Archive of Our Own

In the old days, before she had a ship under her command, Ed wore her hair cropped short, hid her soft jaw beneath a fake beard, and packed her trousers each day with a rolled-up stocking.

The disguise, such as it was, hadn’t fooled Izzy for a second. She’d recognised it, even.

True, there were certain things you couldn’t get away with when your tits were like to burst out of men’s clothing, but she’d been fourteen once. She’d blended in well enough for the time it took to get herself out to sea, and it had been a year before the disguise became untenable.

And so it was that when she saw Ed, that first time, she’d licked her bloody lips and lowered her sword: a calculated display of surrender.

Ed’s eyes had dipped, the way most men’s did, to Izzy’s chest.

Back then, Izzy’s clothes never fit properly, to say nothing of the fact that her shirt had split halfway open during the fight. The wrap beneath did little to preserve her modesty. Already today, she'd gutted a man whose attention had drifted, his concentration on her tits rather than her sword.

But she'd never been looked at this way by a woman.

Even though this woman was playing a role—even though the appraisal was surely part of that—it felt different. In the ten years Izzy’d been at sea, she’d never encountered anything as dangerous as this woman’s gaze.

It made her feel shivery-hot in a way men’s stares never did—made her want to cover up and bare more skin, the duelling impulses paralysing her into complete stillness, like a small animal trapped under the gaze of a predator.

“Could kill you,” Ed had said, matter of fact, and the moment Izzy heard her voice she knew she was done for. It was lowered, consciously so, breathed out with the texture of smoke. Izzy wanted it in her lungs.

Even so, she didn’t reckon this woman could kill her. Izzy had a knife up her sleeve and another snug against the small of her back, and people tended to underestimate her. This woman would be no different: for all they may have shared a gender, Izzy was five inches shorter and nowhere near as lithe. People thought her weak and slow, when first they saw her. It wasn’t an impression she allowed them to hold on to for very long.

And so Izzy had stepped closer, her legs as heavy as if she was wading through water. “You can try.”

That got her a grin, almost hidden underneath the fake beard.

“Cocky and pretty.” Ed’s voice had dropped, impossibly, an octave lower. She raised her sword and held the point of it to the underside of Izzy’s chin, halting her progress. “What else are you, Miss…?”

“Izzy,” she said.

She allowed her chin to drop, just the slightest amount, to see if this woman would follow the movement. It would have disappointed her if she had.

Instead, Ed held firm. Izzy felt a hot rush in the pit of her stomach as her blood welled, coating the tip of the sword.

She opened her mouth. What came out was: “And you can fuck off with your Miss.”

“Miss Izzy,” Ed had said, undeterred, her eyes bright with mischief. “Miss Iz.”

Then she’d laughed, like it was the greatest joke anyone’d ever made. Izzy hated people laughing at her. She would’ve hated it from this woman, too—but the way it sounded, the low hum of it, entered Izzy’s bones and stuck there. It had the same intoxicating quality as her voice. The blood Ed had drawn was rolling down Izzy’s neck, wet and sticky.

“And your name?” she asked, then, a giddy lightness building in her chest. “Sir?”

Ed’s eyes were piercing. “Edward.”

Izzy raised her eyebrows, but didn’t otherwise comment. There passed a moment of knowing between them, as sharp as if Izzy’d been run through after all.

If it had been nothing more than an accident of sex, Izzy wouldn’t have gone with her. She’d have fought her way out, somehow, found a new crew, forgotten all about the tall, bearded woman and her enchanting voice.

But it wasn’t.

When all was said and done, it was very simple: from that moment on, Izzy knew who she belonged to.

After she took command of Hornigold’s ship, Ed grew her hair out, and then she stopped packing. The beard became more an accessory than a disguise.

And all the while she became the most feared pirate captain on the seven seas. She became a legend. No one could quite decide whether Blackbeard was man or woman—or something else. Izzy heard talk of Blackbeard being a shapeshifter, once. She’d liked that, and so had Ed.

But something everyone knew for certain was that First Mate Hands was a bitch, through and through. Izzy couldn’t do anything about that, though she dressed in leathers similar to Ed’s, with a waistcoat that did a passable job holding down her tits until the buttons started springing off, and never let her hair grow past her chin. She learned not to care.

After all, there was something to be said for stabbing a man into his grave when he knew, for certain, that he was being put there by a woman.

As a consequence, though, there was nothing to be done about the rumours that flew about Blackbeard and his womanly first mate. They ranged from the tawdry to the sickeningly romantic, all presuming Ed to be a man. Izzy was alternately his whore, his wife, or some combination of the two.

The stories of them being married amused Ed even more than the ones of her shape-shifting. The idea of it was just so fucking funny to her.

It was, in fact, one of her favourite jokes. New crewmembers got introduced to the ‘Missus’—because that was, naturally, what ‘Miss Iz’ had turned into. Izzy wore a ring at her throat, a ring Ed had got down on one knee to give her, in front of the crew after an especially profitable raid. There’d been laughter, and a mock engagement party that served as little more than an excuse to get pissed, and Izzy’s heart had felt fit to turn to ash—though not before burning brighter than it ever had.

And Ed had kissed her, once.

She tried not to think about it often, but it was a losing battle. She thought about it all the fucking time.

They’d been in one of the less reputable establishments in Nassau, and Ed had started a brawl the way she sometimes did when she got bored, or angry, or melancholy. It raised her mood better than anything Izzy could think to try, and so Izzy went along with her, did her best to control the carnage.

The time with the kiss, it’d been a man putting his hand on the small of Izzy’s back that’d set Ed off, but it could’ve been anything. Ed had been itching for a fight all day; the man’s touch merely provided the perfect pretext.

Before long, the whole bar had exploded into violence, and Ed had been in the centre of the fray, her limbs wild and brutal. Her beard was ripped off when a man tried to drag her to the ground with it. She touched her bare lower face and darted back to where Izzy was watching from the bar, her hand poised over the hilt of her cutlass.

“Kiss for luck, Miss Iz?”

And Izzy had frozen, except for her eyes, which found their way to Ed’s lips. They were full, pink, spattered with blood from headbutting the man who’d touched Izzy, breaking his nose.

Ed had taken her silence for the permission it was, kissed her hard and tasting of iron, and then she’d whooped and re-entered the crush of violence. Izzy was rooted to the spot, her lips feeling like a bruise, like an open wound.

Later, Ed put her thumb to Izzy’s lips and said, “That’ll teach them to touch my wife, hm?”

Of course, Izzy thought: it was only fodder for the Republic’s rumour mill. Ed wouldn’t profane her lips with Izzy’s for anything less than the perfect fuckery.

Later still, Izzy had hooked her fingers into her cunt and come, and come, until she was sore and shaking in her narrow bunk, her throat hoarse from holding back Ed’s name.

Realising she was in love with Ed had come in stages, each one more painful than the last. At first, it had seemed impossible: women didn’t feel that way for one another, and even if Ed could do a convincing impression of one, she was no man. When they were alone, Ed shed the illusion like snakeskin, and underneath was a femininity that was as foreign to Izzy as it was compelling.

Before she’d met Ed, Izzy had fended off advances from men with a viciousness that’d gotten her banished from more than one ship, but she’d never thought of who she might actually want in her bed—only that she didn’t want them.

But, gods above, the way Ed made her feel. There were days she felt like she was drowning in it: sheer, base lust, the kind there was no coming back from. Sometimes she felt like just looking at Ed would give her away for the monstrous, wanting thing she was.

But Ed never seemed to notice.

“You don’t mind, do you?” she’d tossed out, the first time she’d undressed in Izzy’s presence. She’d stripped down until her chest was bare, her leather trousers low on her hips. There was a trail of hair leading down from her belly button. Her nipples were brown, nothing like the girlish pink of Izzy’s own. And her breasts were as small as they’d always seemed, tucked easily away beneath her jacket—but Izzy’s mouth went dry to see them all the same: transfixed by the perfect swell of them, crashing over her ribcage like a wave over sand.

“No,” Izzy had said. “I don’t mind.”

Izzy never undressed in Ed’s presence—or in anyone’s. She despised the softness of her body, the way it curved out, demanding attention. She’d seen women who could control a body like hers, often leaning out of the windows of brothels, but when Izzy stood naked she only felt a fool, a child with a few extra pounds of flesh. There was nothing sensual about her form, nothing seductive.

Nothing Ed could want.

She always dressed and undressed as quickly—as perfunctorily—as possible, and even when she pleasured herself it was with a hand crushed uncomfortably in her trousers, her wrist aching when she withdrew.

There were a few unavoidable incidents. The time a man got the jump on her when they were docked outside some seedy port town, ripping her shirt open before she got the chance to open his throat. Ed had said nothing when she’d returned to the ship with the remaining fabric clutched awkwardly around her, soaked with blood. She’d just stripped off her own jacket and handed it to Izzy, as easy as breathing.

“I can’t take this,” Izzy said.

“Just ‘til we find you something else to wear,” Ed replied, a half-order that Izzy took as a whole one. The jacket fit her wrongly—too long and too tight—but she wore it until their next raid, when she found a serviceable black shirt that was too long in the arms but well-fitted otherwise. It was easy enough to tie the sleeves out of the way.

She returned Ed’s jacket that night. Every time Ed wore it thereafter, something spiked in the pit of her stomach: a possessiveness that, if spoken aloud, would have demeaned them both.

Sometimes, when they went ashore, Ed would don her beard and disappear into a brothel, and Izzy could never figure out what it was she did in there. Surely the whores noticed, because a beard could hardly distract from the lack of a certain organ.

And Ed wasn’t—she wasn’t like Izzy. For her, it was all a game, kissing a woman when it seemed she was a man. Ed wasn’t—couldn’t be—full of the same shameful desire as Izzy was: that constant, consuming want. Ed was Blackbeard, was man and woman and monster, and such craving was beneath her.

There had been hope, once, that Izzy’s longing might subside, given time. She and Ed were getting older, after all, their hair turning silver and lines settling into their skin.

It wasn’t that she believed she would ever stop loving Ed. She only wanted the love to become chaste, pure: to love her the way a disciple loved a messiah. But she couldn’t seem to stop desecrating Ed: imagining herself with her head between those long, muscled legs, Ed’s hand punishingly tight in her hair—or Ed’s fingers inside her, her jumbled assortment of rings catching where Izzy was most sensitive—or just Ed’s mouth on hers, licking in, claiming her.

Age only seemed to sharpen this desire, honing it into something that bit into her whenever she stood too long in Ed’s presence. She’d been at Ed’s side so long—knew so intimately the parts of her that were scarred and tattooed and which parts, too, were soft and seemingly untouched.

She was haunted equally by it all: by the mangled skin of Ed’s bad knee and the smoothness of the thigh above it, dusted with fine, dark hairs. She knew the way the Kraken tattooed across Ed’s hip stretched out, but fell short of, the shallow indent of her belly button. And she had personally tended to the bullet wound that cut through the flesh of Ed’s right calf, the burns that licked up her left ankle.

Izzy had her own fair share of scars, though fewer tattoos. She disliked the intimacy that came with the sting of a needle. And though she’d gotten the swallow for her nautical miles, suffering under the touch of an unfamiliar man in a dingy portside tattoo parlour, she’d vowed never to do it again. Until, that was, Ed had gotten it into her head to learn how to tattoo, and Izzy had offered herself as a test subject. First had been her hand, onto which Ed had inked a wonky spade, and then her face, where lay Ed’s simple mark.

The last tattoo had been, perhaps, her greatest test. Arousal had poured through her, leaving her so wet she felt sure Ed could smell it on her. She’d barely managed to stumble back to her cabin before pushing her hand into her trousers and working harshly at that bright point of pleasure until she spilled, moaning, with blood still wet on her cheek.

It was hard to pinpoint when it started to go wrong. Was it when Ed left her in charge, and Izzy had finally been confronted with the fragility of her own authority? Maybe that was the root of it—learning that what came so easily to Ed could never be within Izzy’s grasp. It wasn’t only that Ed could pass as a man; her mind was sharper, her instincts better. To her marrow, Ed was a captain. And at her core, Izzy was nothing more than a shadow.

