“The next time I see you,” Andres tells me softly, his snow-blond hair streaking as he brushes by me, his head raised to tower over the world, “I will make sure you never sleep soundly again—until you sleep forever.”
“Of course. Until then…” I smile, showing my teeth, “One trade, if we could. I would consider it a personal favor if you take Lord Vikon off my hands and leave me Piranha instead.”
The heap that is Vikon raises its head. “Nile!” he shouts as the Bevnians haul him along. His wide eyes lock on mine with a genuine disbelief. “You can’t. We are family. You and I, we are family.”
I stay upright only long enough for the Bevnian boats to shove off into the choppy seas, then shove Trice into the arms of the closest seaman. The man says something I can’t hear. Not with the wind still coming for me, my magic leaking and pounding. Andres’s two boats make swift distance. I put their chances of drifting to land or ship at about one in ten—and if the ship they happen to come upon is Lester’s, I imagine there might be more than Andres who chooses to jump overboard with the boat’s anchor tied about his neck. Either way, the Bevnians’ fate is in their own hands now.
Our fate is in mine.
I see only my own feet, focus on nothing but the one last thing I must do. My hands grip the rail separating the raised poop deck from the main deck below. A small jump, and my legs clear the beam, protesting as my knees take the impact. Around me, people argue and swarm, Diante and Tirik prisoners still high on the rush of battle. None of them are sure of what to do now. I leave the lot to Domenic’s care. He will keep the ship safe.
I need to make sure Domenic still has a ship a bell’s time from now.
The lid of the wicker basket is heavier than I expect, the whispering from inside loud as a gathering storm. My chest squeezes as I behold the slithering mass of lithe bodies and forked tongues, the flesh-piercing fangs with venom powerful enough to rein in my magic. To keep me from destroying this ship we just reclaimed.
Trice’s screams echo in my head, and I brace myself for the pain. One last breath and reach inside, extending my hand toward our hissing salvation.
“Nile!” The top of the basket slams closed, a muscled arm shoving me away to land hard against the deck. Domenic’s face hovers above mine, his blue eyes dripping with terror. “What are you thinking?”
I struggle to rise, not caring how many people are watching. Listening. “I can’t control the wind,” I say softly at first, then louder, the truth spilling and mixing with tears I hadn’t known were there. “I can’t control it, Domenic. The Stardust—”
Domenic’s hands wrap my shoulders. “This isn’t the Stardust,” he whispers.
I cringe as a spurt of magic escapes me, heralding a gush of piercing wind. “It’s worse.” My voice catches. “There is no working this out. You think I’ve not considered my options—”
“I know you’ve not considered your options.” Domenic’s hands tighten on my flesh, his fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. “Because none of your options have included me.”
I shake my head. “That venom will give me a month in which we might find the Helix and get this ship to safety. I’m the one who handed us into the Bevnians’ clutches. Let me set it right.”
“Let us set it right together,” Domenic counters. “Trust me, Nile.” He releases one grip to cup my face with his calloused palm. His voice gentles, a low, soothing sound that ripples through my core. “I’ll handle the ship through a storm. And you and I, we’ve weathered your magic before. Trained with it. You don’t frighten me. Let me help. Work with you.”
“And if…” I swallow. “What if you are wrong? Over two hundred people—”
“I’m not wrong.” Domenic’s jaw tightens. “But if I am, I will do what must be done to protect the ship. All right?”
My head is as heavy as an anchor to lift and lower through a nod, my heart racing so quickly, the world swims before my eyes.
Domenic leans close and brushes a kiss against my forehead. Warm and confident. “Five minutes. Can you hold out that long?”
I nod again but can’t force myself to release his wrist, which I don’t remember having taken hold off.
“It’s all right,” he says quietly, holding my hand while his body swings out and opens to the ship. A captain assessing the situation. When he speaks next, Domenic’s voice is so filled with command that all the crew stops to listen, broken grammar and all. “Attention, all hands. Sails in. Secure ship. Prepare for weather. Gifted.” His face turns to Trice and the two wind callers. “Prepare to counter the winds, or I swear there will be hell to pay.”
