The streets were dark. A girl, lithe and quick, scrambled over a pile of crates behind the tavern known as the Golden Lady. Drunken song, slurred and boisterous, spilled from its lighted windows and into the crisp winter air. The lamps struggled to prevail against the cold night, slick with ice and casting only a faint pool of light that barely illuminated half of the street. The girl crouched in perfect silence among the crates, which still smelled faintly of the oranges they had carried on some long voyage. The wind was chill and damp from the sea, but the night had just begun for Stella Robison, the most talented young pickpocket the already crime-infested Sonvare streets had ever seen.

It seemed to her that she hid there for quite some time before someone emerged from the tavern and stepped into the dim light. He was young, a shock of dark hair in an unruly mess on his head, and what looked to be a fairly fat sack of coins hanging from his belt. Perfect. A foolish boy, most likely the son of some merchant, trying to be a rebel by sitting in what was well known to be a favorite haunt of pirates. In any case, only idiots carried their coins that way, in a city overrun with thieves. Stella slowly inched the dagger from its sheath, the sharp point glinting like a cold star. This should be fairly simple.

The ties holding the sack of coins severed easily from the boy’s belt, and with practiced skill Stella caught the jingling bag before it could make even the smallest noise. She was, to the untrained eye, merely a shadow thrown by the light—too quick and inconspicuous to be caught. So it was that her surprise was both audible and visible when the boy’s cold hand clamped hard onto her wrist and the point of a cutlass very slightly nicked her cheek.

“Lucky I didn’t chop your hand off, thief.” The boy’s voice was colder than the winter night, colder than the steel blue of his stare. Stella, who had never quite been afraid or even admitted to being afraid in her whole sixteen years of life, was suddenly very frightened. Who was this boy? The intensity of his anger was something she had never encountered. Then again, she had never been caught…at least, she hadn’t been caught for a good five years now. And here she was, face to face with a strange boy who seemed to be no older than she was, a boy who would change the course of her life.

“Where have ye gotten to, son? Best row back to the ship now, afore the whole blasted ocean freezes over.” A voice was calling from inside the Golden Lady, slightly slurred from too many drinks. Heavy footsteps sounded, the clink and jingle of brass buckles and golden rings. Soon a shadow would darken the doorway, and Stella did not need to linger to guess whose voice that was, who this boy would turn out to be. She had heard the Pirate King’s voice before, and it echoed often in her dreams. It was a voice that the whole city knew. Both the would-be victim and the intercepted pickpocket tensed at the sound.

So it was that Luke loosened his hold on Stella, who up until that point had stood under the animosity of his gaze as though transfixed. Somewhat absently, she handed him the small bag that had been hanging from his belt. He took it, wondering who she was and why she had been trying to take his money. As swiftly as his anger had risen, it was ebbing now, pushed aside at the sound of his father’s voice. The clouds had parted and a sliver of moon had been allowed to shine through. He could see her face—terribly beautiful, too beautiful to belong to an urchin on the Sonvare streets. Immediately he thought of his sister, of Anna curled up safe in bed, far from the wintry coast of Guillare. He couldn’t hurt this girl, whoever she was.

“Look, do you need this? You can have it. If you’re hungry and need to eat, just take it.”

Stella snapped out of her temporary daze. She tossed her head contemptuously. “I don’t need any help from you, or any man. I can take care of myself.” And with that she was running away, down the dim street, with only one backward glance. But Luke remembered that glance. He remembered those eyes, and that voice—smooth and melodic, like a hypnotizing tune, or the mermaid song in his mother’s stories before bedtime.

“Well. It’s been some time now, hasn’t it, Stella?” Luke stood on the deck of the Erinye, soaking wet, a pool of seawater slowly gathering at his feet.

“Not long enough to justify pleasantries, Luke Lyon. Or is it Your Highness now? My condolences for your heartbreaking loss, by the way. You wouldn’t want that to be two heartbreaking losses, would you? It would be a shame to have to hurt her.”

