Prologue
She had first learned of him at the age of sixteen, decided she would kill him at seventeen, and finally set out to find him at the grand old age of nineteen. For one whole year she had nursed her mother as her lifeblood drained from her frail and pain wracked body and it was during this time that her hatred of him festered and grew within her until her sole reason for living beyond her mothers death was so that she might find him and have his blood upon her hands. She was not as naive as those around her thought and she knew that the path she had chosen would be fraught with peril and danger. But she had given it a great deal of thought during the sleepless nights she had kept vigil at her mothers bedside and she had planned it as carefully as she could. Over the years she had hoarded her mothers memories like precious stones and played them over and over in her mind until she knew each one as if they were her own. Her mother loved him still. It was in her voice when she spoke of him. A sigh here, a smile there. It was the fact that her mother could still love him after everything he had done that angered her. Her need for revenge against him was like an itch that gnawed at her. Rest would not come until she held her knife to his throat and saw true regret in his cold black eyes.
Her mother was buried on a cold July morning, a thick bank of fog moving over the barren land like the caress of a lovers hand. Yet there was no warmth to be had as a few locals gathered beside her to bid their final farewells to a woman that had been too young to die. Kneeling beside the freshly dug grave long after the others had gone, she offered up a prayer for the woman who had given birth to her and made a final promise that she would find the man who had abandoned her when she needed him most. Standing on unsteady legs she felt loneliness seep into her bones and for the first time in her life she felt what it was like to be truly alone. Squaring her shoulders she regained her composure, took one last look at her mothers final resting place and turned to make her way back to the small house that had been her home. She had packed the night before knowing that after her mothers burial there would be no time to waste. Her passage on the Morning Rose had been booked the same day her mother had passed away and it was scheduled to leave that very afternoon. Before the sun set that evening she would be on her way to a place from her mothers memories. A place full of adventure, dangerous men and whoring women. Tortuga.