Or was it when piracy began to lose the shine that had attracted Ed to it in the first place? There was still adventure to be had, but without a war to distract them the British and the Spanish were closing in, and turning coat was becoming increasingly fashionable amongst those they’d once called allies. “Politics,” Ed would spit, derisively. “It’s all politics.” And though Izzy agreed, she wasn’t fool enough to think she could change anything. She kept on as she always had, killing in Blackbeard’s name, keeping the ship in order, and doing her best to stop herself from ruining everything by saying something she couldn’t take back.

But even as Ed became more erratic, more distant—even as Izzy, herself, felt bitterness growing like a weed inside her—she knew that there was nothing capable of tearing them apart.

That was, until Stephanie Bonnet.

Bonnet was wearing a silk dress the first time Izzy saw her. She looked fucking ridiculous, the cranberry-coloured fabric starting to take on the island’s dirt and dust, her hair falling out of its pinned-up spiral.

Izzy hated her on sight. The idiot pirate who’d run their ship aground was this—a woman who embodied all that Izzy had torn herself to shreds to get away from. You couldn’t wear a skirt, a fucking confection of a dress, and still call yourself a pirate. Being a pirate wasn’t about being pretty. It was about survival. It was about making something out of yourself when all the world told you you were nothing.

Izzy cut up the dress.

She wanted this woman to cry over her ruined finery, wanted her face to go red and for hot tears to burst down her face.

Instead, the woman smiled at her and said, “You’re quite skilled.”

Izzy flushed with rage. Bonnet made no move to cover herself, though her chest was halfway exposed—and when she’d taken Izzy for a fool, knife pressed to her cheek, she only said “I quite enjoyed that.” Sweat was glistening all down the pale line of her neck. Colour was bright in her cheeks. And Izzy let her get away.

It got worse from there.

Ed acted like it was the best news she’d ever heard. “A woman captain,” she said. “Fancy that.”

“Fucking embarrassment is what she is,” Izzy said.

“Don’t be bitter, Miss Iz,” Ed chided. She was smoking; the whole cabin felt heavy with it. “Doesn’t become you.”

“I don’t give a fuck what becomes me,” Izzy snapped, worn thin by the humiliation she couldn’t ever escape—not the way Ed could, or even the way Stephanie fucking Bonnet could. “I’m not some fucking lady.”

“Aren’t you,” said Ed, drawing smoke into her lungs with a half-smirk. She liked it when she got to Izzy like this, Izzy knew. They both liked fighting, and they didn’t much mind if it was with each other. “What a disappointing wife you’ve turned out to be.”

“I never asked to be your wife,” Izzy said.

Ed tilted her head to the side, and then she said, her voice flat and hard, “We’ll be following that ship.”

It was her worst nightmare, come to fruition.

Ed and Bonnet emerging from the aft cabin in each other’s clothes: Bonnet in leather, her golden curls tumbling over her shoulders, and Ed in a dress of ribbons and silk, hair pinned up and adorned with flowers. There was a pearl necklace looped three times around her neck, matching pearls in her ears. Her hands were concealed beneath gauzy purple lace. Izzy couldn’t breathe.

“Izzy,” Ed said, excitable in a way she hadn’t been for months. “Hey, look.”

She swished the skirt of the dress, followed it up with a twirl that sent it billowing out. She wouldn’t ever stop being the most beautiful person Izzy could imagine, but this was so wrong that it was sickening.

“You’d best get that thing off before the boys see you,” she said. Her voice came out strangled, thin.

“Why?”

“You’re Blackbeard,” Izzy hissed. Tears pricked at her eyes, and she blinked them back. She hadn’t cried in twenty years; she wasn’t about to start now. “You’re not—he’s not some slut in a frock.”

Silence, as pointed as the tip of a blade, followed. Izzy was breathing hard—but Ed had gone the kind of quiet that was most dangerous, from her; the kind of surface-level calm that meant that, inside, she was letting her rage harden until she could use it as a weapon.

“Oh, Izzy.” And she cupped Izzy’s cheek with one gloved hand, the texture of lace intolerable against the weather-beaten skin of Izzy’s cheek. “Blackbeard,” she said, “is whatever I fucking want him to be. You got that?”

Izzy shook her head. “I can’t do this. If this is—if this fucking farce is really what you want—”

“You’ll what?” Ed laughed. “You’ll leave me?”

“If that’s what it’s come to.”

Ed laughed again, disbelieving—but there was an edge to it, now, a danger. Her hand swept down from Izzy’s cheek to her neck, where her grip tightened. “And go where?” she asked, sweet. She pressed her thumb into the hollow of Izzy’s throat. “Who else would have you, Miss Iz?”

Even when Ed switched back to the leather, Izzy couldn’t forget what she’d seen. And Stephanie Bonnet—calling herself Stede, now, in a pathetic imitation of Ed—was a constant reminder. She emerged from her cabin each day in a new nightmarish gown, replete with jewels and endless accessories: parasols, gloves, handkerchiefs. She took afternoon tea and read fairy stories to the crew at night. She acted, in short, like pirating was nothing more than a lady’s life at sea.

And Ed was—distracted. Cuntstruck, Izzy might’ve said, if it’d been Fang or Ivan waxing lyrical about a whore who’d surely forgotten them as soon as money exchanged hands. But this was Ed, wanting lessons on decorum from this lady pirate, like she wanted to become her. For all that Izzy had known Blackbeard was a costume, a fuckery, she hadn’t accounted for a desire this preposterous. Ed had started pinning her hair up, tying ribbons in odd arrangements. She was lining her eyes with black and pressing colour into her lips, her cheeks. It made Izzy short of breath to look at her.

“I’m not saying the plan’s off,” Ed was saying, a week into this new arrangement aboard the Revenge. She was holding up diamonds to her ears and studying their effect in the mirror. “We could still kill her. Or we could ransom her back to her husband. He’s obviously loaded.”

Izzy looked around them, at Bonnet’s obnoxiously flowery cabin, which always smelled of lavender and always had jewels flung carelessly about the place, just asking to be nicked. Ed, it was clear, loved this place. Izzy could tell from the way she kept touching everything: running light fingers over the silk settee, holding the velvet curtain to her cheek. Just now, she was pawing her way through Bonnet’s jewellery box, putting aside the things that glittered most brightly.

“Is that a promise?” Izzy asked. “We’re getting rid of her? One way or another?”

Ed sighed. She settled on a teardrop-shaped topaz and hooked it into one earlobe.

“I dunno, Iz,” she said. “She’ll probably get herself killed, sooner or later. Why can’t we just see how things go?”

“Because of what she’s turning you into.”

“Hm?” Ed’s voice dropped to its lowest, most silken register. She picked up another earring, this one set with a blood-red ruby, and approached Izzy, so close Izzy had to flatten herself against the wall—and still Ed kept coming, as close as she’d ever been. “And what—” Ed raised her hand, the sharp end of the earring extended, and traced the X on Izzy’s cheek, softly at first, and then digging in— “would she be turning me into, exactly?”

Izzy gasped out a breath. Her legs were shaking, though not from fear. Fear might have been preferable to the truth of the matter—but it was lust, always lust, whether Ed touched her gently or like this, with startling purpose.

“One of them,” she said.

With each scrape of the earring over her tattoo, the stinging became more intense. Her entire cheek throbbed with it.

“Oh, Iz.” Ed’s voice was so gentle, and at the very same moment she dug the earring in, hard enough to draw blood. The pain of it was shocking, even more so when delivered by something so delicate. “I’ll never be one of them. Hey, shh, don’t cry.”

With her free hand, Ed tenderly wiped Izzy’s tears away.

“Ed,” Izzy said, choked. “Captain.”

“Does it hurt that bad?” Ed asked, sounding more curious than concerned. “You didn’t cry like this when you got shot, did you?”

“No,” Izzy said. She wasn’t sure which question she was answering, but no sooner was the word out than the door swung open and Stede Bonnet came blustering through.

Izzy could pinpoint the moment Bonnet saw them: the clip of her heels against the wooden floor came to a sudden, resounding halt. Izzy could feel the blood and tears still rolling down her cheek, but they felt colder, now.  

“Oh!” Bonnet chirped. “I’ll just—er, I can come back later.”

“No need.” Ed stepped back. Izzy gulped in a lungful of air, her chest heaving with the effort it took not to sob. “Sometimes Miss Iz just needs a reminder about loyalty.”

“I did mean to ask,” Bonnet said primly, as though Izzy wasn’t even there, “about that nickname.”

“It’s a stupid joke,” Izzy said. Her voice was mangled to all hell, raspy and wet all at once. “It’s the fucking stupidest joke anyone’s ever told.”

And Ed wasn’t going to touch her again, not with Bonnet in the room, so Izzy gathered whatever dignity she had left to her and fled.

She didn’t even need to take her trousers off. Behind the closed door of her cabin, she ground against the heel of her hand through layers of clothing and came with a wave of shame intense enough to bring forth more tears, the most she’d cried since she was a girl.

The next day, Bonnet approached her on the quarterdeck, two perfect china cups in hand.

“I don’t know where Ed is,” Izzy said.

“Mm? Oh, no, this one’s for you,” Bonnet said, proffering the cup with the darker liquid inside. “I didn’t know how you take it, and Ed was no help, so it’s black with no sugar, I’m afraid.”

“Coffee?”

“Tea.”

Rolling her eyes, Izzy snagged the cup by its delicate little handle and took a sip. It didn’t taste as bad as she might’ve thought, though she still couldn’t see what all the fuss was about.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Ah. You’re welcome,” said Bonnet. “Now, if you don’t mind, I was hoping to have a bit of a chat with you.”

“Yeah.”

Bonnet smoothed one hand down the bodice of her dress: a nervous gesture. Normally, Izzy didn’t make her nervous—that much had been established from their very first meeting. And so Izzy uncoiled from her slouch against the taffrail, standing to attention.

“I know you don’t like me,” Bonnet said. “But, be that as it may, I need you to know—I care about Ed. And I know you do, too.”

Izzy grunted. “So what?”

“It might be quite the thing for you to—step aside,” Bonnet said. “Renounce your claim on her, so to speak.”

“My claim on her?”

It would be, Izzy thought, like staking a claim on the ocean. Fucking absurd.

But Bonnet was still talking. “Yes. I can’t pretend to know how it works, exactly. I’ve only ever been married to a man, and the less said about that, the better, but even though we’re technically still bound in the eyes of the Lord, I suppose, I sent a strong message by leaving to become a pirate, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Get to the fucking point,” Izzy said through gritted teeth.

“Alright. I would prefer it if Ed were unattached. If we both were, I mean.”

Understanding hit Izzy like a blow to the chest. She stumbled back a step.

“No,” she said. “She’s not like that.”

Bonnet’s face creased into a frown. “But she said—you and her—”

“You don’t know the first fucking thing about me and her,” Izzy snarled, and where normally she would have fisted a hand in a man’s shirt, she had to make do with wrapping her hand around Bonnet’s wrist, tightening her grip until she heard bones crunch. Bonnet whimpered with pain, pathetic and girlish. “And you’ll keep your fucking hands to yourself if you want them to stay unbroken. Right?”

“What’s this, then?”

It was as good a sign as any that Izzy was losing her mind, that she hadn’t heard Ed approach.

“Oh, Ed. Thank goodness,” Bonnet said. “Isabelle’s being an absolute brute.”

Ed moved in closer, her hand a threat against the small of Izzy’s back. “Really? Do we need to have another talk, Izzy?”

“No,” she said. “No, Captain.”

“Good.” In an instant, Ed’s voice went from low and menacing to bright, jovial. It was the tone of voice she reserved for Bonnet. “Got any plans for today, love?”

“Nothing fixed in stone.”

And—dear god, Bonnet was actually batting her eyes.

Izzy wrenched herself away from their cosy little chat, like physical distance would make it hurt less. “I’ll just be checking the stores, boss,” she said. “If you need me.”

“Yeah,” Ed responded distractedly, “sure. Thanks, Iz.”

Bonnet’s crew was about a half and half split of men and women, plus a couple who didn’t attach themselves to any gender in particular. Izzy hated it.

She’d gotten used to being the only woman on Ed’s crew. And it had been horrible—had been hell, having to figure out when to cut a man’s tongue out for a revolting remark and when to leave him be; having to rely on the authority of Blackbeard to get anyone to fucking listen to her; always sleeping with the door locked, a knife under her pillow. It had been her life for thirty years. It was all she’d ever fucking known.

