Sol smiled fondly as Arden touched a card in Luca’s hand, then tapped the table as if to tell him to put it down. He did, grinning at Amael while adjusting his spectacles. “I don’t think so.”
Amael leapt to his feet and pointed an accusing finger at them. “That’s cheating!” He cried. “You can’t help him!”
Arden smirked and tapped the table again, motioning to Amael’s cards. Beat that, she seemed to say.
Glancing at his hand, Amael tossed his cards onto the table. “Fine,” he said. “You win this round. But no more helping him. Let the bastard play on his own.”
Luca was still grinning as he swept the pile of coins towards himself and Arden. “Lighten up,” he said. “You know I’ll give the money back in the morning.”
“Yeah, whatever you don’t spend tonight.” The boatswain slumped back down into his seat, his elbow jostling Sol’s arm. She nearly spilled wine down the front of her dress, a stain that would never come out. “Sorry.”
“It’s all right,” she said, but Amael had still not looked at her, not as he gathered the cards from the table and began to shuffle them.
She sighed. There was a part of her that wished she could join them, that wished she could ask Amael to teach her how to play so that perhaps they could both beat Luca. Or Arden, rather, because Sol had seen her pointing at Luca’s cards since they’d broken out the deck nearly an hour ago.
But she did not want to ruin their fun, did not want to bother them and hold up their game with lessons.
Dropping her chin into her palm, Sol glanced across the table to look at Fynn. He was oblivious to her prying eyes, his muscled arm draped over the shoulders of their waiter. The boy had perched himself on the very edge of their booth, his tray full of wine glasses abandoned on the table as he wallowed in the Captain’s attention. Fynn’s smile was charming as they spoke, one that Sol had seen before when there was something in particular he wanted.
She could only imagine what he wanted now.
A startled laugh erupted from the waiter, his golden curls bouncing against the nape of his neck. Sol realized that Fynn’s fingers were twined through his hair, toying with the curls like Sol often fiddled with her braid.
Her stomach churned, and she told herself it was because of the wine.
But when the Captain was suddenly nudging the boy from their booth and following him through the throng of dancing bodies, Sol could not blame the wine for her heart dropping low in her chest. Fynn’s expression had changed, and that was unmistakable lust now darkening his amber eyes. She watched him disappear, watched as they rounded a corner and as Fynn reached for the collar of the boy’s shirt. He fumbled skillfully with the buttons there.
Sol found herself standing, her wine abandoned on the table. Captain’s orders be damned, she should not have come here tonight. She should have told Riel no when the Quartermaster had arrived at her door, Gracia in tow to help ease the Princess into coming.
“Sol,” Luca called across from her. “Is everything all right?”
She whipped her head towards him. The healer had placed his cards face-down on the table, and both he and Arden raised an eyebrow at her. Amael, she realized, had gone silent.
Shaking her head, she said, “I need some air.
Luca stood, his hand braced on Arden’s shoulder as if he were afraid the beer he’d consumed would send him toppling over the table. “I’ll come with—”
“No,” Sol said sharply. She read perfectly clear the pity in Luca’s eyes. “I’ll only be gone a moment. Don’t let me interrupt your game.”
He sighed and dipped his chin. “Be careful.”
She did not stay long enough to see him sit, only knew he’d done so when she heard Luca’s cards scrape against the table. “It’s your turn,” he grumbled to Amael, but Sol was halfway across the dancefloor before the boatswain had made his move.
For a port so far south, Arrowbrook was frigid once the sun went down. Sol wrapped her arms around herself as she stumbled through the cobblestone streets, keeping herself tucked beneath the flickering flames of iron-posted streetlights. She wished she had thought to bring her cloak, the fur-lined garment still tossed carelessly across the bed in her suite.
The market was closed for the night, merchants having shut down their stalls and placed their goods beneath the counters. It was a testament to Arrowbrook’s nature that their merchandise had been left here at all, not carted home in fear of being stolen by drunken pirates from the tavern.
Not that Fynn was a pirate, of course. Not in the ways that mattered.
“Hey, wait up!”
