Vallin had been brought food yesterday, so for the first time since he'd been tossed in this room, he felt himself again. The only problem? The boredom.

He had a few favourite activities to keep busy. For one, he started braiding little bits of his hair, the ones he'd usually have trimmed by now. He'd learned to braid from his mother, and now was the only time it had ever had any value.

He also stole the fork from his food tray, using it to sketch some drawings in the dirt of the ground. He started with one of her, but she was impossible to draw properly, so he moved on to the Avourienne.

"Evening, love. I like your hair. You do that yourself?"

He cracked the back of his head into the stone wall with surprise, scrambling up to a sitting position. It was completely dark, and the light spilling from the hallway the only one that allowed him to see her at the door.

"It's night," was all he could think to say.

"On an island full of Sirens, it's always evening," she replied. She closed the door behind her, then lit a candle. Vallin had to squint to see her in his adjusting vision, but she looked different. Her hair was down, and she was wearing something more comfortable than she usually was—as though she'd been in for the night.

She tossed something, and he caught it quickly. A bottle. Of rum. He glanced up at her as she sat down across from him and placed the candle between them.

She looked over and placed a second, identical bottle on the ground beside her.

"We're drinking, are we?" he asked. "I thought we were fighting."

She popped her cork. "I may have overacted. Now we're not fighting, and we can drink."

Vallin leaned back against the wall carefully. "Playing mind games, are we?"

"That's what I do best," she replied.

He drew his brows, picking at the label. What a dangerous, dangerous game to play.

"Here's how it works, love," she said, leaning forward. "You ask me a question, I answer. I ask you a question, you answer. I won't ask you the location of the map. You can ask me anything you think will help you get out of here."

Vallin frowned. "How do I know you won't lie?" He spun the bottle in his hand.

"That's what the rum is for," she declared. "You're twice my weight and most likely a borderline alcoholic already, so you drink the whole bottle. I'll have half."

"Half isn't much," he said.

"It's not regular rum."

"So you can't walk in a straight line. You can still lie."

She shrugged. "Sure, but it'll be easier to read me, and I'm not a big liar in general."

She met his gaze, so he tried to read her expression. She didn't seem to be the kind of person to lie their way out of things; it would insult her ego.

"You think quicker," he pointed out. "I propose a change in the rules. I get two questions for every one you get."

She grinned, canines gleaming. She liked that, so she'd take it. "Deal."

He gestured to her bottle, so she handed it to him. He tried it, making sure it was real rum. She'd been right; it was stronger than normal. He handed it back and gave her his to try.

She didn't take it for a moment, so he continued to hold it out. He wasn't going to drink anything until she confirmed it was safe. She took it, had her sip, then handed it back.

"Good enough?" she asked.

"Yes." He leaned forward and clinked the necks of the bottles, then brought it to his lips. He'd never been a huge drinker, but something about the fiery feeling made him feel like he was back where he should be.

He finished before her. She scrunched up her nose, taking breaks. When she finished, she let out a short cough, putting the half bottle on the ground.

"They sell it to pirates diluted," she explained. "Sirens drink it straight."

"Something tells me you don't drink at all."

She smiled, no teeth. "You to serve, love."

Vallin brought his knees up and rested his wrists on them. The blistering heat was causing sweat to bead on his forehead.

"What's your name?" he asked. He figured he might recognize it from somewhere, and that's how he justified using up a question on it. There was something about her that was vaguely familiar.

"Novari," she said.

Vallin grinned. "That's pretty," he said. The rum wasn't hitting him yet, but the name simply suited her too much for him to not make a comment.

"Thank you," she replied evenly. She watched him closely.

"Who leads this resistance?" Vallin asked.

She ran her tongue over her teeth, not breaking his gaze. Her mind seemed to be working just fine for now. "Seira," she replied.

"I meant a full name," Vallin said. "Some sort of title."

"It's my question, love. Who's your first mate?" She didn't seem to be thinking about her questions at all. Like she'd had them all written down before she'd come to see him.

"Why would you care?" he asked.

"It's my question, love."

