. She couldn’t be. No matter how she might enjoy the smell of the sea-salt or the view of the endless seas and skies, she simply could not fall in love with it. She had to marry well, to increase the standing of the Fleetwood family and their holdings, she had to secure her future. 

There was no place for any of that on the high seas.

It made her sad, to think that all of this would come to an end, and sooner than she would have liked. 

Perhaps it was better, then, that the boys directed their attention to a girl who could return their feelings, who had a longer-term future with them. 

“I really wouldn’t worry about them,” Jade added after a long quiet. “Never understood the fuss around them anyway, boys.”

It truly was a shame that Elodie did. 

It was a clear night, the moon high overhead when Elodie had delivered her last messages around the ship, giving out the assignments and whatnot. She wandered back on deck, to at least look at it all one more time before returning to her cabin. When she did, however, she saw a lone figure standing at the prow, her white curls all around her like a veil. 

She knew her envy of Carina and the attentions she had received were unfair. After all, while how exactly she’d gotten in her situation was a mystery, it had been an ordeal. Enough that Elodie had wanted to help her, to draw her sword and come to the other girl’s aid. 

Seeing her stand up there all alone reminded Elodie of that. 

She decided to go to her.

“It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?”

Carina turned, her movements small and her shoulders hunched, her eyes mistrustful. Elodie supposed she couldn’t blame Carina there. They were all strangers, after all. 

“If it makes you feel any better, I’m fairly new here, to all of this.” Elodie gestured around her as she stood next to Carina. “I only joined up two weeks ago. Never would have thought I’d end up on a pirate ship of all things.”

“Is that so?” Carina’s voice was cool, refined, like a mountain spring. There was the careful control there of a society lady or one of the boys at the college in Port Augustine. Elodie knew it from how she had learned such things.

Still, it surprised her to hear it from Carina. Elodie had never heard of any nobility among what remained of the Manoans. And the people of the Windward Isles, while they had their own hierarchies, had no interest in joining the upper echelons of Albionese society. 

But Carina had been trained in such things. 

Another mystery, Elodie supposed. 

“I’m Elodie, by the way,” she offered.

Carina nodded. Still, there was a flicker of curiosity in her eyes. Elodie decided to take that as much of an invitation as she would receive. 

“I was in Port Augustine until about two weeks ago, when pirates showed up and raided the place,” Elodie continued. “Ventus helped rescue me and get me to Captain Jennings, she was a friend of my mother’s, you see. And they’ve been helping me, they’re good people.”

“I see.” Carina tugged at a pendant on her neck, with a blue-green pendant that matched her blue eye. There was something that looked like a sigil of some kind, something arcane carved into the stone and filled in with gold, that glowed as it caught the moonlight. She stared off into the endless night with a certain pensiveness, that same forlorn quality perhaps that Elodie had caught in Jade. 

Elodie sighed. “I suppose what I’m saying it that we’re both outsiders. We ought to help each other. And I understand if you don’t trust any of us yet. But they really are good people.”

Carina said nothing, staring at her with her unique mismatched eyes. 

“I never said thank you, for what you did on the docks.”

“You did, at the time,” Elodie reminded her.

“Well, I’d like to say it again.” With that, Carina turned away, truly as prim as Jade had ascertained her to be.

Elodie supposed that was the end of that. She wasn’t entirely sure what to make of the newcomer, and the mysteries that came with her. But she could also recognize that she would not be making any headway on that tonight. 

“Let me know if you ever need any help,” Elodie offered as she turned away. “And don’t stay up too late.”

Carina said nothing.

Elodie started across the deck, to the door that led to the insides of the ship and eventually, her cabin. It had been a long day, one filled with questions and calamity. But at least they had a direction to go in, an idea of where exactly her mother might have gone. That would simply have to be enough to sustain her. 

Between the fluttering sails, she heard the light fall of bootsteps, and with it, turned to see none other than Ventus standing there. 

Elodie nodded to acknowledge him, and then continue on, when she felt a hand at her shoulder. 

She whirled around to see that Ventus had followed her. 

“I was looking for you.”

Perhaps Elodie really was her mother’s daughter, for how several vile, venomous retorts fought their way to her lips. Then again, perhaps she wasn’t, given that one look into Venus’s eyes dissolved them all.

“Till the ends of the seas and the skies and the world falls off, I’m your man, Elodie.”

So she forced herself to smile. “Of course, what do you need?”

“I’m up on lookout duty for a while.” Ventus jerked his thumb up at the maze of wooden beams, ropes, and sails overhead. “Thought you might enjoy the view.”

He paused, some color filling his fine-boned cheeks. “I also wouldn’t mind the company.”

“Oh.” Elodie glanced behind her at Carina, but she had already disappeared from her spot on the prow.

When she looked back, Ventus had already hopped onto one of the lower beams. 

“Well, are you coming or not?” He called down.

This time, Elodie did not have to force a smile—in fact, it came rather naturally to her as she hiked up her skirts and fastened them to her belt. Then she joined him up on the beams and followed him into another world entirely of netting, sails, and the wind.