Silence. Glances. Then movement. Tentative at first, then more organized as the seamen pull themselves together and repeat Domenic’s orders among themselves. My breath still, the wind blowing my hair. There is nothing that makes the Arrow a crew. No trust, no friendship, not even a common language. Nothing but the primal need to survive the battling terror of the unknown, all hinging on following the orders of a man they met weeks ago.
Domenic gives my hand a reassuring squeeze and unfurls to his full height, his calm presence filling the quarterdeck. My heart thumps. This is why the Felielle Admiralty gave Domenic the Raptor. Not because of gender or patronage or tradition—but because Domenic is good. The kind of captain the best of admirals should want in their fleet. The kind I want on my side as well. Domenic’s voice sounds again, loud without shouting. “Piranha. Where is the closest land with safe anchorage?”
Piranha frowns, either at the question or at Domenic’s broken Tirik, but speaks grudgingly. “One day due east. A small island. Nothing there.”
Domenic nods. “And is your back well enough to help navigate this ship?”
Piranha’s gaze shifts from me to the snakes, then to the strengthening wind that’s already beating the canvas.
“Mr. Piranha,” Domenic says coolly, and the young Bevnian flinches. “You may join the crew as an officer or a prisoner. The choice is yours.”
Storms and hail. Domenic is walking a tightrope, the chasm on each side deep and deadly. Yet he holds his head high, his face calm and confident as he stares down each set of eyes that rise up in challenge.
Piranha clears his throat, the crew shifting on their feet.
“Aye aye, sir,” Piranha murmurs, then repeats louder. “Sails in. Secure ship. And prepare for weather.”
Relief washes over me, but Domenic lets nothing but a small nod show as he leaves the sailors to their business to crouch before me. Strong hands wrap over my forearms, and blue eyes fill the whole of my world. Warmth from Domenic’s body heats the air between us, and the familiar scent of salt and brine drifts into my lungs.
“On the count of ten.” Domenic’s voice is hypnotically soft. “Concentrate on nothing, nothing, but keeping that fierce magic of yours calling a steady, hard gale. You’ve granted the Arrow a fighting chance when you removed Andres. Now let me carry the burden for a few minutes.” A corner of his mouth twitches. “Let’s see if you can do something more impressive than skidding my hat across the deck.”
And so I do.
Chapter 39
Kyra
The world lurched, as if forces mightier than mortals battled each other over a tasty morsel.
Kyra whimpered, her body still screaming from that explosion of powder cartridges that threw her to the deck. Pain crackled along the skin on her left breast and shoulder, mixing with a different sort of pounding that echoed in her skull. She shut her eyelids tighter. Beyond them, there was a rain of blood and entrails, of sudden flame that bit skin hard enough to make her howl. There was wind too. That was new.
Then, she wasn’t on a deck anymore. No, Kyra was in the air, someone’s arms solidly beneath her as the wind rushed by them, whipping hair and skin. Kyra’s face pressed against a soggy shirt, the copper of blood filling her nose.
Kyra recoiled from the smell, her eyes flying open. Nile stood beside Domenic, her magic rallying up a gale, though the win
d was already slowing. Bodies littered the swaying deck, Saarik’s lifeless gaze stared at Kyra, oblivious of his half-decimated, half-charred chest. She screamed.
“I help her,” a Diante voice said above her. “My late grandmother taught me.”
“Touch her, and I’ll reunite you with your grandmother,” Catsper replied with eerie calm. He shifted Kyra in his grip, bringing his green eyes to lock with hers before Kyra could scream again. “Look at me,” Catsper ordered, bending against the wind. “Look at me and nowhere else.”
She did, gripping the marine’s neck when he maneuvered them down the companionway ladder and shouldered his way toward Andres’s great cabin just as the ship lurched violently. Absorbing the punishing motions, Catsper kicked the door open with his foot.
“If you ever pull that again, I will kill you myself,” Catsper growled, setting Kyra down on Andres’s cot. “Understand?” Fear. Yes, that was coppery fear Kyra tasted from Catsper as the man crouched beside her and brushed her hair free of her face.
The touch lit a flame along Kyra’s skin, the sensation swift and powerful enough to shove all else from its path: pain, fear, thought.
