But Mother said they wouldn’t believe me. She said men like Father were good at hiding what they were, that he had friends in the magistrate’s office who would make sure any testimony I gave was dismissed, and that the only way to save me was for her to take the responsibility."

Her eyes met Maureen’s across the table.

"So I ran," Elisabeth said.

"I ran because my mother told me to and because staying would have meant dying, and I spent the next year living on the streets and learning to steal and learning to fight and learning that the world was considerably more terrible than I’d understood it to be. By the time I heard Mother had been executed, I was already gone—too far away to come back, too changed to be the person I’d been, too focused on survival to do anything except keep moving forward."

Maureen’s face was wet with tears; she didn’t seem aware she was crying, her hands gripping the table edge with enough force that her knuckles showed white.

"Why didn’t you come back for me?" she asked, and her voice broke on the question.

"After Mother was gone, why didn’t you find me? I was alone. I was twelve years old and both parents were dead and my sister had disappeared and I had no one."

"I didn’t know about Mother’s death, and if I had known, I would have come back and taken you out of there. I didn’t know; I was on the run for my life. I didn’t know."

"But later I tried," Elisabeth said, and there was anguish in her voice that the pirate queen had been keeping buried for three decades.

"I came back two years afterward, after I’d gotten strong enough to survive on my own, after I thought I might be able to help you. But you were gone. The house was sold. Neighbors said you’d been taken in by Uncle that you’d left the city to pursue that training in other regions."

She leaned forward, her intensity building.

"I looked for you," Elisabeth said.

"For three years I followed rumors and guild records and asked every trainer and guild master in six territories if they’d seen a young woman matching your description. But you were moving around, learning from different teachers, never staying in one place long enough for me to catch up, and eventually I stopped looking because I convinced myself you were better off thinking I was dead than finding out I was alive and had become—" she gestured at herself, at the captain’s quarters, at the ship around them, "—this."

"A pirate," Maureen said.

"A survivor," Elisabeth corrected.

"Someone who took the world’s cruelty and turned it into power, who decided that if the system that allowed Father to do what he did couldn’t be fixed from within, then I’d tear it apart from outside. Someone who protects children like we were by destroying the people and structures that enable monsters like Father."

She stopped and took a breath.

"I’m not saying piracy makes me a hero," Elisabeth said.

"I’m saying I became what I needed to become to survive, and then I used that survival to help people who reminded me of myself. Every merchant I capture, I check for hidden cargo. Every crew I interrogate, I ask about their routes and their clients. Every bit of wealth I take, I invest in safe houses for escaped slaves and funding for underground networks that move vulnerable people to safer territories."

She looked at Maureen with eyes that were bright with emotion but steady.

"I’m not asking you to forgive me," Elisabeth said.

"I’m just asking you to understand that I didn’t kill Father because I was evil or because I wanted to hurt Mother or because I enjoyed it. I killed him because he was going to hurt you the way he’d hurt me, and I would burn this entire world down before I let that happen to my little sister."

The cabin was silent.

Maureen sat with tears running down her face, her expression cycling through grief and horror and understanding and anger and love and pain, all of it happening too fast to settle into any single emotion before the next one arrived.

Jake sat at the table and said nothing, because this wasn’t his moment and these weren’t his wounds, and sometimes the best thing an outsider could do was simply be present while people confronted truths they’d been avoiding for decades.

Eventually, Maureen spoke.

"I’m sorry," she said, and her voice was barely above a whisper.

"I’m sorry I didn’t know. I’m sorry I believed what they told me without questioning it. I’m sorry I spent years hating you when you were trying to protect me."

Elisabeth reached across the table and took her sister’s hand.

"I’m sorry I ran," she said.

"I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough to stay and fight. I’m sorry Mother died protecting me and I’m sorry you were left alone and I’m sorry it took years for us to have this conversation."

The sisters sat there holding hands across the captain’s table while Jake quietly stood and left the cabin, closing the door behind him to give them privacy for whatever came next.

He emerged onto the Darkwhale’s deck where both crews were still separated by his shadow serpents, everyone waiting to see what happened next, and Jake looked at them all—pirates and adventurers, enemies by profession but all of them just people trying to survive in a world that made survival complicated—and decided that whatever happened with the contract and Elisabeth and Maureen’s relationship going forward, this particular fight was over.

"Stand down," he called to the two groups.

"The sisters are talking. Nobody does anything hostile until they decide what happens next."

Grevik, still sitting against the railing where Jake had left him, laughed tiredly. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

"You’re a strange one, Serpent King," he said.

"Most people who come hunting the Queen try to kill her, not mediate her family drama."

"Most people are boring," Jake said and sat down beside the big first mate to wait for whatever came next.