The dull put-put-put of the engine had been swallowed up by the furious roar of the tempest. The guiding lever was slick with seawater, as was the rest of his boat. Samuel spat out a mouthful of foul-tasting ocean and pulled his other hand up to wipe his brow. Lot of good it did him-the wind carried the spray straight into his face.

He could barely see, but he didn't have to. The Wrenhaven was a long way behind him. This was not the place he had navigated in the past few months, past crumbling city walls and through man-made inlets, with nothing but the occasional lamp-buoy and rusting whaler for company. He was as alone as he'd ever been.

Perhaps, he thought grimly, even more than after Cecelia had left him. Though his memory of that time was foggy, so what would he know?

Now, though, out on this sea that seemed determined to finally kill him, he felt the threads binding cruel memory loosen. Everything was falling apart. Everything. She left him because of the sea, hadn't she? Said his first love would always be the sea. Gone the next day, without so much as a goodbye, or a letter, or a lock of her hair, or whatever the hell women were supposed to leave behind when they left.

Ward us, Samuel, you sound like a bad Tyvian romance novel.

It came back to haunt him, even during the Loyalist conspiracy. That was why he stayed in the boat all the time, right? Feigning engine trouble, or pleading some sort of rest from his labours. She was a good girl, a good servant, and it was wrong for the others to treat her like something they'd scraped off the bottom of their boots. But whenever the meek redhead appeared, or tried to talk to him, he'd always make his excuses and leave. The mere fact their names were the same was too much to handle. So back to the boat. Back to the water.

That was why he'd stayed true to the sea, he figured. The sea was rough, and unmerciful, but he loved it all the same. That was just a fact of life, wasn't? You just ended up loving things that wouldn't love you back. Sailors, servants, noblemen, Overseers and everything in between-they all fell for the same shitty joke.

Even that Outsider-damned bastard Corvo. All for Emily, was it? Did that excuse the slit throats and slaughtered innocents he'd left behind? Did that excuse becoming so good at what others made you do that it was just a perfect way of setting aside all decency and compassion, an instant ticket out? No better than the people you've killed-

He felt something judder and shake beneath his boots, and a huge plume of smoke starting billowing into the air. Swearing, he threw himself to the stern and pried open the maintenance hatch. Damnable thing never was in any good shape-

A shadow fell over him, and Samuel cast his gaze upward. His eyes took in the sight.

One of the biggest waves he'd ever seen. Bigger than the ones off Pandyssia.

Amongst all that rain and sleet, the roaring of a cruel ocean that didn't love him, had never loved him, could never love him, time slowed to a crawl. His ears, deafened, translated everuthing around him into an eerie quiet. He looked down at his hands, tight around the steering handle in a white-knuckle grip. They were hands that had done their best to avoid violence. To do good works.

For all the good they did him, when the rest of his body was rotten to the core. He coughed violently. Damned plague. It got everyone, eventually. Not even Sokolov had found a cure. Failure. Something else that everyone shared, whether they had been born high or low.

Now, this wave.

In decades past, he might've managed it. He might have been young enough, strong enough, bold enough, to try to plow straight through it, to cheat death, even as he was surrounded by it. But those times were long past. His time here was done. The void beckoned.

Well, he'd been right, hadn't he? And even when the wave smashed his poor vessel to bits and he felt the pull of the currents start dragging him down, deep into the cold dark abyss, he thought:

Too much love will kill you.