“You seem tense,” said Frenchie, sidling up beside her. Izzy put down the ship’s log and looked her over. The girl had surely known hardship; they all had, even Bonnet. But here, now, she’d found somewhere she belonged, somewhere she could play her music and be wrong about fucking everything, and have people who cared about her. Izzy despised her for it. “If it helps, we all sort of think Stede’s a daft twat, too. Not in a way like we want to stab her, or anything, but we know she’s a lot.”

“She’s done something,” Izzy said, “to my captain’s brain.”

“Well, yeah,” Frenchie said. “Think it’s called falling in love, maybe.”

“Fuck,” Izzy said. She repeated it a few times for good measure, and then, to cement this as the worst day of her sorry fucking life, she burst into tears.

“Oh, shit.”

Izzy sank to the floor, hiding her face in her hands. She could feel her shoulders shaking with sobs that were a whole-body affair, wrenching themselves up from her gut. As though from a great distance, she felt a hand patting her shoulder.

“Fuck off,” she tried to say, though it came out so garbled that she couldn’t blame Frenchie for not understanding.

“Should I get Blackbeard?”

Without removing her hands, Izzy shook her head violently.

“I think she’d know what to do.”

She wouldn’t; Izzy hadn’t ever cried in front of her before yesterday. Izzy communicated this by shaking her head again, harder.

“Right. Okay. Don’t stab me,” Frenchie said.

And then Izzy was being hugged. She tensed up, choked on her own tears, and nearly lost what little balance she had in her crouch against the bulkhead. Frenchie kept holding her through it—not without some awkwardness of her own, but steadily enough that Izzy soon lost the will to fight it.

It took some time for the crying to taper off. She’d lost all feeling in her legs by then, and her head was pounding something fierce. The first thing she said, upon regaining the ability to speak was, “If you tell Blackbeard about this, I’ll chuck you overboard when you’re on lookout.”

“Understood, ma’am.”

Izzy spat on the floor. “Don’t call me that.”

“Sir?” Frenchie tried.

Izzy turned around and left.

It was a few days later that she found out Ed and Bonnet were sleeping together.

She heard it from Lucius, Bonnet’s nosy little scribe, who was prattling on about Bonnet’s brave journey to self-discovery, which seemed a fucking stupid way to describe someone giving in to their own perverted fantasies, and then seducing the greatest pirate who’d ever lived into the same vulgarity.

“That’s disgusting,” she said, even though Lucius wasn’t talking to her. He had a huddle of the Revenge’s crew gathered around, all of them salivating for more details of Blackbeard’s downfall.

Lucius made a face like he was disappointed with her. It was patronising as all fuck.

“The love between two women is just as natural as the love between a man and a woman, Isabelle.”

“Don’t fucking call me that,” Izzy snapped.

“It’s a beautiful thing, actually,” Lucius continued. “Well, not for me, but that’s because the love between two men—”

“I don’t give a fuck about any of that!” Izzy shouted. “Blackbeard’s not supposed to love anyone.”

As she said it, she realised she hadn’t actually said it out loud before. And as she said it out loud, she realised it was fucking stupid.

“Oh,” Lucius said, sounding put out about being cut off in the middle of his sanctimonious rant. “Well. There are people like that, too, although I don’t think Ed’s one of them. Sounded like she was enjoying herself.”

Anger bubbled up inside Izzy again, but all that came out was a wordless snarl, like the last warning of a wounded animal who’d resolved to bite anything that came near. With her heart thudding bloody murder against her sternum, she barked, “Get the fuck back to work.”

It felt like an insult when they actually did.

When Izzy entered the captain’s cabin to give her report, having waited until Stede made her showy arrival on deck, Ed was lying back on the settee with a silk robe crisscrossed around her, so blatantly well-fucked that Izzy almost turned right back around and left.

Perhaps sensing this, Ed lifted her head and said, “Iz. What can I do for you, hm?”

“We’re low on fruit,” Izzy began—and if she didn’t look directly at Ed, it was easy to settle into the routine of it. “The Swede’s showing the first signs of scurvy, and we’ll want to be getting some oranges before the rest of us follow. We haven’t got anything to trade or sell, not unless we’ll be meeting back with the Queen Anne, so we’d be wise to—to—”

Her words died as Ed stood up, stretching her arms above her head with a yawn. Izzy stared too hard, then averted her eyes too obviously. She couldn’t remember what she was saying.

“We have stuff to trade,” Ed told her. “What’s Stede’s is ours, and she’s loaded.”

“Her husband is loaded,” Izzy argued. “That’s not an endless source of income. Especially not when she’s paying those idiots out there a salary.”

“It’s enough for now. You don’t have to worry all the time.”

Izzy clenched her jaw. “Fine. Whatever you want.”

Ed came closer. She smelled of perfume, something more spice than flower, and Izzy twisted her face away. Ed caught her by the chin.

“Stede says you’re terrorising her crew.”

“Hard to terrorise people who don’t listen to a word you’re saying,” Izzy muttered.

Ed sighed. “This again? You’ve got to balance it out, love. Can’t go ’round yelling at everyone all the time, expecting them to do what you want. Thought we went through this. Years ago.”

“It’s not the same for me as it is for you,” Izzy said. “People respect you. They don’t see—some bitch, acting above her station.”

“Stede’s lot aren’t like that.” Ed stroked her thumb over the dip in between Izzy’s chin and her lips. “Yeah, I’ll admit, some of the lads we’ve had on in the past—but they didn’t give you trouble, yeah? After I dealt with it?”

“Dealt with it how,” Izzy gritted out. She jerked her chin away, or tried to, but Ed kept holding on.

“Iz,” Ed said, “I didn’t make you my wife on a laugh.”

“Blackbeard’s wife,” Izzy corrected, because she had to when Ed was standing this close, and she hadn’t tied the fucking robe properly, and there was a slice of tattooed skin down the centre of her chest that Izzy had never stopped wanting to get her mouth on.

“Blackbeard’s wife,” Ed said softly. “Same difference. Got them to back off, didn’t it?”

To some extent, it had. Newer recruits tended to believe Blackbeard was a man, so the deception made sense to them. No other reason for a woman to be at sea, was there, other than to serve her husband. And then by the time they’d been with Blackbeard long enough to realise all wasn’t what it seemed, they’d known to behave themselves—had seen the things Ed could do when her mood got mercurial enough. You didn’t fuck with a woman who might cut off your balls for a laugh.

“They never respected me,” Izzy said. “It’s not respectable to be fucking the captain.”

“Wouldn’t know,” Ed responded easily. “You never fucked me.”

Izzy hissed in a breath through her teeth. It felt like they were having two separate conversations, each feeding into the other. And Izzy’d only come into this wanting a plan to get some fucking oranges.

“You know what I mean,” she said. “It didn’t change much. You owning me. Just another way of being a bitch.”

“What would you have rather I done,” Ed asked.

Izzy caught her tongue between her teeth to stop the truth getting out. What she’d wanted was simple: she wanted it to be real. To belong to Ed in every way it was possible to belong to another person. She’d have taken every indignity if Ed had just given her that.

“Nothing,” she said. “There was nothing you could have done.”

Ed didn’t seem satisfied by the answer. Her lips formed a long, flat line, but she dropped her hand and put a step of space between them.

“It’s not your fault I’m the way I am,” Izzy continued, freed from the distraction of Ed’s touch. “I always would’ve been—difficult.”

“I like you difficult.”

Izzy scoffed. “You never had me try and give you orders.”

“Iz.” Ed laughed, soft. “You order me around all the fucking time. You’re trying to order me to get apples—”

“Oranges.”

“—right now.”

“I’m advising you.”

“And if I say no?”

“Then…” Izzy scratched at the side of her neck. “I’ll keep advising you ’til you do it.”

“Yeah.” Ed grinned. “Izzy. I know you’re an angry little bitch with the patience of a—whatever the opposite of a saint is. I fucking like you that way.”

Izzy could feel her cheeks going warm, and prayed it didn’t show.

“You might be the only one,” she said.

This only made Ed smile wider. “Good,” she said. She reached out again, squeezing Izzy’s shoulder. “Now go tell whoever needs telling that we’re setting course for oranges.”

When they got to St. Augustine, Bonnet put on trousers.

“What the fuck?” Izzy said.

“Skirts aren’t appropriate for every occasion,” Bonnet responded pompously. “I’ve learned that lesson the hard way—it was such a blasted nightmare getting the mud stains out of that lovely frock, last time. If Ed and I are to go exploring, I—”

“Exploring?” Izzy stomped further into the captain’s cabin. “Where is she?”

“Getting changed,” said Bonnet. “Is there anything I can assist you with, Isabelle?”

“I have told you,” Izzy gritted out, “not to fucking call me that.”

“Well, I suppose it is a rather pretty name,” Bonnet said, pausing to let the implication sink in. Izzy rolled her eyes. “You know, Ed hasn’t told me her true name. Do you happen to know it?”

“Her name’s Ed,” Izzy replied. “Should be Blackbeard, to you.”

Bonnet sighed. “Yes, alright. I suppose you’ve made your feelings on anyone showing their feminine side perfectly clear.”

“Suppose I have, Stephanie.”

Bonnet wrinkled her nose. “That’s different.”

“Not really.”

Ed chose that moment to emerge from the side door. She was Blackbeard again, hair loose and beard glued in place. Izzy felt a bolt of familiarity at the sight, a bruised sort of longing—but even she could admit that in Bonnet’s cabin the guise looked incongruous, a remnant of the past made corporeal. Izzy wondered if she was the same: a dark spot of sea-worn leather, out of place in this new, lavish world.

She tamped down on the notion and studied her captain’s appearance, focusing on the practical matters at hand.

“You’re out of practice,” she said, moving closer. “Where’s the glue?”

“Here.” Ed pulled it from her pocket.

“Stay still,” Izzy said. There was a spot under the hinge of Ed’s jaw that she always forgot when she was in a rush, and Izzy applied a small amount of glue there, pressing down on the beard with two fingers until it dried in place. “Better.”

“Thanks, Iz.”

At that, Izzy remembered why Ed was in the Blackbeard get-up in the first place.

“You need to stay on the ship,” she said.

“Come off it,” Ed responded, sidestepping Izzy and making her way over to Bonnet, who’d kept herself suspiciously quiet throughout the whole exchange. They kissed; Izzy started inspecting Bonnet’s bookshelves. “It’s a—what did you call it, love?”

“An outing,” Bonnet said.

“Yeah. That.”

“It’s a stupid bloody risk, is what it is,” Izzy said.

“Relax, Iz. No one’s going to fuck with Blackbeard,” Ed retorted.

“No,” Izzy said, “but they might fuck with his new girlfriend.”

She put all the venom into the word that she knew how.

“I can take care of myself,” Bonnet said, though she didn’t manage to make herself sound like she believed it. “Whatever you may think, Izzy, I’m not some helpless damsel.”

“No, you’re worse,” Izzy said. “There’s a reason ladies don’t become pirates.”

“Iz, come on.” Ed put a hand on her shoulder. “You’re being ridiculous. No one’s going to get hurt.”

Izzy whirled on her. “You’re not thinking clearly. Not when it comes to her. It’s a disaster waiting to happen, all for—what? You can just as well be disgusting with each other on the ship.”

One of the reasons Ed liked the beard was that it concealed her facial expressions. Izzy was practised at seeing past it, but even she couldn’t have said what it meant when Ed’s mouth twitched, her eyes narrowing.

“You’ll just have to come with us, then.”

“What,” said Izzy.

“What,” said Bonnet.

“Yeah,” Ed said. “Might be just what you need, actually. Get off the ship, feel some good solid ground beneath your feet.”

“You hate dry land,” Izzy pointed out.

Ed half-shrugged. “You coming with us or not?”

Izzy looked over at Stede, whose face was turning a lovely shade of crimson. It was the most Izzy had ever managed to rile her, and she hadn’t done anything except be invited on Bonnet’s stupid fucking date.

“I’ll come,” she said, because anything that made Bonnet look like that was well worth pursuing. “You’re right. Might be what I need.”

Ed started off well, but before long she was complaining about the bugs, and all the walking, and the way she was sweating under her beard.

“You could take it off,” Bonnet suggested. She looked a little overheated herself, curls wilting under the relentless glare of the sun. Her cheeks were the kind of rosy that couldn’t be faked by a powder, and there was sweat slipping lazily down her exposed throat. “There’s nobody around.”

Ed cast a look at Izzy. “Best not.”

“Fine,” Bonnet huffed. “We’ll just have a rest, then, I suppose. And then go back to the ship.”

