by Alex Lidell
That target now on my back is another reason why what happened in the cargo hold with Domenic must never repeat itself. Intimate relations between an officer and sailor are forbidden, and what Rima could—would—do if he discovered us chills my blood.
Emerging on deck, I squint at the bright sunlight, finding Ana clutching the rail with a white-knuckle grip. Her face turns toward me, eyes lined with silver and glistening. She’s heard about Kederic, then. I come up to stand beside her and watch the sea.
Ana is only a year younger than me, though her petite stature makes the difference seem more pronounced. Tall, redheaded, with the straight-backed posture drilled into me over the nine years I’ve been at sea, I tower over mousy Ana. Mousy but smart. And kind. And scared out of her wits, it seems.
“You heard about Kederic?” I ask quietly.
Ana nods, the wind ruffling her dark hair. Ana’s lower lip bleeds where she’s chewed it with her teeth. “Commander Dana won’t release me from deck to go sit with him,” she whispers.
“You are on watch now,” I say softly. “You can sit with him as long as you wish in a few hours.”
Her head whips to me, her nostrils flaring. Around us, the deck crawls with thirsty work parties and bubbling tension. We are short on drinking water, have been for a week now, and the repairs from the great wave’s damage are forcing the crew into longer shifts even as the reduced water rations dry their lips. The Spades, a training unit of adolescent marines from the Spardic Kingdom, stand guard with loaded weapons near each water cask. The hands snap at each other with little provocation, and bosun’s mates are busy keeping scraps from escalating.
Ana’s jaw tightens. “No, Nile. You don’t get to lecture me about what one can and can’t do on watch. Not anymore. Your naval rules are supposed to protect us. How is that working out?”
“Ana,” I whisper, though I’ve no notion what to say next. “We’ll get through this.”
Ana wraps her arms tight around her shoulders, a tear sliding down her cheek. I quickly shift my weight to block the crew’s view. Ana has been at sea for only seven months, but she is a midshipman, an officer in training, and the crew cannot be permitted to see her cry.
No crying before the crew. That was one of the first lessons I learned when I first stepped aboard a ship at age eight. A different ship in a different world. The youngest child of the Ashing king, I was destined for the admiralty commanding our kingdom’s armada. That wasn’t how it worked out. When my ship failed at an impossible mission, my father sacrificed my career for his public image, while my mother schemed to marry me off to Felielle’s Prince Tamiath.
I ran. Ran all the way to the Aurora, where everyone thinks me nothing but a lowly seaman.
Everyone except Dominic and Catsper, who know the truth and keep my confidence.
“I want off this cursed ship,” Ana whispers, her voice filled with agony. It’s her thirst talking. I hope it’s the thirst. There is a haunted look about her, as if the great wave had washed away her spirit and left but a shell behind. “I want my family and my home. I want to marry and raise children. I want to be anywhere but here.”
I touch her hand, my long fingers awkward beside her small, pretty ones. “Hold fast.” I conjure a smile I hope is reassuring. “We need to hold together now. All the middies do. And the crew needs you too. We’ve set course for the Crystal Oasis to take on fresh water. It will be not much longer now until we dock. Just focus on that, all right? Focus on getting the ship and crew to water and we’ll work everything else out one step at a time.”
Ana pulls her hand away from my touch. “I’m no idiot, Nile. I know bloody well the crew needs nothing of me. If anything about this ship was based on the crew’s needs, you’d be in bloody command, not playing at being some lowly seaman you are not.”
I freeze. It is the first time Ana’s called me out on my mysteriously obtained naval knowledge, and her voice is bitter with resentment. After I took command of Ana’s gun battery in the middle of battle and spent hours tutoring the middies on navigation skills, anyone with half a brain realizes I’ve been at sea for some time. But going to sea to escape a past life is a long-standing tradition amid seafarers, and an unspoken sacrosanct rule keeps questions in check. Everyone has secrets they want to keep ashore.
Ana had respected mine until now. But her limits are stretching. Ripping.
