I can’treallybe friends with Weston.
“I’m going to sleep!” I call out and pull the sheets tighter around me again.
“Good. I’m taking you somewhere tomorrow. I’ll wake you when it’s time to leave.”
“Where are we going?” I say, suddenly curious. He shouldn’t have another shift, since he had one tonight. So does that mean we’re going to the island during the day?
Splashes and the sound of scrubbing distract me from my questions, and I squeeze my eyes shut again.
“You’ll find out tomorrow. Goodnight, princess.”
I let out a sigh and try to clear my mind. Any relaxation I’d achieved from reading completely reversed once he returned to the ship. I take another deep breath and try to remember what it felt like to sleep at camp, to have Dane’s arms wrapped around me, but all I can conjure up are flashes of the nightmares I had every time I closed my eyes.
So instead, I drift off to the soft sounds of rippling water.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“Princess.”
My eyelids flutter open, despite my eyes feeling heavy and grainy. Weston stands beside the bed, shaking my foot lightly, and I groan loudly, pulling the bedding higher up on my face.
“We need to leave,” he says, his voice low as if he’s trying not to wake anyone, even though I’m the only other person in the room. “I let you sleep as long as I could.”
That small kindness makes something in my chest ache. With all the other ways he’s tried to make me uncomfortable since capturing me, he could have done the same this morning, waking me early so I was miserable for the rest of the day. But he didn’t. After all the friendship talk last night, it makes me think he actually listened to Sig and is trying to not make me hate them.
It’s too early to be feeling so many things.
“I’m coming,” I mumble as I throw the sheets back and slide off the side of the bed. As I stand, Weston’s shirt falls over my thighs, from where it had pooled around my hips in sleep.
He clears his throat and tosses my dagger down on the bed as I bend down to grab my pile of clean clothes.
“Meet me on deck.”
I’m too tired to care about what he might have seen, so I just nod and cover my mouth to stifle a yawn. Footsteps ring through the room as he heads out the door, leaving it cracked so I can follow.
He hasn’t told me where we are going, but by the way he’s talking, I assume it will just be the two of us. I’ve avoided spending as much time with him as I can, but this may be an opportunity to play nice, especially if he already is.
The suns have not risen when I step onto the deck. The early morning is still, the only sound being the slow crashing of waves in the cove. Weston stands alone by the gangway, his body covered with weapons just as he was last night, but my eye catches on something he didn’t have before.
A bow.
Why does he have a bow this time?
I clasp my hands behind me, stretching my arms and shoulders as I walk over to him. He doesn’t spare me a glance before he’s bounding down the gangway, calling out over his shoulder.
“We need to move fast. We’re running out of time. Follow me.”
I bound down the boards behind him, wondering where the fuck he got all this energy after having a shift last night, but I feel dead. Regardless of my fatigue, my steps have become more sure of the uneven land and beach during my time on shift, and I’m not as worried about falling into the water as I was weeks ago.
Weston steps to the side of the portal, waiting for me to pass through before him and following a breath later. Now that we’re safely in the tunnel, he doesn’t seem as rushed, his steps slow and measured, so I can easily keep up with him.
Neither of us speaks, and after his prodding and teasing last night, it feels like a step backward. If I’m going to make strides befriending him, I need to do something about it.
“Did you find any clues last night?” I ask.
“Nothing out of the ordinary.”
Silence.
