“Adeline?”
She acknowledged Ceri’s voice in her ear with a whimper, fingers curling tight around the ship’s edge, eyes screwed shut.
“We need to get you below deck. Apparently, ourdelightfulCaptain would prefer you vomit in the enclosed space we’ll be inhabiting for the next ten days.”
“The ship’s just been painted,” said the gruff voice, pitch rising to a slight whine. “Daughter’s love, I’m not asking her to spew in the hallways, we’ll get her a bucket!”
“Hear that, Your Highness?” said Ceri. “You get a bucket!”
“Can’t—” She gasped, another heave rising through her body, and another wail behind her.
“Oh,hush, will you?” Ceri hissed over her shoulder.
Adeline tried again. “Can’t—Can’t m-move.”
Ceri patted her shoulder, but the next words she spoke were directed away from her again, spoken a bit sharply under her breath.
“Think you might help, or are you content to watch?”
After a moment, a broad hand replaced Ceri’s and settled on her back, light and warm and moving in the slightest soothing circle. Even with the dizzying nausea tugging her every which way, Adeline recognised the touch.
Kai said nothing for a long moment; just kept up that rhythmic, soothing circle until her breath evened.
“Adeline, it’s Kai—”
“I know.”
His hand faltered for just a split second—then resumed, slow and soothing as before.
“Can I help you get below deck?”
The ship gave another merry lurch, rocking back and forth like an oversized cradle. Adeline groaned and shook her head, then groaned again at the terrible spinning the movement incited.
“Could I carry you?”
His hand slid around her waist and paused, awaiting her answer. She couldn’t bring herself to open her mouth again, but the thought of Kai’s steady arms around her, of not bearing her own weight on the shifting, swollen floorboards of the deck, was a relief in itself. She turned into him without a word, opening her eyes for just long enough to slide her hands over his shoulders and bury her face into his chest. Kai’s hands went around her almost reflexively, behind her back and beneath her knees. He bundled her tighter against him, and then they were moving.
“I thought you’d made this journey before?”
He spoke quietly, but the words rumbled pleasantly through his chest, and she couldn’t bring herself to feel ashamed that she’d instinctively burrowed closer.
“Long time ago,” she mumbled into his shirt. “Forgot about this bit. Father had a tea. Slept a lot of the time—”
“Root tea, she means,” the gruff voice cut in, its owner apparently having followed them across the deck to be sure Adeline didn’t jump up and make a break for the side of the boat. “Long-brewed valerian, mostly, some other herbs too. Must be sea sickness.”
“Oh, do you think so?” Ceri said, each word thick with sarcasm. “I assume you have some of this tea on board, then?”
“Aye.”
“Do you think perhaps you should fetch it? Might be the courteous thing to do, no?”
A grumbled response, and then his heavy, truculent footfall sounded in the opposite direction. Kai kept moving, his grip on Adeline tightening as he descended the stairs, moving slowly so as not to jostle her. When the light dimmed behind her lids and the sound of shifting waves dulled, she assumed they had found their way below deck.
Adeline opened one eye and immediately regretted it. Even in the dim, even with Kai’s steady embrace locked around her, the sudden tilt of the hallway turned her insides to thick, roiling liquid, and she had to clap a hand over her mouth.
“Almost there.”
“How do you stand it?”
