Hello again, everyone! I really didn't mean to keep you all waiting for so long! I just finished up writing up my qualifying exams, as well as being in the midst of writing up a grant! I will reply to your reviews for the last chapter in the next two or three days. I wanted to post this so that you can all get to see it before the end of the weekend! Thanks for staying tuned!

Chapter 25: Sweet-Talking

"What?!" Elizabeth said in reply to Beckett's impromptu proposal of marriage, in the loudest whisper she could conjure. "Have you gone out of your mind?"

"No. Right now I'm thinking more clearly than I can ever remember."

"Are you on some sort of drug? What ever could possess you to say such a thing—"

"Love, I suppose," he replied in a languid drawl. The way he had said it was inappropriate for the content of his words. All the while he eyed her up and down as she rested up against him, keeping his gaze from stopping on her face for more than a moment at a time.

"What?! That word has never even been mentioned until this point!"

"It's as good a time as ever; wouldn't you agree?"

Elizabeth felt dizzy. Had he actually just asked her to marry him, in his calm, matter-of-fact way of going about everything?

"You're not being very romantic about it, you do realize. Rather, you're being… eerily casual. How can you say such a thing with so little emotion behind it—and expect me to believe what you say?"

"Oh, is that what you were hoping for. For me to fall to my knees before you, kissing your hand as I proclaim my undying love for you."

Elizabeth flashed him a little smirk.

"Well, that wouldn't hurt."

Upon the mention of Cutler Beckett as his wife's current lover, a frown painted on his face, pupils glowing black, Will trod away from Joana without another word.

Upon reaching the organ room, Will noticed Pintel and Ragetti playing some sort of idle tune on the highest keys, which had been barely audible because of their high pitch.

"Get out!" Will yelled, causing them to whirl around and stare at him. Pintel was taken aback. This was not the Will Turner he remembered, the easygoing pushover who would take anything with a shrug. This was more like Jones.

"There a problem?" Pintel asked, rotten teeth on display.

"I said, get out!" the captain shrieked, storming at them with a slight limp. The two pirates scattered, racing out of the room from two separate directions, leaving Will alone in the organ room.

Once he was completely alone, the large room devoid of all but himself, Will shut the door, blocking it with a wooden bar, as he moped over to the bench of the organ. Breathing loudly, he sat down at the organ, black eyes darting about the room in despair.

How could she have committed such an atrocity against me? To betray me with a man whom we both despised, with good reason? What all has she done with the bastard in her unfaithful life without me? It's no wonder she left the chest behind—she has no sense of responsibility, no sense of loyalty. How I could have ever convinced myself that she'd stay true to me I've no idea. She has quite simply broken my heart. I daresay I rather hope that the possessor of the heart stabs it and ends my miserable existence.

But then again—Beckett is headed to Southampton—the place where I fought the holder of the chest— with Elizabeth, who has the key. Could she have plotted this all along, to have them acquire the heart and control me? Or… could it be that Beckett has seduced her in order to return to power? Oh my God. He's going to return to Southampton and obtain my heart, and then I'll be completely at his mercy, just as Jones had been. And now I don't even have the Kraken at my disposal to dispatch his ship early. Of course, if Elizabeth is on that ship that would be horrific—

Even if Beckett had seduced her, how could she have allowed herself to fall for him? She is my wife and is supposed to be completely devoted to me, just as I have always been devoted to her. Could he be drugging her?

There came a knock on the door of the organ room, a sound that reverberated in the craggy rafters of the large space.

"What is it?" Will said with a growl of annoyance.

"It's Joana," a muffled voice spoke.

"I wish to be left alone," he replied, his voice devoid of the rage it once held.

"Please," Joana's voice said through the door. She attempted to push the door open to no avail.

"If you want your book deciphered, from now on please go to someone else," he told her. "I'm indisposed from now until the day I am freed from this curse."

She frowned behind the door. How was it that the one devoted, loyal man she had ever met was hung up on someone like Elizabeth? And was now disgusted with her after demanding her to tell him information on his cheating wife?

"It's not about that," Joana replied in a raised voice. "Please—let me in."

"Come back in a few days," he said. "I'm tired."

"No!"

He turned his head to look at the door.

"What did you say?"

"Please—just let me in!"

With a great sigh, Will stood up, moving slowly towards the door. With a new realization that his ankle wasn't bending the way it was supposed to, Will limped to where Joana was waiting behind the closed door. He nudged aside the wooden bar with his hardening foot so as to permit the door to open a crack.

