You and me both, pip-squeak.
“You’re the one that bit my finger,” I mutter, hiccupping. “I think. That hurt, by the way. Went all the way through my nail.”
She crosses her arms, eyes narrowing.
“Wanna see?” I shove my finger in her face, but she bats it away with her tiny hand.
Guess that’s a no. Hard to find good company at this hour.
I move my arm so I can scan her from all angles. “Where’s your scroll? Did you lose it?”
She stamps her hands on her hips and hisses, baring a hoard of tiny pin-like teeth, forcing me to focus on her features. Her hair’s so teased from the elements her head resembles dandelion, her lacy wings are lacking the usual layer of powder, and her cheeks are flushed from the cold.
I’ve never seen a mail sprite so worse for wear.
Spotting the black bead pierced through the tapered tip of her right ear, I slap myself on the forehead. “Fuck, I’m sorry. You’re the little ocean scout we sent after Laith. No wonder you look so …roughed up.”
She stomps her foot. “Geif han dak’t le neivala va me! Shashkina me lashea af ten ah!”
Wrong thing to say, apparently.
“Sorry, sorry. I’ll pay closer”—hiccup—”attention.”
Spitting a few more words too fast for me to decipher, she flutters up, drops onto my shoulder, and tilts toward my ear.
Her hushed words stack sobering stones upon my chest, one by fucking one, shattering my numbness and draining the blood from my face.
I plummet back to reality at a sickening speed that threatens to turn my stomach inside out …
Fuck.
* * *
Ishove a branch out of my face to see him looking out across the angry ocean as a mottled masterpiece of muted color drips upon the world.
Wind whips at his cape, the cliff a sheer drop at his booted feet, and I can tell he’s heard my clumsy advance by the set of his pelt-shrouded shoulders. By the tension-riddled air—stiff enough to snap.
“They’ve turned around,” I mutter, the coarse grass crunching beneath my boots as I enter the cliffside clearing lantern-first, wrapped in my illuminated safety net. Precautions—the light a lethal weapon that strips the Irilak into a steaming heap of bones and not much else.
Though they mostly reside in the South, the light is a safety net I prefer not to part with.
“The entire fleet?”
“Every ship besides the two that ...” I clear my throat, “sank.”
“Whichships?”
The deep thump of his question rattles my bones—a storm in his voice to match the one brewing on the horizon. I stuff my free hand in my pocket to stem the shake. Not from fear, but from an anger that’s grown its own caustic heartbeat.
Orlaith’s out there, vulnerable, underinformed, and brimming with justifiable rage. Blame is a hot coal in my hand ready to be tossed, because fuck me ... itburns.
“Baze?”
I bite my tongue, studying the sword sheathed down his spine.
Finally, he turns.
I open my mouth, but the words are clogged by the raw sight of him.