Vallin rolled his eyes. "Adrian Everson. The one with the dark eyes. Why would you care?" But as soon as the words left his mouth, he realized he'd wasted a question.

"I'm thinking he might be a little less tight-lipped than yourself," she answered.

Vallin should've seen that coming. It was customary for captains the share things like an important map's location with their first mates, and if she brought Everson in for questioning, he would never be able to play off Vallin's already carefully constructed story.

"Your question," she said, clearly impatient. Vallin's head was beginning to spin. He guessed hers was doing the same, and she wanted to get as much out of him as she could before her thoughts began to blur.

"The leader of the resistance," Vallin repeated. "What's her last name?"

"Silta," she replied.

Something about that name was familiar to him. It was right on the edge of his mind, but he couldn't quite place it. "Where do I know that from?" he asked.

"It's my question, love."

Vallin was tired of hearing her say that. He motioned for her to ask.

"Where is the rest of your family?" she asked. A good thing to exploit, no doubt.

"Chorro, where I was born," Vallin answered. "Where would I have heard the name Silta before?"

She gave a large sigh and rolled her shoulders back as if they were sore. He wondered what kinds of things caused stress to her body. If she was out every day, working to maintain that acrobatic skill.

"The King had an affair about eighteen years ago," she said. "It was port gossip. The mistress was our resistance leader."

Vallin's mind was clouding, so he didn't think about the importance of those words. All he could think about was how soft her hair looked.

"When I say king, by the way," she continued, "I don't mean you." She let out an abrupt laugh, then went back to mindlessly running her finger in a circle around the lid of her bottle.

Vallin watched her finger for a moment, wondering why she'd clarify that. He stretched out his legs and leaned his head back against the cold stone.

Age. Ask her age.

Vallin blinked. "How old are you?"

Her eyes snapped to him. "Eighteen."

He didn't make the connection yet. Instead, he raised his brows and said, "You're way too young for me, stunner."

"It's my question, love."

He set his jaw.

"Where did you find the map?" she asked.

Vallin paused. He couldn't lie. She'd see right through him.

"I wasn't the one to find it," he answered, expertly avoiding the truth with something very close to it. "Where were you born?" He suspected Myria, but he wasn't sure.

"Here," she said, with the same cautious tone she'd told him her age in. He latched onto it, knowing she had just given him a piece of information she hadn't wanted him to have.

Eighteen years ago. Eighteen years old. Born in Myria, on a Siren island. Second-in-command to a mistress of the King.

Vallin leaned forward suddenly, his mind racing with possibilities.

"Your father. He's...?"

"Joseph Kain," she said, glancing over at him. Her gaze slid back over to the window, where moonlight just managed to get through enough to produce a shine in her eyes. "The King of the Cobalts."

"Shit," Vallin breathed. "Shit."

She slid her finger around again. "Wouldn't I be a nice addition for your quest," she mumbled.

Myria's chest. That's what she was after. The one treasure in all of the Cobalts and Myria that required royal blood to open. It didn't do much, but knowing which map she was looking for made it easier for him to pretend he had it.

"Has anyone on your crew or you memorized the map?" she asked. Her eyes drifted to the ceiling as she leaned back further on her elbows.

"No," he replied. "You're a royal. You're the heir to the throne."

She let out a long, confusing breath of air. "You're more of a royal than I am," she said.

Vallin's head was swimming. "Does the King know you're alive?" he asked.

"No. Don't tell."

Vallin watched her. "I'll keep it out of our frequent conversation," he said.

There was silence for a moment. Then, she looked over at him. "It's your question, love."

Vallin tried to come up with one that might benefit him, but he couldn't think of any. His mind was too foggy to care, anyway.

"Your mother leads the resistance, then?" he asked. "That makes you the only person on this island that isn't a Siren."

"Yes and no. There are a few men on the island as well as some other women who aren't Sirens. People my mother has convinced to stay," she said.

"Your mother forces you into this, then?"

She let her elbows go and laid out flat on the floor, her hands laced over her stomach. She closed her eyes. "I could leave," she said.

"That's not what I asked."

She stayed still, knowing exactly what he'd meant. There was a difference between being able to leave and going through with it.

