Chapter 10

My world is rocking back and forth with a creaky swing, a chill wind nipping at my cheek. I open my eyes, watching the patchwork sail whip against a background of fluffy, white clouds clotting the sky like a sponge painting. A string of salt-crusted hair blows across my face, tickling my nose, and I lift my hand to push it away—

Big mistake.

A wail rips free as a bolt of pain tears through my shoulder.

Eyes squeezed shut, I roll to the side, hissing through the echo of hurt that bites into me with every thud of my heart. I unfasten the top two buttons of my shirt and ease it down my arm, exposing a gnarly bulge now protruding from the round of my shoulder.

All the breath puffs out of me.

Definitely dislocated. Looks just like diagrams I’ve seen in medis books in Spines.

I let my hand fall, head tipping as I close my eyes, sweat dappling my brow despite the cool stir of wind that seems to have woken the sea.

If I call for Alon, they’ll drag me down to that small, poky room. Probably lock me out of the nest for good.

I have to pop it back in myself.

Somehow.

Reinspecting the disjointed protrusion, movement catches my eye, dragging it between the gaps in the railing and out across the rolling ocean.

My next breath is snipped mid pull, frantic gaze hopping from one navy sail to another …

“Fuck.”

A hive of ships surrounds us—some closer, others so far away it’s hard to make out the finer details.

I thought Cainon was being dramatic, but he brought an entire fleet. Toomany ships to be considered a courtesy hand over as trade for my hand.

My heart sinks.

What the hell have I gotten myself into?

I drop my stare to the first of many rowboats shoving through the choppy ocean; to the statuesque man perched at the nose of it, wheaten hair pulled back, tan skin struck by the sun.

Sky-blue eyes pinned to me.

My breath hitches.

Something inside me squirms, the rest of me paralyzed by a suffocating string of tension coiling around my limbs and body.

Cainon, High Master of the Southern Territory of Bahari.

My promised.

His mouth cuts a hard line, stare unwavering as the two men working the oars ferry him closer, every pull adding another horse to the galloping herd in my chest. They dock against the ship, rope ladders thrown overboard by grim-faced crewmen. Cainon finally breaks his stare to climb up the edge, and my posture crumbles.

I tip onto my back and stare at the sky, then down at the cupla shackling my wrist—gold accents catching the sun and tossing it back at me.

The fierce sledge of my heart accelerates.

Shit.

I edge up, hissing a pained breath as I cradle my arm, shuffle forward, and shove my head through a gap in the spindles, my hair falling heavy around my face.

Cainon eases over the handrail and steps aboard.

The crew are standing at attention in a long line, white bandages starkly contrasting their weather-beaten skin. Cainon stops before our stoic captain, and I watch them converse.

Crane to listen.

The thieving sea breeze pockets their words before they can make it to me.

Cainon looks up the mast, catching my eye and breath in the same motion. My stomach swirls as he breaks away, stalks toward my ladder, then grabs hold of the bottom rung and yells, “Open the hatch, Orlaith. I’m coming up.”

I glance across his bobbing fleet, back to the top of his head. “The lock’s rusted shut. Might take me a while to chip it open. I’ll just meet you there.”

He pauses, skewering me with a stern gaze. “Someone bring me an axe!”

The bellowed words slice. Hack.

Slay.

Blood drains from my face, leaving me dizzy and light-headed, and I shake my head as a memory burns to the forefront of my mind ...

A big man walks toward me and the boy. His head is shiny, and there’s one of those wood-cutting things hanging from his hand. I think it’s called an axe.

Why is there red stuff dripping from it?

My entire body locks, that thing inside me arching like a coil of snakes ready to strike.

“Not an axe ...” I shake my head, wide eyes screaming the words my mouth can only whisper.

Please.

“Open the hatch!”

I jolt back and heave a violent breath, battling the bolt with trembling hands. I swing it open and bunch myself into a pain-riddled ball for far too long before I register Rhordyn’s pillow slip still crushed against my chest, my small parcel of caspun sitting beside me on floorboards blotted with my blood.

All my weaknesses aired for him to see like the open wounds they are.

I stuff him and the bulb in my sack for safekeeping, fingers brushing the pommel of a weapon I’d rather pretend wasn’t there. My hand jerks back, but I don’t have time to knot the drawstring before Cainon pushes halfway through the opening.