She swallowed and lifted her fingers toward Catsper’s. Too slow. She was too slow, and Catsper’s hand was already gone from her cheek by the time her own reached the destination.
“I see you condescended to join the fighting,” Catsper said. “And found a damn bloody way to go about it.” At Kyra’s eye level with barely two feet between them, Catsper filled the entirety of her vision. His brow creased, tense despite his controlled voice. The hand that brushed Kyra’s skin moments ago now was braced on the mattress.
“I thought one of us should.” Kyra let a corner of her mouth twitch up. “Since you wanted a break.”
Catsper flinched.
Kyra’s chest tightened around her ribs like a band. The man who danced with death and had taken a lashing with hardly a grunt flinched. Reaching her hand toward Catsper, Kyra covered his knuckles with her palm. “I… I didn’t mean—”
“You meant exactly what you said.” Catsper’s jaw tensed, the muscles flexing along his face. His head lowered, and Kyra held her breath, waiting for the command to mind her own problems. For him to pull away from her touch. Instead, he stayed stone-still, like the statue he was on the ridge in Port Mead where she’d first found him. A breath of silence chilled the room. Another. Finally, Catsper rolled back his shoulders. “There was someone worth fighting for just now.”
Kyra pushed herself up on her elbow, her free hand shooting forward to grip the man’s chin. “You are someone worth fighting for,” Kyra said, her voice hard. Catsper’s face still hostage in her grip, she studied his eyes. Green with tiny speckles of yellow, as if a feline of the species truly was in his ancestry. On his right, a thin scar lined the angle of his jaw. One of so many that no one ever saw. Kyra’s pulse quickened, her whole body heating as she pushed herself toward him.
Catsper stilled, only the rise and fall of his shoulder betraying his breaths.
Kyra’s own lungs halted, air trapped in them as her lips gently brushed Catsper’s.
The marine’s eyes widened, his coiled muscles frozen in place while a trickle of need escaped those shields, tingling on Kyra’s tongue. The intensity of Catsper’s gaze burned into Kyra’s soul, his eyes drinking in the flickers of her fingers, the blinking of lashes. The need grew, burrowing down through Kyra’s core until she didn’t know where Catsper’s desire ended and hers started. And yet the man still refused to move, his muscles locked in iron check.
“You won’t hurt me,” Kyra whispered to him.
Catsper’s fingers rose to brush the singed inside of Kyra’s left shoulder. “I already have.” He rocked back on his heels and uncoiled himself upright. “You are covered in blood.” He stepped back toward the other end of the cabin. “There—I saw a casket of drinking water. I’ll fetch it.”
“Wait.” Kyra pushed herself to sit. Stand. Step toward him. The last was a mistake, as the ship tilted beneath her and what little balance Kyra had dissolved into mist. Catsper caught her before she could fall, that lethal, predatory movement returning now that he paid it no attention. Their gazes met, and he swallowed, his throat bobbing.
Kyra knew she was pretty in a way that appealed to men, that it took no effort at all to attract a man’s touch. Whether she wanted it or not. But she didn’t recall a time when she longed to brush her hand along a man’s skin, to connect on a plane deeper than words. Until now. Until him. Stars, but that tiny brush of lips lit up more nerves deep in her body than whole nights of sport ever had.
Except, for the first time ever, the man before Kyra refused to press the opportunity. To take more than she offered. To dare accept even that. Catsper’s hands, both bracing her hips to steady her, sang with tension. His breathing quickened, and he shifted his eyes to the overhead, exhaling with forced slowness.
Kyra’s fingers closed around the collar of Catsper’s shirt. “Take it off,” she whispered.
His breathing stilled, his hands releasing her carefully to hover at the garment’s hem. “Are you—”
“Yes.”
Catsper gripped the bottom of his shirt, muscles shifting with the motion.
“How far did Piranha say that island is?” Nile’s voice reached in from the pass-through, and Kyra’s heart splattered into her stomach.
Catsper’s hands slipped back to support Kyra’s elbow just as the door to the great cabin opened to admit the princess and Dana, both looking the worse for wear.
“A day with good winds.” Dana held the door open for Nile before following the girl inside. “There is little there, apparently, but safe anchorage and dry land, but it will suit.”
