The wind snatches my short-lived scream, the crunching, sloshy sounds of my own masticated flesh and bones haunting me to wakefulness.
I jerk upright, gulping briny air.
A nightmare.
Not real.
I become aware of the creak of swaying ropes, my world tipping back and forth in a deep, monotonous sway beneath a litter of midnight stars.
Clutching my swirling belly with one trembling hand, the other fists the jewel hanging around my neck, as if my subconscious was tempted to snap the chain and rip it free.
I release it, draw a deep breath, andholduntil my lungs are about to burst, pulling my focus from that echo of raw hurt, from the feel of my brother’s motionless body lumped in my lap. Swallowing hard, I knead my throbbing temples with a near-deadly force.
They already got me, Ser ...
I drop my hands, slam my spine against the thick, wooden mast at my back, and stretch my legs—bare feet pushing through the gaps between the wooden spindles and poking over the edge as I rub the sleep from my eyes. Lazy wind plays across my sweat-slicked skin, ruffling my loose hair and delivering gruff voices to my sensitive ears …
“Does she always scream in her sleep?”
“Hard to tell when the wind’s up, but she usually wakes in a fit like that.” Vanth’s apathetic voice is as hollow as this void in my chest.
“It’s chilling. Makes me regret stepping in for Roal in exchange for his serve of salted pork. Why’s she even up there? It’s a lookout, not a loft.”
“Who fucking knows.”
“Cap’s not pleased about it. Did you hear Brock’s been ordered to lock her out of the nest if the wind passes eighteen knots? He’s afraid to nap and risk a lashing.”
Idoubt my guard and the barrelman occupying the central mast a stone’s throw away know I can hear them over the slapping of the sails, billowing and slack … but I can.
“She still hasn’t changed out of her black garb?”
“Not hard to guess where her loyalties lie,” Vanth snipes.
He’s taken a nightly shift on the central mast on the pretense that he’s required to keep constant guard on the Western Territory of Bahari’s future High Mistress.
Me.
Scratching the itchy scab from my fading bite mark, I scowl at the cupla caught around my wrist …
His watchful chokehold on my actions is suffocating.
Edging around the mast until I’m partially hidden by the slab of shadow untouched by the moon’s harsh glow, I reach for the stuffed sack tied to the rails and brimming with all my belongings—a grain sack I traded my basket for with the obliging cook. I loosen the drawstring, retrieve a small parcel, and peel back its layers of damp cheesecloth to reveal a bulb of caspun the same deep shade of indigo as the sky.
Stamping my nose against the sawn-off nub, I draw on the potent, earthy punch …
The smell only adds to my pain—makes that swelling pressure thrash as though it’s afraid to be silenced, taunted by the pacifier I refuse to indulge in.
A deep sigh is snatched from my lips by a whip of humid air.
I rewrap the bulb and tuck it amongst my belongings, rummaging past my wooden sword, fingers tangling with a slip of silky material my face and palms are achingly familiar with.
My heart flops.
Rhordyn’s pillow slip.
A swallow. A short, shuddered breath as horses gallop through my chest.
Blood-boiling fury and finger-tingling desperation battle inside me, and I steal a moment to pretend I’m stronger than I really am before the desperate flood ofneedbursts through me like a gulp of icy water. I free the slip, burrow my face into its soft pleats, and draw my lungs full ofhim—spiked with equal doses of rapture and self-loathing.
