“I wanted to be alone. My cousin’s wife insists on fussing over me incessantly. I came down here for quiet. To think.”
“About what?”
He raised his eyebrows. “What do you think?” The silence that followed was both significant and awkward. He broke it by clearing his throat. “Would you like some ale?”
“I think not. I need water, and lots of it.” My throat and skin felt tight and parched.
He reached across the table to refill my tin cup. I smiled. It was funny to see him pick up the jug and serve me—something he would never have done when we first met. I marveled at how comfortable it felt to be eating with him.
“What happened, back at the island?” I asked. “I don’t understand how Kenté hid you from the shadowman. Are those meat pies?”
He pushed the tray at me. The pies were cold, but I hardly cared. “Actually she didn’t. We were behind that stack of barrels on deck. When Nereus yelled, it woke me up just enough to remember we were in danger. I grabbed Daria and dove behind the barrels.” His face colored. “Well, it was more like she grabbed me. I think he’d been concentrating on me, you see. It was the strangest thing. I was so confused.”
“I know. I felt it too.”
He went on. “It wasn’t until Cleandros started shouting at Kenté that I realized he hadn’t seen us hide. When we didn’t reappear, he thought it meant she was more powerful than him. That’s when he got angry and shot you.”
As I ate and drank, he told me what had become of our allies. Five days had passed since I’d gone overboard. Nereus had taken Vix into Iantiporos, where Kenté visited the offices of Bollard Company. The Bollards had sent ships to retrieve the Antelope’s crew and transport the Black Dogs to the appropriate authorities. Pa and Ma took it upon themselves to make sure Markos and Daria reached Valonikos safely. Ma almost sent Kenté back to Siscema, only Daria pitched a fit and refused to sail without her. Meanwhile the wherrymen had bid them farewell and begun the journey back to Hespera’s Watch on Conthar.
“Do you still have my things?” I asked.
“In the captain’s cabin.” He pushed back his chair. “I’ll—”
I also stood. My heart pounded. “No, I’ll get them.”
The cabin had been cleaned, the bed made up with fresh sheets and blankets. I found my belt on a shelf. Sliding one of the pistols from its holster, I traced the mountain lion. Then I touched the brim of my three-cornered hat, sitting on the shelf beside it. They looked the same. But everything was changed.
I spun to find Markos leaning in the doorway. My eyes dropped to his jacket. It was the one he’d bought in Siscema, though the rest of his clothes were new. I longed to run my fingers down that gilt trim. It was a very attractive coat, especially on him.
“Still wearing it.” He stretched like the lions on my Akhaian dueling pistols and grinned. “Would you like me to be Tarquin Meridios again?”
“Why would I?”
“Admit it, you found him handsome.”
By all the gods, he was flirting with me, barely half an hour after I’d come back from the dead.
“There were things I wanted to say to you,” I blurted out. “Not to Tarquin Meridios. You.” My cheeks warmed. “But you were dead.”
“I felt similarly,” he said. “But then you were dead. Please, go on.”
I was suddenly shy. “You first.”
One side of his mouth twisted up. “Very well.” Angling his eyes away from mine, he said, “I finally realized why it wouldn’t have worked when I first tried to kiss you.”
I crossed my arms. “Because I’m not the kind of girl who kisses boys she just met the day before yesterday?”
“No. Well, yes. That too.” His voice was steady and serious. “All my life I expected people to respect me because I was the son of the Emparch. But you didn’t. At first that made me mad. Infuriated me, really. You have no idea.”
I had some idea.
“But now I know you better.” Hesitantly he wound one of my curls around his finger. I didn’t stop him. Emboldened, he brushed his hand over my hair. It tickled, but tiny fireworks lit up all over my body.
“Now I see.” His voice dropped low. “You respect people who take care of other people. People who are bold. And brave. I couldn’t figure it out at first. Why you thought more of common wherrymen than you did of me. You respect people because of the things they do. You were different from everyone I’d ever met. You knew what I did not—that it’s the things we do that make us who we are.”
