He took a step closer and tossed his sword from one hand to the other. I reached out with my steel and attempted to catch his and flick it away, but I missed completely. Everything went double in my vision. I blinked my eyes and flexed my fingers around my sword’s handle.

Blackbeard laughed, a mean spirited, cackling laugh. “Stupid girl. How long will you continue to try and fight me off?”

I’ll kill myself before he takes me alive.

I thought about trying to answer, but Blackbeard was moving his sword around slowly. It took all of my concentration to watch his blade. A chilled veil of sweat cropped up across my forehead and I sunk to my knees.

“Get up, wench,” he growled.

I struggled to focus on him, but everything went sideways.

Don’t faint, Redella. Don’t faint.

I jabbed blindly with my sword, as though I was fighting an invisible enemy. As his image drew closer, my sword met resistance.

Blackbeard growled and let go a string of curses. “How did you—” His voice was tinged in incredulity. “Me leg! You slashed me leg!”

“Just need to lay down—” The words sounded garbled even to my ears as I tried to watch death as it came for me in the form of Blackbeard’s steel.

Death or worse.

Jack’s face fuzzed over Blackbeard’s shoulder as the old pirate grew nearer to me and slashed wildly with his steel.

“Jacky,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

Blackbeard’s steel slashed wildly before me. I lost sight of it until I felt a trickle of blood drip down my arm.

“Ow,” I whimpered.

“Surrender to me.”

Everything went dark. A strange sense of peace shrouded me. “I’ll be with Loreena,” I said. Or perhaps I thought the words. “You won’t take me alive.”

Jack’s voice interrupted my internal reverie. “Gaaaaah!”

A death cry. Was it mine?

I struggled to open my eyes, which felt as though the lids had turned to stone. I watched as Jack sunk his dagger into Blackbeard’s neck. The older pirate fell to his knees, his eyes still alive with hate as I lay helpless before him.

Blackbeard stared through me and gurgled something, but the words were lost to the blood that filled his throat. When Jack pulled out his dagger, Blackbeard fell over. Dead.

Jack crouched at my side. “You need to be in bed, Redella.”

“I couldn’t,” I began. I closed my eyes again and may have slept for a moment. “Couldn’t leave you alone.” The world pitched and rolled, like a ship on an angry sea.

Jack pulled me to my feet. I kept my eyes closed, though I kept my fingers tight around my blade’s handle. “While the boys clean up from the fight, you and I have some business to attend to.”

Beads of sweat stood out from my forehead like pearls on a necklace. As I allowed Jack to pull me through the macabre scene that was our deck, I felt them slide down my neck in a ticklish descent. My body felt hot and, with the adrenaline ebbing and my heartbeat slowing to a somewhat normal rate, I felt shaky and weak. “Jack, I don’t feel well,” I started. “Can you tell me where—”

I saw it before we’d even reached the far side of the deck. A small crate with the word potatoes stamped on the outside. I ground to a halt. “No Jack.”

Emotion burned in my throat, but no tears came. Everything hurt. My woman parts, my guts, my arms and legs. Even my insides felt to be on fire. But nothing hurt more in that very instant than my very heart and soul.

“Come wife,” Jack said. His voice was gentle, not at all commanding as it had been in the past. “It’s time we bury our daughter.”

“I don’t know how—”

“We became parents together.” Jack’s hand covered mine. “We will this learn together, as well.”

I stepped closer to the box. A dark swatch of skin was visible just inside. Strange bubbles were visible just under her skin that gave her an otherworldly look. I knelt down and stroked my daughter’s head. Someone has mercifully closed her blue eyes. Probably Rusty, as the fight raged with Blackbeard’s men.

“She had blonde hair, Jack. Like you.”

Jack’s hand massaged my neck.

I wanted to memorize everything about her. The tiny details that made her who she was. The curve of her nose, the length of her fingers. “We will never gotten to hear her squeak,” I whispered. “Or hear her first cry.”

I stared at her little offset mouth. “She never got to smile.” Her first smile, if it even happened inside me, would never happen again on this earth. “I’ll never get to feel her wrap her little hand around my finger.”

I covered my eyes with one hand. While I wanted to drink in every detail of my firstborn child, I also wanted to forget. Forget the excitement. Forget the pains. Forget the moment when she was born. Forget everything, because remembering—knowing—hurt with an excruciating force in an unseen place deep inside me.

Jack cleared his throat. “Solo found your old blouse. The one you came aboard wearing.” He squatted down beside me. “He thought you might like to let Loreena rest in it. In case it was a family heirloom.”

“Solo,” I began, before emotion broke my words. “Was the first to hold her. He has been correct about so many things since I’ve come aboard, Jack. And he is correct here again.”

I chewed my lip and bowed my head. Jack leaned over and gently picked up our daughter’s body, which was wrapped in the blouse that had accompanied me from my former life. “I wore it to my mother’s funeral,” I whispered.

I dared a peek at Jack. He smiled down into Loreena’s face. A smattering of silent tears glistened upon his cheeks. “That settles it, then. Our daughter will rest in her grandmother’s arms in Heaven, and in a blouse her mother wore to honor her own mother.”

Rusty appeared silently at his side, a sewing needle in her hand. “Shall I, Father?”

“Say goodbye, Red.” Jack looked down at me. “Say goodbye to our daughter, until we meet again someday.”

Emotion hitched in my throat as I allowed Jack to pull me to my feet. Ever obedient to my husband’s command, I leaned over and kissed my dead child on her precious forehead. “I love you, little one. I am sorry you never got a chance to see the ocean.”

I melted into Jack’s side as Rusty sewed my blouse over her little, stillborn sister. “Thirteen stitches, Father,” she whispered. “Correct?”

Jack nodded. “Yes, that’s correct.”

Tears flowed from my eyes and soaked my face, and Jack’s blouse. An unwelcome, unbearable pain seared hot in my chest. “Oh God, please,” I managed. “Please. Please, please.”

Suddenly, a horrible realization hit me. “Rusty, stop sewing!”

“Mama?”

“What is it, Red?” Jack’s loving voice was tinged with concern.

I peered up at him, fully aware of my quivering lips and trembling voice. “Jack, baptize her. Please.”