by Alex Lidell
Standing a few paces away, Domenic stares at Catsper, everything about his posture shouting Stop it as loudly as if he’d given the words voice.
Catsper grins and pulls the top lace of his pants loose.
Chapter 7
For the first time ever, I see Domenic close his eyes on the quarterdeck and take several overtly calming breaths. When he opens them again, Catsper is fully naked, utterly comfortable, and waiting patiently for the two seamen already poised at the pump. Rum, the damn animal, trots up to his master and sprawls lazily on the deck as if to say, If you are having a bath, I want one too. Of course, of course, Catsper owns the only dog in the universe who doesn’t hate water.
I catch Johina sneaking off deck moments before the dreaded thump of Captain Rima’s footsteps clanks up the companionway. The already silent deck holds its collective breath. Even the seamen at the pump stop working, leaving a soaped-up Catsper standing in a puddle of water without more coming.
“Mr. Catsper.” Rima’s nasal voice is a deadly purr. “To what might we owe the exhibition?”
Catsper wrings out his hair before answering. “Lice, sir. Better safe than crawling, wouldn’t you say?”
“Are you insane?” Domenic grabs the lapels of Catsper’s jacket and slams the marine into the Cove’s bulkhead.
Catsper lets him, not even wincing at the impact. The rest of the Spades give the quarreling pair little attention. Their commanding officer can take care of himself. Penn, one of the younger marine boys who has taken a liking to me, tosses me a dagger.
I raise a brow.
“Start carrying it with you, Ash,” Catsper calls over his shoulder, then nods to Domenic to continue the pummeling all he wishes.
Domenic steps back and sits on one of the boys’ sea chests. “Are you insane?” he repeats, this time in a reasonable tone, as if inquiring after the weather.
“Oh, most certainly,” says Catsper, straightening his clothes. “And clean too.”
“You think Rima—”
“I think I can handle Rima a bit better than a handful of children,” says Catsper, and suddenly there is no more humor in his voice. A chill settles over the Cove at once, Catsper’s irreverence only adding weight to what he’s done, why he’s done it. There is a hunt aboard ship, and if Catsper can’t stop it, he’ll offer himself as bait.
The marine is trying to mop up my mess by throwing himself into the fire. My face burns. Even Domenic becomes rigid. I raise my chin and meet Catsper’s green eyes and then Domenic’s blue ones. “It should be me,” I say quietly.
Catsper snorts. “Let’s get to training with that knife Penn gave you before it is you, Ash.”
“I thought your ankle hurt, Nile,” Domenic says quietly, his brow cocking. “A bit difficult to spar with that, I’d think.”
I hide a wince. Behind Domenic’s back, Catsper gives me a look as if to say, Your problem. You deal with it.
I shrug nonchalantly, but my heart gallops as I say, “I’ll manage. I imagine Catsper will tell you it’s unlikely the Tirik will inquire about my health before trying to stick a blade between my ribs.” My smooth words feel like slime in my mouth. I’m lying to Domenic. Again. After he’s invited me to into his confidence, shown me the man behind his cold mask. And just as with the ship’s change of course, the thing I’m hiding—my Gift—is not a negligible one.
“You took a fall from the shrouds, Nile. And I’ve not seen you mount the rigging since,” Domenic says softly, and my heart sinks further. He’s been watching me. He’s been worried. Falling from the rigging is much like falling from horseback—it’s vital to get back on before the fear festers.
And, horrid person that I am, I meet his genuine concern with half-truths. “I’ve not grown a sudden fear of heights.” It’s getting caught in the midst of a jerking spell and falling from said height that bothers me. “I’ve been at sea long enough to know fish-bait pitfalls. A little more time to heal, and I will be back in the ratlines.”
Domenic’s gaze bores into me.
Slime. I am lying slime, and I don’t deserve him.
Domenic opens his mouth, and I know he’s about to suggest we step out together. Before he can utter a word, I turn to Catsper, my blade in my hand. “So, where are we training?”
