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My vampiric hearing picked up a shrill cry coming from the harbor. For whatever reason, it rose above the din of voices and music from the festival. I swiveled the telescope around and found a woman running through the shallows. I adjusted the focus, bringing her into full view, studying her like one of my stars.

“By Diana, she has curves like a figurehead,” I muttered absently.

“What does that mean?” my son inquired.

Embarrassed by the improper slip, I tried to backpedal and explain. “It means… She looks like the figurehead on my ship. The one old Gerard carved.”

“You mean she looks like a piece of painted wood?” Adrien inquired, not looking up from his telescope.

“No. I mean she—” I gestured vaguely at the harbor. “She is very⁠—”

“Very what?”

“For the love of—” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Go back to looking at your stars.”

“You’re the one who said she looked like a figurehead,” he grumbled.

I let out a tight breath of frustration.

“Oh,” he said, smacking his forehead like it had just clicked. “You mean because she has big⁠—”

My eyes grew wide. “I very well did not mean that,” I lied. “And it is very ungentlemanly to bring up a woman’s…”

Words escaped me. He was only eight. Did I really need to have this conversation with him already?

“Chest?” he offered.

I growled in response. “Enough, Adrien.”

Thankfully, that silenced him. Together, we watched the woman racing into deeper and deeper water through our scopes. Her red hair marked her as a Witch of the Darkness, one of the two rival factions that had warred brutally before the Blood Treaty bound them to peace. A peace I’d sworn to protect.

It was a strange sight to see a Dark Witch eagerly running into the water, but it wasn’t the strangeness of it that held my attention. It was something else. My throat tightened, and despite being a well-satiated vampire, thirst burned red hot. Licking my lips, I wondered what she might taste like.

I chastised myself and grimaced at the way my mind and body responded. Years of celibacy and loneliness were clearly doing strange things to my brain.

“If she’s trying to catch that dinghy, she’s going to have to run faster than that,” Adrien said with a laugh.

I lifted the scope and realized he was right. She was chasing a small boat drifting farther out to sea with the retreating tide. Water splashed around her waist as the dinghy drifted toward the anchored ships.

“Mama!” she cried. The word carried over the harbor, landing on the balcony like an assassin in the night, ready to tear me open. “Mama! Come back!”

I lowered the telescope slowly and looked at Adrien.

He was staring at the water with that expression he got sometimes. It wasn’t sad exactly, but like he was turning something over in his mind. Connecting dots I didn’t want him to connect, because it always led to complicated questions I didn’t have the answers to.

“Do you suppose her Mama is in that dinghy?” Adrien asked. “Do you think she’s…?”

Just as expected, the question ignited the guilt pooling in my chest like a match on lantern oil. I glanced back at the woman, who was wading into dangerous waters, without a soul to stop her. The harbor watch was busy with travelers and drunkards.

“Someone needs to help her,” Adrien said.

I set my jaw, knowing he was right. When a sailor saw a man in the water, friend or foe, it was his job to rescue him. My fingers tensed, even as excuses to stay put crowded into my mind. I’d grown comfortable on my balcony, observing life as it passed me by, but now, life was demanding more of me.

I was the Sea Lord. What kind of duke would I be if I let something happen to this woman when I had the power to save her?

I rounded on my son. “Stay here.”

He scrambled up from his stool. “Why? I want to come!”