The captain's heels clicked back and forth across the deck as the other ship came closer.

"I told you that was a bad idea," the officer said. "We can't outrun them with that stupid thing."

The captain stopped pacing and glared at the offending officer, a toddler smacking into her legs as soon as her heels stopped clicking.

"Get over it or get off my ship, Mr. Morgan. Over half of the people it's protecting are your family, and if you don't want to leave them behind I suggest you get over it." The captain knelt to pick up her own child. "I told you before you joined that the non-combatants' safety was my first priority and no one is making you stay."

She looked out at her crew. "First mate!" she shouted above the din of battle preparations.

"Aye, Captain Swan?" he said from behind her.

She glanced over her shoulder at him, readjusting her son's position on her hip. "Are they all safe?"

"Yes, ma'am. They're below deck, just waiting on you and Henry."

"Waiting on me? I showed Cook how to seal the door." Henry giggled and reached for her red cloth mask to pull it off her face. She caught his chubby little toddler hand and kissed his fingers. "No, sweetheart. Leave it be."

"Alas, captain, none of us," he gestured to the crew, "would know what to do with a three-year-old. He'd for sure grow up a scoundrel."

Captain Swan scoffed. "Ye of little faith. I'm not going to die today." She spun on her heel toward her cabin door. "I'm too young; I've got a lifetime of sailing ahead of me." She flew down the stairs and ducked under the low door into the captain's cabin—her cabin—and side-stepped the cradle bolted to the floor before the window seat. Cook was just poking her head through the narrow entry beneath the bench.

"Captain!" She sighed in relief. "Here, pass Henry to me and we'll close it up after you get down here."

The captain passed her son to the cook who was so proud of her skills that they were her name, but she laughed so that her son might not shed the tears she could see in his eyes. "What kind of captain, pirate or otherwise, abandons her crew to fight without her?"

"One with a child who needs her, Swan," Cook said. "Please!"

Swan smiled. "I'll be fine. Take care of him. I love you, Henry." And she waved her hand, sealing off her son's wails and the magical safe room that existed beneath her quarters. "I promise I'll come back, my love."

Captain Swan took a deep breath and turned to leave the cabin. Her ship, her crew—her home and family—were being threatened. She wouldn't stand by and lose either as she had the parents she'd never known and the husband she'd never married. She pulled the chain that held her golden ring of straw from around her neck and stuffed it into her pocket as she threw open the door and flew back to the helm. She wouldn't part with Baelfire's last gift, but it wouldn't do to let someone strangle her with it.

"How long, Sam?" she asked as he stepped aside, giving her the wheel.

"Impending doom is impending," he said.

The captain groaned. "That would be why we call it 'impending doom,' so answer my question."

The first mate smirked. "Any minute now, captain. Why can't you conjure a breeze so we can lose them?"

"Because I would screw up the weather patterns." She glanced in the way of their pursuers. "And they're too close. They'd benefit from it, too, and catch us that much faster."

"She can't do it is what she means," Mr. Morgan said. "Some Light practitioner you are, captain."

"Light," she emphasized. "I don't do magic if it means hurting other people, in this case causing a hurricane out of season. Now would you like to lead the charge, Mr. Morgan?"

"No, thank you, ma'am."

"Then shut the hell up."

The first mate snickered.

"Not the time, Sam."

"We wouldn't give you so much grief if you answered that kind of question with a demonstration."

"That would be Dark Magic. And cause a hurricane."

"He wouldn't take nearly as much wind to blow overboard as The Dark Swan would require outrunning the navy."

"Didn't you see the sharks?"

"Your point?"

"He has a family." Captain Swan turned to ship. "Hoist the sails! Fire the cannons!"

Her crew got a few good shots in before they were boarded. The protection spell she'd set along the ship's rail did its job, neutralizing any projectile weaponry that passed through. She'd heard nasty rumors about portable cannons and thought it best for her crew if her bow was the only ranged weapon that could be fired on her deck, and sure enough the trousers of several invaders combusted as the gunpowder was prematurely ignited, causing their owners to fall screaming into the sea. Swan regretted the necessity, but she wasn't skilled enough to maintain an impenetrable barrier until the navy men got bored and left them alone. She could only maintain this one for a half hour if she was lucky.

"Captain!" a sailor squeaked as he knocked her to the deck. She saw the sword just in time to latch onto her protector and pull him out of harm's way as well. God, he's just a kid.

"Get moving!" she yelled as she rolled off him and behind their assailant. She drew her dagger as she rose and hit the man on the head with her hilt, smiling without amusement as he crumpled to her deck. She turned, looking for the funny hat the other captain was surely wearing. In her experience captains always wore them, especially in the navy. It was that same assumption on someone else's part that had ended Baelfire's life, and she hadn't worn any hat since then.

"Princess Emma!" the captain of the navy vessel shouted from the other deck like a coward. "Hand over the princess or the queen will sink this ship!"

Swan rolled her eyes and jumped into the fray, incapacitating invaders where she could, killing them where she couldn't.