I grab her arm. “Please. Let’s not do this. Not now. We need to stay together.”
She jerks away. “You’re a hypocrite.”
“What?”
“Forget it.”
I shut my eyes and inhale the sea air. Ana is thirsty and frightened and not herself. The happenings on the Aurora are nothing either of us expected. The Siaman Sea, where Aurora sails, a stretch of water between the Lyron continent and the reclusive Diante Empire, is far from the Tirik Republic and supposed to be a safe station.
It isn’t working out that way. The Tirik ship Devron attacked us two weeks ago, taking as prize two merchantmen we had under our protection. Then the earthquake and the great wave that nearly capsized our ship last night. And now Kederic…
“I’m going below,” I tell Ana, and start to the companionway ladder without waiting for a reply.
I sense it a heartbeat before it happens. The sudden, too familiar fear pulsing through my body. The racing heart rate. The shallow breaths. My body is about to betray me, and I’ve nowhere to hide.
Blood drains from my face.
“Nile?” Ana’s voice is distant. Concerned. “Nile, what’s the matter?”
I can’t answer. The first of the green lights flashes before me.
Chapter 3
I’m grateful I am able to fall to my hands and knees before the familiar convulsions rack my body. The impact of my knees hitting the deck reverberates through me even as I use my last strands of control over my body to thrust my head through the sideboard rails. I tuck my right hand into my belt. As before, the right side of my body tightens involuntarily, only the belt keeping my arm from flailing like a deranged rag doll. My back slams against the rail.
“Nile!” Ana kneels beside me, the thrash thrash thrash of my right side colliding with her hand.
My head shakes. I don’t intend it to, but Ana extracts a meaning from the motion. “It’s all right,” she says quietly. “You just look as if you’re seasick. Again.”
The part of my mind that can still think thanks her, though I’ve no way of telling her that. The convulsions will stop when they deign to and not a second before. I’ve learned that much.
“What’s going on here?” Domenic’s low voice demands from somewhere close. Too close.
Ana puts one hand on my forehead, the other holding my hair back for me. “Ash’s stomach is rolling again, sir,” she says with an exasperation-filled voice. “I’ll take her below just as soon as I’m certain she won’t sully the berth.”
As if on cue, my jerking spells end, and I do throw up over the rail. Horribly. With Domenic watching every moment of it.
Behind us, the hands snicker at me. My face is hot as I swipe my sleeve across my mouth, but better the crew laugh at my belly than think too closely on what happened.
“Enough,” Domenic barks at them before looking down at Ana. “Take her below, Lionitis.”
More chuckles follow us as Ana helps me navigate the steps of the companionway and silently helps me to our berth. The tiny room is the length of Ana’s cot and the width of three steps. The hammock I sling up at night is rolled up, leaving just Ana’s sea chest and a tiny hanging desk. Small canvas smelling sacks of dried apple skins and ground cinnamon fight a losing battle against stale air.
I squeeze Ana’s hand in gratitude.
“It’s getting worse, isn’t it?” she says quietly, closing the door. “Whatever it is that’s causing these fits of yours.”
My chest burns. I sit on her sea chest, both because I cannot stand and to cover my shock. I hadn’t realized she’d noticed the convulsions befor
e today, saw them as anything but the seasickness I claim them to be. A naïve, ridiculous hope given we share a berth. “It’s just the stress,” I mumble. “I’ll do better once we take on fresh water.” That much is true. I swallow and look up, needing to know what exactly she thinks she saw.
“By the Goddess,” Ana hisses. “You’ve asked me to respect your secrets, but there is a line between discretion and daft blindness.”
My strength is drained, and my heart pounds so hard, I barely hear Ana’s words. “What do you want me to say, Ana?”
“Why do you suffer these fits?”