We both still, his scrutiny tracking over my face like a razor blade, and I swear his pupils swell.

“Orlaith—”

“Cainon.”

“Why is there blood on your face?”

My bandaged hand whips up to the crust caked along my upper lip. “Just a nosebleed,” I croak.

His shrewd gaze darts to my ear.

“The warm weather brings them on,” I’m quick to add, and his eyebrows lift the slightest amount.

Rhordyn’s right. I need to lie better.

Cainon clears his throat and climbs onto the landing, scanning the mural I carved into the floorboards.

The urge to stretch and smother it gnaws at me.

He reaches for my sack. “Do you have any fresh water in there?”

I push in front of his hand, making my shoulder blaze. “Yes.” Chewing on a wince, I dig through my contents. “I’ll find it.”

His stare tracks my movements, leaving a prickly trail on my arm, up the side of my face. I pull the waterskin free and hand it over.

Taking it, his attention flicks to my injured hand. “What happened?”

“Captain didn’t tell you?”

He pulls a square of blue cloth from his pocket and dampens it with a tip of water. “I want to hear it from your lips.”

Of course.

“I fell. Got a bad case of rope burn.”

“That’s not the answer I’m looking for, Orlaith.”

I bite my tongue so hard it bleeds. If he expects me to give him a step by step on just how twisted his guard became during the short time we spent together, he’ll be sorely disappointed. He’ll receive no ammunition from me.

I can’t hold Vanth’s actions against him—not when I’ve bathed in the same oily muck his sanity slipped on before he shoved me off the railing.

Heartbreak can cripple the body. The mind.

It has no mercy.

My own grief has punched its teeth into flesh and silenced heartbeats. And there’s something slithering inside—a coy awareness that hisses its truth like a snake.

I’d do it again.

Cainon crouches, setting down the skin and the square of dampened material. With a deep sigh, his eyes flick up, watching me from beneath thick, golden lashes. “Your right shoulder is hanging lower than your left.”

“It’s fine—”

Before I have a chance to blink, he has me gripped by the bicep, his other hand firm against my injured shoulder. Then he’s wrenching my arm in such a way I’m certain he’s tearing it free.

An acute pop echoes through my bones, and I scream—howling through my ripped throat.

“I forgot ... how much of an ... asshole ... you are,” I bite between sharp breaths, sinking into the flood of relief that swiftly follows.

He grabs my other hand and guides it around to support my elbow. “Would you have preferred I warn you, petal?”

I snarl as he begins unbuttoning his shirt, paring open a window to well-defined muscles that look like chiseled sandstone, unmarred aside from a two-inch scar almost directly above his heart. Hard to appreciate the view through my red-veiled vision.

He didn’t even give me something to bite down on, the ass.

He threads his shirt under my injured arm before I slap his hands away. “I’ve got it,” I mutter, using my chin and some well-practiced finger work to forge the shirt into a makeshift sling. Perks of relying on one for the first few days after I snapped my thumb.

I look up to see Cainon perched on his heels like one of the Rouste Dune Cats I’ve seen in picture books—huge, regal, slick gold fur, and statue still.

There’s a world of calculating astuteness behind those purple-flecked, cerulean orbs.

“I see you’ve grown some spine since I saw you last.”

My head snaps back.

I’ve grown nothing. All I’ve done is lost.

“You can leave.”

He pops a brow. “You’re dismissing me? From my own ship?”

“Yes.” I shuffle toward the mast, set my back against it, and tip my head, casting my gaze on the finger-painting sky riddled with circling gulls. “Close the hatch on your way out.”

A long moment passes before he clears his throat, plucks the damp cloth from the floor, and moves so close I can feel his static. “Like it or not,” he murmurs, breath hot on my face as he dabs my upper lip, “you can’t stay here.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m going to sink this ship.”

My heart flips, breath catching as I look straight into the merciless clutch of his sky-blue stare. “You’re kidding.”

“Dead serious. The injured crewmen are being hoisted down to the rowboats as we speak.”

I bat his hand away and level my stare. “Can’t you just ... fix it?”

He looks at the floorboards, then cracks off a loose splinter of wood, gouging a dent in one of my doodles. “Broken things can’t always be fixed. Unfortunately.”

Something inside me recoils.

“I’d rather spend my resources on more important things.” He pockets the splintered token. “Chin up.”

Right.