"What do you want," he said to her, his face appearing in the slit of light that the barely open door allowed. Already his skin had taken on a most alarming color, a subtle shade of orange, like that of some sort of crustacean. His black pupils seemed to burn through her face.

Joana had never understood why Captain Turner had transformed with alarming rapidity in the short time she had known him. At first, she had suspected it was due to his neglecting his duty between worlds, but already his appearance had startlingly changed in the course of an hour or so. There was a different force at hand. A force she wished to stop, if possible.

"I want to come in."

"Why. You've already seen this room. There's nothing left to see."

"I want to talk to you."

"I believe you've already told me what I need to know." At that, he began to shut the door with a starfish hand, feeling a resistance when he tried to push it all the way closed. Joana was leaning on the door with all her weight, and when he allowed the door to open again, she nearly toppled over.

"I don't see what you could possibly need to say to me," he remarked with a sigh. "Has my wife taken yet another lover in the time since we last spoke?"

"Can you think of nothing but her," she blurted. Will froze momentarily at the odd admission.

"Why shouldn't I think of her constantly. She's my wife, and the mother of my child—" suddenly he paused, face losing some of its orangey colour. "Oh, God, you're not here to tell me the child isn't mine, are y—"

"When it was revealed that she was pregnant, she told everyone the child was yours."

"That means nothing to me now. She's a liar, a cheat. How could she do this to m—"

"I don't know how," Joana interrupted, utterly fed up by Turner's one-track mind. "I could never do that sort of—"

"What," he said quietly, eyes narrowing slightly.

"She doesn't deserve you!" Joana cried, voice breaking. Will nudged the wooden bar away, opening the door slowly as he watched Joana's face carefully, at the passionate way she had said such a thing.

"What do you mean by that?" he asked her in a strange voice.

"I've never met any man so dedicated, so loyal as you. And for you, to be doomed to a life with someone like her, her with no decency, no conscience; it disgusts me!"

He was taken aback.

"What all has she done?" he asked in a voice that sounded unsure of if he actually wanted to know the answer to the question. Joana took a step into the room, her face flushed with anger.

"It's not about what she has done; it's about her state of mind in betraying you, her husband, and her utter lack of guilt about it! She's worshipped by all the pirates, including my father, though she's wholly undeserving of it!"

"So are you saying that she—"

"I'm sick and tired of all the credit she gets! She does nothing to deserve all that she has! I cannot even speak to my own father if she's around! I don't understand what power she holds over everyone, but it's certainly a power I do not possess!"

Will could only watch in silence as the girl in front of him spoke with conviction in her exotic accent, the girl with Jack Sparrow's dark almond-shaped eyes and prominent cheekbones, donned in the clothing that Elizabeth had once worn when the Black Pearl had been Barbossa's ship.

"Well, after I rid the world of Beckett once and for all, she'll—"

"She'll what? Can you ever really trust her? The question is, should you trust her after—"

"Enough!" he railed, raising his voice and startling her to stop speaking. "What do you propose I do then, hm?" he added quietly and sarcastically. "Kill her?"

"Of course not!" Joana cried.

"I was being sarcastic," Will muttered, looking immediately contrite for even saying it aloud, as joking as it was meant to be.

"I know," she replied. "I just think—for the sake of your own health, your own well-being, to not dwell on her—for now."

"She's my wife! I grew up loving her, and I've loved her for as long as I can remember! I cannot, as you say, not dwell on her. It's an impossibility."

"Never mind then," Joana said with a scoff. She began to turn away, realizing she'd never get through to anyone. It was like her entire life so far was her waterlogged medical reference book. It had the potential to save lives, to help people, but had been rendered illegible.

Suddenly she felt a bristly object grasp her shoulder, and she turned her head.

Will was touching her shoulder with a starfish hand, and his expression was unreadable.

"Why did you come here?" he asked her, voice greatly softened.

She paused, unsure of what to say. He remained where he was, watching her intently.

"To help you feel better. But now I realize that I don't know what I was thinking. I'll never know what you're going through, and so I can't relate."

"Why do you say never? You've a long way to go."

"Relationships always end in heartbreak. Whether it's due to unfaithfulness, neglect, or death, they all end badly. And so I've decided to avoid my mother's fate—as well as your fate—and never allow myself to fall for someone."