“Thought we were meant to be hunting for oranges.” Ed came to a stop in the shade of a palm tree, leaning against it. “We’re not done yet.”

“Well, you’re clearly not enjoying yourself,” Bonnet said. She glared at Izzy, as though it was Izzy’s fault that Ed had chosen a life at sea. “So I think we’d better head back.”

Ed scuffed her boots in the dirt. She evidently wasn’t going to make a decision either way, and so Izzy sighed and retrieved a few strips of dried meat from her pack, handing them over.

“You’ll feel better when you’ve eaten something,” she said.

“No, I won’t,” Ed argued, demolishing the whole lot in a few bites. “I wasn’t even hungry, so—”

“You didn’t have breakfast,” Izzy said.

“You weren’t there. You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do. You only get this pissy when you haven’t eaten anything.”

“I’m pissed with you—”

“I’m sorry,” Bonnet interrupted, looking disgustingly earnest. “I should have thought. I suppose I expected we’d eat some of the oranges once we found them, but—”

She gestured helplessly at the clearing around them, which bore no such fruit. And then she plonked herself down in the shade of the tree, her back against the trunk, legs stretched out in front of her. The trousers clung to every obscene curve of them. As Izzy watched, she undid the second button of her shirt and began fanning herself with a fallen palm leaf.

Izzy looked away, studying the fork in the road ahead. They hadn’t brought a map with them, and neither captain had shown the slightest interest in keeping track of the route they were taking, which left it up to her.

“We’ll keep going,” she said. “Can’t have the captains going back to the ship empty-handed.”

“Izzy,” Stede said, beaming, “I think you just called me a captain!”

That evening, they sat out on deck as the sun dipped beneath the horizon, fingers sticky with orange juice. It was no thanks to Bonnet or Ed, who’d eventually given up and purchased a single bag of oranges off a fruit seller for more than twice their actual value. The rest of the crew, meanwhile, had loaded a couple of barrels onto the ship in their absence.

They’d decided to stay anchored near St. Augustine for a few more days. It was ostensibly for Jim’s benefit, but Izzy suspected it had more to do with the glistening white sand of the beach and the warm turquoise water lapping at its shore. She couldn't find it in herself to mind.

She was licking a stray droplet of juice off her thumb when Stede sat down beside her. She jumped, unused to a captain chumming around with their crew like this, lingering in the spoils of their victory. Ed had been like that, once, but not for many years.

“I’m curious,” Stede said.

“About what?”

“You and her.” Stede stretched her infernal legs out in front of her, leaning back on her elbows. Izzy kept sitting upright. “You told me I didn’t understand, and you’re right. How can you be her—her wife, and never her lover?”

If she was here to gloat, Izzy was going to kill her. She was going to push her overboard and watch her drown. She was going to slit her pretty throat and rip out her heart for good measure.

“It was a joke,” she replied sharply. “Or—a means of protection, I don’t know. It never meant anything.”

She heard Stede take a deep inhale.

“I think you’re wrong,” she said. “I actually think it means rather a lot. To both of you.”

“What does it matter?” Izzy asked. The sky was painted in dark slashes of red: a bloody sunset. “You won. You’re what she wants. If I needed proof that she never could’ve wanted me—” She flung a hand backwards, hoping it encompassed all of Bonnet’s sweet, blonde womanliness. “There we go.”

“You don’t think someone can want more than one thing?”

“No,” Izzy said.

“Hm,” Bonnet said. “And I suppose there’s nothing I could say to convince you otherwise?”

“Why would you want to?” Izzy asked. She knew Bonnet was a peculiar type of sadist, but convincing Izzy that Ed wanted her, when Ed had already chosen Bonnet—that was beyond the pale.

“I want Ed to be happy,” Bonnet responded, that dreadful earnestness re-entering her voice. “And she’s terrified of losing you. She doesn’t know how to make you stay.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Stede sat up. She put her hand on Izzy’s shoulder—and Izzy let her, her pulse thudding in her throat.

“Perhaps not,” Bonnet said. “But we’ve had some interesting conversations about you, these past few days. Would you like to hear about them?”

Izzy’s mouth opened, then closed. Her hands curled around her own knees.

“You see, I’ve had a lot of catching up to do with Ed,” Bonnet said. “She’s so experienced in the art of lovemaking, and I—well, my husband wasn’t a brute, you mustn’t think that, but I avoided intercourse with him whenever I could. I’m sure you understand.”

“I don’t,” Izzy gritted out.

“Really?” There was a smile in Stede’s voice. “Well, I’m sure that’s for the best.”

“What’s your point, Bonnet?”

“Oh, yes. You see, the thing is, Ed likes it when I talk to her. In bed. Things I’d like to do to her, things I’d like her to do to me. It’s taken some getting used to, but last night I think I really got the hang of it.”

Izzy swallowed thickly. Bonnet went on.

“I had my mouth on her—and then when she was getting close, I asked her whether there was anything else I could be doing.” Stede paused. It seemed like she was waiting for Izzy to respond, but Izzy couldn’t have said anything if there was a gun to her head. “What I asked, actually, was when Izzy went to her knees for you, what did she do? Of course, I wasn’t on my knees, we were lying down—but that’s irrelevant. Do you know what she said, Isabelle?”

Izzy shut her eyes. “No.”

“She didn’t say anything,” Stede told her. “She came.”

That night, Izzy retreated to her cabin in a daze. Stede had left her alone after—after that depraved nonsense had come out of her mouth, but not before handing Izzy a second orange, already peeled, and telling her that she deserved sweet things, too. Of all the fucking things to say.

She was thrumming with need when her head hit the pillow. There was wetness between her legs, but she kept her trousers on and her hands firmly by her sides, refusing to give in to the urge to touch. If she did, Stede would have won—would have gotten to her with her ridiculous lie—and even if—

Even if Ed had come, it didn’t mean anything. A mouth on a cunt was a mouth on a cunt, capable of tipping her over the edge with or without Stede’s incessant prattling.

That was all it was. That was all it could be.  

But it didn’t seem to matter—whether it was a lie or a meaningless truth, Izzy’s body couldn’t get the message. She could feel her pulse between her legs.

She shut her eyes and promptly fell to imagining herself on her knees for Ed, ministering to her the way Stede believed she had. She could feel the phantom sting of a hand in her hair, a phantom ache in her jaw. Then the fantasy changed, and she was lying on her stomach with legs slung over her shoulders, tight around her, as she licked her captain’s cunt.

It was a few moments later that she realised the legs she was picturing were pale, unblemished, and rounder than Ed’s.

She bolted upright, hot with rage at the realisation that Stede Bonnet had intruded on her fantasy the same way she’d intruded on Izzy’s fucking life. Her heart was pounding; her skin had turned to ice.

It was one thing for her shameful desire to be directed towards her captain. That was—if not permissible, then at least understandable. Very few people had met Ed and not wanted her in some way or another.

But Stede wasn’t—she didn’t—

She had the kind of body Izzy hated: round and soft, the way Izzy might have looked had she known luxury. She wore dresses with necklines that cut into the obscene protrusion of her breasts, and undergarments that emphasised her every curve. She was a seductress, a jezebel. And Izzy had fallen into her trap as surely as Ed had.

Izzy barely slept that night. When she did, her dreams left her aching with want, her cunt clenching around nothing.

It was high time, she realised, to leave.

Ed had been right to say that she had nowhere to go. No other crew would take her, between her gender and Blackbeard’s claim on her. If a woman at sea was bad luck, she was double the curse.

But there were places on land.

She packed everything she had, plus food from the storeroom and a flask of freshwater. It wouldn’t last her long, but they were close to shore and she was counting on being able to sell the ring Ed had given her: the one valuable thing she owned. Her spoils from the years she’d spent by Ed’s side didn’t belong to her—she and Ed had never differentiated their shares.

Like a marriage, she thought hysterically.

There was no hiding her intentions. Even if she tried slipping away under cover of darkness, there was that insane Scotswoman to contend with. And so, in the end, she strode out onto deck at sunrise, dumped her bags into a dinghy, and looked for the highest-ranking member of the crew on deck.

Since Stede didn’t believe in hierarchy (except, of course, for the part where she was in charge) this was no easy task. Izzy settled on Boodhari, since he at least wouldn’t respond to her with ravings about seagulls or the moon.

“I’m leaving,” she announced.

Boodhari frowned. “For what? More supplies? I thought we were all set with the oranges.”

“For good,” Izzy replied.

“Oh,” Boodhari said, backing up a step, “shit. Um. Shouldn’t you be telling Blackbeard about this? Not me?”

“No,” Izzy said. “I don’t need a fucking scene. I just need to go. You’ll tell your captain.”

Without waiting for a response, she strode back to the dinghy, grabbing Frenchie and Wee Jean on the way and instructing them on how to lower the ship’s boat. Both of them looked as alarmed as Boodhari—so alarmed, in fact, that Izzy was forced to put her hand meaningfully to the hilt of her sword to force them into compliance.

“Quickly,” she said, feeling a little as though she was in a race against something—her own weakening resolve, perhaps. She fixed her gaze on the beach, its sand glittering white beneath the rising sun.

As the dinghy was slowly and unevenly lowered, she tried to work out where she would go from St. Augustine. If she could acquire a proper boat, or pay for passage on one, she could find her way back to the Republic of Pirates. There, Jackie might give her a job—if she was feeling generous. It wasn’t much of a plan, but Izzy hadn’t made a lot of friends—or even allies—during her time at sea. Jackie was her best hope.

If not—if Jackie rejected her, or she couldn’t find her own way to the Republic—well, then she was well and truly fucked. She hadn’t lived on land since she was a child. All she knew was the life she’d chosen, the one Stede fucking Bonnet was driving her out from.

She was lost enough in her thoughts that by the time she registered the commotion on deck and looked up, Ed was already climbing over the ship’s railing and flinging herself down.

“Fuck!” Ed yelled when she landed, her legs going out from under her. She was just barely dressed: a white cotton shirt and untied trousers, bare feet and loose hair. Izzy had suspected that she and Bonnet would still be in bed at this time in the morning, but she’d counted on it slowing Ed down more than this.

“What the fuck did you do that for?” Izzy shouted. “You’ve got your knee, you can’t jump halfway down a fucking ship!”

“What the fuck are you doing? Leaving?” Ed responded, matching her in volume. “You fucking—cunt, you weren’t even going to say goodbye.”

Thinking her incapacitated by her knee, Izzy wasn’t expecting the way Ed launched herself at her, the way her hands closed around Izzy’s throat. Izzy lashed out instinctively, bringing her knee up, hard—too used to fighting men. Ed cried out in pain nevertheless, letting go of Izzy’s neck and grabbing her by the hair instead. Izzy felt the fire of a fight surging through her, everything sharpening, coming into focus. She twisted like a fish on a hook. She kicked out with one leg, then the other, but Ed didn’t let go of her. She threw the weight of her entire body forward—

And sent them both tumbling into the waves below.

The impact was crushing. Izzy tasted salt in her mouth, her nose, her throat. She knew she was underwater, knew she needed to swim to the surface, but her frantic kicking felt clumsy and ineffectual. She’d never been taught to swim. She didn’t know many pirates who had; most, like her, picked up enough to crawl through shallow water and left it at that, knowing that if they went overboard during a storm their fate would be in God’s hands.

Ed was the exception: in water, she was as graceful as if she’d been born there. It was a small comfort, as she drowned, to know that Ed wouldn’t follow her to her grave.

Her eyes were closed, her mouth open. This, she thought, might be the stupidest way anyone had ever died. They were all of five hundred feet from the shore.

And then something wrapped around her waist, and there were legs tangling with hers. She stopped kicking; her body went still. She let Ed carry her to the surface.

Once there, Izzy didn’t even have the chance to take a full breath before Ed was shifting her in her arms and swimming them towards the shore. Izzy held on tightly, doing her best to stay above water—but the waves were choppy, and saltwater kept flooding her mouth and nose, making her gag and splutter.

“Hang on,” Ed told her, kicking ferociously even as the waves began to turn in their favour, buoying them towards the sand. “Almost there.”

A final wave spat them out onto land, where they landed in an inelegant heap.

Ed rolled onto her back, breathing hard, her hair spiralling out in inky tendrils across the sand. Beside her, Izzy raised herself onto her hands and knees and coughed out a lungful of seawater, her eyes and nose streaming.

