Page 69 of Wicked Tides
“I suppose it is good. Though it is harder to use your crew against you.” I looked up at Boil. “They are all so much more difficult to hurt than a young girl would be.”
Both men scoffed, but I doubted it was because they didn’t believe me. I imagined they were used to hearing threats and my words were only more of the same in a way.
“Yes, and we’re running out of sisters to use against you,” Vidar countered, reminding me that I’d lost Voel and Kea.
“Oh, but it’s in your best interest to keep Meridan safe while I’m here,” I said, reaching over to the slab of meat on the cutting board. In it was a rib bone, which had been partially exposed after Boil had carved it. “Without her, I have nothing, and when I think I have nothing,” I paused, bringing the boned meat to my lips. “I am so willing to destroyeverything.”
I opened my mouth. My teeth sharpened as I bit down over the bone and broke it beneath the pressure of my jaw. It filled the room with a loud crunch when it snapped. The meat and shards splintered between my molars as I picked up the plate of food. I took the slab of meat with me, still chewing as I left the kitchen and the two men behind.
I had a sister to feed.
~ 26 ~
Dahlia
Blind is not theman who cannot see.
But the man who sees and realizes nothing.
~Hector Stone
There was an incessant voice in my ears like the high-pitched ringing after getting hit in the head. It stabbed at my thoughts, causing everything around me to disappear into a blur.
Everything around me… which was nothing.
I was in a deep void. One where the echoes of that screaming noise was all-consuming. I could hardly breathe. I could not move. I only knew that I was slipping deeper into the cold, dark depths toward something awful.
I reached up toward the faintest bit of light above me. I could hardly see my own hand. Try as I might, the light was only getting further away from me and as it did, another voice rang in my thoughts. My own. It kept saying what I somehow already knew.
I was being dragged to the depths. I was being dragged to a hell I did not want to go to. A place where I knew onlysuffering was waiting for me. Endless suffering. Stagnancy. The slow destruction of all that I was.
I reached further, wishing for a way out. A lifeline. Anything to hold onto so I would not sink to a place I could not return from.
And then I felt it. Fingers wrapped around my wrist. Everything went dark once more, even the light above me. And then the cool kiss of wind on my wet skin shocked my eyes open. A stomach full of water was regurgitated from my mouth as if I could not breathe underwater and I nearly drowned.
Beneath me was black sand. As I pushed up on all fours, I dug my fingers through the wet grit, relieved beyond reason to be on land and not in the water.
I never imagined I’d feel that way.
“Your screaming could be heard from the heavens I imagine,” a voice said.
I rolled with a start to find a man sitting on a pile of black rocks nearby. The ocean still massaged the shore, reaching up the beach as if trying to beckon me back. But the ocean was no longer what occupied my thoughts. It was the man on the rock. Vidar fucking Bone Heart. He had one foot propped up so he could perch an elbow upon his knee. He was in his captain’s coat, his dreadlocks tied back with a red sash. In front of him, his bronze cutlass was standing, point in the sand, and he was twirling it slowly, but his eyes were on me.
“I did not think I would ever be pullingyouout of the water like a drowning damsel.”
“You know me, then,” I blurted out.
Dreams were strange. Unpredictable. He could know my face one night and not know me the next. I was clearly unprepared to fall into his head that night. The shock had rendered me stupid.
“Of course I know you. I’ve been hunting you since we were children. I never thought this is how I’d find you.”
“And how exactly have you found me?”
I stood, black sand weighing down my wet, cotton shift.
“Calling for help.”
“And why would you help me?”