"But you're so young. You've quite a long time ahead—"

"I'm old enough to know what I want and what I don't want. Certainly I'm older than you are."

"Somehow I doubt that."

"How old are you?" she asked him. "I'm twenty-five."

"Alright," he muttered in a defeated tone. "You're right. So, what do you want then."

"I want to help people. I want to restore them back to health, to allow them to live their lives to the fullest. I want to preserve people's lives. And yet, I've not even been able to do that."

"How so?"

"My father was shot in the leg. I sutured the wound back together so that he could walk, and yet he was still captured by the Royal Navy. I tried to help—Elizabeth, but she was still ill under my care. Maybe by my book being destroyed, someone was trying to tell me something."

"I don't see what you mean," Will commented.

"It means that I've lived in vain! I grew up without a mother and father, and when I finally meet my father, all that I do is not good enough to keep him from being executed. Until I entered his life, he avoided capture. I've done no good for anyone."

"But he's still alive now, right?"

She let out a scoff.

"I'm not sure… but even if he is, he won't be for long."

"Don't worry; we'll get there in time."

"You obviously hate him. It wouldn't bother you to see him die."

"I once saved him from execution in Port Royal," Will commented matter-of-factly, watching Joana's eyes widen. "And for your sake, I can do it again."

"But you cannot walk onto land," she murmured. "There's nothing you can do. I appreciate your offer, but there's no need to say such a thing."

"I will find a way," he replied. "I need to repay you for your… brutal honesty."

"I think it's going to be too late," she muttered, feeling a bit perturbed by the way he had phrased her most recent series of comments. And in defining her comments in such a way, he was now being brutally honest. A thought that brought the subtlest of smiles to her face.

Beckett knelt on the floor below Elizabeth's bed as she sat on the mattress, feet draped over the side, a mischievous smile on her face. Both wore only long tops that covered to their knees, looking much like children saying their evening prayers before going to bed.

As Beckett looked up at her form looming above him on the bed, he felt a mixture of excitement and something foreign and indefinable. And yet, he wasn't going to let this odd negative feeling in the way of what he wanted—that being Elizabeth.

With heavy eyelids and a little grin of satisfaction on his face, Beckett reached his arms to bring one of Elizabeth's hands to his face, lifting his body off of his knees to kiss the top of her hand.

I can't believe I'm actually doing this, he mused, picturing his actions from a point outside himself. This sort of action was so unlike him, it was scaring him to know that he was capable of doing such a thing. What sort of spell has she cast upon me?

Elizabeth blushed and giggled girlishly at Beckett's gentle kiss upon her hand. Now comes the declaration, she told herself. This should be interesting.

After kissing her hand, Beckett sank back onto his knees and look up at her earnestly, still finding it difficult to focus exclusively on her eyes. Must have to do with that odd secondary feeling I'm getting in my gut. No matter; it's probably normal to feel this way—not that I'd know that, really.

Smiling at him unabashedly now, Elizabeth loudly cleared her throat. This jolted Beckett back to reality.

"I hope you don't reject me after all that I've done," he said with a tinge of bitterness in his voice. "You're touching on a level of vulnerability I've… not exposed before."

Oh, bloody hell. Why did I just say that? Since when do I reveal my weaknesses? I've been too long away from battles, been too long away from exercising leadership….

Rather than reassure him, she remained quiet, giving him a little nod in acknowledging his comment.

"Elizabeth," he said in a low, husky whisper so as to prevent others from hearing her actual name. It was certainly appropriate to say it at this moment in time. A period of silence followed.

"Yes?" she finally asked, upon realizing that he wanted verbal acknowledgment of his addressing her.

"Will you ma—"

"What about your declaration of love?" she said, an eyebrow raised. This obviously amused her more than he would have hoped. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

"Oh, yes. That. Well. Let's see." He pondered for a moment what he would say, because he had very much anticipated on skipping this part and going right for the inevitable question.

"Elizabeth," he said again very quietly, "from the moment you attempted to pull the Letters of Marque from my hand, sparing my life though you had a weapon, I developed an interest in you. And then, when you were so bold as to rescue me from my watery fate, to pull me onto the very ship that sought my death, my interest grew. However, I believe it was after our reciprocal 'punishments' and your subsequently nursing me back to health that I was smitten. And now… well, it worries me to think of how I'll cope if I have to live another second knowing you're not mine."

Beckett paused momentarily, pushing the odd feeling into the depths of his stomach as he looked into her eyes, and seeing receptiveness there, continued speaking.