Tipping my head, I cast my gaze skyward again, until Cainon dabs at the bruised peak of my chin. I flinch, but he steadies my face and continues his ministrations—swiping the sharp line of my jaw to the lobe of my ear, down the length of my throat. “You have a very beautiful neck.”

He’s never seen my neck. My face.

The real me.

“Now you return with a compliment. That’s how this courting thing goes.”

“You’re not courting me.”

“I am.”

“Then you’re off to a shit start.”

There’s a brief stretch of silence while he swipes back up my throat, across to my other ear. “I take it you’re not impressed by my fleet.”

“Not unless it’s going straight to Ocruth,” I deadpan, and his hand pauses.

I drop my gaze, watching from beneath lowered lids as his face dawns with stark realization.

“You were listening ...”

To his and Rhordyn’s very private conversation.

“Guilty,” I admit, my voice entirely void of it.

“Interesting ...”

“So? Are they going straight to Ocruth?”

Wind whips my hair into a flaxen scribble between us while he watches me, eyes coasting back and forth in smooth, calculating paths. “There’s a storm coming from the north—”

“And these ships were built to withstand rough weather. Firsthand witness,” I say, raising my bandaged hand. “They self-correct.”

“—What we call a ship smasher,” he continues, ignoring my negation. “It’s five days to a safe port southward. Weeks to Ocruth with kickback from the swell.”

“So you’re turning back around.”

A long pause, then, “Correct. Straight back to the capital.”

Something cold and acidic spills through me, settling deep.

I swallow, stab my stare skyward, and watch the gulls churn. “Then no,” I mutter. “I’m not impressed by yourfleet.”

He grips my chin and tugs my face down with commanding poise, snatching my stare, scattering my heartbeats. “That’s not very nice. It came all this way to see you.”

“For being a few days late.”

“You’re a week late. And I did warn you, so no point being pissed about it.”

My eyes widen. “I thought you were joking.”

“Why would I joke about such a thing?”

I swear, he looks genuinely baffled.

Sighing, I rip my chin away and tip my head against the mast, suddenly more tired than I’ve been in days. “You’re exhausting,” I mutter, closing my eyes. “Just ... let me go down with the ship.”

That sounds peaceful.

“Not an option I’m afraid.” I can tell by the strain in his voice that he’s pushing to his feet. “Let me help you up.”

Internally, I groan.

Prying my eyes open, I rock to the side, using my bandaged hand to push myself to a wobbly stand. Cainon’s hand snakes around my side to steady me, but I shove away, grabbing hold of the handrail. Feeling his stare blaze across the side of my face, I watch a slew of rowboats pull away from the ship—piled full of injured crewmen.

“You’re far more … what’s the word … hostile than normal.”

When I don’t respond, he kneels and gets to work on the rope securing my sack to the mast.

A storm bulges in my chest as I anticipate him digging through its contents ...

Dreadingwhat he’ll find.

If I leap at it now, it’ll only draw more attention.

I internally catalog its inventory while he battles the series of knots, preparing excuses to toss at him like boulders. Hard to come up with one for the talon. Or the pillow slip. Or the parcel of shit-shrooms I never got the chance to pottle.

Crap.

The sack falls from the mast, and he grips the ties, pulling them tight enough to strangle someone, then twists the tails into a tidy bow while I almost vomit with relief.

“Anything breakable in here?” he asks, waving it at me.

“Depends what you classify as—”

He tosses it over the balustrade, and I watch in stunned silence as it plunges to the deck below and lands with a heavy thud.

I feel that sound in my gut.

Staring down at it, I finally manage to sift some words from the coals of my fiery rage. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“More than you could possibly imagine,” he mutters.

A vast assumption. He has no idea how broad my scope is for the various levels of fucked up.

“Come here.”

My gaze slides to his open arms and very bare, very smooth, sun-kissed chest.

“In your dreams.”

He flashes me a wicked grin. “Oh, Orlaith. My dreams are far more devious than that, I assure you.”

My cheeks flare with prickly heat, mind scrambling.

He pops a brow, giving me a come-hither gesture that sends my foot sliding back.

“No,” I blurt. “Not happening.”

“No?”

“I’m surprised you’re not better acquainted with the word.”

His eyes lose their spark of amusement. “You can climb down on your own, can you?”

Probably not.

I lift my chin. “Absolutely.”