Sol whirled on her heels. Her Magic stirred, yawning awake as if slumbering deep in her bones. She clenched her fists to hide the muddy water gathering in her palms, summoned from a nearby puddle.
Squinting through the dark, her eyes having yet to adjust to the midnight blackness that poured into the streets like ink, she recognized Amael jogging towards her.
Sol frowned. “What are you doing here?” she asked, tilting her head as he skidded to a stop in front of her. “I told Luca I’d be back in a moment.”
Amael snorted, his hands braced on his knees as he panted, “Fynn would have our heads if he found out that we let you wander off on your own. Arrowbrook may be a luxury port, but it’s not without its own dangers.”
“Oh.”
“Why did you leave?” Amael asked. He crossed his arms over the broad swell of his chest. “If it’s because Fynn took off with that guy—”
“It’s not.”
The boatswain rolled his eyes at her. “Jorel is a friend of his,” he said. “You’ll find that Fynn has one in every port. He visits them whenever we dock.”
Sol did her best to ignore the chasm that Amael’s words carved inside her chest, a hollowness ringing through her that she had not felt since her mother died. “I don’t care.”
“You do,” Amael mused. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have run away.”
“What do you care?” Sol sniped in return. She tasted saltwater on her tongue. “You’ve barely spoken to me in days, and when you do, it’s not without hostility.”
Guilt flashed in his eyes at that. “I haven’t meant to be hostile,” Amael told her. “But you lied to us, Sol. You lied to me. Why would we have cared if you were a Wielder?”
Perhaps it was the wine that helped slip her temper from its leash. Sol flung up her hands in frustration, water spraying from her fingertips. “That’s what your problem is? That I’m a Magic-Wielder and didn’t tell you?”
“Yes,” Amael said. He stepped from beneath the shower of mud-water, watching as it settled back into the puddle she’d conjured it from. “We never gave you a reason not to trust us. Fynn saved your life in Valestorm, and I’ve been nothing but kind to you since you joined us. I thought we were friends.”
“So did I!” Sol snapped. “You think I liked keeping it a secret? I felt awful. But my brother said—”
“Your brother isn’t here,” Amael pointed out. “Fynn is a Wielder. A strong one at that, and so are Riel, Arden, and Luca. Any one of them could have taken you had they thought you were a threat to our crew. There was no reason to keep your Magic from us, especially not that bullshit excuse you spouted to Fynn that made him forgive you so easily.”
Sol’s nostrils flared. “I’m sorry,” she spat at him, and although her temper was getting the better of her, she meant it. “But when my brother sent me away, promising to keep my Magic a secret was all that gave him peace. He was worried sick I’d be killed for it.”
Amael stepped back and blinked at her, the malice gone from his eyes. “Your brother is who sent you away?”
She gave pause, her Magic sputtering out as if to abandon her to the question. Sol cursed it, cursed herself and her loose lips for her foolishness. “No,” she said, fiddling with the hair that fell and curled over her shoulders. “It’s more complicated than that. You wouldn’t understand.”
“What else are you hiding from us?
” Amael inquired. His tone was more thoughtful than demanding, as if she were a puzzle he could not quite figure out. “If you’re in some kind of trouble, Sol, we could help you. To Fynn, you’re already one of us. He would sail to the edges of this Earth to—”
“Stop,” Sol begged. She folded her arms around herself. “Beyond taking me to Nedros, there’s nothing you can do to help me.”
“Why Nedros?”
“It’s the only place I’ll be safe.”
Amael’s brow creased with concern. “Why? If you’d just tell me, I could—”
“I can’t!” Sol cried. Water trickled through her veins at the outburst, a flood building up inside her that she did not dare let loose. If she did, a torrent would wash away this port. “If I were to tell you why I left, who I am, you’d be obligated to send me home. You would—”
“That’s your fear?” he asked. She did not miss the hurt that flashed across Amael’s face, the second betrayal she had dealt him. “That I would send you back to Valestorm?”
“No,” Sol whimpered. “That you would send me to Dyn where I belong.”