"Elizabeth… will you marry me."

His eyes were now affixed on hers, as she looked down at him in this most uncharacteristic position.

"Do you love me?" she asked, an utterly serious expression on her face.

Beckett's eyes fell briefly, as he swallowed quietly, his gaze recovering its previous focus. There came an overwhelming urge to roll his eyes, but he ignored it. He couldn't screw this up—this was too important.

"Yes."

"Please—say it for me."

"Say what," he said, feeling a bubbling of annoyance within. If she was going to string him along only to reject him he was going to be enraged.

"Tell me you love me."

Again his gaze fell, recovering after he swallowed again. He cleared his throat, finding this much more difficult than first thought. This was unbelievably difficult to do, in fact. Was it because he meant what he was going to say, as opposed to lying through his teeth? Beckett couldn't recall anything in his life being harder to do than this. Was it because she might reject him? And obviously for that to be a consideration, he obviously did not want her to reject him, and in wanting her affection, felt affection for her in turn.

Elizabeth could see that Beckett was having a bit of an issue with saying what she direly needed to hear from him, yet whatever he was feeling during his position on the floor, his expression eternally serious, she couldn't decipher it.

Suddenly his lips parted, eyes steadily gazing into hers, eyelids fully open in his upward stare. In this position he looked much like a boy even younger than herself, all innocence and sincerity.

"I… love you," Beckett stammered, a rapid blush overcoming his face within moments of his admission. Though his face was hot, a chill ran down his spine. How very odd indeed, he mused all the while. His eyes fell, finding their focus on her knees, which were directly in front of his face. A nerve-wracking silence followed, as Elizabeth watched Beckett carefully, sensing his raw fear over what she would say.

"Cutler," she said to him in a voice laced with sternness. His head shot up, eyes following shortly. He remained silent, though his eyes conveyed a rage of emotions. His eyes right now are showing the most emotion I've ever seen in him, Elizabeth mused.

"Yes," she murmured quietly, a little smile on her face as she said the word.

His eyebrows shot up in shock, throat immediately drying out. She had conceded to marry him! He could not help but smile up at her, feeling very much like standing up and going about consummating their betrothal.

"You've never heard me mention my feelings for you," Elizabeth added, at seeing a stir of motion from him. "Aren't you curious as to how I feel?"

"Well—I believe your answer to my question confirmed your feelings on the matter," he replied, voice breaking from the earlier shock.

"Don't you want to hear me say it?"

"Of course I do. Please, do divulge your feelings," he said gently. A little smile crossed his lips.

"Well, as you know, any blossoming feelings I had had for you were morally wrong all the while I had them. I knew this as well and I hated myself for it. I felt guilty constantly, but I couldn't help the way I felt. And as your kindness increased, sometimes I allowed for my feelings to run rampant. It was wrong of me to do so and I deserve what ended up happening to me. Yet now, I've been granted freedom to feel as I want. And so now I can announce my feelings without reservation. I honestly never dreamt I'd feel such a way again. I love you… Cutler Beckett."

She finished her statement with a smile, prompting Beckett for his next move. Without further ado, he rose from his position on the floor, and leaned down, a big satisfied smile on his face, to kiss his fiancée.

"Oh, I almost forgot," he said, pulling away from the kiss prematurely. "I must do this properly."

With that, he pulled the ever-present gold ring off of the ring finger of his left hand, and held it out to Elizabeth.

"I regret that it is not the appropriate sort of ring for an engagement," he began earnestly, "but I cannot leave your finger bare from this moment on. It will be replaced with a much more suitable alternative once we are wed."

She accepted the ring, a rather gaudy sort of gold ring which bore the insignia of the East India Trading Company.

"I'm rather surprised the Company didn't take this back from you," she said with a quiet giggle, slipping the ring onto the appropriate finger. It was only slightly bigger than needed, Beckett watching her emotionlessly as he opened his mouth to speak.

"Well, considering their only real chance to do so would've had to have occurred aboard the Endeavour after I failed to order the crew to fire upon your two attacking ships, I presume there were other, more urgent issues at hand while we were being obliterated."

"Ha ha, very funny."

For the first time, Beckett felt the cold hardness of his ring from a rather different perspective, as she gave him a playful slap to the top of the hand.

