Page 93 of Rise of the Vicious Princess

She lifted her chin, and he laughed quietly. “I see.”

He pressed closer still, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, the heat of his body warming hers. A clear invitation to lean on him if she needed to.

If she wanted to.

The glow of warmth she always felt when she was with him brightened.

When she kept her spine straight, Tal leaned forward, his face turned toward hers as if wishing he could read her expression beneath her mask. His lips quirked into a smile. “If you get too tired to keep pretending you’re fine, let me know. I won’t tell the crew. And I would like a warning if you think you’re going to pitch over the side of the boat.”

She huffed out a little laugh. “We wouldn’t want you to have to dive in after me.”

“Seers forbid. That’s why I brought Dec along. He enjoys rescuing people from the water.”

“I wonder if that will count as protecting me in Holland’s eyes.”

Tal sobered instantly. “There is the matter of my intestines.”

“Indeed.”

“Perhaps I should take some precautionary steps to ensure your safety.” He lifted his arm as though to wrap it around her back and watched her for permission. “For Holland’s sake.”

She laughed again, though the wind whisked it away instantly. The warmth inside glowed like the sister moons, and it was getting harder and harder to convince herself that she could ignore it. “Who would have thought that the first time a boy wanted to put his arm around me, it would be to avoid a disembowelment.”

His arm curled around her back, warm and secure, and he anchored her to his side. She meant to straighten her spine. To pull away just enough to let him know that she wasn’t leaning on him. Not really. But his shoulder was warm, and his touch was gentle, and she was just so tired.

Her head tipped against his shoulder, and he leaned his cheek against the crown of her hair. Quietly, he said, “You know quite well it didn’t take the threat of disembowelment to make me want to put my arm around you.”

The boat rose and fell, rocking gently with the swells of the sea, and all too soon the large, rocky cliffs that flanked the entrance to the bay were just ahead of them. Charis sat up, her exhaustion forgotten as they came closer. The wind scoured the sky above, chasing away any clouds and leaving the sapphire light of the sister moons shining clearly.

Charis leaned forward, her hands gripping the edge of the rowboat as they swept between the cliffs and into the shallow, rocky bay.

“Seers forbid!” Finn whispered. Charis waved a hand at him to shush him as her heart became thunder in her ears.

Spread out before them, tucked beside rocky outcroppings and lined up like miniature war frigates, were at least twenty ships. They were small—even smaller than Charis’s ship—with crisp lines that ended in points as sharp as fangs on the top of the masts and at both the bow and the stern. Lanterns that glowed an eerie pale green were hung in clusters of three on the cabin walls. There wasn’t a single sound from any of them.

Charis’s mind raced as Finn and Dec quietly rowed them out of the bay.

Twenty ships, unlike any she’d ever seen. Capable of navigating shallow water and the tight turns necessary to maneuver around rocky outcroppings. And somehow packing enough weaponry to take down Calera’s massive navy frigates before any of her sailors could understand what was happening.

Which kingdom had done this? And why? Or were these the strange ships that had been sighted in the northern seas? If so, she could understand Rullenvor choosing to ally itself with the Rakuuna so they could defend themselves on the water.

“Captain, that’s an armada,” Finn said finally as they moved quickly back toward their waiting ship. “And we don’t have a single war frigate capable of going into that bay to fight them.”

“I know,” Charis said, feeling slightly dizzy as her racing thoughts picked up one solution and then another.

“We have to let the queen know,” Dec said.

“I’ll handle that.” Charis stared back at the bay, at the terrible secret hiding within it. “She’ll need to attack from both land and sea.”

“Nothing we have on the water can get in there safely,” Finn said. “Nothing with any sort of cannon power, at least.”

“We don’t have to get in there safely,” Tal said, his eyes meeting hers as if they were in perfect harmony. “We just have to make sure they don’t get out.”

Charis bared her teeth in a vicious smile. “We send flaming arrows from land.”

“And cannon fire from the sea,” Tal finished.

And once the enemy ships were destroyed, they’d fish some of the survivors out of the water and interrogate them until they knew which kingdom had betrayed them.

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