The boatswain sucked in a breath. He dropped his arms to his sides, his hands within casual reach of the knives strapped to his belt. “So it is true,” he murmured. “The bounty hunters who attacked our ship and chased us from the port, they weren’t looking for Fynn. They were looking for you.”
Sol helplessly lifted her shoulders. “I don’t know,” she told him. “If they were looking for me, I didn’t think they’d find me so soon.”
“You’re just a girl,” Amael said. Sol did not let herself take offense. “Who would send the hunters after you? What have you done?”
“Nothing,” Sol insisted. “I’ve done nothing.”
Amael dragged a hand across his face, pinching at the bridge of his nose in frustration. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll have to tell Fynn.”
“No!” she implored. “Amael, please. You don’t understand.”
“Then make me understand!” he demanded. “You feared being a threat to this crew, and now you are one. Those bounty hunters nearly killed Arden, and if you’re not going to tell me why, then I—”
“Because I’m betrothed to Thane Grayclaw!”
The words slipped out of her before she could stop them, before she could turn on her heels and disappear into the darkness of this port. She could find another Captain, one more inclined to take her money, to sail her across the sea and leave her there. But now she’d given Amael the one piece of his puzzle that pegged her as a price tag to anyone looking to make a profit.
But Amael did not look at her as a prize, did not bind her with rope and haul her in front of Fynn and make her tell him who she was.
Amael’s hands fell away from the sharpened blades at his belt. “Thane Grayclaw,” he repeated slowly, as if the name were acid on his tongue. “As in the Crown Prince of Dyn?”
Tears welled in Sol’s eyes. “My father meant to use me as a pawn,” Sol explained. There was no going back now, no reason to hide the truth from him. Amael would decide what to do with her with or without an explanation. “Our marriage was to be the bridge between our kingdoms, but I was never informed of the betrothal, not until the night before Fynn found me in Valestorm. My brother ordered me away in hopes of sparing me from Thane’s cruelty.”
Amael stared at her, his wariness replaced by something far worse. He pitied her.
“Who are you?” he questioned softly, as if the bedrock of this port would hear him. As if the mountain itself would spill Sol’s secrets to anyone nearby who might be listening.
She sighed. There was no point in hiding her name. One way or another, Amael would figure it out, either on his own after putting together the pieces, or because Sol told him the truth. Who else was Thane Grayclaw meant to marry if not the daughter of a King?
She said the words that would damn her. The ones that would send him scrambling back into the tavern to tell Fynn. “My name is Sol Rosebone,” she confessed. “And I am the Princess of Sonamire.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
FYNN
The sunlight filtering in through the open bedroom window was a curse, one meant to blind him as he rolled onto his stomach and buried his face into a soft, feathery pillow that vaguely smelt of cinnamon. His head was pounding, like someone had taken a mallet to his skull and was repeatedly beating him in the temple. A visceral groan escaped from him.
How much had he had to drink last night?
Jorel had kept the wine flowing for hours, filling Fynn’s glass the moment he’d drained it to the dregs. Red wine, honeyed wine, and spiced wine, mead that burned Fynn’s throat and beer that warmed his currently churning stomach. They had racked up a bar tab greater than the coffers in Fynn’s trove, and apart from that, the Captain had paid Jorel one hell of a tip for his services.
He groaned again, also aware that Jorel had left him to wake alone.
Alone in bed, at least, because Amael was sprawled in an empty chair across the room, counting a pouch of gold coins. His mouth twitched with a smile as Fynn pried open one eye to look at him. “He left about an hour ago,” the boatswain told him. The humor in his tone had Fynn stuffing his head beneath his pillow, the bedsheets reeking of that cinnamon-scented cologne that Jorel sometimes liked to bathe in. “He was careful not to wake you, but he asked me to thank you for a fun night.”
“Bullshit.”
“He asked me to thank you for the—”
“Keep talking, Amael, and I’ll drown you in the Emerald.”
Amael snorted as he rose from his chair, untangling his long limbs and stretching as if he’d been sitting there for an even longer while. “Jorel left you a kettle of tea steeping on the counter. It was nice and hot when he left, but since I couldn’t return to this room until you’d both fallen asleep, I didn’t think you’d mind if I helped myself.”
