Ace stopped speaking, her eyes closed and her lips pursed to stem a rush of tears. Zander waited in silence until she continued.
“After the fire, Ignacio kept me trapped in his house. He told me it was too dangerous to see my home—that the structure wasn’t stable, that the land was too dry, that I must wait. He told me he would protect me, and that I must trust him to do so. I feigned trust, but in truth I had no choice. I was alone, vulnerable, and something deep in my bones told me I was not safe. But to let on that I knew would only put me in more danger.
“Ignacio came to my room every day to comfort me. He talked of our marriage and what it signified—the coming together of two families, two legacies. The joining of what was mine and what was his. He waited to ask me about my parents’ famous treasure. He had mentioned it before, when he courted me, but he always phrased it as if it was a joke. I told him my parents had left me an inheritance, and he took it to mean the fabled treasure itself.
“One evening, in the midst of my grief, he came to my room. He told me he wanted to show me something, and then he took me to a locked room in the west wing. Inside lay the spoils of the Sanz fortune. Gold coins, tapestries, ancient relics from cultures I couldn’t name. And in the center of the room, held aloft on a silver pedestal, was an emerald-encrusted dagger. He took the blade and held it out in front of me. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is the legacy of my family. A blade passed down from generation to generation, valued for more than its jewels. It is part of me.’”
Ace took a deep, shuddering breath. Zander laid his hand atop hers.
“He told me that when we married, the blade would become mine as well. ‘All that is mine will be yours,’ he said to me. ‘And just the same, all that is yours will be mine. The legacy of your family will be my legacy as well.’ Then he pulled the emerald-studded sheath away from the knife and held the blade in front of my face. He said, ‘I am all you have left, Aracely. You will see soon enough, there can be no secrets between us.’ His message was clear: I would give him everything my parents left behind, or I would suffer until I did. I knew then I must run.”
Zander squeezed Ace’s hand. She twisted her fingers so they could wrap around his, and she squeezed back.
“When I left, I broke into that room, and I took the emerald blade. I stole his legacy, like he stole mine. I meant to return to his room and kill him with it, but Cristian found me and stopped me. He made me think of my Tio, who slept in one of the guest rooms, and what he would have to endure if I left with Ignacio’s blood on my hands. So instead of killing him, I fled in the night, and I used the blade to buy back my parents’ sloop. That boat was their real legacy… at least to me. But this,”—she tapped the lid of the chest with her fingertips—“this is the fabled Vidal pirate treasure. I wasn’t able to return to it all those years ago.”
Ace smiled fondly at the chest, memories dancing in her eyes. Then she looked at Zander and raised her eyebrows as if to say, Ready? Zander nodded, and she pried open the clasp, revealing the treasure inside.
Zander leaned forward, peering through the darkness at the contents in the chest. When he saw what was inside, he clutched his belly and laughed out loud. Ace joined him, her laughter ringing through the night and filling the valley. Zander wiped a stray tear from his eye and moved so he was sitting next to Ace, their thighs pressed together. He put his arm around her, and she laid her head on his shoulder so they could look at the contents of the chest together.
Inside the worn wooden box lay the treasures of a child, collected during her adventures at sea: a piece of coral, a sand dollar, a crab pincer, a doll made from corn husks, a seashell necklace, and a total of sixteen rocks of various sizes and colors.
And, tucked into the lid of the box as if it were a frame, was a detailed charcoal drawing of a little girl with curly hair and dimples, standing between her mother and father. Nicolas had the same broad smile as his daughter. Tendrils of his wavy hair fell across his face, his head tilted inward toward his little family. Ace’s nose and strong brow were a spitting image of her mother’s. Chandace wore a soft smile in the portrait, her hair pulled back from her face in dozens of small braids.
“What a beautiful family,” Zander said, kissing the top of Ace’s head as she gently traced her finger along the edge of the drawing.
“Aye,” she said softly. “One of my mother’s friends drew this, on a visit to Jamaica. I was eight, I think.”
“And these are your treasures,” Zander said. “Little pirate.”
Ace laughed softly, her shoulders shaking under Zander’s arms.
