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Epilogue

Adrianna Geist stared at the shadow on the horizon, watching it slowly grow against the settingsun like a tumor. She knew who was on that ship. She couldn't say how she knew, exactly, but she knew. She wondered if the ship would get here before her crew murdered her.

The surviving members of the Sea Fang_surrounded her, eyes hard and hateful. The smoldering flotsam of the treasury ship _Twilight Promise_floated miserably in the waters around the pirateship that had killed her. The three-day storm had, shockingly, not capsized the _Fang, nor rid them of the remaining debris of their quarry. Throughout the storm, it clung to the ship like barnacles made of hemp rope and mainmast splinters.

After she'd put a bullet in her mutinous first mate's monkey skull, the captain of the Sea Fang had found overhalf her crew had been killed fighting the Autocracy marines who'd been protecting the cargo. There had been no slaves, just coin and dry goods. Some fresh water barrels, too, thankfully.

Speaking of thanks, what thanks had her crew given her for years of keeping them alive and rich? She'd been attacked, of course. Overwhelmed and bound to the mizzenmast as Akimi, Twist, Palms, Dewdrop, and--of all the fucking Anthros--Lillian surrounded her, leering and playing with knives like it was going to scare her. These stupid twats had no idea what was coming. Nothing to do but tell them, try to make them understand.

"You need to let me go," Geist said quietly.

Palms barked a laugh in her face, his serpentine eyes narrowing at her. The Constrictor crossed his huge arms. "Uh huh. We ain't letting you go anywhere 'cept the keel, when we drag your fucking crazy mug across it. Maybe we'll eat us a few pieces of whatever meat chunks are left of you." Twist laughed cruelly at that. The Lontramar reached forward with his massive knife and dragged its sharp tip across her cheek, just hard enough to draw a line of blood under her gray fur.

"Alright," Dewdrop said, waving a hand. The Delphian would have ended up the captain if this mutiny had ever been fated to be successful. He was thoughtful, pensive, and likable. Not a good trait for a pirate captain, but good for a regular captain. The bastard even looked good wearing her tricorne hat. Too bad they were all going to die. "No need to make threats. Her fate is already sealed, no need to belabor it. The storm is past, which means naval ships will finally come looking for the Promise. Get the sails raised and get us out of here. Once we're a couple days away, we'll take care of this bitch." He spat on her naked feet and walked away. Lillian, the Bat Saurian cabin girl, stood staring appreciatively at the naked Lepid, then gave Geist a sheepish, apologetic glance.

Geist had always liked Lillian. She was a sweet kid, and tasted even sweeter. Before her gods-cursed children had come aboard, she'd split her sexual antics between Itsuo and Lillian. The Stick, everybody called her, because she was so bony. She wasn't underfed--she got just as much food as the rest of the crew--she was just a girl with a high metabolism. Geist was a little jealous, to be honest. But she tried to treat the girl well, regardless, and the cabin girl seemed grateful. She had a tough life on a pirate ship, but she'd had a tougher life in the slave pens of the Autocracy. She'd been slated to be one of their breeders before Geist had sunk the ship carrying her. Hells, half these fucking scum owed Geist their freedom, but Lillian was the only one who appreciated it.

"Lillian," Geist murmured, her lids heavy, her voice soft and husky. "Love, please. They don't understand. We're all in danger."

Lillian's lip trembled, and she rubbed her arm uncomfortably. "C-can't, cap'n. I'm s-sorry. They'll hurt me. 'm not strong like you."

Fucking little selfish brat. What the fuck. So much for fucking loyalty. Geist pushed the anger down and smiled sweetly. "I know you're scared, baby. I won't let them hurt you. But there's a ship on the horizon, do you see it?" Lillian frowned, then turned and squinted into the rising sun. Geist saw the moment Lillian spotted the ship, and what it must mean. "Yeah. The man on that ship is coming here, and he's gonna kill all of us. He did it to me once before, he'll do it again. You are all in danger. Once he's dealt with, we can discuss this whole mutiny business. But for now, we need to work together if we're going to survive him." She jerked her head toward the speck on the horizon.

