He stared at the ground hard, eyes raking the crevices between the smooth stones. His breath came in wisps before his eyes, short and furious and nearly a pant with a guttural growl in the back of his throat.
That bitch. That brash, insufferable, bitch.
He admired it. It was hard to discern the burning through his veins as hatred or magnetism. It was difficult not to let her name and the cruel twist of her mouth as she turned away scream through his thoughts and coil his muscles in preparation for attack.
He could taste the salt on her skin when he mended her wound, the sharpness of rum in his nostrils where his nose grazed her palm. He felt the searing anger accentuate the bite of cold metal in his wrist, restrained by the handcuff.
She had been in love too.
Whatever his reputation was, swashbuckling pirate, trickster, wicked murderer…
He sensed she shared that kind of lost wrongdoing as he did. He'd said it himself, he was the worst kind of human there was.
He'd killed the love of his life. And there she was without hers. As she stared at him and betrayed the haunted eyes that he refused to acknowledge were his own.
He would hunt her. He would hunt her down and press his knife up against her throat and push his face right up to hers.
He would hunt her and gut her and she would scream his name.
Swan. He was coming for her.