I stay out of the berth Ana and I share for as long as I can, eating dinner with the Spades, checking on Kederic and the boys, and staying on deck to mend sail until the darkness forces me below. My magic has been refilling, and since my reserves emptied into the sails, the need to release it soon stirs in my blood. When I confide as much to Catsper during our sparring lesson, he puts me through such training to tighten my mind’s focus that I can little tell whether it’s the marine’s assistance or the recent convulsions that lie behind my screaming muscles. Either way, when I finally stumble down to the shared berth at day’s end, I can think of nothing but slinging up my hammock and sinking into sleep.
Opening the cabin door, however, I find myself uncertain I’ve come to the right place. The ridiculous baubles and ribbons Ana has lying around have been cleaned up. The little apple-cinnamon potpourri sacks are gone. Even the embroidered blanket she keeps covering her sea chest, the one that falls to the deck and tangles my feet each time the Aurora hits a wave, is nowhere to be seen.
Ana sits on her cot, the lantern swinging above her as she writes in her journal. Her hazel eyes slip to me as I enter, then return coolly to her work.
“Good evening,” I say slowly.
Ana nods briskly, her slender hand making curling motions as she fills the page. The passive anger blossoming from her is powerful enough to back me into the wall. Fine. If the girl wants to brood, she can. Unrolling my hammock, I string it up to the bulkhead with practiced motions.
“Who do you think will be next?” Ana says into my back, her voice cold. “Kederic was two days ago. Song yesterday. A reprieve today, it seems, but the night’s not over yet. So who do you think will be next, Nile? Me? Sand? Thatch Lawrence? Not you, though. No, you like to stay behind the scenes, pretend to be something you are not. Play it safe.”
I sink into my hammock and rest my forearms atop my knees. My head throbs, my muscles ache, my blood boils with magic, and my heart can’t slow down for thoughts of Domenic. Despite it all, I force calm reason into my voice for the sake of the girl who’d offered to share her berth with me when I had nowhere else to go. “We are all targets, Ana. If I could protect you and the boys with my body, I would.”
Her head snaps to me. “Would you?”
“Of course.”
She puts down her pen and meets my gaze. “Then go over to Captain Rima’s cabin, tell him who you are, and order him to turn this ship back to the mainland so we can all get off it.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “I’m no one, Ana.”
She snorts. “That’s what I thought.”
Pushing away my exhaustion, I grab my blanket and limp down to the cargo hold to sleep. Dark, stale, and rat infested it might be, but I will get better sleep lying on coiled rope than in my berth tonight.
I don’t get better sleep. I get no sleep, actually, as I nestle amid the ropes and let the motion of the ship stir my thoughts to and fro like stew. I’m tired and thirsty and…and very alone.
“Are you waiting for me or hiding from me?” Domenic’s voice caresses the silence an hour into my solitude. I jerk upright as he approaches my resting spot, the covered lantern in his hand letting the barest of light wash over the forgotten space.
“Neither.” I’m wide awake now, my hands gripping my rope nest. Despite the poor lighting, I am acutely aware of Domenic’s every motion, from the solid tap of his boots against the deck to the slight stoop of his shoulders as he ducks beneath the overhead beams, to the instinctive sway of his body to compensate for the rocking sea. “I’m just, err—”
“If the next word out of your mouth is sleeping, then you should devise a better lie.”
“Resting?” My heart’s insistent pou
nding muffles my thoughts. “Will you accept thinking?” That at least has the added benefit of being true.
Domenic reaches me in two long steps and crouches beside me. “Shall I leave you to your thoughts?”
Yes. No. I don’t know. I rub my face.
I don’t know what Domenic reads in my eyes, but after a moment of intense study, he hoists himself up beside me and, in a single fluid motion, lifts me into his lap.
His lap.
A gasp escapes me. I’ve seen sailors perch whores on their thighs, and strapping courtiers lift pretty girls, who giggle and wrap dainty arms around the men’s necks—but Domenic’s manhandling has a different feel to it. Confident and intimate. Possessive. Knowledgeable.
As for me, I’ve never been with a man, never even kissed one before three days ago when my lips locked with Domenic’s in this very hold. Waves and hail. I watched Catsper strip himself naked on the deck this morning and felt not a tenth of the awkward discomfort that crawls over my skin now.