Fynn pulled back the pillow and glared at him, his eyes still crusted with sleep. “Is there any of it left?”
“None. It was delicious.”
A snarl ripped between his teeth. “You ass,” he said. “You could have left me at least a cup.”
The boatswain laughed as he crossed the room. He brandished a white mug from the counter adjacent to their beds, then filled it with tea from the still-steeping kettle. A small fire was lit beneath the metal pot to keep it warm. “Jorel said you’d be in a foul mood when you woke. That you’d drank enough wine to render an entire army useless. I didn’t want to deal with you, so I only took a few sips.”
Fynn was sitting up, albeit slouched against the headboard of the bed, when Amael pressed the mug into his hands. His tingling fingers leeched the warmth from the glass, steam rippling in plumes from the dark liquid inside. Fynn drank, a mixture of herbs and spice sliding down his throat until there was nothing left. Until the mallet beating him in the head was no longer chipping away at his skull to expose the muddled brain beneath.
“Jorel said I drank how much last night?”
Amael shrugged. “Between you in the rest of the crew, the owner of that tavern became a very wealthy man last night. Riel paid the tab on our behalf, but I doubt she used her own money.”
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Do it in the bathroom,” Amael warned. “Then get dressed. I’m starving and have things to do. I figured you could join me.”
Fynn presented his friend with a show of his middle finger and rolled out of bed. He staggered into the nearby bathroom. He did indeed vomit once inside, hunching over the porcelain toilet until he’d emptied the contents of his stomach. The Captain said nothing as Amael ducked into the bathroom, not even a croaked thank-you as he tossed a leather bag onto the ground near Fynn’s feet.
Rifling through it, he fished out the supplies to brush his teeth. Fynn rinsed his mouth twice before last night’s wine was no longer a taste on his tongue. Neither was Jorel, his tea, or that godsdamned cologne that Fynn both loved and hated. Loved because it promised him a
good time, and hated because this always followed, the headache, the vomiting, and the desire to crawl back into bed and stay there.
He was dragging a tarnished brush through his hair when Amael laughed from beyond the door, loudly enough that Fynn’s curiosity got the better of him. He hadn’t heard anyone enter their suite, so who was Amael so jovial with? Fynn was still ripping through tangles when he ventured into the main room, far less presentable than most of his crew had ever seen him. His eyes widened to the size of gold coins when he found the Princess of Sonamire perched on the edge of Amael’s bed. Her cheeks were pink.
“Sol,” Fynn said in surprise. “What are you doing here?”
She tilted her head as she looked at him, her lips slightly pursed as she sniffed at the air. She likely smelled the vomit that Fynn had tried and failed to banish from the bathroom by repeatedly flushing the toilet. “Rough night, Captain?”
“You could say that.” He rubbed at his face, his calloused palm brushing over the stubble that darkened his jaw. “Did you enjoy your night out with the crew?”
The Princess fiddled with her braid. “Amael and I retired early,” Sol told him, continuing quickly when Fynn raised an eyebrow, “Since you were…indisposed, and since Amael had no place to go, he slept on the floor in my suite. He was—what did you call it, Amael?”
“Sexiled,” the boatswain provided.
The tips of Fynn’s ears heated with embarrassment. He cast a scathing look to Amael, but his friend was grinning a smile so wide that his cheeks were near splitting with glee.
“Sexiled,” Sol repeated, her own cheeks flushing further. “That’s right.”
Fynn cleared his throat and said, “I take it the two of you have made amends?”
Amael slung his arm around Sol’s shoulders. “We have indeed.”
“Good,” Fynn said tightly, suddenly too conscious that he was dressed in nothing but his undershorts. He hastily began collecting his clothes from where Jorel had thrown them the night before. “Is there a reason you’re here, Sol? It’s early.”
“Yes.” Sol lifted a cream-colored envelope, her elegant handwriting scrawled across the top. “Amael promised to take me into the market to help me send a letter.”
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