Face as unperturbed as always, Catsper nudged Kyra toward the cot. The marine sat too, his own body bladed subtly between her and the others. Sitting shoulder to shoulder with him, Kyra felt the rapid beat of Catsper’s heart echo through her skin, racing her own galloping pulse.
Stars damn ships and close quarters.
“Good, you are here,” Dana said, nodding to Catsper and Kyra in turn while he pulled up two chairs. “Are you two whole?”
“Is the ship?” asked Catsper.
“For now.” Nile dropped into a chair. Behind her, Dana reached for Nile’s shoulder, pulled back before the hand connected, then changed course again to splay his fingers between her shoulder blades after all. Nile dropped her head into her hands. “But we need to get to land before I make it otherwise.”
“Don’t give yourself too much credit.” Dana sat beside her. “The crew might sink itself before that happens.”
“Are we going—” Kyra’s words faltered. Home. She was going to ask whether they were going home. But their home wasn’t hers. And their war?… Beside her, Catsper shifted his weight, moving slightly away. Giving her space. His bloody shirt stuck to his back, the wounds still oozing through the fabric.
“We must head to the closest land first, ensure that the Arrow and her crew—and me—are all fit for sea.” Nile’s voice was heavy with fatigue. Fatigue, but not surrender. Not now, not when the Bevnians had stripped her naked, not when she had sacrificed her dignity to protect her ship. “Then…Andres and Saarik thought Lester was targeting Biron, so we must assume the Ardent Ocean waters are fully hostile. Even if the route was safer, a crew of Tirik and Diante prisoners would never agree to sail to Lyron. Continuing on to the Diante Empire is our best choice. We go to finish what we set out to do: negotiate a full military alliance and give Lyron a chance against these bastards.”
Kyra sucked in a breath. Not an end to a mission, but still the start. After everything, it was still only a start.
“With Diante support, we may even be able to free some of the Tirik prisoners to rouse opposition to the Bevnian stronghold,” the princess added thoughtfully. “Storms, maybe we can find this village and drag Quinn back to work.” A small smile touched Nile’s lips, then dissolved. Reaching out, she brushed her f
ingers against Kyra’s. “I do remember the promise to take you to Milan.” She turned to Dana, her eyes not demanding but questioning. “The archipelago is closer to us than the Empire’s heartland.”
The man nodded. “It would be a good trial. I wish to be comfortable with Nile’s wind and the crew’s abilities before we spend any more time in open ocean, but yes, after that, we could stop in Milan.”
Catsper tilted his head, a brow rising. “Remind me which one of you is in charge today? I lost track.”
“Domenic is the Arrow’s captain,” Nile said, her voice solid. “The operations of the ship and crew are fully his responsibility.”
“And Nile?” Catsper asked. “Is she the first officer now?”
“She is the mage,” Domenic said, spreading his shoulders. “The Bevnians are bastards, not idiots. We can’t afford to sweep the Gifted out of sight because convulsions can be inconvenient. So Nile and I will work to integrate her skills into the ship’s life. And if—when—we recruit Diante ships to join us, she will act as a Lyron admiral would.”
Kyra’s breath caught. Mage. Squadron. Vision. War. Kyra’s friends were already regrouping, organizing, turning from a castaway gaggle of survivors into a navy.
“Will you be my lieutenant of the marines?” Dana asked of Catsper.
There was nothing in Catsper’s immediate nod that would ever tip off Dana and Nile to the coppery pain and fear that rippled through the marine as he accepted the assignment. Nothing to hint at the complex man Kyra had learned to see behind the confident facade. Catsper’s friends took him at face value, as he wanted them to. Just as they believed that his wounds bothered him as little as he let on.
Behind Catsper, Kyra’s palm rose to rest gently on his back. Finding her magic, Kyra called the heat toward her, gathering it like a spiderweb from the surface while a soft chill remained to sooth the wounds. Catsper tensed as the coolness spread, but Kyra kept her attention on the others. On Dana. For while the men and woman before her knew how to wage war, they little knew how to heal its wounds. How to come through it with their souls intact. And she didn’t either. But she could learn. Wanted to learn. Because while the people around her fought, someone needed to make sure they lived too. “Requesting permission to join the ship’s company, Captain Dana.”