Chapter 11

No one was more surprised than Morgan himself when he closed the distance and tackled the other person before they even made it off the beach. He readied himself to fight, or threaten, or do whatever he needed to do—well, almost whatever—to get them to never speak of this, but then he realized exactly who he’d tackled.

“Garen!” Morgan sat back and let his friend up, delighted—

And promptly fell on his ass as Garen punched him in the face.

Ow. OW!That hurt! And, shit, Garen was starting to get up and turn again; Morgan couldn’t let him get away. He grabbed his legs and forced him down again, this time sitting on his back. Garen was the better fighter, but Morgan was scrappy as hell and had a wicked grip on Garen’s hair.

“Stop!” he snapped. “What the deep are you doing?”

“Me?” Garen sounded incredibly offended. “You’re the one having strange liaisons in the sea with people I don’t even know! What the deep are you doing out here, huh?”

“I’m—it’s not—there’s no liaising, I’m not liaising with anyone!”

“Then who were you talking to out there?”

“No one,” Morgan said a bit frantically. “There’s no one here but you and me.”

“Morgan!” There was real, deep hurt in Garen’s voice now. Second-guessing himself but knowing he had to trust in their friendship, Morgan let go of Garen’s hair. The other man rolled over beneath him, not even trying to buck Morgan off but seemingly desperate to make eye contact. “I spend every minute with my father, pretending to see the same things he does to keep him from falling into a screaming fit,” Garen hissed in anger and despair. “Reality doesn’t have a place in my own home, so don’t you start telling me I’m not seeing things that I clearly am, or I might have a screaming fit myself!”

“Oh.” Oh, my poor friend. “Come here.” Morgan pulled Garen into an embrace before his friend could do more than squawk about it. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re up to something,” Garen muttered, but the ire was slowly draining out of his voice and body.

“I …” Honesty, Morgan. He needs honesty. “Yes, fine, I am. And I’ll tell you all about it, but! I need you to promise me that you’ll listen to the whole story before you run off and start gabbing to people about it! This is really important, Garen. It’s a matter of life and death.” Morgan stared at his friend, willing him to take him seriously for once.

“You want to bring me in on a matter of life and death?” Garen glanced over Morgan’s shoulder. “Are you … sure?”

“You’re the only one I could imagine telling, honestly.”

Garen lowered his voice to a whisper. “Is it another one of us? Another survivor?”

Oh, this was going to be so awful. “It is a survivor. Let me—”

“I’m human.”

Both of them turned in a flash to look at Auban, who had somehow dragged himself all the way up to this part of the beach, far from the supportive water. Right now, slumped against the gravel, naked and shivering, with the light of dawn slowly illuminating the damage his body had taken, he looked far less intimidating than anyone calling themselves a human should.

Which, Morgan realized, was the whole point. “Humans” were scary, but this battered, skinny wreck of a person wasn’t.

“Morgan found me in the water after the ship exploded,” Auban went on, and now it was Garen’s turn to shiver. He turned a betrayed look on Morgan, and all Morgan could do was shrug.

“I don’t remember what happened there, or what we were doing here,” Auban said. “I don’t remember anything except waking up and Morgan’s face being the first thing I saw. Without his care, I would be dead.”

“You should be dead!” Garen snapped. “You ought to be dead for the havoc you wrought on our home! Humans have no place on our island, our sanctuary! You should have died with the rest of your awful kind!”

“I know.” Auban lowered his head. “I completely understand, I assure you. But the fact is, I’m alive. Unless you want to kill me yourself, the best thing to do is get me off this island as fast as possible, and that’s what Morgan is trying to do.”

“The boat,” Garen muttered, then sighed in despair. “The fucking boat you’re building with Brevaer. It’s for him?”

“How else am I supposed to save him?” Morgan demanded.

“You’re not supposed to save him at all! You’re supposed to be on our side, not his!”

“I am on our side!” Morgan roared. That got Garen, really got him—his eyes widened, mouth dropping open. Morgan had never yelled at his friend like that before in his life. He hated that he had to do it now, but he also needed to make Garen understand.