"I was born into it," she replied. "But I could leave," she said, her voice quiet.

"Have you ever considered that?" Vallin asked.

"It's my question, love."

"If you say that one more time, I swear to the Devil—"

"How did you end up with the Avourienne?"

Vallin glanced down at her. "How is that going to help you find the map?"

He continued to watch her when she didn't answer. Her head was to his left, resting on the cool stone. She opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling for a moment, her pupils dilating and constricting. She'd forgotten about the map. She'd asked a question she simply wanted to know.

"I found it," Vallin said. "The Avourienne. In this isolated cove on the south side of Chorro where I used to sail. I found her there, never touched and ready for a crew." He could feel the excitement that had brewed in his heart that day, realizing that it was a gift for him. "I don't know why it was there, and I don't know how it got there."

"The Devil," she said. "That's what they say."

Vallin didn't want to admit how vividly he believed that rumour. He attempted nonchalance with his response, "I suppose it makes sense."

She watched him carefully, waiting for more, and his skin felt a chill. She could read him well enough to know exactly what he thought, anyway. What was the harm in a sliver of honesty?

"Sometimes I think there's something on my side," he said. "Something rooting for me. Telling me what to say, what to do, setting a path out for me."

Vallin had thought about that a lot these last few days. Nothing had ever gone this bad before for him, and he was starting to wonder if there was a reason he wasn't making some sort of miraculous escape like he usually did. He was starting to wonder—should the stories and the premonitions be real—if there was some sort of purpose behind this.

Vallin shook the existential thoughts from his mind and spoke, "I was younger than you when I found the ship. Never even went back to tell anyone I was leaving. I just left."

"What about your family?" she asked.

"It's my question, love," he said.

She didn't move. She looked like she was made of porcelain in the golden candlelight, like artwork. Like something he could spend his entire life drawing and never quite get right. He wanted to reach out and touch her, but she was too far away.

"I like your voice," she said. "Tell me why you never went back."

Vallin lifted his chin. There was a unique faux demand to her words, simple and firm. As if she was only playing at giving orders, letting him be the man in the end.

"My father was a good man," Vallin said. "Held morals close to his heart. I never understood him. My mother went mad, stared at walls and cut off her fingers. I used to be able to bring her back to reality, but her age worsened it, and there came a time when I didn't understand her anymore. Chorro was a world of nothing substantial. If I'd stayed any longer, I would've joined her in madness. I haven't spoken to them since."

"But you kept her ring."

Vallin glanced at her. She'd been on his ship. In his drawer. In his head. "You're nosy," he said. That was invasive. Too invasive for his liking.

"Very. You can draw."

Vallin wanted to back up and take a few steps away. It was an uncomfortable feeling of giving up just a little too much, giving someone something that could turn into an edge. He didn't answer.

"The ring. It's your mothers," she repeated.

Vallin shook his head. "Don't you have a map to find?"

"Look at you," she mused. "Clamming right up. Tell me whose ring that is."

Faux demand, but a demand all the same. It said, If you want to get your way in the end, let me have my way now.

"It was hers," he answered. "On one of her few lucid days, she told me to have it. That there wasn't a thing in this world more blissful than love."

She didn't answer for a long time. Then, "Would you still have left? If you never found the Avourienne?"

"Yes," was his immediate reply. "I was not meant for repetition."

Her eyes had been half-closed, head resting on the concrete, but now they watched the ceiling. They weren't quite yellow or golden—in fact, a colour couldn't quite encompass it. To Vallin, they had the same hue as sun rays through water. The only part of her that comforted him.

"I hate repetition," she said. "But you live too brazenly for me."

"You thrive off repetition," he corrected. "You're a planner, darling. A reader, a predictor. Repetition is your weapon, because the more standardized the person and the experience, the better chance you have at winning."

She shook her head and closed her eyes. He saw the conflict in her—maybe because she was drunk, maybe because she wasn't hiding it well enough. Whatever the reason, he saw her internal disagreement. He had no doubt she did hate repetition, but she was too afraid to let go of it.

Her voice was near-tentative, "How can you possibly win if you're so out of control?"