When she’d recovered enough to speak, she lay down beside Ed and said, “You…fucking…idiot.”

The sky above was a bright, perfect blue. Izzy closed her eyes against the glare of the sun, only to open them again when the light behind her eyelids changed.

Ed was looming over her. This close, Izzy could see the way the seawater was separating into droplets on her eyelashes.

“You’re the idiot, never learning to fucking swim properly,” she said. “Why’d you fight me like that?”

Her elbows formed a cage around Izzy’s head. Izzy struggled for breath.

“You started it,” she said.

“I always start it.”

“Maybe I’ve had enough,” Izzy snapped.

Ed’s mouth tightened. The sun was shining behind her head; she looked like an avenging angel who’d been caught in a storm. “No,” she said, like it was as simple as that. “You haven’t.”

Wave after wave slapped the sand, loud and relentless. Izzy couldn’t think.

“You don’t want me to stay,” she said. It was more honest than she’d ever intended to be—even to herself. But there it was. No matter what Bonnet thought, Izzy had long since served her purpose. She no longer fit into the future Ed wanted.

Ed was quiet, her eyes flicking all over Izzy’s face. “It’s meant to be ’til death do us part,” she said. “Did you forget that, Iz?”

Izzy felt like she was underwater again.

“We’re not married,” she managed to say.

Ed’s gaze settled on her lips. “No?”

Izzy opened her mouth to say—something. To remind Ed that she was fresh off sleeping in someone else’s bed, maybe, or to enumerate all the ways that Izzy was unworthy to be her wife. Whatever she was going to say, it didn’t matter—Ed was kissing her before a single word was out.

Ed tasted like the sea: vast and wild and dangerous. She bit at Izzy’s lips to open them, the violence of the dinghy transforming into something more like hunger; and Izzy bit back, trapping Ed’s lower lip between her teeth and following with her tongue, tasting the sweet coppery tang of their blood.   

She’d thought them close already, but then Ed was crushing herself on top of Izzy’s body, wet sand forming a cradle around them as the waves lapped at their feet. Izzy clutched at Ed, hands fitting into the soft slope of her waist—and it felt the most natural thing in the world. This was where her hands were meant to be; this was what her mouth had been made to do. Years she had spent resisting the desire that had brought her here—and there had been no reason to. She could have had this all along. They could have had each other.

It was Ed who pulled back first—Ed, whose lips were dark and wet, her eyes shining. Izzy tried to avert her gaze, but Ed held her still by the chin with forefinger and thumb.

Slower this time, Ed kissed her. There was sand everywhere, even gritty between their lips. It made Izzy smile, made Ed start laughing. She pulled back, sitting up beside Izzy and spitting onto the ground.

Izzy propped herself on her elbows, her head spinning.

Across the narrow stretch of water, the dinghy had been lowered the rest of the way, and she could see the entire crew of the Revenge pressed up to the ship’s railing, watching them.

“Do you understand now?” Ed asked.

“No,” Izzy said. She barked out a laugh. “What the fuck, Edward, how do you expect me to—?”

“You’re mine,” Ed told her. “In every way that counts.”

“Yes,” Izzy said. “Yeah, I know—”

“And I’m yours,” Ed continued. She reached out and covered Izzy’s hand with her own, digging her nails into the hard-packed sand. Her eyes burned into the side of Izzy's face. “Not a husband, Iz. Not Blackbeard. I’m your wife the same as you’re mine.”

Izzy blinked salt from her eyes. She had a thousand questions, but all she could seem to do was watch, mute, as someone—Jim, she suspected—began to climb down one of the ropes to the dinghy. At least they wouldn’t have to swim back.

Ed didn’t speak, either. She waited, even as Jim started rowing towards them—a trip that would take a couple minutes at the most. Her hand stayed where it was, blanketing Izzy’s.

The thing Izzy’s mind kept circling back to was Stede. How did she fit into any of this? And how could this—marriage, if that was truly what they were calling it—fix what they’d done to each other? The years of Izzy being too full of shame to give Edward anything beyond her servitude—and of Ed being too full of pride to ask.

It was only when Jim was right there, in the shallows, that Izzy said: “I never got you a ring.”

Ed huffed out a laugh. “Doesn’t matter. It’s not like yours even fits.”

“It fits,” Izzy confessed, touching the cravat at her neck. The ring was as secure as always, knotted on tight enough to stand up to the attack of the open sea. But it fit perfectly on her finger, where Ed had placed it that first night. She'd been lying when she told Ed it was too small. “It’s always—I just couldn’t—”

“Oh.”

“I’ll steal you one,” Izzy promised.

“Gold,” Ed said. “With a purple jewel.”

“You’ll get what you’re given,” Izzy said, already trying to think of where she might acquire such a ring. Amethysts were fucking expensive—and it was rare you came across many this side of the Atlantic. Maybe Stede would know; Izzy had seen some purple stones in her damnable jewellery collection, after all.

“Ready to go?” Ed asked, squeezing her hand. Jim hadn’t made a move to approach, was only sitting in the dinghy with the oars spread across their lap—but Izzy knew their time was up. She got up and waded over to the boat, Ed close behind.

When they took their seats, Jim raised their eyebrows but didn’t comment.

Izzy tried to brush some of the sand off herself before promptly giving up. Beside her, Ed squeezed seawater out of her hair and stretched out her bad leg.

“You okay?” Jim asked. Oddly enough, they seemed to be asking Izzy.

“Yeah,” she said. “Fine. Let’s get back to the ship.”

“Vamonos,” Jim muttered, and started to row.

Back on the deck of the Revenge, Frenchie led the crew in an awkward half-round of applause. It was something of a shock: none of them much liked Izzy, and they weren’t quite done being terrified of Ed even if she did go around with bows in her hair now. But all of them, up to and including Spriggs, were grinning from ear to ear.

“Get back to work,” Izzy said. She didn’t bother raising her voice: the time for intimidation was long past. She was shivering in her wet clothes, looking like nothing so much as a drowned rat who’d been kissed silly. Worst of all, she’d just exposed once and for all how she really felt about her captain. If a single member of Bonnet’s crew had respected her to start with, it might have been a problem.

“There’s no work to get back to,” Lucius pointed out. “We were getting our beauty rest when all the fighting and yelling started.”

“That’s not—” Izzy started.

“Get back to work, go back to sleep,” Edward said, stepping forward and wrapping her arm around Izzy’s waist, “doesn’t really matter to me. Just need someone to bring us up some hot water and clear off.”

The crew, whose collective gaze was averted from the soaked-through transparency of Ed’s shirt, mumbled variations on “Yes, Captain.”

Ed squeezed Izzy’s waist. “You can have first bath,” she said.

Izzy’s lips twitched up into a smile, but whatever humour she could find in the situation vanished when she turned and saw Bonnet standing in the companionway. Her heart stopped.

“You came back,” Bonnet said.

Izzy swallowed.

“Never left,” Ed said.

Stede’s eyes narrowed, but then Ed was crossing over to her and kissing her. When they parted, Stede’s expression was considerably gentler.

“It’s been quite the busy morning for you two,” she said, smoothing her hands down her nightgown in what Izzy recognised as her nervous gesture. “I suppose you thought about what I said, Isabelle.”

There was no use denying it. “Yeah,” Izzy said.

“And you told her how you feel?” Stede asked Ed.

Izzy snorted. “She told me we’re fucking married.”

“Well, that’s one way to go about it,” Stede responded, her eyebrows sailing towards her hairline. “But, Ed, you did tell her—”

“Yeah,” Ed interrupted, “bound for life, she’s never getting rid of me. All that stuff.”

“Ah,” Stede said.

“Twat,” Izzy said, fondly.

Ed looked over at her with an expression like she’d done something amazing, or like she was something amazing—neither of which made any sense.

All Izzy knew was that she was staring back at her with the exact same look on her face.

Later, in the smoggy heat of Bonnet’s washroom, Izzy stalled for time. She scrubbed her body twice, inspected every pot of cream Bonnet had sent her in with before dismissing all of them as ridiculous and exorbitant, and then lay there, the water cooling around her, trying to imagine how things might go from here.

She wasn’t stupid enough to believe Bonnet would be out of the picture. Quite aside from the fact that Izzy was currently in the woman’s bath, on the woman’s ship, the kiss Ed had given Bonnet upon their return to the ship had been—chaste, but reassuring: an affirmation of what they felt for each other. What they would continue to feel.  

It was easy to take Ed at her word when she was kissing Izzy and telling her they were as bound as two people could possibly be. But removed from the whirlpool of all that, Izzy had the real world to reckon with. A world where Ed loved someone else—a person who was a lot simpler than Izzy to love, and who probably didn’t shudder to think of Ed seeing her naked.

Bonnet, after all, was beautiful—a classic kind of beauty, like a Grecian statue. And Izzy was—

She rose from the bath and stood shivering for a moment, trying to gather the courage to look in the mirror affixed to the bulkhead.

When she lifted her head, Izzy saw that her skin was dotted with water droplets and gooseflesh, her nipples drawn in and pebbled. She was relatively well-groomed, everything trimmed and neat. She wasn’t as plump as Bonnet, nor as slender as Ed. She was, simply, herself—whether she liked it or not.

She ran a hand through her hair, pushing it back from her forehead. It was getting long. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken a pair of scissors to it: before Bonnet, certainly. The ends were halfway down her neck, more grey than black. It was an inconvenient length: long enough to get in the way in a fight, too short to tie out of the way. Over the years, Ed had often been the one to cut it—though she’d always professed to want to see Izzy’s hair long. Izzy had thought it a mockery; Edward’s finger curling around a strand, her low voice murmuring think how pretty it’d be if you let it grow.

The thought of it brought colour to her cheeks. In the mirror, she watched as the blood bloomed pink across her face. The colour made her think of Bonnet, who after all must have looked at herself in this same mirror—and a shudder rolled through her, nothing to do with the chill.

Finally, there was no putting it off any longer. She stepped out of the tub, wrapped herself in a too-long robe, and opened the door.

While Ed took her turn in the bath, Bonnet waited on her like a servant. She offered Izzy tea, then an assortment of little cakes, and then asked if she’d like for Bonnet to do her hair.

“What do you mean, do it?” Izzy snapped. She was still in Bonnet’s robe, bundled up in an unforgivably plush armchair. She felt comfortable, and the feeling unnerved her.

“I could comb it for you,” Bonnet said. “Style it, perhaps.”

“Why? Does it look—wrong?”

Bonnet shook her head. She was still in her nightgown; it was long and gauzy white, stopping right above her feet. Her curls hung in loose, glossy ringlets: perfect. There were an astounding number of ways, Izzy considered, to feel inadequate.

“You know, when I pictured being a pirate,” Bonnet said, “I pictured being like you. Wearing men’s clothes, chopping off my hair.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Bonnet shrugged. “I still might. But I realised I could have it both ways. I didn’t have to give anything up.”

“Good for you,” Izzy said acidly.

“All I’m saying is that you don’t have to be a certain way,” Bonnet continued. “Look at Ed. She was beautiful in my dress, wasn’t she?”

It felt like a trick question; Izzy pressed her mouth shut.

“And she’s beautiful the way you like her, too. When I first saw her, I—” Bonnet sighed dreamily, like a character in a romantic story. “Well, you of all people can imagine. So you must understand that I wasn’t trying to change her by lending her my clothes like that. They’re just clothes. She can take them off as easily as she puts them on. Which isn’t especially easily, I’ll grant you, when you’re bringing corsets and stays into the equation—but even then, it’s not permanent.”

“What’s this got to do with my hair?”

“I’d like to do it for you,” Bonnet said. “And at the end of the day, you can dunk it in some water and start over. Does that sound reasonable?”

“As long as you don’t make me look like a lady,” Izzy said, eyeing Bonnet suspiciously.

“Oh, Isabelle,” Bonnet sing-songed, “I couldn’t if I tried.”

Bonnet had Izzy sit between her legs on the floor, and then she took out a pretty, delicately carved comb. The teeth were close together: at the first touch of them to her hair, Izzy realised exactly why such a thing had appealed to Bonnet.

She wasn’t gentle. There was something gratifying about the revelation that, beneath all her layers of civility, Bonnet had some desire to cause Izzy pain.

It sent heat skittering out from Izzy’s gut, only intensifying the longer Bonnet kept going, attacking the snarls in Izzy’s hair with her fine-toothed golden comb. The pain was curiously insistent, building to a throb that enveloped her entire skull, with bright points of hurt at the top of the strands Bonnet was tugging at.

