Page 67 of Wicked Tides
I stood up off the floor, walking toward the stairs. I needed fresh air and to hear the waves and the wind.
“Kea and Voel died helping you get revenge on that man up there,” she said. “For you to side with him—”
I spun, grabbing hold of Meridan’s neck and driving her back against the wall. I was bigger than she was. I was Kroan. Stronger. I was a killer, born to wrestle men to their graves and tear out throats and hearts with my bare fingers. She was small. Her kind were shy and she was out of place on the surface. The moment I overpowered her, her eyes went wide and her body stiffened.
“Who was it that cut him loose in the first place?” I said. “Let’s not forget that you trusted him first. And I am not siding with him. The thought alone makes me sick, but the waters are not safe, Meridan. For either of us. Killing his crew and him leaves us with another empty ship and all those girls we both swore not to kill. It leaves us stranded with an ocean full of killers and monsters around us. Do youunderstand? I cannot lose you. If I lose you, I truly will have nothing to fight for. So silence yourself and accept our fate for what it is today. Tomorrow may be different, but today, we are here.”
She nodded timidly and took a deep breath as soon as I released her. I had not touched her in that way in a while, but fits of anger were something I’d been unable to control for some time. Frustration ate at me. Madness caressed my thoughts at all hours of the day. Perhaps I’d never made a right decision in my life, but I was too tangled in the web to be anyone else. I was too far across the line to take anything back.
“Forgive me,” I whispered, stepping back. “You know I would never blame you if you left.”
She slowly shook her head, her shoulders slumping with defeat.
“Like you, I have nowhere else to go. No one else to cling to.”
“Then we remain lost together.” I stepped away from her again, putting more distance between us. “Stay here. I will find food for us both.”
I ventured up the steps, feeling strange being unhindered, and found a group of Vidar’s men on the deck, gathered around in conversation. The conversation seemed a bit heated. When I saw Vidar leaning up against the mast, arms crossed, I could sense the exasperation on his face by the way he was pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Never have I questioned you, cap’n,” one man said. “But to let those bitches walk freely on this ship? It’s madness. I have half a mind to say you’re under their spell.”
“We are near Port Devlin,” Vidar said. “Like always, you’re free to leave. Find work on another ship.”
A couple of the men shook their heads at that.
“This is the damn Burning Rose,” Gus spoke up, puffing on his pipe. “And this is Captain Bone Heart. The lot of you won’t find a better ship and any other captain would have taken a finger just for questioning him.”
“Maybe hunting isn’t as lucrative as it used to be,” someone said.
“This isn’t hunting. If we were hunting, those women would be dead,” another man chimed in.
“Governor wants ‘em alive. That don’t mean we should let them walk around like part of the crew.”
“Maybe voting in a new cap’n is in order,” another spoke up.
Vidar looked the culprit in the eyes and straightened off the mast, stepping into the man’s space. The man immediately dropped his shoulders like a dog coming face to face with a wolf.
“Go ahead and vote, then,” Vidar said, staring unblinkingly at his crewman. “But I’m willing to bet I’m the only one on this ship ready to die for it.”
I believed him wholeheartedly and so did his men. Their talk of dethroning Vidar seemed to end as quickly as it began and slowly, men began to disperse. Gus leaned up against the mast beside Vidar, speaking softly so other ears could not hear. I walked onto the deck and caught both of their eyes.
Vidar had been the one to free us from the hold, but he still seemed almost offended that I’d ventured out of it. I raised my chin at him and slid my hands into the pockets of my coat.
“Need something already?” he asked.
“We’re hungry,” I said.
Gus and Vidar exchanged a look before Gus strolled off, blowing smoke into the air with a long exhale. Vidar groaned, rubbing the back of his neck as if to relieve tension, and pushed off the mast.
“Come, then,” he sighed.
I followed him below deck into a small kitchen area. The man with a terribly scarred face was playing a card game on a table with a teenage boy I’d never seen. Both of them stopped what they were doing and stood when we entered, whatever joy there was in their faces extinguished with my presence.
“Boil,” Vidar said. “Our guest is hungry.”
I didn’t expect him to leave me with his beloved cook and the boy and he didn’t. He grabbed an apple from a wooden bin and sat on a stack of crates with one foot on a rickety stool as he carved into it withhis dagger. The apple was overripe and before he even took a bite he was cutting away bruising and brown spots.
Boil groaned as he stood, telling the boy to grab something from a drying rack. When the boy returned, he had half a slab of dried meat, which he placed on a thick cutting board for Boil to begin slicing into. I stood at a distance, watching the precise cuts the cook made in the salted chunk. He put a few on a plate before the boy returned again with a round loaf of bread that had a heavily browned exterior. When the cook cut into it, the inside was still soft and preserved. None of it was fresh and none of it looked particularly appetizing, but I hadn’t eaten food with taste in a long time.