"Check," Joana said with confidence, having threatened Will's king with a bishop immediately diagonal from the king, a knight protecting the bishop. It was now evening on the Flying Dutchman, though the hours had flown by. In her last move, she hadn't noticed the presence of his knight in the process…

Without pause, Will moved his knight into the position of Joana's bishop, sweeping her bishop off of the chessboard with a starfish hand. The chess pieces had been rendered coralline and barely resembled their respective figures. She hadn't even noticed the faint curvature of a horse's face on the piece having been an L-shape away from her bishop.

She gave a little scoff of surprise, having supposed she had trapped him in checkmate.

"All that thinking you do before each move, and yet, you didn't see my knight there?" Will commented with a barely perceptible smile, placing her bishop on a key of the pipe organ.

The pair sat face to face on the bench in front of the pipe organ, a chessboard between them, several loose pieces sitting on the keys of the musical instrument though not heavy enough to cause production of sound. The past several games they had played had been entertaining, to say the least, and Joana was able to hear Will's dry sense of humor. This was probably what he is usually like, she mused, enjoying the tinge of bitterness he'd inject into his more potent humorous comments. Since meeting him, Joana had learned of Will's selfless devotion to his wife, utter obsession with her state of health, joy at news of her pregnancy, and upset over her unfaithfulness. He lived for her and nothing more. He was, quite simply, a sort of man Joana had never met before. Such a man she had supposed did not exist. And here he finally was, aboard the ship of the dead, rapidly becoming some sort of crustacean.

Rather than move her knight away since it was now being threatened by Will's knight, Joana suddenly moved her knight to capture his knight, removing his piece from the board with a little smile of satisfaction. He then captured her knight with his king, placing her knight on the key of the organ's keyboard containing her bishop.

"Apparently you don't mind sacrificing your knights," he said to Joana. "You could have moved away, you know."

"If it was to any of those imbecile pirates I'd be ashamed to sacrifice a knight," she commented, a little mischievous smirk on her face. "But I'd be glad to sacrifice my knights to you."

The double entendre was not lost on Will, who was in a bit of a shock to have actually deciphered this thinly veiled act of flirtation. Or was it? The naughty look from Joana confirmed what she had meant by the phrase, and he was taken aback. She just had to test him, to see if this was some sort of front—or if he truly was as devoted to his wife as he claimed to be.

Focusing again on the game, Will picked up his queen with his starfish hand and moved it two spaces in front of Joana's king, where it was not met with any resistance from other pieces.

"Check," he said triumphantly.

Joana pinched her king piece between finger and thumb, attempting to move it to the three open spaces around it. None of her pieces were in range to move in front of the queen to block her king from danger. Two of the open spaces around her king would still cause her to be in check with Will's queen, and the other one would put her into check with another of his pieces. She had lost the game. And he had responded to her earlier flirtation with no more than several blinks of surprise.

"Mate," Will confirmed, after watching her attempt to move her king in vain.

"Congratulations," she said as sweetly as possible in her disappointment over losing. "What's the record now, two and two?"

"I think so. Tiebreaker?"

"Do you have any other games we can play, just to add some variety?"

"Well, there is a dice game called Liar's Dice, come to think of it… but I lost the last time."

"Well, being as I've never played it before, I'd say you have a good shot of winning."

After eating a small dinner that Beckett had brought back from the galley, the newly engaged couple sat on Elizabeth's bed watching the other carefully. Elizabeth realized where this was going, but had to know one last thing before they made love yet again that day.

"Cutler," she said with insistence. He looked at her with puzzlement.

"What about the baby?" she asked him.

"I will raise this baby as my own, if you so desire it," he replied, poking her lightly in her bulging stomach. Elizabeth was overwhelmed with joy. How could he have turned out to be so perfect, so obliging, so unlike her first impression of him?

She wanted to finally see this man in his entirety, being as he had finally revealed his feelings in their entirety. After giving him a kiss of gratitude as he lay along the length of the bed, she straddled him, unbuttoning his shirt and exposing his chest, him completely at her mercy as she remained in her nightgown atop his totally bare body.

During each unbuttoning of the clothing that restricted him, Beckett could visualize his interest increasing to a fever pitch. Her remaining clothed above him seemed to excite him even more, what with him being left so vulnerable beneath her, completely exposed and unsure of what exactly she was planning on doing to him.

Suddenly Elizabeth rose onto her knees, which were positioned astride his hips, and lowered herself quickly and smoothly onto him as she commenced with the movement that drove him out of his mind.