"You want my advice, do you?"

She lifted her head, settling back on her elbows and looking over at him. "Yes."

Vallin held her beautiful gaze. He lifted his hand and told her to come closer with the curl of a single finger.

Her eyes flickered from his hand to his eyes. He wasn't sure how she'd manage the maneuver if she decided to make it; she was already on the ground, and moving over towards him would come in the form of either an awkward crawl or an even more awkward stand and walk.

She kept her eyes on him as she sat up slowly, using her hand on the concrete as a rotation point and covering the distance in a movement that was neither awkward nor forced. He wondered if his movements looked so effortless to others.

She leaned her shoulder against the wall. "Tell me," she said.

Vallin rolled his head to catch her gaze. "Trust," he said. "In my new family. That I'll do right by them and they'll do right by me."

"I hate it."

He smiled. It was his port smile, his patient, deadly smile. "I figured."

"And if they betray you? Gang up on you, overthrow you?"

He laughed as he turned away from her for a moment. "I'd be honoured," he said. "To experience mutiny is to have made something worth dying for."

She shook her head and closed her eyes. "Everyone says that until they die for it."

He glanced back at her. She was serene in that moment, completely safe. He reached out to touch the skin over her temple. She was warmer than he thought she'd be, still as stone.

"I suppose I'd rather die having lived than live in fear of death," he said. He made his way down her cheekbone, to her jawline. Like artwork. He felt some small muscle of hers tic somewhere deep under his fingers.

She turned her head, maybe to see him better, maybe to get closer. She opened her eyes, hidden with something Vallin couldn't read in this state.

"Perhaps I like repetition after all," she said.

"No, you don't," he said. "You want to feel. True excitement, anticipation, heartbreak. Those are the only indicators that you're living." He brushed a thumb over the outline of her lips. "It's about faith."

"I have no faith," she said through his fingers.

"You don't believe in the Devil? In the angels?"

"They support no logic."

"You've been on my ship, stunner. Explain it another way."

She lifted her chin and closed her eyes again, so Vallin ran a finger down her throat. He believed in faith because he had to. Because if he didn't, he'd spend his life trying to figure out why every few months, some shipment would arrive in his name at his port in Chorro. And he'd go mad trying to understand who had sent the silky, blood-red extra sail that would be in the box.

"There are some things I can't explain yet," she replied.

"But you think you will one day?"

She didn't answer him, and Vallin wondered if it was because she didn't have an answer. He twisted a lock of black hair around his finger and examined it closely. Was it her beauty, was that all he wanted? He tried to sort through his own drunken feelings. Was it so superficial? He couldn't quite be sure. He just knew what he wanted.

"I want you," he admitted. "Against my will."

"You're not unique," she replied, unfazed.

He sighed, his head dizzy. "I wish I met you somewhere else," he said.

She leaned forward abruptly, and his hand fell away. "If you'd met me anywhere else," she said, "I'd be irrelevant. A notch, like we all are to you. You don't want me; you want me to want you. It's a desperate obsession with machismo."

Vallin didn't move his head, but he did move his eyes to meet hers. It was, frankly, a rather hypocritical declaration. "Women are not irrelevant to me," he said. "I just haven't found one I want around." He clasped his hands again, looking back over at her abandoned bottle. "You, though, I'd keep. I'd agree that it would be to prove I could at first, but I don't think it'd end that way. If I met you somewhere else, it would've been you."

"It," she repeated.

He hummed in agreement. "If you were a sailor, and we stopped in the same port, you would be my objective, the next thing I needed to prove I could have. I'd play the quick-wit game that has never failed, but you'd beat me at it, and that would give me pause. I wouldn't think too deeply of it; I'd make an effort not to. You'd come back to the ship with me because you have a thing for authority and power, and you love that I reek of it."

He paused for a moment, remembering how it had gone with Rhea. How it could've been with somebody who meant something. "I'm sure of it," he said, coming to his own realization. "I wouldn't have slammed the door the next morning. I would've kept you forever, put my mother's ring on you and called it a life. No woman will ever understand me quite like you would've."

She was still and silent, watching him.

