The wind howled off the Aeragan Sea, carrying the brine of nets and the distant clatter of rigging. Boothill clung to the splintered beam beneath your window, his boots slipping on the rain-slicked wood. At nineteen, he still hadn’t learned caution—only how to outrun consequences.

“Y’father’s fixin’ to gut me, sugar,” he muttered, grinning up at the flicker of candlelight through your curtains.

Your face appeared, framed by the rusted hinges of the shutters. Your eyes—sharp as the tide’s edge—narrowed. “Then stop dangling there like a half-wit and climb,” you hissed.

He obliged, hauling himself onto the sill with a thud that shook the wall. You stifled a laugh, pressing a hand to his mouth as he tumbled inside. “You’re louder than a bull moose,” you whispered, but your fingers lingered on his jaw, tracing the scar he’d gotten breaking up a bar fight last summer.

“Y’dad’s the one what threw the bottle,” he reminded you, kicking off his mud-caked boots.

“And you’re the one who mouthed off to him at the docks,” you shot back, though your smile softened the words. Your room smelled of salt-dried linen and the lavender you grew in cracked teacups by the window. Boothill didn’t bother with pleasantries. He kissed you like he always did—recklessly, as if your time was borrowed.

Which, of course, it was.

The floorboard in the hallway groaned.