Page 138 of Ship of Shadows
“I would.” I stared out at the endless sea before us, thinking of those boys and the lives they had ahead of them.
“So where could we possibly put them?”
I gently pushed myself out of his arms.
“What are we going to do?” He spread his arms out wide, one of them still bandaged and healing. “Are we going to find undiscovered land somehow? No court, no city, is going to welcome a bunch of lost boys.”
“No,” I agreed, “but a pirate ship will.”
He cocked a brow and brushed a wisp of hair from my eyes. “What is going on in that mind of yours?”
“We can buy ships for them. They can use the ships however they’d like: to become merchants, to be mercenaries for hire, to sail the seas and be free. They don’t need land. They need a placeto call home, and what better place than a ship where they can create their own communities?”
Bastian stared at me for a moment, a look in his eyes I didn’t recognize. “I think I fall more in love with you every day.”
I crossed my arms. “Even when I tried to drown you? Or tricked you with the pixie dust? Or wrecked your ship?—”
“Shut. Up.” He pulled me to him, lips capturing mine and drowning out my next words.
He leaned me back against the railing, one hand sliding around to my waist, his tongue slipping into my mouth. I let out a moan, and he kissed me harder.
“I liked you better when you were fighting,” Kara shouted. “We have a ship to sail, and you haven’t even told us where to go yet, Captain. So if you could remove your tongue from the princess’s mouth for a moment and give us some damn orders, I’d really appreciate it.”
He let go of me, leaving me breathless.
“Are you sure we can’t just find an abandoned island somewhere and live out the rest of our lives alone?” he asked, then cut a look at his sister, who was glaring at him. “Because right about now, that sounds rather preferable to this.”
I laughed. “You’d miss it. Now go. You have a job to do, my pirate lord.”
“And you’re going to help me do it, my pirate queen.”
“Now that I like,” I said, grabbing his hand as we walked toward the middle of the deck. Bastian began telling the crew our new plan while I stood by his side.
This was the me I’d always dreamed of being, and now I had my entire future ahead of me. Maybe not as the queen of Apolis. But as the queen of pirates. As the queen of the sea.
THE END