I knew what I wanted to say, but I also knew what would happen if I said it. “Markos.”
He braced himself in the doorway, trying so hard to appear casual that even I was nearly fooled.
“I think you’re the bravest person I know.” I stepped backward into the cabin.
“You’re going to bed. Of course. You’ve been through a lot.” He stuck his fingers in his hair. “I mean, you were dead. I’ll just—”
I placed my hand on his shirt, spreading my fingers wide. The solid heat of him made me feel bold. “When you kissed me in Casteria, I didn’t know if it meant anything.”
His chest lurched under my fingers. “As if I would kiss someone like that and not mean something.”
“Oh, wouldn’t you?”
“Not,” he said, clearing his throat, “like that.”
“Perhaps you just wanted to kiss a girl before you died.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Perhaps I didn’t want to die without kissing you.”
“That’s what I just said.”
“You know it isn’t. Not at all.” He whispered, “Can I please stay? I swear, I won’t do anything.”
He backed up, putting the length of the cabin between us, to prove his intentions. But the cabin was tiny and he was too tall for it. I felt his presence, a warm physical thing, taking up the whole room.
“Why do you say it like that?” I asked. “You won’t do anything. When if we were to do anything, and I’m not saying we will, it would be the both of us doing it.” I licked my lips. “Like, maybe I might want to do things. But then you talk like it’s up to you and take me right out of it.”
“I’m sor—do you?”
Realizing I’d gone slightly too far, I prepared to come about. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Are we talking about … I just want to make sure we’re referring to the same kinds of … things here.” Tension yawned between us. He stepped closer, as if there were a string connecting me and him, and I’d just tugged on it.
“Are there other kinds of things that happen between a girl and a boy?”
He gave me a sly grin. “Are you asking?”
I shoved him on the shoulder. “Shut up.”
He kissed me.
A girl who, at the age of seventeen, captains a pirate cutter she seized as a prize ought not to let her head be turned by kisses, even if they are from a boy who is the rightful Emparch of a whole country. Particularly not if the girl knows embarrassing facts about said Emparch that should make him wholly unattractive. Such as, he doesn’t know how to load a pistol or properly stow a sail, or in fact do anything of use except look good holding two swords at once.
I didn’t care. Everything went right out of my head, except how greedy I was for his lips and his tongue, even if I did have to go up on tiptoe to reach them. He smelled and felt and tasted like Markos. I simply couldn’t have been kissing anyone else.
It was all him. The silkiness of his hair as I finally twisted my fingers into it. The catch in his breath as he dragged his lips down my neck. We wrapped ourselves around each other until there was no space between us. Until I couldn’t tell whose throbbing heartbeat I felt.
He laughed softly into my shoulder. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“It’s all right,” I told him. “Tomorrow we can go back to not liking each other.”
“You think we don’t like each other?”
“I think I find you maddening.” I tangle
d my fist in his shirt.
“Well. That’s different.”
His voice was irritatingly smug, so I kissed him some more to shut him up.
“It’s most likely because,” he said, breath tickling my neck, “we spent so much time on that damn boat together. That’s all it is. A natural … mmm … thing,” he finished absently as if he couldn’t be bothered to think of the word. “Reaction,” he said several moments later, kissing his way up my ear. So much later, in fact, I barely remembered what he was talking about.
“I agree,” I said. “It’s definitely nothing.” I tried to climb him, wrapping my legs around his waist. His back bumped the wall, causing something on the shelf to shift and topple.
Eventually we found the bed, which wasn’t hard even in the dark because the cabin was so small.
“Markos.” I hesitated, unsure of what he would think. But it had to be said. “This isn’t … my first time. If that matters. Which it shouldn’t. It’s just—I thought you ought to know. In case—”
“Caro. You’re talking too much.”
Relief loosened the tension in my shoulders. “I almost expected you to make a rude remark about girls from the riverlands.”