Domenic’s arms tighten around me. “You don’t have to be a warrior just now. Not with me. Tell me what you are thinking.”
I couldn’t do that even if I wanted to. In any case, it’s impossible to concentrate amidst the ensemble of hard muscles pressing against me.
Domenic nuzzles my hair, taking a deep lungful of my scent before exhaling a warm breath that tickles my ear. On the deck above, the bell calls the time. The watch will be changing soon, and Domenic needs to go ensure the transition. There isn’t any time for anything on this bloody ship.
“I don’t want to talk,” I rasp, lifting my face toward his.
Domenic’s body shifts beneath me, tensing as if readying for battle. Or fighting itself. He inhales again, the tip of his nose brushing my cheek. “We will have time,” he whispers, his voice raspy. “We will make time—”
My hands clutch his shirt and pull.
The hard angle of Domenic’s jaw lowers to align with my mouth, which already prickles in anticipation of his lips’ velvety warmth. His lips hover inches from mine, his body stone-still while the air around me is saturated with need. I growl softly, but Domenic remains poised, a captain awaiting the perfect moment before ordering the great guns to life. Inside me, however, the explosions are well on their way. I arch up toward him.
Domenic beats me to it. Like a sail suddenly filled with wind, his mouth descends on mine, his tongue claiming me with powerful strokes that send jolts of energy crackling over my skin. His fingers dig into my flesh, simultaneously crushing and holding me together as the scent of salt and brine fills my nose. It’s all I can do to ride the wave of desire and excitement until my lungs burn in demand for air.
I grab Domenic’s shirt as he pulls away to draw breath. There is no time to waste, not on a ship where discovery lurks in each shadow. Now that I’ve tasted him, I can’t stop. Even my breasts feel different, full and tingly and altogether like nothing I’ve felt before. I twist in his hold so that I’m straddling his lap, my face in line with his.
Domenic catches my shoulders, his muscles quivering. “Nile,” he whispers, his voice hoarse. He swears softly, and then his mouth is covering mine again, his tongue finding my own, his hands working themselves into the tangles of my hair.
My hands drop to his shoulders, my nails pressing into muscle. My heart pounds. Closer. I want to be closer. Pushing off my knees, I press into Domenic, grinding my body against his as my hands fumble to open his jacket.
“Easy,” he whispers, breaking the kiss to capture my wrists before my hands destroy his clothes.
I stare at him, panting as humiliation drowns excitement. “Why?” The word is out before I can stop them. He doesn’t want me. The why of it is irrelevant at best and pitiful at worst. “I mean, of course. I—” I start to pull away from him, but Domenic’s hold on my wrists tightens.
“I don’t want a quick romp atop discarded rope with you, Nile,” he says, watching my face. His chest heaves and his muscles are coiled tight as if fighting themselves for control. “The next time we call to port. We will take the day. The night. There will be time, and privacy and a mattress, storm and hail. I want to explore and savor you, to show you the pleasure your body can feel, not gulp you down like cheap grog.” He drops one of my wrists and reaches for my face, his calloused fingers gentle against my cheek. “And after that… I don’t know what we are going to do, Nile, not yet. But I will work it out. I promise. Now, I want to know what you’re thinking.”
That makes two of us. A waiting silence settles as Domenic gives me the chance to reclaim myself, but ship’s bell beats me to speech. Above us, a string of curses and pounding feet announce the familiar commotion of seamen on the verge of mischief.
Domenic glances toward the overhead and curses under his breath.
“You need to go,” I acknowledge, giving up my place atop his thighs.
He nods reluctantly. “Are you all right?” he asks, brushing a knuckle down my cheek.
No. Yes. Both. I don’t know. I swallow, nod.
He rises in a fluid motion and straightens his uniform, the mask of cool command settling back on his face. A change of costume between numbers in a strange dangerous dance we play.
Especially when one of us is damaged goods and lying through her teeth about it.