“Aye. When we came here, I buried my treasure. It was part a game, but mostly I did it out of spite. I thought surely my parents would come to their senses and take us back to the sea. They would see me burying the souvenirs of my childhood and be utterly distraught at the heartbreak they’d caused. I whispered a curse as I buried them, asking the magic of the sea to curse this land and drive us back into her arms.”
Ace chuckled again, remembering her childhood angst. “It eventually became a family fable, a joke between the three of us. The Vidal family fortune, my grand inheritance, buried in a secret location known only to us. I made the map myself, and my father hid it inside the compass for safekeeping, to humor me. When I was trapped in Ignacio’s home after my parents’ death, one of my parents’ servants snuck the compass to me, to comfort me. A memento.”
Zander tightened his grip around Ace’s shoulders and the two sat in silence for a while, listening to the ghosts of Ace’s childhood. When Ace’s breathing began to slow, Zander gently shook her. She straightened, yawning, and looked up at him.
“We should go,” he said.
Ace nodded sleepily and stood. Zander closed the lid to her chest of treasures and lifted it, and the two walked back toward the ruins and the horses waiting beyond.
“There’s one thing I still don’t understand,” Zander said as they walked.
Ace raised her eyebrows in question.
“Ignacio asked you where ‘it’ was. Was he looking for his dagger? Or your parents’ treasure?”
Ace laughed. “The fool was looking for the treasure,” she said. “All that talk about family legacies, and he never even asked me about the dagger. Honestly, I’m not sure if he noticed it was gone at all. He probably made up all that stuff about it being passed down from generation to generation.”
Zander chuckled, shaking his head. “A villain and a fool.”
They walked in silence a few minutes more. As they approached the horses, Ace reached out and touched Zander’s arm, stopping him.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for coming to save me.”
Zander smiled. “There isn’t a force in the world that could have stopped me.”
24
When Zander and Ace entered the port town of Malaga, the sun was just starting to peek over the horizon. Their bodies forgot their exhaustion as they rode, the sound of hooves on the ground a reminder of the carnage they left in their wake, pushing them forward.
Zander barely noticed their surroundings as they approached an inn Ace seemed to know. He was lost in his thoughts—thoughts of Theo and Yarrow and the men they chased north, of Hugo and Cristian and how worried they must be, of Ignacio’s cold, lifeless eyes, forever staring at the wreckage of the home he’d destroyed—and beneath it all, intertwined like threads, was a persistent anxiety about the woman riding next to him.
In the last few hours, the secrets between them had become far fewer. But he couldn’t shake his worries about what lay between them—or what didn’t. As he pressed coins into the sleepy stable boy’s hands, as Ace exchanged pleasantries with a large man named Henry who thought he’d never see her again, as he followed Ace up a set of tiled stairs toward their room, he ruminated on the depths of his love for the wild, mysterious, tenderhearted pirate captain who had barreled into his life one day out of the blue. It was a love that wrenched open the deepest parts of him, a love that made him feel vast and seen, a love that had no room for anything but bold-faced authenticity—a love that spanned lifetimes.
And he knew if he found out she didn’t feel the same, it would shatter him beyond repair.
The sound of the door closing behind him snapped Zander back to the present moment. Before him was a spacious, comfortable room with a large bed. A fire was just beginning to roar to life in the hearth, and a plate of bread, meat, and cheese awaited them at a table near the corner. Zander turned to take in his surroundings, stopping at the sight of Ace standing still near the door, watching him.
Despite his anxiety, Zander couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face seeing her standing there, whole and alive. She was giving him the same playful smile she often did when they retreated to her quarters at night, when the crew was good and drunk, and they knew they wouldn’t be interrupted.
Zander removed his boots, then unbuttoned his coat and began emptying his heavy pockets. Ace stood and watched him. When he fished a handful of gold coins from his pocket and dropped them on the table, followed by another, her eyes widened.
“Where did you get those?” she asked.
Zander took off his coat, winking at her as he did. “I stole them,” he said.
Ace’s eyes narrowed mischievously, her grin widening. “Pirate,” she said. She sauntered toward him.
