“We seemed to have gained a crew,” Marin told him.
Perri chirped cheerfully.
“I’m glad you’re happy about it.” She wondered if she was. So far, it didn’t seem all that bad. But then, she’d opened her heart before and regretted it.I’ll be careful this time.She’d care less, then it would hurt less.
As she watched Dax and Ree swim with the turtles beneath the circling winged cat, it occurred to her it was not going to be easy to guard her heart.
As nice as it was to swim with the sea turtles, eventually Marin had to corral her crew back onto the boat and resume her job.Our job.“We have a couple days before the festival,” she told them. “That’s time to do a few deliveries, if we’re efficient about it.”
“You know,” Dax said cheerfully, as he wrung out his hair with a towel, “there’s a whole set of ballads about fake relationships that transform into true love. It’s a common trope, particularly among the lute cycles from the last decade.” He hadn’t put on a shirt yet.
“You’re going to burn, if you aren’t careful,” she told him.
He looked at her blankly.
“Your skin,” she said. “From the sun?”
“I’ve never burned before.”
“Have you ever spent days on a boat before?” she asked. Without waiting for an answer, she said, “There’s a lotion downstairs labeledwith a picture of a sunflower. Use it everywhere that’s exposed every few hours, and maybe you won’t turn into a cooked lobster.”
He headed downstairs, and she felt her rib cage loosen.
Firmly, she told herself she wasnotgoing to imagine rubbing the lotion on him. Or him on her. He had agile hands—she’d watched him play that lute. She wondered if he and the drummer, Shiare, had ever been more than friends.Absolutely none of my business.
Dax returned, still shirtless, glistening with lotion, and carrying his three-necked lute.
Gahhhh.
Marin focused on the sails with a high degree of concentration. Yes, they were luffing a bit. She should adjust the lines to maximize the wind.
Sitting on the prow, Dax ran his fingers over the strings of the tri-lute. He coaxed out a melody paired with a deeper harmony. “There’s one ballad about a fake engagement that ended in a grisly murder. Actually a lot of ballads end in a grisly murder. On the whole, it’s a melodramatic art form.” He switched keys and played a second melody, layered on top of the first, as if it were two singers chasing one another. “But ninety-seven percent of ballads in the pretend-partner type, as defined by the Arne Index, end with love.” He strummed as he said the word “love,” then silenced the strings.
“Are you trying to hint at something?” Marin said testily. This was not a conversation she wanted to have while they were both sharing the same space for an unspecified amount of time and he was shirtless. And it was absolutely not a topic she wanted to dance around for days. Best to nip it in the bud.
“Oh no,” Dax said quickly. “I just think it’s interesting.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“I wanted to point out that if you’d like us to fall in love, there is precedent.” He looked down at the strings as he strummed, and his damp purple hair fell across the frets.
Marin wasn’t certain how he wanted her to react to that statement,so she decided she wouldn’t. “Okeydokey,” she said. She continued to sail while he played.
Over on the starboard side, the winged cat was napping in a swathe of sunlight, and Ree was amusing himself by tickling his wing with a leaf. Every so often, Stowy would flinch, then resettle his feathers. Eventually, he had enough, swatted at Ree, and then devoted himself to licking his feathers flat.
Ree hopped over to Marin at the helm.
“You’re lucky he didn’t swat you overboard,” she told him.
“I just want him to be my friend.”
“Then maybe don’t be annoying.”
Ree rustled his leaves. “Me? Annoying? But…” He sputtered, then his leaves drooped. “So how do I get him to be my friend?”
“Ask Dax,” Marin said. “He’s the one who befriended Stowy in the first place.”
Ree trotted over to Dax, who proceeded to give him lots of advice that all, in Marin’s opinion, boiled down tomaybe don’t be annoying. Also, offer him fish.