She opened her eyes—not having registered the moment she let them slip shut—and saw that Ed was standing in the doorway, watching them with rapt attention.

“Looks painful,” she commented.

“Beauty is pain,” Bonnet said cheerily. “Though—honestly, Isabelle, have you ever brushed this?”

Izzy set her jaw. She may not have done her hair the way Bonnet did it, curls meticulously fastened into place with diamond pins, but it was never anything less than neat. It was only that the saltwater had done a number on it: it was drying wavy, where usually it stayed stubbornly straight.

What she said, instead of snapping at Bonnet for her presumption, was “Keep going.”

“Yeah?” Ed’s smile took on a knowing edge. “You want her to?”

“I’m sorry, am I missing something?” asked Bonnet.

“Iz likes it when it hurts.”

“Oh,” Bonnet said—sounding disappointed, the absolute bitch.

“Right, Iz?”

Izzy shut her eyes again. “Yeah,” she managed. “How long’ve you known?”

“The earring,” Ed said, and Izzy shut her eyes. Even the memory of it made her body turn soft, like wax under the heat of a flame. Ed’s voice was the slightest bit uncertain when she said, “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Izzy said. Her voice sounded like smashed glass.

“What would you have let me do?” Ed murmured.

Izzy opened her eyes. Ed was worrying the hem of her robe’s sleeve between thumb and forefinger, her gaze averted.

Izzy thought about lying, about saying what it was that Ed wanted to hear—but the problem, as ever, was that she didn’t know what Ed wanted to hear.

So instead, she told the truth. “I would’ve let you carve your way to the back of my skull.”

She heard Bonnet’s intake of breath behind her, felt her fingers and the comb slip from Izzy’s hair—but she didn’t take her eyes off Ed.

Ed, whose eyes went huge and wet at the admission, the restless motion of her fingers falling still.

“Fuck,” she said. “Come here, Iz.”

Izzy stood up. Her legs were shaking, skin prickling where droplets of water had wormed their way beneath Bonnet’s robe. It took her longer to reach Ed than was dignified; she felt like a calf learning to walk for the first time, unaccustomed to its new world. When she was close enough, Ed’s hand darted out to snag her by the wrist, and Izzy went where she was led.

They were so close that the fabric of their robes whispered together; so close that Ed had to let go of Izzy’s wrist and hold her by the hip instead. Izzy flushed all the way up from her chest to the crown of her head.

It was different now than it had been on the beach: the differences in their heights more pronounced, a wider gap to bridge. Ed bent at the neck, but Izzy still had to stand on tiptoe to fit their mouths together, feeling as she did that she was only doing as she was told—though Ed had issued no order aloud.

Ed’s hand tightened on her hip, then softened. She bit Izzy’s lip, then smoothed it with her tongue. When she pulled back, she asked, “Does it have to hurt?”

In the haze of her own desperate wanting, Izzy found it difficult to answer.

Ed rephrased: “Do I have to hurt you?”

“No,” Izzy managed to say. Then, “But I want you to.”

Ed tilted her head in acknowledgement; they were too close for her to nod without knocking her forehead into Izzy’s. “Right now,” she said, “I’d rather be gentle with you. Let me?”

It was so far outside of Izzy’s imaginings that she barely knew how to answer. Aware of Bonnet’s continuing presence in the cabin, she said, “Whatever you want.”

“Hm.” Ed let go of her wrist and trailed her fingers, feather-light, from Izzy’s temple to her throat. Izzy’s skin buzzed with the contact. Her heels thumped back on the wooden floor, extending the space between them. Without breaking eye contact, Ed slipped her thumb into the knot of Izzy’s belt, tugging it undone. “Loads of people have hurt you,” she continued softly. “Anyone else touched you like this?”

She flattened her palm over the spot where Izzy’s heart was battering her chest. Then, with aching deliberation, she cupped the swell of Izzy’s breast and dragged her thumb over the petal-pink peak of her nipple.

Izzy shook her head. If she opened her mouth now, she didn’t know what would come out. It could be anything from a whimper to a scream. She could tell Ed she loved her as easily as cursing her to hell.

“No?” Ed bent to mouth at Izzy’s pulse point. “Who else has kissed you, Miss Iz?”

When Izzy closed her eyes, she saw the flint-bright chaos of that bar in the Republic, felt the echo of Ed’s hard mouth against hers.

“You,” she said, a little nonsensically. But Ed understood. She kissed Izzy’s lips: lush, soft. It was as though the kiss in the Republic had been a question, and this, finally, was its answer.

Izzy reached out and clutched at the lapels of Ed’s robe. She didn’t know if she could keep on standing otherwise.

“Can I take you to bed?” Ed asked.

Bonnet’s bed. Izzy finally managed to tear her gaze away, to look back over to where Bonnet was sitting, one leg crossed over the other, her mouth wet and open. Izzy was surprised by the hook that put in her belly.

“I can leave,” Bonnet offered. The illusion of propriety was shattered when her eyes slid hungrily down to Izzy’s exposed chest.

They both wanted her. Yesterday she would have thought it impossible, but today seemed destined to be a series of impossible things.

“Would you, Stephanie?” Izzy simpered, smiling.

The way Bonnet’s face fell was comical. “Of—of course, just give me a moment to get dressed.”

Just as she was getting to her feet, Izzy clicked her tongue and said, “Give your girlfriend a kiss goodbye.”

Bonnet froze. Her eyes sought Izzy’s—but this, baiting Bonnet, Izzy could do. She kept her expression as placid as it could be with the blood so close to the surface, and tilted her chin impudently towards Ed.

Bonnet’s steps towards them were more confident than Izzy’s had been, but her eyes betrayed her uncertainty. When she reached them, she cupped Ed’s cheek and kissed her, gently at first—a proper goodbye kiss, by Izzy’s estimations. Ed was the one who deepened it, or perhaps it only looked like it was. Whoever started it, Izzy was soon witness to the sight of their open mouths, to Ed’s tongue and Bonnet’s teeth. Ed moaned, full-throated. Her head tipped back, fingers framing the curve of Bonnet’s jaw. Izzy tried to suck in a full breath, but the air was punched out of her when she saw Bonnet’s hands slip beneath Ed’s robe. The belt loosened in the wake of the incursion, then came fully apart. Izzy made a small, desperate sound.

And then Ed was smiling, too wide to kiss, turning her head so that Izzy was caught in her bright gaze. Bonnet turned, too, though her expression was hungrier.

“Izzy…” Bonnet said. Izzy watched her breath hitch.

“Fuck’s sake, Bonnet,” she said, and reeled her in by her stupid white nightgown to kiss her.

After a moment of squeaking uncertainly into Izzy’s mouth, Bonnet got her bearings. She kissed differently from Ed—and though it was to be expected, Izzy found herself unprepared for it. Stede bit at Izzy’s lower lip, having made no promises of her own to be gentle, and she threaded her fingers through Izzy’s hair only to yank her head nearly fully back, Bonnet’s mouth bearing down on her. Bright spots bloomed under the veil of Izzy’s eyelids. She clutched at Bonnet’s shoulders, which were broader than she might have thought, and moaned the way Ed had. She couldn’t help it; Bonnet was hurting her so sweetly, like she’d been born to it. Her grip on Izzy’s hair was hard and unhesitating, her mouth stinging and brutal. Izzy’s thighs shook.

“Bed,” Ed murmured insistently, her mouth close to Izzy’s ear.

Stede drew back.

“Would you still like for me to leave, Isabelle?”

She was batting her fucking eyes again. Izzy stepped on her foot, though with neither of them wearing shoes it was less satisfying than she might have liked. Bonnet smiled down at her, sweet as syrup.

“I don’t—” Izzy started, then cleared her throat. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

“That’s easy,” said Ed from behind her, still in that low, almost cajoling tone.

Stede tsked. “She’s never done this before, Ed.”

“What do you, Stede fucking Bonnet, want from me?” Izzy persisted. “Just say it.”

“Well,” Stede said, demurring, “lovemaking is never really just one thing, and—”

“You want to make love to me?”

Bonnet’s gaze sharpened. “No, Isabelle, I’d like to fuck you. But Ed’s the reason you’re here, isn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“So even if I want to slam you against a wall and have my way with you—” Bonnet paused, cruelly, to revel in Izzy’s intake of breath. “—we’d better not. For Ed’s sake.”

“For Ed’s sake,” Izzy repeated numbly.

“You two done negotiating?” Ed asked. Her hands came up to Izzy’s shoulders, fabric bunching underneath her palms. She tugged, and Izzy’s robe fell unceremoniously to the floor. She didn’t even feel cold—had, in fact, been sweating into Bonnet’s expensive fabric for the last five minutes at least—but she felt her nipples tightening all the same, her skin prickling. Ed kissed the back of her neck.

“She’ll do,” Bonnet said, eyes making a conquest of Izzy’s body. It should have felt shaming, demeaning, to have Bonnet evaluate her like this. Instead, a moan was punched out of Izzy’s chest, so breathy she must have sounded multiple decades younger than she was.

“Lovely,” Ed added, even though she wasn’t in a position to see much of anything. “My lovely Iz.”

She took hold of Izzy’s hips, and when she pressed in closer Izzy realised she must have shed her own robe already. Her body clenched with the desire to turn around. But even now, the idea of looking her fill at Ed felt forbidden; instead, she let herself get used to the sensation of Ed’s skin against hers. Her cunt felt heavy, full, and when she finally remembered to breathe it was obscenely loud—more of a gasp than an inhale.

“Ed,” she managed to say. It was all she was capable of.

Stede’s grin was smug, though no one had said her name. She took Izzy by the hand and tugged her in the direction of the bed. Izzy, who barely undressed even in the privacy of her own cabin, could feel her skin going hot with exposure. She turned her head to see Ed following, her limbs long and elegant as she scooped up her still-wet hair and tied it into a knot atop her head. Izzy focused on that—on the strands that immediately sprung loose, spiralling down the nape of her neck—rather than contemplating the totality of Ed’s body.

“Where would you like her, darling?” Bonnet asked, like Izzy was a doll to be placed just so.

“Up against the pillows,” Ed instructed. Izzy pulled out of Stede’s grip to comply, kneeling where she was wanted. “No, love. Not like that.”

Izzy winced.

“It’s fine, just relax,” Ed continued, coming to kneel in front of her on the bed. Stede stood apart, watching them with hawkish intensity. Ed placed her hands on Izzy’s knees and exerted the gentlest of pressure. “How’m I supposed to lick you out like this, hm?”

For a long moment Izzy could only blink at her, certain she’d misheard. From what Stede had said; from every half-formed lustful thought she’d had over the last two-and-a-half decades—it was supposed to be the other way around. She was supposed to be going to her knees for her captain, or lying down for her, or whatever it was Stede had rambled on about.

“That alright with you?” Ed asked. A little hysterically, Izzy realised that this was what she’d tied her hair up for.

“Yes,” she said. It was true; anything Ed wanted to do with her was alright. More than alright.

Ed grinned, whip-fast. “Scooch down, then.”

As though in a trance, Izzy parted her thighs and shifted herself downwards, so that she was lying down under Ed’s regard, legs splayed.

“Sweetheart,” Ed breathed. “Stede, look, she’s fucking dripping.”

“On my bedsheets?” Stede responded primly, though Izzy noted that she moved to better see. Izzy managed to keep her legs open through the ensuing examination, but only by shutting her eyes. “Isabelle. That’s—excessive, honestly.”

“Never been this bad before,” Izzy mumbled in response, lightheaded with the mix of shame and arousal Stede’s words produced. It was only making her wetter, too, ratcheting the humiliation higher.

“You’re not bad,” said Ed, her hand landing warm on Izzy’s thigh. Izzy shook with the flash of pleasure that went through her. “Fuck, look at that. Think you might come just from me breathing on you.”

Izzy couldn’t find it in herself to disagree.

“Iz? Open your eyes, love.”

It took effort, but Izzy wrenched them open. Ed’s lower lip was held captive by her teeth, and her gaze seemed to encompass Izzy’s entire body, all at once.

Izzy looked at Stede. It felt safer.

“Are you just going to stand there?” she asked.

Stede arched her brow. “There’s not really anywhere for me to sit, is there?”

“Pull up a chair,” Ed suggested. “Might be here a while.”