Because I have magic in my blood, magic that calls to air and leaves me with convulsions as a side effect. I’m Gifted, like my twin brother. And if anyone finds out, I will get kicked off the ship in a heartbeat and shuffled off somewhere out of normal people’s way. Gifted are unpredictable, too dangerous to others and to themselves. I had come aboard the Aurora to search out a cure for my twin’s Gift, but now I am seeking one for both our sakes. I swallow, my mouth dry. “I don’t know.”
Ana scowls. “I don’t believe you.”
I shrug.
Her nostrils flare. “Fine. To be frank, I little care. I covered for you just now because I know you wish to keep whatever this is quiet. And now I want answers to my real questions. No, not just want. I deserve answers.” Ana’s face is hard, and she crosses her slender arms across her chest. For the first time since I met her, her petite frame dwarfs my taller build. “And I’m tired of hearing your ballads about duty and responsibility while your actions reflect anything but. Or will you tell me you followed those very virtues the night you ran from Ashing to join the Aurora?”
I rub my face and stare up at her. Ana… This Ana, she isn’t the girl I first met. Her skin is dull, her lips cracked, and her eyes have sunken into her once-delicate face. If the battle with Devron and the night diversion of the Aurora have fed my spirit, they’ve emptied hers, leaving nothing but desperation.
“What specifically do you care to know?” I ask. What exactly are you accusing me of?
“Do you recall last week’s dispatch ship?” she asks.
Of course I do. Probably better than Ana does because of the news the ship carried—news that I learned from Catsper, but Rima keeps from the crew. While the Aurora kept to her backwaters station, the Tirik Republic engaged the Lyron League fleet in the Ardent Ocean that separates our two continents. Engaged, and enjoyed the greatest victory in the dozen years of our war.
In a single day, the joint Lyron League fleet lost twenty ships. With the joint League fleet nearly crippled, the six kingdoms on the Lyron continent will soon be left to rely solely on their own private armadas for protection. My kingdom of Ashing, the smallest of the six and the one closest to the Tirik, will be the first to fall.
“I remember,” I say carefully. “What of it?”
“My mother’s letters were included with the mail,” says Ana, as if letters from a Felielle Kingdom noble should somehow raise my suspicions. “My mother includes newsleafs with her correspondences,” Ana continues. “The last had a note of a missing girl. It struck me as odd. A girl matching your description went missing right at the time and place I met you. A girl who was once destined for the Ashing Admiralty, until the ship she was on went against orders. Like Aurora went against orders just recently. Both diversions ended in disaster.”
Storms. The newsleaf. Only my quarterdeck practice of masking my thought keeps the fear and anger from my face. Fear for what Ana might be thinking and anger over the suggestion that the Aurora and Faithful, the ship I had served on and lost due to my father’s scheming, are anything alike.
Ana leans forward, looking down at me. “Are you Nile Greysik, Princess of Ashing?”
I chuckle. “If I was an Ashing princess, don’t you think I’d have found berth on a higher-class ship than this backwaters rubbish?”
She weighs me.
I make myself breathe. In and out. In and out.
“No,” Ana says after a few moments, shaking her head for emphasis. “Someone else, yes, but not you, Nile. There is too great a chance of exposure on a better ship.” Her jaw tightens. “I’d once have thought that a missing princess must be a victim of misfortune or kidnappers, for surely no girl would care so little for her parents’ feelings and the surname she owes her children. But you… You’ve no notion of family honor. While I left behind all that is dear to protect my family’s dignity, you care for no one and nothing beyond your enjoyment of the sea.” She pauses. “No one else might consider that a late-night conscript from the Ashing shores is anything but a runaway from a foul life, but I know you better than they do. And you are just that ruthless.”
I’m ruthless because I’ve no worry over the surname of my nonexistent children? I blink at Ana’s words and sigh in feigned boredom. “I saw the newsleaf, Ana. Prince Tamiath of Felielle, the princess’s intended groom, is the one who wrote the notice. He is offering a reward for the girl’s return, as I remember.” I raise a brow. “The thought of gold is making you see things, I think. You’d not be the first to fall victim to an expensive imagination.”