Lillian gulped, then glanced around. Her four surviving crewmates were paying them no mind, busying themselves doing the work of a dozen Anthros in order to get the Sea Fang ready to depart. She turned back to Geist and finally nodded, drawing a small dagger from her boot and setting to work on the ropes binding her captain.

"Thank you, honey," Geist whispered. "I'll be sure to reward you for your efforts." She made it sound as sultry as possible. Lillian bit her lip, pointed, fuzzy ears switching excitedly at her mistress's implied meaning, and sawed at the ropes with a little more vigor.

"Oi!" Twist called, alarmed. "The fuck you doin', Stick??"

Lillian squeaked plaintively and cut even more vigorously. Geist simply watched unworried as the Lontramar scrambled down the rigging toward them, cutlass in his teeth. He was directly over their heads when Geist felt the ropes drop from her body. With a smooth motion, she snatched the dagger from Lillian's paw and tossed it almost contemptuously at Twist. The blade buried itself in his eye socket, and he tumbled out of the rigging. Geist stepped aside easily as the dead otter fell to the deck with a plop. She plucked up his cutlass in time to bat aside Palms' charging swing with theblade, then spun in place and swiped across his belly, opening him up.

Akimi was on her an instant later, the Ailurid shrieking fury and latched onto her back, clawing viciously at her face. She felt flesh tear open all over her cheeks and forehead, felt blood rush down her face as her lip split open. Geist reached back, grabbed the red panda by their ears, and tumbled forward. She landed with herself on top of a winded Akimi, then twisted around and grabbed their upper and lower jaw. Akimi screamed and slashed at Geist's forearms and chest with their sharp claws, but Geist didn't budge. She pulled with all her might, bellowing her rage, as the Ailurid's jaw finally wrenched free. Akimi gagged and wailed, holding her ruined mouth, as Geist unhurriedly picked up her dropped cutlass and drove it into Akimi's skull, splitting it open like an overripe melon. The Ailurid twitched and flopped as their nervous system failed to receive the message that they were already very, very dead.

A sound like a thunderclap rang out and agony erupted in Geist's guts. Dewdrop stood at the helm, with a smoking flintlock in his paws. "You stupid fucking bitch!" he snarled. "You fucking killed them!"

Geist stumbled to the side, clutching the dark blood pouring out of her stomach. She fell to her knees next to Twist's corpse, trembling fingers digging through the slicked fur of his face to unhilt the dagger she'd buried in him. On the deck, Dewdrop cursed as he tried to reload the unfamiliar weapon. Geist's nerveless fingers finally wrapped around the hilt and yanked the weapon free. She turned and lobbed it at the possum just as he raised the reloaded pistol. The dagger slashed him across the face then bounced away, dealing little damage but causing enough of a distraction that his second shot went wide.

Geist clutched her blood-soaked cutlass, stumbling past a cowering Lillian as she tumble-ran up the steps of the poop deck to the helm. Dewdrop had no other weapons on him. He was halfway through reloading for a third shot when Geist relieved his shoulders of his head. Blood squirted into the air in three rhythmic bursts before the body slumped to the deck. The spurts became a slow drool as the Delphian's heart finally stopped pumping.

Geist dropped the cutlass and picked up Lillian's dagger, then wrested her flintlock from Dewdrop's lifeless paws. Finally, with fire churning in her belly, she turned to take stock.

Blood. Everywhere, blood. Gore slicked every inch of the foredeck from where Palms's guts had spilled out across it, and blood pooled around the base of the mizzenmast from Twist's eye wound. Akimi's brains dribbled out of the massive gash in her skull, having been turned into pulp by the viciousness of Geist's blow. It slowly crept toward the port stairs up to the poop deck. And all around the helm, blood was everywhere in thick splashes from Dewdrop's headless corpse.