Stede sighed, put upon, and went to rearrange some furniture. The moment her back was turned, Ed scratched her nails over the thatch of hair above Izzy’s cunt, dragging them down until her fingers slipped into the soaking crevice beneath. There was a deliberation to the way she did it, and Izzy recognised this sort of attention from when Blackbeard was making the trickier sort of plans—the ones that would require a certain amount of improvisation along the way. It shouldn’t have been erotic to be thought of as a mark, as something to be taken.

Helplessly, Izzy bore down on her captain’s hand, her body moving in a way that felt beyond her control.

“Oh, Izzy.” Ed smiled, withdrawing her fingers and tapping one of them against her bottom lip, as if in thought. Then her tongue darted out, twisting around the tip of that same finger.

“Ed.” Izzy’s voice was little more than a tremor.

“You taste good,” Ed responded cheerily. “Not sweet, but—” She paused to pop the entire finger into her mouth, drawing it out slowly. “—good.”

At that point, mercifully, Bonnet returned with her chair, setting it down so that she was level with Ed, facing Izzy. Izzy could see her nipples through the gauzy white of her nightgown.

“Don’t mind me,” she said, smiling. The morning light pouring through the window made her skin appear alabaster, her curls golden. She could be a doll, if not for the covetous hunger in her eyes. “Though, if I could make a suggestion—one might think you didn’t even want her, Isabelle, with the way you’re just lying there.”

“Stede,” Ed said, “be nice.”

Stede held her hands up. “Merely a suggestion. She’s rather—passive, isn’t she?”

“Fuck off,” Izzy said, weakly.

“Prove me wrong.”

Trying to pretend she hadn’t been goaded into it, Izzy reached out and—paused, stock still, her palms an inch from each side of Ed’s waist. She must have looked ridiculous, but Bonnet didn’t pounce on the opportunity to mock her. Even Ed was quiet, waiting.

The first brush of her fingers to the bare ridges of Ed’s ribs felt revelatory. She traced the hard lines of bone with the utmost care, gaze fixed on the place where her skin met Ed’s: the shadow she cast, the indent she caused when she pressed down. When she reached the flat plane of Ed’s sternum, she let her hand flatten, spreading out. The thud of Ed’s heart juddered through to her wrist.

Finally, she managed to raise her eyes. Ed’s mouth was parted, her breath coming in quick gasps. Izzy hadn’t known she had the power to affect her like that. She kept her hand on Ed’s chest as she knelt up and kissed her. It was fanciful, but she imagined she felt Ed’s heart speeding up.

As they kissed, Ed snaked a hand between them, her knuckles brushing Izzy’s stomach before they reached her target, zeroing in. This time she was bolder, exploratory, circling Izzy’s clit before pressing first one finger, then two, inside of her.

The feeling wasn't entirely comfortable: Izzy hadn’t put her fingers inside herself in quite some time. It wasn’t as efficient as the other way, and she’d never seen much point in drawing things out if she didn’t have to.

“She doesn’t like that as much,” Bonnet said, like she was inside Izzy’s fucking head. “Go slower.”

Ed pulled back, looking searchingly into Izzy’s eyes. “That right?”

“Yes,” Izzy was forced to admit.

“Do you ever like it, or…?”

Izzy shrugged. “Last time I did it was ten fucking years ago.”

“That doesn’t answer the question,” said Bonnet, the bane of her fucking life. “Did you like it?”

Izzy tried to separate it from her usual considerations. She’d stopped fingering herself because it took longer, because it made her feel more out of control, because it was messy and loud and made her wish someone else was touching her instead.

“Yeah,” she said, “I liked it. It’s just been a while.”

At once, Ed’s expression went from penitent to calculating. “You should’ve said. Fuck, Iz, I can make it so good for you. Go so slow.”

She was true to her word, pushing Izzy gently back against the pillows and slithering down her body until she had her chin propped on Izzy’s thigh, waiting for something. God knew what.

“You want my mouth, Iz? Want me to eat you out ‘til you’re begging for my fingers?”

Izzy drew in a shocked breath. She’d heard worse from loudmouthed men in alehouses, but Ed’s deep, silky voice had never lost its effect on her. It was that voice, as much as the words, that made her cunt throb.

“Yes,” she said. “All of it.”

“Good,” Ed said, kissing her hip. “Stede, love, get off your arse and kiss her while I’m down here.”

Izzy heard Stede’s outraged squawk. She felt smug about it—at least until Ed moved in and started licking at her hole, holding her legs so far apart that the muscles began to twinge.

For a long moment, Stede seemed as entranced as Izzy, transfixed by the way Ed’s shoulders bunched and her legs bent up at the knee so she could fit in the small space. Her feet twisted in the air as her tongue twisted in Izzy’s cunt. Watching her, Izzy held her breath until she couldn’t anymore, until it all released in a high, warbling moan, the sort of sound she’d always assumed whores were faking when she’d heard it coming from the window of a brothel. No one could let themselves go this entirely without meaning to, she’d thought.

“Goodness,” Stede said. “You really should try to be quieter, Isabelle.”

“Fucking shut me up, then,” Izzy snarled. This, finally, was enough to spur Bonnet into movement, and she managed to squeeze herself into the narrow slice of space at the edge of the bed. Her nightgown caressed the length of Izzy’s arm, the fine, delicate fabric tickling her skin. Izzy turned her head, tilting it towards Stede’s, but Stede still didn’t kiss her. Instead, she traced her thumb over Izzy’s lips, then hooked it between them. Izzy bit down.

“Rude,” Bonnet murmured. “You can’t be sweet for Ed and mean for me. Not when we’re both right here.”

“Watch me,” Izzy said, not altogether steadily. “I’ll fucking—fuck.”

Stede had pinched her in the side.

“Bitch,” Izzy said. She felt Ed start laughing. “Kiss me if you’re going to, Bonnet, or get out of the fucking bed.”

“It’s my bed,” Stede huffed, but then—

But then.

It felt a little like floating, suspended between the two of them—Stede’s possessive mouth and Ed’s exploratory one, both claiming her for their own. She felt her body arch, her hand wrapping around the back of Ed’s neck and then, when she remembered herself, drifting over to cup the sharp point of her shoulder. Stede was kissing her all the while, sucking the breath from her lips.

When Ed’s first finger slipped inside her, she felt so wet and open that it barely registered—just one more sensation in a torrent of them. But then Ed’s lips closed around her clit, sucking in tandem with the gentle thrust of her hand, and Izzy nearly flung herself off the bed.

Stede held her down.

“Just let it happen,” she murmured. “I can see you want to. Let go.”

Izzy said “shut up” and pressed her lips back to Stede’s, but when she felt Ed winding her back up again with careful thrusts of her finger and deliberate off-centre flicks of her tongue, she took Stede’s advice and let herself feel it. She let herself reside entirely within her body, within the moment, closing her eyes and watching the sparks dance along the backs of her eyelids. She could smell the thick scent of her own desperation in the air. It was too much; part of her wanted to retreat from it, because feeling this good was dangerous. Feeling this good meant there was something—everything—to lose.

Ed crooked her finger and said, “Do you want another, sweetheart?”

“Yes,” Izzy said, half-garbled by Stede’s mouth. “Yeah, I—”

“Say please,” Stede suggested sweetly, her thumb embarking on a new journey: across Izzy’s collarbone, down her sternum, and then over to her tight, aching nipple. There, she pinched, too light to be anything but teasing.

“Please,” Izzy said, her head flopping back against the pillows so she didn’t have to look at either of them. “Fuck you, please.”

“Gorgeous,” Ed murmured. She must have been talking about Stede, must have, because Izzy was sweaty and flushed with patches of violent red, any composure she might once have had torn to shreds. “I’m coming up, hang on.”

Izzy opened her eyes, watching as Ed shifted and rolled out her shoulders. Her hair was half out of its tie, her mouth bright and wet. There was no one else in the world who deserved to be called gorgeous when this was the competition, Izzy thought.

Grinning, Ed straddled Izzy’s thigh and bent to kiss her neck, still with the same frustrating gentleness as before. Except this time her fingers were teasing at the entrance of Izzy’s cunt, and Stede was on her other side, digging her thumbnail into the peak of Izzy’s nipple.

“Wanted to do this for so long,” Ed commented, right before she closed her mouth over the other one.

Izzy whined, like a fucking dog, her feet scrabbling against the sheets. She couldn’t decide which part of it was more overwhelming, the feel or the sight of it. Ed kept her eyes on Izzy’s face even as she sucked on her tit, so messily that before long Izzy could feel spit rolling down her side.

Stede had drawn back to watch. She was propped up on her elbow, and her expression went soft, focused as she was on Ed. With Ed lapping at her, soft and wet, Izzy needed Stede even more than before; she reached out and yanked her back in, biting at her lips so that Stede would bite her back.

Somewhere in there, Ed got two fingers inside her and crooked them just right, so that Izzy’s body felt small and centred, all of her contained in that bright point where Ed was touching her.

Then it snapped, and she was coming with a choking cry. Her legs spasmed; her back arched. She hadn’t quite realised, before, the way she’d suppressed herself. She’d never let herself go like this before, never let herself get swept up in the tide of pleasure.

When it was over, or at least when her cunt stopped greedily clenching around Ed’s fingers, it took her a few long seconds to open her eyes. She didn’t expect how close Ed’s face would be, and so it sent yet more aftershocks through her when Ed claimed her mouth, kissing her with exacting tenderness.

Just as she was beginning to settle into the rhythm of it, the softness, she felt another finger pressing at her entrance.

“Fuck,” she wheezed, and her lips went slack under Ed’s, all of her concentration narrowing to the gorgeous ache of being opened, of coming apart.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Ed told her. “Nice and relaxed now. Could put my whole hand in you.”

Izzy’s chest contracted. She wanted it, she realised: wanted as much of Ed as she could take.

But for now all Ed was asking of her was a third finger, and so it was easy to let her legs splay apart, one of them knocking into the space between Stede’s thighs, and luxuriate in the newness of this feeling. Ed’s fingers felt like an excavation, like she was uncovering something essential buried deep with her. Although, Izzy acknowledged, it may have felt the same way if Ed had touched her anywhere.

The sun pouring in through the window felt warm on her skin, and she stretched a little, her spine lengthening. Ed kissed the point of her chin.

“I want,” she said—and then pulled back a little, so she was looking Izzy right in the eye. “I want to do everything with you.”

“You can,” Izzy rasped. “Anything.”

“Within reason,” Bonnet added, since she couldn’t let a single goddamn thing be.

“Feeling left out?” Ed inquired sweetly.

“If you must know…”

“Take your fucking nightie off, then,” Izzy said.

“Fine,” Stede said, and stood up from the bed while Ed teased Izzy with her terrible, magical fingers—idly, like they had all day and Izzy wasn’t going anywhere. It wasn’t an unfair assumption; Izzy wouldn’t have moved to save her life.

Stede’s nightgown seemed complicated to remove, and in the end she heaved a sigh and lifted it off by the hem, persisting even when her perfect hair got messed up. When it was in a heap on the floor, she put a hand on her hip and said, “Happy now?”

Izzy looked her up and down. She took her time answering, because for all Stede’s bravado it was clear that she wanted, very badly, for Izzy to tell her she was beautiful. And Izzy wasn’t going to give her that.

Never mind that the sight of her hips, her thighs, made Izzy’s mouth water. She wanted to bruise them.

“Get back over here, then,” she said, voice low. It wasn’t much, but Stede smirked and walked back over in a way Izzy had never seen her move before—like she wasn’t afraid to take up space.

“Where do you want me?” she asked—not out of courtesy. There was a challenge in her voice. She had all of a week's headstart on Izzy when it came to fucking women, but clearly she was going to lord it over her the entire way. “Lying alongside you still? Or are you going to do something, Isabelle?”

“Wasn’t aware you wanted something from me, Bonnet,” Izzy said, eyebrows raised. “Though it shouldn’t be a surprise you can’t wait your own turn.”

Ed was wide-eyed, her head swivelling between them. Still, she didn’t let up on playing with Izzy’s cunt—really playing, sending useless sparks of pleasure rocketing up to Izzy’s gut and then letting them fizzle out just as quick. Izzy turned back to Stede and sneered.

“Poor little rich girl,” she said. “Want to sit on my face?”