Her brows narrow. “I don’t believe you.”
“If you wish to believe you share a berth with the missing bride of a Felielle prince, go right ahead. I would keep your delusions to yourself, however, unless you wish to become the laughingstock of the crew.”
She smiles without humor. “Oh, I’m already the laughingstock of the crew.”
This morning, I would have told Ana that wasn’t true. That every day she is making strides toward earning their respect. But now I keep my silence lest she use any of my words against me.
Ana steps forward, her lips brushing my ear. “Don’t you ever instruct me on duty again, Nile Greysik of Ashing,” she whispers. “Not when you abandoned your family, your husband, your people, and two nations. Make no mistake, you are the hypocrite I named you.”
Chapter 4
I am nauseated all night, and the lingering effects of the convulsions are only partially responsible. Ana’s words haunt me, her anger a nail in my flesh that joins too many others. I give up on sleep altogether with the first rays of dawn and seek out Catsper. To talk, to fight, to do anything but wait for my mind to explode into shards. The marine is busy with his own work however, and I’m not about to interrupt him to babble about feelings. And even if I did, there is one matter that would still remain unvoiced.
That matter is currently striding along the circumference of the deck, inspecting the tied-down great guns, the stone-sanded wooden deck, the set of the sails. My jaw tenses as I see a knotted rope’s end in Domenic’s hand, a reminder to the crew to behave. Domenic taps the rope absently on his thigh, his face a mask of icy harshness. And it is a mask, I realize. The more willing the crew believes Domenic is to hand out punishment, the less he must actually do so.
I wonder for the first time whether Domenic minds it, being feared. Hated. Thought of as a savage monster who savors pain and blood. An image he’s carefully constructed for himself here on the Aurora and one that is at odds with the man I met on the Ashing beach that month ago. The man whose gentle, calloused fingers caressed my skin yesterday.
I try to make myself busy, but each time I try to focus on checking canvas for tears or line for wear, my thoughts stubbornly sneak back to the hot press of Domenic’s lips, his stubbled chin sliding across my face, his hand pressing hard against the small of my back. It is as if Domenic’s kiss awoke a sleeping girl inside me and now she is yawning and stretching, and shoving Nile Ash to and fro like a fresh wind. It is an effort to avoid looking at the man, a losing battle to concentrate on anything else.
Domenic’s trained gaze finds me across the deck and narrows.
My chest tightens. The last time he saw me, I was hurling my guts into the sea. Suddenly, I want nothing more than to disappear before Domenic’s steady steps reach my workstation, but my body holds fast of its own traitorous accord. My mouth dries, m
y limbs wanting to run toward him and sprint away at the same time.
I beg the stars he doesn’t speak to me, for I’m at a sudden raw loss for words to utter back. My heart strikes hard against my ribs. If Domenic regrets yesterday’s kiss… One word from him will cut me to the quick, and it’s my own damn fault.
Like a coward, I throw a glance over my shoulder, begging for someone to interrupt the impromptu meeting before it happens. No one does.
“Ash?” Domenic’s voice is a soft rumble. He steps toward me, close enough that I feel the heat of his body mixing with my own, the salty sea smell that clings to his clothes filling my lungs. Close enough that if he lifts his hand, he’ll touch me. Domenic crosses his wrists behind his back. “Are you well?”
Am I well? The absurdity of the question hits me like pelting hail. Ana. Kederic. The fleet. Whatever this thing is between Domenic and me. The list of things standing between me and well is too long to count. I long for Domenic’s hand to reach forward, for the calloused, powerful fingers to brush my cheek. The image alone sends enough energy through me that I half expect lightning to crackle through the deck.
A kiss. It had been one illicit, illegal kiss. The first for me, but likely one of dozens for him. Of hundreds, perhaps.
Domenic frowns, and I realize I’m yet to give him an answer.
“Aye.” I swallow, placing my own hands behind my back in mirror of his, aware of the rest of the deck’s crew going about its business. “Aye, sir.”