I felt him freeze. “I was a pompous ass when I said that.”
I wasn’t about to argue with that. “What do you want to do?” I whispered.
My heart hammered with unvoiced fear. I was scared he would come to his senses and remember that this was a terrible idea. That the two of us together was something like what happens when flint strikes steel.
“Take off more of your clothes,” he said roughly, and that put paid to my worries.
His jacket hung from his left arm, where it had gotten stuck and we’d both forgotten about it. For my part, my hands were inside his gaping shirt. I’d always admired men’s shoulders, and his were particularly fine from all that sword fighting. I wrapped my leg around his, my bare toes making a trail down his calf muscle. I hadn’t ever imagined his weight pressing down on my body would feel so good.
“I meant, beyond that.”
“I hadn’t thought beyond that.” He tugged lightly on one of my curls, watching it spring back into a corkscrew. “I love your hair.” Casting his eyes down, he swallowed. “Caro … You know I can’t promise you anything. I … just can’t.”
“What—what do you mean—‘promise’?” I stammered.
“You know, marriage. An engagement. That kind of …” He trailed off. I saw him go a little dead behind the eyes, steeling himself for my reaction.
I shoved him back, propping myself up on my elbows. “As if I’d want that! I’m seventeen. I have more important things to do.”
He regarded me with a strange half smile. “You’re not like anyone else, are you?”
“And you’re a liar, Markos. You said you hadn’t thought beyond this. You thought enough to come up with that little speech, didn’t you?” I flopped onto the pillow. “Marriage. I’m going to be a captain and a privateer. I’m going to be the terror of the seas. Whoever marries you will have to wear pretty dresses and go to parties and learn the names of a hundred boring politicians.”
“Oh, pretty dresses. That sounds like torture.” He whispered, “You’re really all right with this?”
But I was. The thought of any more change was too much to bear. Just for once I wanted to do what I wanted and let fate go stuff itself.
“Why are you smiling?” I asked.
“Because,” he said, “finally we’re doing something I know how to do.” He touched my linen undershirt. “Yes?”
“Yes,” I said impatiently against his hair, trying to untangle his jacket from his left wrist. The buttons were caught.
He fumbled with the ties at my waist. “Yes?” His hot breath tickled my ear.
I pushed up against him, and he grunted. “Yes.” I kicked my underthings down the bed.
He wrestled off his own clothes, and I remembered I’d seen him almost naked that one time on Heron Water. I hadn’t bothered to look very closely, because to be honest, I had not expected anything impressive.
Well. That had been a mistake. But it wasn’t only his bare body that made me gasp. He was covered in purple bruises and wore a tight bandage around his ribs.
“Hush.” He dipped to kiss my lips. “The physicians say I’m fine. It’s only sore.” We were pressed skin to skin. I felt him shaking, his breath an unsteady flutter in his chest. “Caro? Yes?” Catching his lower lip between his teeth, he waited for an answer.
“Why do you keep asking me?”
“Because.” A line appeared between his eyes. The muscles in his arms were tense. “I made a mistake that other time. I don’t want to do it again.”
“Oh.” I kissed him, but again he drew back. His lips slipped from mine, still stubbornly waiting. “Yes to everything,” I said.
The serious look on his face nearly killed me. I couldn’t figure out when he’d become so important in my life. It was like trying to name the moment you learned to breathe air. I tried to will myself to stop being nervous, but after all I liked him so much more than I had liked Akemé. So it wasn’t the same.
I felt him all over my skin, even the places he wasn’t touching. Curving my hands over the peeling sunburn on his shoulders, I thought my heart would burst out of my chest. Warm, his skin was so warm. And solid. And real.
A strange, hot hitch in my heart made me pull him close.
“I didn’t think I would see you again,” I whispered.
“I didn’t think I’d see you.” He buried his face in my neck, inhaling. “You shouldn’t have come back for me. It was dangerous and stupid.”
“That’s me. Dangerous and stupid.” I grinned, and that banished the possibility of tears.