Stede’s face went an immediate and gratifying shade of puce. She spluttered—perhaps correctly intuiting that Izzy was only repeating something she’d heard men laughing about when they were in their cups. Still, it was a simple enough concept, and Izzy fancied she might enjoy it. If nothing else, it was a way to get her mouth on Bonnet’s legs.

“Might have to rearrange a bit,” Ed commented, withdrawing her fingers from Izzy’s cunt and wiping them dry on the blanket. She walked back on her knees, then grabbed Izzy by the calves and tugged.

“Christ,” Izzy yelped—she’d begun to lose hope in Ed being at all rough with her, and it was all she could do not to beg her to do it again.

Ed clearly knew it, too. “Comfy?” she asked, smiling.

“Yeah,” Izzy said. She reached back and propped a pillow under her neck, then reached out to grab Stede by the meat of her thigh. “Go on, then, princess.”

As expected, Stede arranged herself so she was facing Ed. Her knees slid just under Izzy’s shoulders, and when she lost her balance she righted herself by putting her entire fucking weight on Izzy’s right tit.

“Fuck,” Izzy hissed, but then it disintegrated into an unmistakable sound of pleasure. It wasn’t the kind of pain she was used to—the kind delivered by a sword or a punch. It was a bone-deep ache, juddering up to her teeth, and her mind went hazy with how much she liked it.

“Sorry,” said Stede, unrepentantly.

“Iz,” Ed said, her voice strangled, “let her do it again. The other one.”

“Yeah,” Izzy responded, not even taking a second to catch her breath, “yes, do it, come on—”

It was different, seeing it coming; Stede lowered her weight slowly this time, and while she crushed Izzy’s tit beneath her palm Izzy turned her face and bit at her inner thigh: pain for pain.

She strained her ears—there was a sound, wet and quick, coming from the end of the bed.

“Ed?”

“Looked like it hurt, Iz,” Ed responded. There was a tense, thin waver in her voice. “Looked—fuck.”

“I want to feel you,” Izzy said. She didn’t want Ed furtively getting herself off, outside Izzy’s line of vision, even if it was because of the way Izzy’s tits looked under the weight of Stede’s hands.

There was a pause, a scrabble of movement, and then Izzy felt Ed grinding down on her left thigh, her cunt hot and wet and making a fucking mess all over Izzy’s skin. Izzy couldn’t control the sound she made—had to cut herself off by sucking on the skin of Stede's inner thigh.

“Keep going,” Ed said, grinding herself back and forth as she picked up where she left off, pressing three fingers into Izzy’s cunt. “Keep touching her pretty fucking tits, go on.”

Izzy bit down hard enough to leave a bruise, and Stede retaliated by scratching her long fingernails up Izzy’s chest.

Squirming with embarrassment, Izzy submitted to Stede’s fondling. It helped that it was coupled with the most exquisite sounds from the other end of the bed, each of Ed’s moans swallowed up by the next.

“I thought you promised me your mouth, Isabelle,” Stede said. “And not just on my legs.”

Before Izzy could muster a retort, Stede was pinching each of her nipples in turn, so harsh that she could feel her pulse trapped in the vice of Stede’s fingers. Pain sang through her. Too dazed to argue, she turned her face and started licking, blindly, at Stede’s cunt.

“That’s it,” Stede said, rocking on Izzy's tongue. “I knew you could follow instructions if you put your mind to it, dear.”

Izzy bore down on Ed’s fingers while Stede used her mouth. She was moving on instinct, any higher manner of thinking obliterated by the need thudding through her.

“Iz,” Ed gasped, then, “fuck, I gotta—”

Izzy felt her tip forwards, felt Ed's lips wrap around her hot, stinging nipple. She could be as gentle as she liked, now; it still hurt. Stede had made sure of that. Izzy sucked on her clit in thanks.

It felt good to stretch herself out, and so Izzy let her legs splay wider, her spine curving in pursuit of Ed’s mouth. And Ed indulged her, forgetting to be careful; her teeth came out and Izzy felt bruises blooming the breast Ed had her mouth on. Her only regret was that she couldn’t see—but even that was soon mitigated when Stede twisted her arm behind her and got a grip on Izzy’s hair, the better to force her where Stede wanted her.

Izzy wasn’t expecting it when Stede came. She’d barely been doing anything, just holding her mouth open for Stede to grind against, but it must have been enough. Stede cried out, loud, and her thighs shook. Izzy reached up and took hold of them.

“Izzy,” Stede said when it was over, when Izzy was nudging at her entrance with the tip of her tongue, “I think you’d better see what you’ve done to your wife.”

Even with that incentive, Izzy chased Stede with her tongue as she moved away; she wanted to prove she could make her come again, could make her come over and fucking over, until that shaking spread from her thighs to her entire body.

But then she saw Ed, and every thought of that left her.

She’d felt the way Ed was moving against her, but that was no comparison to seeing it, the roll of Ed’s hips that was somehow both sinuous and jerky; elegant and desperate. Her hands were braced to either side of Izzy’s torso, and her face—

Her face was pure hunger.

Their eyes met; Izzy reached out, her hand feeling like a separate entity from the rest of her, and threaded her fingers through Ed’s hair.

“God,” Izzy said, “you’re so—”

Ed blinked slowly up at her. “So what, Iz?”

“You’re so fucking beautiful.” She swallowed. “I should’ve told you before. Should’ve told you every day.”

“Might’ve got excessive,” Ed responded, joking even as her eyes shimmered with emotion. “Could go for once a week.”

“Whatever you want,” Izzy said, meaning it more than she’d meant anything the rest of her life. “Whatever you—”

Ed cut her off with a kiss, with her mouth sloppy and graceless against Izzy’s. For the first time, Izzy thought that maybe their feelings for each other were equal, or something approaching it. Maybe Ed really, truly, wanted her.

Perhaps it was for that reason that as soon as Ed gave her space to breathe, she gasped out, “I love you,” like she’d never get another chance to say it. Her chest was heaving. Stede, beside them, was already putting her fucking nightie back on, and stopped stock still in the process, her shoulders coming up as she awaited Ed’s response.

“Izzy,” Ed said, and kissed her again, softer, lingering. Izzy was shocked by the disappointment that suffused her; it wasn't as though she'd thought Ed loved her, before. It was only, she supposed, that calling someone your wife—

“Say it again,” Ed ordered, but it didn’t sound like an order; she sounded on the edge of tears, or on the edge of something.

There was no question of disobeying.

“I love you,” Izzy said. “I love you. I’ve loved you since the first day we met, you—”

Ed cried out, her body convulsing. She was leaving smears of her release down to Izzy’s knee, rocking back and forth as she came down. Her mouth found Izzy’s sternum and she kissed her there before worrying the skin between her teeth.

“You’re all I’ve ever wanted,” Izzy said, finishing the sentence.

Ed huffed out a low sound and hid her face in the valley between Izzy’s breasts.

“Didn’t know you were a romantic, Iz,” she said.

“I’m not.” Izzy took a deep breath. All of Ed’s weight was resting on her; Izzy never wanted her to move. “It’s just…you.”

“Me,” Ed repeated softly. Her lips brushed Izzy’s skin as she spoke. “I didn’t think it was love. Thought it was obligation.”

“What?”

“I could’ve killed you, back when we met. Made the other choice. And, ever since, it’s like you thought you owed me something.”

Izzy couldn’t help it; she laughed.

“I don’t owe you for that, you twat,” she said. “Had two fuckin’ knives hidden on me, and you thought I was an easy mark. Don’t deny it.”

“Wasn’t going to,” Ed replied, a smile in her voice.

“I could’ve taken you.”

“Yeah,” Ed said. “Suppose you could’ve.”

“So,” Izzy continued, her throat tight, “it was a choice. I chose to go with you. And I kept making that choice. That’s—to me, that’s what love is.”

“I chose you, too, Iz,” Ed told her. She propped her chin on Izzy’s sternum and blinked up at her, eyes glossy. “Yeah?”

Izzy’s breath caught. She struggled to get a word out, and Bonnet, naturally, jumped in to fill the silence.

“She’s saying she loves you,” she translated.

“Yeah,” Izzy said, “fuckin’ got that, thanks.”

Ed slithered the rest of the way up her body, kissing her soundly. “My Iz,” she murmured, voice sweet enough to send a shiver down Izzy’s spine. “Think you can go again?”

Afterwards, Stede fixed them all a drink even though it was the middle of the morning, and Ed lit up her pipe without putting her clothes back on, stretching herself out in the middle of the rumpled bed.

Izzy got dressed. She drank the wine she was offered, let it burst warm in her chest, and sat in the chair Stede had abandoned. There was no need to pretend she wasn’t staring at Ed, but she still felt furtive about it. She still justified it to herself by telling herself that it was only because Ed was going to spill fucking burning hot ash on herself if she wasn’t careful, and that was what Iz was there for—to be the careful one. To be the one who watched.

When the drinks were finished, Stede disappeared into her ludicrous wardrobe, and Ed rolled onto her stomach. She set the pipe aside.

“Iz,” she said, “fancy taking a day off?”

“To do what?” Izzy asked. There was reluctance in her voice, unfeigned. A large part of her had been clinging to the prospect of throwing herself back into the normalcy of work. Maybe then she’d stop thinking about the sounds she’d made.

Ed smiled, rueful. “Just hang out. We could play cards.”

“You always win,” Izzy said. “What’s the point?”

“You pout when you lose,” Ed replied. “It’s cute.”

“Hm.”

“And we haven’t, have we, in a while. Got myself a bit—lost, in everything that’s going on. I’ve missed, you know…”

“Hanging out.”

“Exactly. I’ve been neglecting you.”

Izzy bristled; that made her sound like a pet, and not even a good one, that could fend for itself.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I don’t need—”

“You know, Frenchie told Wee Jean,” Ed interrupted, “about your little meltdown. The Swede overheard, spoke to Roach. Lost the thread a bit after that, but point is it made the rounds ’til Lucius let Stede know.”

“I’ll kill him,” Izzy hissed. Her ears were buzzing. “I’ll kill all of them, the nosy little twats.”

“They were worried about you,” Ed told her, sitting up. “Think they reckoned that anyone who could make you cry like that, must’ve done some hell of a thing wrong.”

“You didn’t.”

“Iz.” Ed reached out and touched Izzy’s face. “I thought you knew. Spent years so caught up in my own head that I thought you knew I’d married you. And you were right there, the whole time, thinking it was all a big joke.”

“It wasn’t real,” Izzy said. “There wasn’t—you only kissed me the once, never took me to bed.”

“You didn’t kiss me back.”

Izzy gaped at her. “What?”

“That time, when I kissed you. You fuckin’ froze up, didn’t speak to me ’til we were back on the ship. I thought I’d fucked everything up.” Ed thumbed Izzy’s cheek tattoo. “So I thought—you know, that’s that. You didn’t want that sort of thing. It’s not like I needed you to. Figured we belonged to each other whether we fucked or not, didn’t make much of a difference. So that was—yeah. It was real to me.”

Something in Izzy dissolved, and the next thing she knew she was pushing Ed back onto the bed and kissing her. Neither of them mentioned the taste of salt, dripping between their lips.

“You took me by surprise,” Izzy said wetly. “I loved you, and you took me by fucking surprise, and no one ever fucking kissed me before. Why didn’t you just ask me why I went still?”

Ed blinked up at her, looking for all the world like this had never crossed her mind.

“Yeah,” she said at last. “Probably could have saved us a lot of trouble.”

Izzy couldn’t help herself; she laughed. She was still crying, a little, and it was dripping down onto Ed’s face, but she felt light, happy, like something huge and crushing had finally been lifted from her. She laughed, and Ed joined in, that beautiful half-mocking laugh that Izzy still remembered from a lifetime ago, from Ed holding a sword to her neck and calling her Miss and pretty. Fucking flirting with her, apparently. She felt foolish for not having realised before—but then, Ed was a fool, too. They’d built a marriage on utter fucking stupidity.

“You can make it up to me,” she said.

Ed’s laughter faded into a grin, and she wrapped one strong arm around Izzy’s waist. “Got any ideas, love?”

Ed’s grey hair was exploding over the pillows in every direction; she smelt of sweat and the sea, of Stede’s fancy soap and of Izzy, too. Izzy would have given her life a hundred times over to see her smile like this—but she didn’t have to. All she had to do was be here, her knees framing Ed’s hips, their bodies pressed so close they’d begun to breathe in harmony.

“A few,” she said, and kissed her again, and again, and again.