FREE PALESTINE

But the glances start to linger, given time, and Edward begins finding excuses to stay longer—to tell you stories of elsewhere in the Caribbean under starlight, to ask about the books he oft finds you nose deep in, to listen to the woes and annoyances of ladies of society and a growing number of troublesome suitors. 

Footsteps on the gravel draw your attention away from the page. Edward Kenway comes along the garden path, his strides unhurried as he strolls over to you. Your traitorous heart gives an unwelcome leap at the sight of him. 

“Kenway,” you greet, trying to sound properly annoyed at the interruption—even if your eyes stopped following the words some time ago. You close your book around a finger to keep your place. “My father will be waiting for you.” An unfair reminder of the purpose behind his appearance. He belongs to the sea—to violence and debauchery, you remind yourself. To a world you've been taught to condemn. 

“He can wait a few moments more,” Edward says, settling next to you on the ground, leaning back against the old oak tree. His eyes linger over the curve of your cheek and lips, and warmth creeps beneath his gaze before he remembers himself. 

After a moment, he fishes something out of a pocket on his coat. “Brought you something.” A black pearl rests in his open hand, dark as midnight and gleaming iridescent when the sunlight catches it through the leaves. “Stole it from a mermaid,” he jests, pressing the pearl into your palm and folding your fingers over it—a few more of his gifts and you might have enough to string a necklace. His hand lingers around yours, callous fingers brushing along your knuckles. 

Edward slips his hand in yours before he goes and is brazen enough to let his lips stray to your cheek in the daylight. His kisses have always belonged to darkness: by the shoreline, in the gardens, between the apothecary and tavern in town, even your own chambers when he scaled the wooden lattice below your balcony.   

You should pull away, for the sake of decency and propriety. Someone is certain to see. But you don’t move from the feather-light kiss. Before you can find your voice to scold him for taking such liberties, Edward rises and starts off to the manor house. 

Only when he's halfway across the lawn do you realize he’s pressed something else into your hand—tucked under the black pearl is a slip of paper. You wait until he's safely out of sight before unfolding it and reading the heavy slant of his writing. Come to the cove at dusk. It makes your heart hammer in your chest. 

The past years have seen Edward do his fair share to keep your father’s status quo. Smuggling letters unfit for the new governor’s seal, escorting the men your father wished not to be seen with, recovering sensitive documents, ensuring ships never made it to harbor. Whenever your father’s hands needed to remain clean, Edward Kenway’s became stained instead. And you hate that. 

You hate that your father smiled politely in society while Edward shouldered the danger—a pawn to be cast aside when he outgrew his usefulness. You hate that Edward continues accepting the work. But maybe most of all, you hate just how impossible it’s become to hate him. He’s a pirate, though your father will insist privateer is a more dignified term for someone of his standing to deal with. Why could he not have been born a man of status? Why has the Lord cursed me to love a criminal? 

Supper is taken in your chambers after claiming too much time in the sun has left you indisposed to join your family for the meal—an effective guise to abscond from the manor and down to the shore. You take the path through the gardens down to the cove. Fewer eyes are posted there to see or stop you. It’s one you’ve tread before, a dozen times even, when Edward Kenway came calling. 

He’s sitting on an overturned longboat, looking toward the last light of the sun and the reds and purples painted in the sky. Just beyond the curve of the island is his Jackdaw. The rustle of your skirts and steps in the sand give you away. You go to him, sitting close enough that your skirts and sleeve brush his thigh and shoulder. Wordless, Edward reaches for your hand, threads his fingers through yours, and lifts your entwined hands to his lips—a kiss on the knuckles. 

“Sneaking out?” Edward asks, a roguish and charming smile splitting his lips. There’s no shame in his eyes. No apology either for these compromising flings, just relentless want.

You slip your hand from his, anger and longing twisting—choking—your chest and belly. It’s hard to breathe. Unable to look at him, you bury your face in your hands. "I can't do this,” your voice cracks. “Every time the tides bring you back, I remember what you've done. What you are." His breath catches, but he says nothing.

You dare look at him. All the charisma of the good captain is gone in a blink. He’s only a man, tired, looking far older than his years, and foolishly chasing yet another prize he can never hope to have.

"And then” —you wring your hands together, shaking your head— "then you smile at me as though you're not a man I ought to fear and loathe." Edward’s mouth twitches; an aching breath escaping. "I can't..." You press a trembling hand against your mouth, forcing the words out. "I can't want you and hate you at the same time."

Edward’s expression twists into something softer and nigh pained. He reaches for you, cradling your face with calloused hands, and God forgive you, you lean into his touch.

“Then stop hating me,” he murmurs, sea blue eyes searching yours—burning with unshed tears. “Or stop wanting me.” His voice cracks on the last word. Your hand slips between you, pressing into his chest, fingers loosely curling into the open neck of his tunic. 