Geist wiped her mouth, her gore-slicked arm coming away with even more blood on it. She could feel the hot, sticky liquid coating her from head to toe. She stumbled over to Dewdrop and pulled her tricorne hat off his gore-soakedhead. The Delphian's facewobbled and rolled away from her. She ignored it and placed the wet headgear between her perky ears with a satisfying squelch.

She glanced at the horizon. The ship was no longer a speck, but a longship, narrow hull cutting through the waves in her direction with alarming speed. She saw only a single figure standing in it. He was still easily twenty minutes out from the Fang, but she could see it plain as day. Father was almost here, and she had no one to defend her ship from him now.

That was fine. That was the plan.

Geist stumbled down the steps to be met by Lillian, who held up her captain, her sweet little bat face caught somewhere between horror and awe. "I love you," the girl whispered.

Geist wrapped her arms around Lillian and kissed her. She shoved her tongue into the girl's mouth and tasted every inch of that space as the young cabin girl made a noise somewhere between a terrified whimper and a lurid moan, her little claws clutching at Geist's blood-soaked clothing.

Geist buried the dagger in the girl's neck.

She gripped her by the hair and continued the kiss as Lillian gagged and struggled, her panic making Geist's heart race. She'd been a good kid, after all, but the plan was the plan. She kept kissing Lillian as she yanked the dagger downward, tearing a massive hole in the girl's neck. The fight quickly left the Saurian and she simply collapsed into Geist's embrace, eyes glassy as her lifeblood poured out of her. Geist didn't stop kissing her until the girl's tongue laid in her mouth like a dead fish. She distantly realized she was sobbing. It didn't matter.

The plan was the plan.

By now, her gut wound burned inside her like fire, and she knew she was a dead woman walking. Well--crawling, now. She crawled up the steps to the poop, arms trembling as she pulled herself up the gunwale. Her fingers were almost completely numb from blood loss, and reloading her faithful sidearm was a chore. She spilled over half the powder from the powderhorn all over the place, but enough made it into the barrel, she supposed.

Now Father's longship was less than a hundred yards away and pulling in fast. Bullet next, then the ramrod to shove it down. She coughed, and something wet spilled out of her mouth and down her chin fur. She raised her flintlock with shaking paws, placing the barrel under her chin.

"Fuck you," she whispered to the approaching ship. "Fuck you. If I can't have them, you sure as fuck can't either."

She knew he'd come aboard and torture her until she told him where the twins went. How he even knew to look for them when he couldn't remember anything seconds after it had happened, she had never been able to piece together. Maybe something else was driving the cart at this point. Maybe the man who had raped and impregnated her wasn't even there, anymore. Hells, he'd barely been there when it had happened.

Didn't matter. He would come up here, and maim her body until she either died or spilled the beans just to get him to stop. She wouldn't do that. She wouldn't let him have that. Her finger tightened against the trigger.

Her hand trembled.

Gods damn it, Addie, just fucking do it. You deserve it. You deserve this.

And still she hesitated.

In that moment, the longship pulled up alongside the Sea Fang--

--and sailed past. The tall, cloaked figure manning the small mast didn't so much as glance at Geist or her ship before sailing by, due east--the same direction her children had sailed.

She'd failed to kill herself, she realized.

She'd failed to kill herself, which meant in some Seen future, Father had stepped aboard and tortured the information out of her. The fact that he didn't do that in the present didn't even matter, he had the information he needed from one of the Seen futures. She tried to wrap her noodle around that and only managed to vomit blood.

She watched the father of her babies sail past with the knowledge of where they'd gone. She'd given it to him without even trying. She'd just given her children to their father, who likely intended to murder them to get to _their_children. Her grandchildren. The longship slowly began to vanish into the eastern horizon.

Geist put the flintlock's barrel against her chin once more. She'd failed, but none of it mattered now.

The plan was the plan.

Adrianna Geist pulled the trigger.