“Domenic,” I ask, taking cowardly advantage of his averted attention. “What would you think of a Gifted going to sea?”
He turns his face toward me. “Like your twin, Clay?”
I shake my head. “No, not someone so… Not a metal caller. But someone like Price.” Saying Price’s name reminds me that no one’s checked in on the prisoner and his odd weather-foretelling Gift in some time. “Would you’ve made Price a part of the Aurora’s company if you could? You. Not Captain Rima or the admiralty or the Articles of the League. Just you.” My shoulders tense as I lay that first stepping stone and await Domenic’s answer. Granted, Price is a special case —harmless and more valuable to a seaman than a weather glass. Like I said. A stepping stone.
“No.”
I jerk. That was not the hoped-for answer. “What?” I bristle in confusion. I must have misunderstood Domenic. Or he me. “Price foretold weather up to and including the quake. Why in the world not?”
Domenic frowns at the buttons on his coat as he ensures each is turned straight in its loops. “Would you take a terribly powerful gun with a defect into battle? Well,” he concedes, “you just might. But since you asked for my personal opinion, then it’s no. Not only would it upset the crew to have such a seaman in their midst, but also we know too little about the Gifted’s magic, how and why it attracts the elements, how it’s controlled. The Gifted themselves know too little. It’s possible that Price’s presence itself triggered the earthquake. That his terrible accuracy predicting the weather is really rooted in his body’s influencing the elements to begin with. If I had the choice, I’d have the boy off the ship as soon as it was safe.”
I grapple for words and find myself sounding like a petulant child. “Ashing permits Gifted to serve aboard ships.” Vetted, tested Gifted doing tasks their disability permits. Crippled sailors sometimes get employment too, if their skill far surpasses their invalidism. The crews never like it, though.
He shrugs. “I know, but Felielle does not. It’s a calculated risk, one I think little worth the danger.”
Felielle does not. As if that’s an endorsement. How can the notions of a nation that is not even mine burn me so? My mother. Prince Tamiath. Ana. Domenic. “Felielle also put ashore its best captain last year upon learning he preferred men over women warming his bed.”
Domenic shifts and frowns at me. “What’s this really about, Nile? I presume you are neither divining a way of indoctrinating a Tirik Gifted prisoner into the Lyron League Navy nor worrying about your pillow preferences.”
No. I’m worrying about your preferences, Domenic… “Nothing. I mean, you were right, I was thinking of Clay. What it might be like when I find a cure.”
I rearrange myself in my nest of ropes, nowhere near as comfortable without Domenic’s body. At least now I know. And since Domenic wants something more than a quick romp in the ropes, then what I’m doing—lying about what I am because I know the truth will make him walk away—it’s wrong on the deepest of levels. Domenic deserves someone better than me.
Chapter 8
It is one bell into the forenoon watch when Catsper comes to stand beside me at the rail. I feel Domenic’s gaze on my back, as it has intermittently been all morning. It’s tearing me in two, what he and I did last night in the cargo hold. Half of me, like some awakened primal animal, wants to pounce on him and let the world and consequences and the phantom perfect room in a port of call be damned. Just the thought of his hands on me, touching my back, sliding possessively over my neck, makes my body arc. The other half, the one that still has morals and remembers basic decency, demands I respect Domenic’s wish. He wants nothing to do with a Gifted, wants no Gifted on his ship at all. Though he doesn’t know it, Domenic doesn’t want me.
Perhaps if he’d just wanted fun and physicality, that quick romp, it might have worked. But as it is… As it is, I need to work a way out of this mess with as little hurt to everyone as possible. That private room ashore where Domenic was going to show me all the things our bodies can do, it’s as much a mirage as his promise of a plan and future for us. Just as the version of me that he thinks real is an illusion – one that I can never permit him to approach close enough to discern.
I never knew that it could hurt so much to lose what I don’t even have yet.
“When will we drop anchor?” Catsper asks, examining the approaching shoreline. The jagged wounds of cracked rocks and uprooted trees left by the earthquake mar the land’s silhouette. The Crystal Oasis and its fresh water are hidden from sight, but increasing vegetation confirms our location.