"Every time I set off" —he closes his eyes— "I find myself hoping your father will have another reason to call upon me." So that I may see you once more—he doesn’t have to say it. Because now you see the cruel truth and irony. Edward Kenway isn’t accepting contracts from your father that sully his hands and name for coin anymore. He hasn’t for a long while. He’s been coming for you. For these stolen moments and whispered affections. 

He looks to the Jackdaw, rocking gently at anchor, then back to you, wiping away the tear that betrays you before resting his forehead against yours, his breath warm against your cheek. You close your eyes, torn between pushing him away and pulling him closer. You don’t move, though. And neither does he. Edward’s lips find yours, but there’s more hesitancy than even the first. A final chance to push him away. To deny another kiss stolen in the night. 

Your hand slips to the nape of his neck, drawing him closer as you tilt your chin up, leaving no doubt. And you know you’re already lost to the tides, to him. Hate him. Want him. Love him. You cannot do any of it halfway. Not with Edward Kenway.

Fresh flowers sit in a blue-and-white vase upon the dining table, half-mended clothes are draped over the back of a sitting chair, new books and trinkets fill the library shelves, and new burgundy curtains are drawn back around the doors. The manor no longer resembles the bare-bones hideout of a pirate—the only thing Edward ever intended it to be, in truth. It feels...lived in. His stomach knots. It feels like he’s returned to a home. And after everything, that unsettles him.

Edward turns to his quarters, pushing the door open. You are there—lying atop the quilt on his bed, one arm tucked under your head, wearing one of his tunics. There’s an open book next to you, as though you’d succumbed to sleep while waiting for him. The sight keeps him motionless in the doorway.  

You stayed. 

After every cruel thing he'd said. After callously brushing you off and setting you aside for endless weeks. Edward had given you every reason to hate him. He expected—wanted—to return to an empty manor. But you stayed. And Edward Kenway is unable to shake the feeling that the cruelest thing he's ever done is tell you to leave a place that was as much yours as his.

His gaze lingers on a loose lock of hair across your cheek, and his chest tightens. Floorboards creak as he crosses the room, lowering himself onto the edge of the bed. It’s not until he reaches out, brushing that lock of hair aside with the backs of his knuckles, that you stir. 

Your lashes flutter, though sleep still clouds your eyes when you find him. “You’re home.” And the ghost of a smile follows. He doesn’t say anything, but the stormy look in his blue eyes and painful tightness in his jaw do. You should loathe the sight of me for what I’ve done. You sit up, sidling closer to him. "Edward?” Your hand curls around his forearm, worried. “What is it?" 

He doesn’t see a path forward without facing the truth of his heart—what he’s known and been afeared of all along. Love. Your fingers slip from his arm, up to his chin, coaxing his gaze back to yours. Edward’s throat tightens. "Swore I'd never let you get close," he says, voice cracking. 

Turning from you, he drags a hand through his sweat-damp blond hair, refusing to meet your eyes. "I've buried too many people." Thatch. Mary. Bonnet. “Friends." Edward’s voice goes quiet. Caroline. "My wife." He hadn’t been a good husband. Good husbands didn’t leave to chase riches and make promises they couldn’t keep. The thought of Caroline nearly breaks him.

"Everyone close to me,” he says, swallowing hard, "ends up in a grave." Edward sees the question shining in your eyes by the silver moonlight. So you thought to spare me? "Thought if I kept you at arm's length"—he shakes his head, laughing bitterly—“would've been easier."

He sees the question shining in your eyes, hidden behind the beginnings of tears. For whom? Edward has no answer to give, because there is no answer. It hadn't been easier for either of you. The forced distance and harsh words, when all either of you wanted was this right here—each other and a place beyond the Jackdaw to call home. Your fingers find his careworn hand and thread through his. “Edward.”

"I don't rightly know how to do this,” he admits, thumb brushing over your knuckles, tentative. By God, he wants to do this properly for once—do right by you, for you. He searches your face in the moon and candlelight, as though he’ll find pity there, or something harsher, instead of love. "Liable to make a complete mess of it,” he says, the corner of his mouth twitching.

You laugh, quiet, and smile for him, and it makes the knot in his chest loosen. “I've noticed,” you muse, then lean toward him, letting your lips brush over his brow before settling at his temple in a soft, lingering kiss—thumb tracing the scar on his cheek. He exhales before lifting a calloused hand to cradle your cheek, reverent. “Come to bed,” you tell him, the gentlest of commands. 

Then, with a weary breath, Edward Kenway undoes his swordbelt—propping the blades up at the foot of the bed—and lays his pistols upon the bedside table. He has spent nights barely sleeping and always within an arm’s reach of steel and powder, but tonight, he chooses your arms and home instead.