Anna could feel the rapier at her throat. It annoyed her to no end, this business of being the hostage. She wanted to kick and scream and pitch a fit over it, and it alarmed her that her reaction was so childish. Still, it was infuriating having to be helpless. There was Lee now, probably gloating at her in his head, and Luke too; her relief at seeing him come to rescue her had very quickly been thrown off-balance by the anger at his decision about Jesse. Anna found that she had precious little patience for the tableau that seemed to be spreading out before her, like the water now seeping into the cracks between the deck planks. Whatever story there was to be heard, whatever reason for Luke’s knowledge of who this woman was, Anna didn’t want to know. All she wanted was to be free and able to have a fair fight with all the people who seemed to be waging war against her for inexplicable reasons.

“Hurt her? By all means, do. If you’re willing to die for it.”

Stella laughed, the sound of it curling up into the air and hanging there like a foreign perfume. She pushed the blade’s edge closer against Anna’s skin, just enough to draw blood. “I doubt you could kill me. You didn’t quite manage to the last time you tried, and it doesn’t seem like you’ve grown much sharper over the years. But come now, it would be silly for your darling sister to lose limbs over this. It’s such a silly matter. All I want is the locket she wears, nothing more. Let me have the locket and sail off into the sunset, and we won’t be bothering you again. Not anytime soon, at least.”

“Since when do you barter for what you want? If you wanted it, you would’ve taken it by now. There’s something else you’re waiting for. And I’m not enough of an idiot to stand here and wait for it with you—not anymore.”

Stella was forced to throw Anna aside in order to parry Luke’s cutlass, something that was difficult to achieve and yet barely elicited a bead of sweat on her part. Gritting her teeth, she pushed with all her strength until Luke had to take a step back. Lee dashed to Anna’s side, lifting her from the deck and narrowly avoiding a collision with Luke and Stella as they lunged at one another with weapons flashing in the dying sunlight. There was a crash as a section of railing splintered under the ferocity of their fighting, scattering shards of wood across the floor and crumbling into the bay.

Anna, staring at the fight that was taking place, was amazed that Stella’s rapier could even stand up to Luke’s cutlass. The rapier looked so delicate, its blade tapering to a graceful point, as though it had been wrought to deal in beauty rather than in destruction. And yet, with Stella, all things seemed so—her face, her voice, even her effortlessly charming manner, were petals among poisoned barbs. It was, to Anna, more terrifying than the anger with which her brother fought now, an anger burning brighter and hotter than she had ever witnessed before. Stella was more frightening because she radiated a thousand illusions, drew you in sweetly before ruthlessly cutting you apart. It was worse than any rage that could be seen, felt, detected instantly. It came at you from an angle you had never anticipated, because you had never imagined such duplicity existed in a form so angelic. She had barely met the woman, had known her only because of the kidnapping and the melodious voice in her ear, but Anna already knew. She sensed that Stella would be difficult to defeat, even with Luke’s skill.

It was several days later when they met again, and once more it was entirely by chance. Luke, who soon tired of drinking with the other men (he always managed to out-drink them), no longer spent much time in the evenings at the Golden Lady. He would walk out to the very edge of Sonvare, where even the boardwalk of the pier ended in a patch of forest at the water’s edge, and sit on the sand to look out at the silhouette of his father’s ship in the distance. It would be his ship, one day. He would become the Pirate King. He found that he thirsted for it, thirsted for that life of freedom and riches beyond measure, of travel and the capricious ocean, of the camaraderie of his fellow pirates, of the rush as he drew his cutlass and became the nightmare of every dreaming coastal town. It was the life he wanted. It was the life he craved. And it was the life he was meant to have.

He sat there that night, two days from their first meeting, and nearly jumped out of his skin as a twig cracked behind him, in the copse of trees. He stood up, on guard, and walked toward the forest. It might just be some animal, he thought to himself. But it was Stella, who had been up in the boughs of a tree since late in the afternoon, when she had been fleeing from an angry merchant and disappeared into the small forest to hide. Accustomed to any sort of sleeping place or position, she had soon succumbed to general exhaustion and fallen asleep, comfortably wedged between two sturdy branches, her head resting against the tree’s rough bark. She had woken to find that Luke was sitting on the sand not too far away, and in her shock (as well as the cloud of disorientation that hovers when you’ve been asleep for quite a while), she had nearly slipped right off the branch. In catching herself, however, she had found it would be difficult to shimmy back up into the tree, and had to let herself down. She landed on the twig, and in a minute Luke was heading her way.