He sighs, ignoring my yowling protests as he scoops me up with ease and tucks me against his muscular chest. “Stop wriggling and wrap your arms and legs around me.”

Averse to the idea of making more of a scene, I clamp my legs around his trim waist, thread my arm around his neck, and stab my stare across the sea now littered with rowboats.

“Unless you want to fall again, I suggest you lean closer and tighten those pretty thighs.”

“I’ll tighten them around your neck,” I mutter, and he chokes out a laugh.

“Once we’re coupled,” he says, maneuvering us through the hatch, “I’ll hold you to that.”

Realization strikes a match to my face, and I’m silently begging he drop me now so I can plummet to a swift death.

Instead, he confidently scales the ladder, my injured arm tucked between us the only barrier preventing our bodies from being flush—something that heats my skin but rattles my soul.

Cheeks burning, I watch the small boats drift and disperse amongst the rest of the fleet, the men stealing peeks over their shoulders at me clinging to their High Master, being pulled from the perch I stubbornly set myself in.

“This is humiliating.”

“So is waiting days with bated breath for your promised to dock at her new home, to no avail.”

Bated breath, my ass.

I don’t know much about managing a fleet, but I doubt he could prepare one on such short notice. He probably put the order in the moment he returned. Hell, he probably sent a mail sprite before he even left Castle Noir.

I’m forced to admit there may be some weight to Rhordyn’s condemning observations ...

Cainon has ambition.

“Tuck your head under my chin,” he gripes. “I’m getting a kink and not the fun sort.”

I do as he asks, refusing to take his verbal bait. Refusing to take any enjoyment from having my cheek pressed against his chest—no doubt his intention.

He reaches the bottom and steps off, one hand weaving around to support the underside of my thigh.

My breath hitches. “I can walk, Cainon.”

“Clever girl,” he muses, and bends to retrieve my sack before striding to the rail and tossing it.

I twist in time to watch it thunk into the hollow of one of the three remaining rowboats still tethered to the ship’s side, right beside an austere sailor’s booted foot.

“I wish you’d stop throwing my shit around,” I mutter.

“Out,” Cainon bellows, and the two sailors clamber into another dinghy already stuffed with five other men. He turns as Captain approaches. “Is the ship clear?”

“He’s the last,” Captain says, gesturing toward an injured sailor being hoisted off the side.

“Good.”

Captain turns to bellow down at the crew, not even glancing my way, and a splinter of guilt lodges itself deep in my chest.

I’ve disappointed him.

Cainon tosses his leg over the rail, maneuvering us down the long, wobbly rope ladder flush with the ship’s side. I’m forced to tighten my grip around his neck, drenched in the scent of citrus and salt.

“Getting quite cozy there.” He drops into the boat’s hollow, somehow managing to maintain his balance as it bucks so furiously it scrapes against the ship. “Seems a shame to part ways now. Perhaps you can sit in my lap while I row?”

“I’d rather be tossed over the edge,” I murmur, and he laughs, setting me on the back seat that’s splashed with sea water.

He’s still chuckling as he readjusts my makeshift sling while I scan the resting fleet blotting the horizon—loose blue sails flapping in the wind.

His laughter stops abruptly.

“Who gave you this?”

My gaze drops to Cainon’s fingers pinched around the black jewel that must have slipped free from my shirt, Kai’s conch resting beside it.

My heart stops.

I snatch it back and tuck the precious pendants under my collar.

His eyes narrow, darkening. “Who gave it to you, Orlaith?”

I look him square in the eye. “I’ve had it since I was small.”

Not a lie. Not the truth he was looking for, either, but if I tell him it was a gift from Rhordyn, he’ll justifiably insist I take it off.

Not an option.

“Since you were small,” Cain mutters, stare dragging across my Ocruth garb as though he’s counting each and every black fiber and stacking them against my character. “Hmm.”

He reaches past, unties the rope tethering us to the ship, then takes his place in the seat before me. Strangling the oars, he digs the paddles deep, pulling us away from the ship now void of life.

His muscles bulge and strain, features impassive, stare stuck to my face.

Stab, pull.

Stab, pull.

Stab, pull.

Wind grapples my hair, twisting it into messier knots, the odd sprinkle of foam flicking up from the nose of the boat and hitting me in the face.

Cainon’s gaze doesn’t drift. He barely blinks. All the while, Rhordyn’s pendant burns a phantom brand against my skin.