“I’m on our side, always,” Morgan said more quietly. “But Auban isn’t our enemy. He’s a good person.”

“You don’t know that,” Garen argued.

“I do! He’s kind and sweet and he treats me with dignity!”

Garen pointed a finger at Morgan as though he were about to catch a huge fish. “But you didn’t know any of that when you first pulled him out of the water.”

“No, I didn’t,” Morgan said, not at all repentant. “He was hurt, I helped him, and I’m not sorry about it. I was prepared to kill him if I needed to,” he added, which was a lie, but no one needed to know that. “But I didn’t. I want to help him. I want to give him a chance to get back to his own home.”

“You’re mad,” Garen said, but there was an undercurrent of resignation in his voice that let Morgan know he was making progress. “You’re completely mad. Your brain has been baked by the sun. Do you know what would happen to you if anyone finds out you’re harboring a human?”

“It would be bad.”

“Your brother would beat you half to death, the elders would beat you the rest of the way, and Brevaer would never be voted in as chief.”

“I know!” Morgan had gone over the ramifications in his head time and time again; he knew the consequences that would fall on him and his family if word of this got out. “Why do you think I ran so fast to catch you? I thought you were Drenikel!”

“And what would you have done if I was Drenikel, bashed me over the head with a rock and fed me to your human friend?”

Morgan had no good answer for that. Fortunately, Auban chose that moment to faint, providing an excellent distraction for both of them. Morgan clambered off Garen and ran over to Auban, who seemed unusually pale even for him. “He’s exhausted,” he muttered, then looped one of Auban’s arms over his shoulders. “Help me get him back to his bed.”

Garen looked at him like he’d just asked him to wipe the human’s dirty ass.

“Garen, come on! We have to do this fast; do you want someone to find us in the middle of the beach carrying Auban between us?”

“Sometimes I wish I’d never met you,” Garen huffed, but he got up and gingerly got his shoulders under Auban’s other arm. Together, they moved Auban back down to the overhang and settled him onto his seaweed bed. He woke up just as Morgan was adjusting his feet.

“Fuck,” he said groggily.

Morgan didn’t mean to, but he began to laugh. He’d never heard Auban speak like that before, crudely, like one of the men in the village. He’d been gentle, refined … and now it was like he’d swallowed a mouthful of seawater, he was so salty.

“Sorry,” Auban apologized, but he was half smiling. “I think I overdid it. Damn legs …” He glared down at the appendages in question, which had by far taken the most damage. Several of his toes were fused, and the front of his right leg was still vividly red, the skin taking a long time to regenerate there. “Let’s hope my arms get stronger faster. I assume I’ll have to use an oar with this boat?”

Right, back to the subject at hand. “Yes,” Morgan said. He knew humans had ways of capturing the wind to help propel them, but Morgan had no clue how to do that. “I’ll have to wrangle the materials for it somehow, but—”

“I can do that,” Garen put in. He looked sour, but his voice was firm enough. “I’ve got something we can use,” he said, this time looking straight at Morgan. “It’s one of my father’s old training spears,” he said. “No one will notice it’s missing.”

“Thank you,” Morgan said, touched beyond telling.

“Thank you,” Auban echoed. “I can see you’re a good friend to Morgan.”

“The best,” Garen said snippily. “Which is the only reason you’re alive right now. If you care about Morgan at all, as soon as you can leave … go.”

“I will,” Auban said solemnly, his eyes darting to Morgan’s before he turned to look out at the sea. “I know I have no place here. I promise, as soon as I’m capable, I’ll go.”

“Good.” Garen sounded satisfied by that.

Morgan was far from it, but he knew he couldn’t argue. He was destined to lose Auban. The thought of keeping him should never even have crossed his mind, and yet the idea filled him with a kind of poignant longing anyhow.

Still, they’d pushed their luck far enough. The sooner Auban was off the island, the safer he would be.

Morgan would have to learn to be satisfied with that.