Stella, never one to admit she had been less than graceful, decided she should just walk out and deal with him. Luke, however, only laughed.

“You again? Are you following me? I thought you said you didn’t need any men?”

“That’s very funny you know, considering I don’t see any men for miles around. Only a scruffy pirate boy. Last time I checked, deck swabbers weren’t considered actual men.”

“Hey! If you had any idea who you were talking to—”

“Well, you don’t know who you’re talking to!”

“You’re just a pickpocket, and a bad one at that!”

Shaking with anger, Stella went right up and slapped Luke square across the face. “My name is Stella, and I happen to be the best pickpocket in Sonvare. Ask any merchant here. They would give you all their ridiculous wealth if you managed to catch me. They’re sick of me picking their stock clean before they can even get it to market day.”

Luke laughed again, merrily. “And I’m Luke. Honestly, I never met a girl who took so long to introduce herself.”

“Are you tired yet, my dear?” Stella spoke through gritted teeth, backing into the mast and then ducking just in time before Luke could pin her there, the sweep of his cutlass chopping off a length of her dark hair. Luke’s only response was a vague smile as he blocked a particularly menacing blow from his opponent. Much of the Erinye’s deck was in shambles, barrels cracked and coils of rope thrown askew. It was a wonder that the sails were still held in place. All this had taken place in less than ten minutes. The fighting was unforgiving and devoid of any pity, any human quality. Anna could sense none. Even Lee, keeping her close beside him and picking her up whenever Stella and Luke came too close, could hardly get up and try to join in to make the fight go by quicker, defeat the woman sooner.

Whatever animosity between them, Anna realized, ran deep and cold. They seemed to have known each other quite well in the past, though how or where they had met, Anna didn’t know. Luke had never spoken of anyone named Stella. Then again, this was hardly the brother she had known and loved for so long. It was a different Luke, unapproachable and harsh. It was as though he had peeled away the layer of himself that had been son, brother, friend, to reveal something else beneath that exterior. Had that undercurrent of cruelty always been present? Had she been blind to this, as well?

Lee suddenly gave a shout, his arm reaching for the javelin but one second too late. Stella had Anna, her first curled tightly in the girl’s hair. Anna yelped with the pain, but Stella was dragging her now, and before anyone could react, she had cut a line and grabbed onto it, snapping the sail back and sending it flapping into the wind. They were swinging around over the darkening waters of the bay, and Anna could hardly breathe from Stella’s arm clamped tight across her chest to keep her from falling in. She could see, faintly, that Luke and Lee were trying to get to her somehow, but they were being harassed by Stella’s crew now that the intense battle had been drawn away. Stella’s breaths were shallow and tired, blood was running down her arm from a gash in her shoulder, but she held on with grim resolve. They were swinging out and would, if the trajectory was right, be able to let go and land on the roof of the Erinye’s main cabin when they came back around.

There, Stella would kill the girl. It was useless to waste time in fighting when all she had wanted was the necklace. And it would be the best gift she could give to Luke, her enemy—watching Anna die, watching those eyes go dim in the last rays of the setting sun. Not even that was enough, to pay him back for everything he had done to her. To balance all they had dealt out to each other, to erase the mistakes that had already been made. Nothing could ever be enough; no amount of pain or sacrifice, no amount of suffering or loss. Stella was unmoved. Her revenge would not end there. If she could rob Luke of everything he loved, it would still not be enough to slake her thirst.

I have to get away…I have to save myself… Anna was growing dizzy from the height, her fatigue and weariness becoming an audible roar and a physical weight. What felt like a thousand bruises were blooming all over her body, her throat rasped as though she had swallowed a sandstorm. The locket hung heavily from her neck, and it was all she could do to lift her head and look up at the sky, awash with sunset colors and a faint ring of clouds. She knew she had only a split second to decide. Looking down, she saw that the water wasn’t too excruciatingly far a drop—she could manage. And, taking as deep a breath as she could manage, Anna moved her free arm and elbowed Stella in the stomach, hard enough to loosen that vise-like grip and send them both plummeting through the air and into the sea.