The idiot captain of the queen's navy was still yelling for the princess as the last of his crew fell dead or unconscious.

Captain Swan waved her hand, willing her barrier to block the screaming from the other ship as well as gunpowder. "Search for survivors," she yelled to her crew, bending to follow her own orders. "Bind anyone who isn't ours, help whoever you can. You know the drill!

"Master Silver!"

"Ma'am!"

"Pick a couple lads and prepare the dead… Do you know who?"

"Maybe a couple of ours…Mr. Morgan is dead."

"Damn."

"I'm sorry, Captain."

"It isn't your fault, Thomas… I'm going to go get my son…"

Captain Swan strode back to her cabin. The secret door opened just as she entered and before she knew it there was a three-year-old clinging to her knees like he'd never let go.

"Henry," she crooned. "Baby, it's alright. I'm here now. You're safe." She knelt to lift him and held him in her arms.

"Mommy," he cried again and again. "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!"

"Shh," she soothed as she walked over to the entrance to the safe room and knocked lightly with her boot. Cook probably hadn't realized Henry had escaped. His own abilities were developing far more rapidly than Swan had expected. She was going to have to find a way to disable them until he learned control—he was much too young to know Light from Dark.

She kept kicking the panel. "It's safe. You can all come out now."

She was still kicking the panel as the other children filed past her and the other three women squeezed out. Two of them were skilled at field dressings, but one of them was newly a widow.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

"We have some wounded. Cook, stay here with the children. Greta, get going. Frieda…I'm so sorry."

The woman's face crumpled. "You don't mean—"

Swan reached out a hand to Frieda's shoulder and closed her eyes. "I don't know what happened. I just know he's gone."

Frieda fell to her knees and two of the kids sat next to her, unsure of what had just happened. She had another on the way.

"You can stay aboard as long as you like. I'll take you wherever you want, as soon as you ask it of me."

"Thank you, Swan," Frieda sobbed.

"Excuse me," the captain said, bolting with Henry before she could fall apart as well. She couldn't afford to yet.

The dead were separated from the injured and unconscious by the time she returned. Thomas was carrying out his duty and looked the worse for wear. She'd make sure he was alright as soon as she could, though she was thankful to see that against all odds only one of the dead was hers.

She's going to pay.

"Captain Swan," Sam said as he touched her shoulder. "I know this is the last thing you want to do, but that coward is going to board if you don't drop that barrier."

She sighed and did as her first mate requested, and she could see the exact moment when the sound hit the coward again.

"Hand over the princess, you villains! I've been tracking this ship for three years and you will return her to me!"

Swan kissed her son before readjusting mask that hid her face. She sauntered over to the railing and sprawled across it with her son on her lap, snuggling into her and still crying. "Who did you say you're looking for, captain?"

His face reddened with rage. "Princess Emma! The daughter of queen Regina and heir to the throne!"

She looked around at her crew. "Does anybody know a lass who goes by that name, gentlemen?"

"No, captain," Sam said, not bothering to hide his smirk.

"Oy! Captain Coward, what's she look like?"

"Be careful, Swan," Sam said. "He looks close to an aneurism."

"How dare you? Princess Emma is a charming young girl with blond hair, blue eyes, and a royal aura!"

Captain Swan rolled her eyes. "Of course he'd call me charming," she muttered. "You lost me at 'royal aura,' my lord. I'm but a lowly sailor; I had no idea a princess would be royal!"

Her crew guffawed and the man across the gap turned purple, looking that much closer to his death.

"See here, young lady—"

"The fact remains, Professor Plum, that there are no daughters of Queen Regina aboard my vessel, kidnapped or otherwise. I'd recommend you collect your crew and retrace your steps, except you damaged my vessel and my crew for nothing. There are fourteen dead sailors staining my deck and one of them is mine. I don't know about yours, but mine has a family! I expect reparations for damages and for his widow. Then and only then may you and your men leave us in peace."

The navy coward's mouth worked but no words were forthcoming.

"Oh, I know! I'm so generous and forgiving. They don't call me the most merciful pirate on the high seas to be ironic, you know. They call me Captain Swan; I ought to be Captain Dove.

"Bring me what gold your survivors won't need for the journey home and we'll call it square."

The other captain promptly fell over, blue in the face.

"Sam, send someone to check on him; I do hope I didn't kill him. Collect enough for Frieda to live on for a while when she chooses to leave. If they don't have enough, I'll make up the difference."

"You hated the man, captain."

"But I adore his wife, and I'll see to it she's taken care of."

Sam inclined his head. "Yes, milady."

Swan sat up and held her son tighter, stroking his hair. "I've been telling you for four years to stop that. How many more times must I say it?"

"At least once more, Captain."

Swan rolled her eyes. "I don't care anymore, just don't do it with anyone around. I'm going to take Henry back inside. He's seen enough of this messiness."

Henry clung to his mother as they waded through the post-battle mayhem. His head was buried in her chest so firmly that she knew he couldn't have seen anything. She would never admit it to her first mate, but she had seen enough of this messiness.