Why Don't You Want to Kiss Me?

Instead of berating her, the pirates just looked at her with this expression that spoke only of one thing.

Disappointment.

"I don't understand why you are surprised to see me switching sides," Mariana said, but she knew that this was coming out of a place of defensiveness. She hated to feel herself as so weak, as this piece of crumpled paper around a core that was either made out of something strong or something that merely looked strong. She didn't know which one. She felt so brittle, so fragile.

"Can I come aboard?" Mariana asked.

"Be our guest, Captain Adams."

It was not a request for her to jump on the deck. It was a simple permission.

She didn't know why, but it was now her who was disappointed.

Aboard the Good Wife, she glanced around to see if anything had changed. She didn't find much more than Wolfe's unexpected transformation.

"Well, I guess I have to tell you what this is all about," she said.

"Aye," Wolfe said, refusing to display open hostility towards her. "You will have to do so, Captain Adams."

Anger overtook Mariana and she didn't look towards Captain Wolfe any longer. It was the best she could do, to try to hide her emotions.

"I am here because I need the dice," she said. "Are they here?"

"No." Wolfe looked pretty serious. She had no reason to think that he was lying.

"Roinar took them with him and I don't know where he currently is. If I did know, I would not tell you."

Mariana felt a bit anxious. She knew that with Roinar away from her, she could face Dars and all that nonsense about having to kill someone she loved with all of her blackened heart.

"And if we try to interrogate you?" She raised her eyebrows.

"That would be most unwise," Wolfe said.

"Why? Because you will resist?"

"Because hurting me will haunt you for the rest of your miserable life." He gave her a sad smile.

Mariana bit her lip. "Well…you're right. Not like I don't hate you for bringing this up, but I brought it on myself."

"Aye."

The situation seemed to only be getting worse, but then Daniel jumped onto the deck, scaring Mariana.

"Oh, thank gods," she said. "I was waiting for you."

"I had no idea that the search had already begun," he said, carelessly flipping his hair from his eyes.

Mariana's heart did a backflip, too.

"Mariana, is there anything I should know?"

They turned the Good Wife upside down while searching for any trace of either the dice or the witch. They found nothing.

"Looks like he was telling the truth," Mariana said to Daniel.

"Aye, he did…it's just that we don't know where the witch is. And we need him." The pirate king shot a deadly glare at Captain Wolfe. "How about you start telling us what to do to find the witch? If you don't open your mouth right now, I will have to kill you and ask you when you've bled out. Believe me, I can do that as well."

Wolfe looked at Mariana.

"You have no control over him, do you?" the old pirate asked.

Mariana didn't reply.

"All right. He left towards an island in the eastern parts of the ocean. I am telling this to you only because I want to spare Mariana from the horrors Captain Brandon will unleash upon me if I should be quiet."

Mariana was silent. She felt like she might never talk again. Something inside her died that day.

There was another problem. The Dainty had suffered enough damage from the cannons of the Good Wife that it was no longer feasible to get to the island with her. There was a threat of violence in the air, but it seemed like Daniel's side would have won the man-to-man encounter, and this made many pirates of the Good Wife propose a bloodless alternative to that.

They would join their crews and the larger portion of men would take the ship that was still intact.

Wolfe was free to sail back to the nearest port with his handful of loyalists and some gold. He accepted this deal.

"I don't want anything to do with this sad ordeal," he told Mariana. "Keep them. Keep those who don't know what their duties are, gods know I don't really need or want those men."

Holding back tears, she escorted the last of her men aboard the Good Wife without even saying goodbye to her former first mate.

Daniel was not too pleased to see his own little vessel go, but he made a few favorable comments about how well the Wife had been kept.

Mariana got her night off, and it was a necessary retreat; Daniel gifted her a bottle of wine and told her to do "whatever" without ever specifying what that could be. Naturally, Captain Mariana Adams cried into her goblet and thought about the dangers of encountering ghosts.

She woke up next to Daniel, but her buttons were not undone, she could not see anything that was wrong with her outfit, and to add insult to the injury, he had his back turned on her. He had not touched her. Why was that? It would have been better to have him manhandle and fondle her in a situation where she had some kind of plausible deniability; she could have blamed it on the wine, no, she was not so easy, in fact, she was very much decent.

She smelled his hair, his pure, crispy scent of cocoa, and decided to lay down for another five minutes or so.

Then the memories of her behavior the night before came rushing into her head.

"Kiss me," she had insisted. "But you're such a good kisser. Why don't you want to kiss me?"

He had pushed her off, chuckling with clear arrogance in his voice. "Shut up, Captain Adams, you are drunk. I will not have you clutching your pearls about decency in the morning."

She had pouted and said something about him being petty and wanting revenge for this whole dice case.

In her bed, holding her head because of the pounding headache, she was so ashamed of herself - and those were merely the parts she remembered.