Keir broke the kiss. He looked at Akira stunned. He hadn’t expected her to be as angry as she was nor had he expected it to fade so quickly.

“I’m still angry, Keir,” she said as if reading his mind. “But I refused every other man who came courting me because I believed you’d come back to me. I believed so staunchly, my whole family thought I was crazy to keep refusing these eligible bachelors.”

“So, you threw yourself into your work,” Keir sighed.

“Not exactly,” Akira replied. “I went back to school for my PhD. That’s why I’m here. I’m working on my thesis.”

“Your thesis is on the Bloodshed?” he asked increduluously.

“Why wouldn’t I make my thesis on the Bloodshed?” she countered.

“Because you can’t possibly have enough records to find where it sank!” he exclaimed.

Akira pushed him away, the hurt evident in her eyes. He didn’t doubt that Akira could find the Bloodshed, if she were given enough time. But the fact this was her thesis, worried him.

“Akira, I know you’ll find it but not in time to present your thesis,” he told her gently.

“My advisor is giving me all the time I need to find it!” Akira snapped. “And not only do I plan on pinpointing where I think it went down, I plan on actually finding it. I’ve already received a grant to research and find it.”

Keir stared at her in shock.

“I know she was last sighted between Greenland and Iceland,” she said. “I also know that her father used Iceland to store his plunder but I expect that Anwen removed it after she killed him and took his ship. I’m fairly certain that she had a settlement on Greenland.”

“A settlement?” Keir asked.

“Yes,” Akira replied. “It would definitely be easier to hide the loot she stole in a settlement with women and children. She probably kept her first ship to make supply runs to Canada, since the Bloodshed was too easily recognized.”

“What else do you know?”

“Captain Anwen Wolfe had a son and a daughter. Asena Arayna Wolfe and Mavi Rune Eames.”

“How do you know their names?”

“What’s my last name?” she countered.

“Eames,” he replied.

“And my middle name?”

Keir shook his head.

“My name is Akira-Mavi Asena Eames.”

Keir stared at her stunned.

“We are descendants of Mavi Eames,” Askel coughed, sitting up slowly. “Anwen left instructions for Ulric should she die.”

“Instructions?”

“Yes,” Akira replied. “She told him to take the children to his home and never to let either of them become what she had because of the siren song of the sea.” She picked up an old leather bound book. “Mavi wrote a biography on his mother from the stories he gathered from the crew that survived. He told the story of his mother’s death from his point of view, his sister’s, and his father’s. He then details what happened after she died. From the time we were young, we were told stories of grandpa Mavi.”

“Grandpa?”

Askel and Akira chuckled.

“Yeah. Haven’t seen him in years, ‘course today wasn’t the happiest of occasions to reunite with him,” Akira replied.

“He’s still alive?” Keir exclaimed. “He must be at least a hundred!”

At this Akira laughed outright.

“More like 150,” Askel replied over his sister’s laughter. “But I swear he doesn’t look a day over 28.”

“That’s because he learned some sort of something from someone in Norway,” Akira told him. “He doesn’t say what he learned or who he learned it from but he does say it pissed his father off royally. Ulric nearly disowned him for it. Speaking of which, Askel is he still at the house?”

“He may look 28 but he’s 150, Akira, what do you think?” Askel replied dryly.

Akira squealed with delight. She stood quickly and began collecting the records she’d been combing through. She ran into the rows of shelves and began putting things away. Though she was moving quickly through the records room, Keir could tell she was lovingly putting the documents away.