"It's ironic," he said. "That you're probably going to end up killing me on this damn island, and I would've loved you under a different circumstance. One way or the other, I end up on a knee for you."

She searched his face, her expression unreadable. "You look good on your knees," she told him.

Vallin grinned, looking back at her. "You think so?"

"I do," she replied.

Vallin let his smile melt away under her gaze. He was the King of the Sea, risk-taker to end all risk-takers. She was reeling him in, doing what she did best, so he'd do what he did best. He turned to face her and reached for her jaw again. He pulled her closer, but she gave resistance at the last second, a breath apart.

"You'll regret it," she whispered.

"I won't," he told her, because nothing was telling him not to. This was safe; he felt it in the pads of his fingers and the rare clarity in his drowning mind. She was safe.

She searched his eyes, then lifted her chin a little to meet him.

He leaned forward as she softened, feeling the prick of her canine against his lips, tasting the salt of the ocean. Like adventure and uncertainty and danger and everything he'd ever really searched for.

She sat up a little, freeing a hand to lift to his face. Graceful and soft, mesmerizing and drunk. He'd thought that this would be the threshold, that it would be as enthralling as an experience gets. He'd almost forgotten all the other things a person could do to another person.

It was painful, this waiting, this anticipation. It was awful and he lived for it. It hurt to know it could get better than this—that this was not the end, it was the beginning.

He pulled her closer, finding her shoulders and her arms. She leaned into him even more, placing a hand on his chest. He could feel her fingers through his shirt, feel her heartbeat, slow and rhythmic in comparison to his racing one. Was she so calm, so unaffected?

She moved slowly and carefully, as if he was fragile, as if knowing that if she moved too fast or gave him too much, he'd shatter the peace and move too quickly.

She was over him now, did he miss that? Her fingers were twirled in his hair, those canines sharp. He tasted blood, felt the weight of her on him. He could feel the tendons in her back and the lean muscles in her legs. He could feel every inch of her and it overwhelmed him. Like there was too much to touch. Too much to feel and too much to do in such little time.

Her fingers trailed down his chest, some motivation to them he couldn't quite place. They shifted lower and lower, grazing the hem of his shirt. She tugged it up, and Vallin leaned forward into her, letting her pull the fabric over his head. Her hands returned to his waist, her fingers against his bare skin.

He wanted it all. All of it. Pull back. Pull away. Do it before she can.

What was the point of having a devil in his ear if it never let him do anything truly dangerous? He pushed it away, pulled her closer. She steadied herself with a hand on the wall, the pressure of her hips sharp as she leaned forward. Vallin wanted it all, the skin and the whispers. He'd never wanted it so badly as he did now. He hooked his fingers under her shirt, felt the brush of her skin.

She let out a long breath, her hand on his neck a little tighter. But she was breaking away, suddenly, fingers still but lips just a hair too far away.

"The map, love," she whispered. Her lips touched his jaw, down his neck, leaving the stinging feeling of pain. His heart fluttered.

"I don't have it."

She didn't stop. She worked her way back up his neck and to his jaw, brushing her thumb over his lips.

"You don't have it?" she murmured through his skin, her other hand finding his hair. He felt the sharp graze of her nails on his head, so he closed his eyes.

"I never had it."

Vallin's couldn't win this game. She was better, that was all. He just wanted her, wanted someone who understood this life like she did.

She drew away, enough to clear his head a little. Not enough to make him fully realize what he'd just said and the implications of having done so, but enough to realize it was over. Her hands and her body and her lips. It was over.

"Sorry," he whispered, despite having only lied to save his life, despite never having had any reason to be honest with her.

She watched him for a moment like she wasn't quite processing what he said. Her eyes searched his face, her fingers still on his jaw. He wanted her to stay. He wanted her to pull him back in and forget about the map and do all those things he knew she could do. He wanted her to want this, not to have done it for some other reason.

She was silent for a long minute, her hand falling back to his chest. She ran her finger down the middle of his torso, her nail against his bare skin.

She pulled away, getting to her feet. She turned, heading to the door and shutting it gently behind her.

Vallin didn't move for a long time. And when he did, it was to reach for her bottle.