What he did next banished them even further.
CHAPTER
THIRTY
A wherryman’s voice carries. It is both a blessing and a curse.
For us it was a blessing, because I heard Pa before he even stepped onto the dock. I flung off Markos’s arm, crawling to the porthole. It was my parents, sure enough. Kenté trailed behind them and Daria skipped between, wearing a flowered dress and a man’s hat.
“You have to get out!”
Markos began throwing on clothes. “I thought riverfolk didn’t have notions about their daughters’ purity.”
“They don’t. Well, not my parents anyway.” I added, “I think.”
He tucked his wrinkled shirt into his trousers. “Wonderful.”
“Ma might. But what can she possibly say about it? She took up with Pa, and they aren’t married.” I tried to scoop my hair together into something that didn’t resemble a bird’s nest. “It’s just embarrassing.”
There wasn’t much space in the cabin, so we kept bumping elbows and knees while we dressed, which somehow felt more intimate than what we’d done last night.
“It could be worse,” Markos said. “If we were in Akhaia I’d probably have to face your father at dawn.”
I stared blankly.
“A duel,” he explained, straightening his jacket. “How do I look?”
I smirked. “Your trousers are open.”
He swore.
“If Pa thought you’d hurt me, he wouldn’t bother to fight a duel with you. He’d just shoot you.” I buckled my belt. “Pretend we’re just eating breakfast together.”
“Which doesn’t sound at all suspicious.” He trailed a finger down my cheek.
A thrill shot through me at his gentle touch, but I pretended it hadn’t affected me. I unlocked the cabin door, and we climbed out into the common room. I was still wriggling into my boots.
He caught my hand. “How far away were your parents?”
“The end of the dock.”
Before I could ask why, he swung me against the wall and kissed me. I couldn’t help running my hands up around his neck. His skin was warm, and he smelled like me. We smelled like each other, I suppose, an appealing mix of sand and sweat and sleep. And
probably other things that my parents, being neither stupid nor inexperienced, would recognize.
I couldn’t bring myself to push him away. His lips were soft and his tongue strong and lazy. He gripped a handful of my shirt at the small of my back. I wanted to crawl inside his jacket and stay there all morning.
“We have to stop,” he said, pressing me against the full length of his body. And then, no matter how much I felt like melting into him, I stepped aside. One of us had to halt this madness.
It felt so strange, after all I’d been through, to be accountable to parents again. I heard footsteps overhead and the hatch cover shifting.
Daria was the first down the ladder. Markos grabbed her from behind, lifting her. “Little badger.”
She squealed, but I knew she loved it. Tapping him on the nose, she said, “You look happy again. I’m ever so glad.”
“Hush, monster.” He tweaked her hat, and my heart flip-flopped. Seeing Markos being a good brother made him even more handsome. “What in the world are you wearing on your head?”
“My pirate hat. Nereus got it for me.” She peered at me from under its skewed brim. “It’s just like Caro’s.”
My parents and Kenté came down the ladder, and suddenly it was all noise and hugging and everyone talking at once. Pa’s gaze jumped from me to Markos and then back to me. I knew he wasn’t fooled by the three feet of space between us.
“But how’d you find out I’m not dead?” I asked.
Ma went briskly to the stove and began to pour coffee. “Nereus told us this morning.”
“Nereus? I didn’t—when did Nereus—?”
Ma raised her eyebrows. “I don’t suppose you heard him.”
I couldn’t look at any of them. An awkward quiet fell over everyone except Daria, who was still talking about her hat. My face burning, I wished I’d stayed dead at the bottom of the sea.
Pa clapped a hand on Markos’s shoulder. “Perhaps you’ll come along to the market with me to fetch some fresh bread.” I almost choked on my coffee. From his voice, I knew it wasn’t a request.
Markos knew it too. I held my breath, remembering how rude he could be if he thought his honor was being insulted, but he only said, “Yes, sir.”
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