You can run off and tie yourself to your pretty High Master, but I’ll hunt you to the four corners of the continent. Not because I want to, but because I can’t fucking help myself.

A shiver rakes through me …

Growing uncomfortable under the weight of Cainon’s perusal, I drift my stare beyond him to a small rowboat, a mere speck compared to the giant ships swaying with the sea’s beat. It appears to be bobbing towardus—boasting a single sailor with hair the color of corn.

When we finally cross paths, the man’s appearance strikes me.

He has none of that Bahari glow I’ve become accustomed to, his skin sallow, eyes sapped of life, expression void of emotion. There’s a lesion on his hand that’s weepy and red.

Frowning, I watch him over my shoulder, the distance between us expanding with every powerful pull of Cainon’s oars, but the man just keeps rowing toward the ship we came from.

He docks against the side, then scales the ladder.

“Why is he—”

“You should have come with me when I left.”

Cainon’s words jar me, and I spin, looking into his bold blue eyes. He looks so much larger outside of Rhordyn’s castle, like he’s shed some sort of skin of his own. Or perhaps it was Rhordyn’s dominating presence that cast Cainon in a crushing shadow.

“You said it was okay for me to come on a separate ship.”

“A mistake that almost cost your life. I underestimated how little Rhordyn taught you about the outside world,” he dredges out. “He may have saved your life when you were a child, but he’s failed you every moment since.”

I can’t deny it, but I’m no damsel. Not anymore.

Never again.

“You’re not giving me enough credit.”

“You almost died. You might still, should your hand become infected.”

I don’t tell him I have enough herbs in my sack to disinfect an army’s worth of wounds for fear of drawing attention to its illicit contents.

Straightening my spine, I watch a dinghy being hoisted onto the deck of a larger vessel. Silence stretches, dented by sloshing waves and the clunk of the oars rotating in their rungs every time Cainon stabs and pulls.

Stabs and pulls.

“Tell me, is there a reason you’re still dressed in Ocruth garb?”

I catch his stare.

Hold it.

“I like black,” I answer simply, because there’s no easy way to say I’m all caustic blackness on the inside. That it feels fitting to wear it on the out.

I’m not here to fit in.

I don’t.

I am here to make peace with the mountain of death lumped inside me; with all those condemning stares that watched me from the wall in Whispers.

I’m doing this for the ships. So Rhordyn and Zali have the vessels they require to sail the Shoaling Seas and work their way into Fryst through the Northern Territory’s back door. So they can cork the spill of Vruks at the alleged core and put a stop to the devastating raids shredding through the continent.

I’m doing this so they can save lives.

His gaze flicks to my cupla, then over my garb again. “The crew don’t see you as one of us. Which means they don’t see you as mine.”

“I don’t belong to you,” I snap so fast I barely register the words passing my lips. “I don’t belong to anyone.”

“Perhaps, but you are expected to play the part. You’re a soon-to-be High Mistress. Like it or not, sacrifice comes with the title.”

“What is that supposed to—”

An ear-splitting explosion rips across the ocean, and I whirl, seeing the ship we just came from riddled with writhing flames, vomiting a cloud of smoke and ash as the vessel is violently demolished.

“Who—” I swallow past the lump in my throat. “Who lit the fuse?”

A harsh blow of wind breathes boisterous life into the fire and batters me with the smell of burning flesh.

Something inside me withers.

I can’t breathe. Can’t speak.

All I can do is stare.

“The man you just saw traveled aboard one of the other ships.” I spin, flayed by Cainon’s cutthroat perusal. “He came down with the Blight two days ago. I couldn’t risk the spread.”

Another explosion erupts from the south, rippling across the waves, and I gape in wide-eyed horror as a second ship flares like a torch. Screams erupt, men caught in the clutches of billowing flames as they dive off the side—a charred feast for the waiting predators.

Couldn’t risk the spread ...

A dense, gray cloud muddies the sky and blots out the sun, and I blink, feeling Cainon’s perusal track the tear that darts down my cheek.

One by one, men fall to the flames or the sharks, their screams snipping out like blown candles. It’s only once I’ve watched the bubbling water swallow the vessel that I look to my promised.

Stab, pull.

Stab, pull.

His eyes are vacant as he drops a word on my chest that somehow weighs more than my heavy, aching soul …

“Sacrifices.”