Beckett laid his head against the pillow, chin high in the air as he shut his eyes, concentrating on keeping the tension going for a bit longer. The flood of emotions that he had allowed to flow free was threatening to end this activity sooner than he wanted. And the feeling of being within her, the movement of her body around him, was trying on his endurance. As he tried his best to remain in control, his hand moved southward over her loosely hanging nightgown, reaching the juncture of their trembling bodies. Elizabeth attempted to decipher where exactly his hand had went when suddenly, not only was she being filled by him, but there was something else stroking her as she moved back and forth on top of him! Each time she moved forward, Beckett's finger would brush against that most sensitive point of her anatomy, causing her to squeal with pleasure as she thrust herself harder against the welcome micro-obstruction to movement.

Again, they simultaneously climaxed, Beckett feeling the weight of Elizabeth's body heavy on his own as she rested on him after an amazing finish. Within another minute or so, she repositioned herself so they were now lying side by side on the bed. Beckett smirked as he pulled the blanket up over their perspiring bodies, snuggling his unclothed body against her nightgown-clad body, feeling the baby kick rather forcefully.

That was certainly powerful enough to be the kick of a boy, Beckett mused, running his palm over the swell of Elizabeth's belly. The little whimper Elizabeth emitted in response caused him to forget everything instantaneously, his heart melting as he wrapped an arm around her back and nestled into the curves of her body. It wasn't long before both had fallen asleep.

Much to Will's dismay, Joana was rapidly becoming competent in Liar's Dice. They were now on their sixth game, with stakes ever-increasing from buttons, to small sums of money (though useless to him), and finally to objects such as a nonworking albeit elegant pocket watch. The only reason Will had won the last game was because Joana refrained from calling him a liar, though he had actually been lying. The stakes increased yet again.

"I wager… an entire afternoon dedicated to helping you decipher your book," he said, his eyeballs much less red than before. The only steep wager that could be made while on the Dutchman was time.

"Well, I wager… an entire day spent helping you do whatever it is you'd like to do."

"Really," he said, eyes scanning her for signs of joking. It was quite the wager for someone such as her, with her having not won once yet, to make.

"Yes. What do you like to do, anyway?"

He considered for a moment, and then spoke.

"In life I was a blacksmith," he replied, a trace of bitterness in his words. "I crafted swords and daggers and many useful pieces of met—"

"…I'm afraid I have no materials for that here," she commented.

"With the weapons I'd create I enjoyed swordfighting—firstly, in order to test them, but then my own interest grew in using weaponry properly," he said. "I taught myself how to defend myself against all of pirate kind—interestingly enough, afterwards learning that I am one of them."

"I'd be rather terrible, but I can try."

"Alright," he said, rubbing his starfish hands together. "It's settled. An afternoon—eh, let's make it a full day—of translating your book to a full day of swordfighting. I daresay by the end of the latter day, you'll be quite competent with a sword."

With that, Joana and Will rolled their dice, hiding them beneath their respective tumblers.

Joana peeked beneath her cup, seeing two fours, a six, and two ones.

"Three fours," she said carefully, lowering the tumbler onto the dice. Her dark eyes flickered mischievously.

Will peeked under his tumbler at his own dice.

"Three fives," he replied with utmost confidence.

She didn't skip a beat. "Four fours."

"Five fives."

Joana glanced again at her dice. There was no way all his dice could be fives. But then again, she really wanted to learn how to swordfight. She took a deep breath. Surely Will would call her on this one…

"Six fours," she stated very clearly, smiling broadly at him. Will looked at her with his jaw slightly agape, peeking down one more time at his own dice. Say it, Joana mused. You know I'm lying.

"Liar," he muttered under his breath, almost with a sort of sigh. Joana revealed the contents of her cup to have two fours, and Will showed his own to have only one four.

"I guess you win," she said, shrugging.

"But you must've known I was lying as well," he replied quickly, staring at her dice. "You have no fives."

"Oops, I guess I have more to learn. Well, all that matters is that I lost."

"Would you like to now learn some of the basics of swor—"

"Today is already well underway. I said I'd devote an entire day to it."

Will was taken aback.

"Alright, so… would you like tomorrow to be the day that you learn how to swordfight?"

"Yes, if that is alright with you."

I apologize for the wait in posting this chapter! Well, I hope you enjoyed the Beckett-Lizzie and Will-Joana interaction, and I hope this chapter was (maybe slightly?) worth the wait!