Page 57 of Saved By the Selkie

“B-brother,” Jans stammers in the background.

Athos considers for a long second, then claps Aramis on the shoulder, gesturing grandly up the gangplank. “I’ve no need of spectacles,” he announces.

Aramis glowers at him. Athos waves a hand. “But never mind that—what are you doing out here?”

“I might ask the same thing,” Aramis replies as they start up the gangplank. “I didn’t know you’d undertaken shipping on the main line.”

“Oh,” Athos says, giving Aramis a coy grin, “I haven’t.”

Aramis stares at him for a second, then sucks in a sharp breath. “And Lord de Sellegue knows about this?”

Athos snorts with laughter. “What my lord father doesn’t know doesn’t hurt him, now does it?” He pauses as they reach the little knot Anna, Porthos, and myself have formed. He peers at the three of us, his gaze lingering on me the longest. “Odd of you to travel with a … woman … with a babe-in-arms,” he says, then turns back to his brother. “Come. Dine with me—we have much to discuss.”

Aramis sighs. “That we do,” he agrees. He pauses, giving me a guilty look. I roll my eyes. Anna elbows Aramis in my stead.

“Tell him,” she hisses in Aramis’s ear as he passes by. Athos is already marching across the deck, not having realized he’s holding court with himself now.

Aramis turns red. “I can’t,” he whimpers.

“You’re going to have to at some point,” Anna says as she gives him a shake. “Better sooner than later.”

Aramis shakes his head, then looks apologetically at me. “You don’t understand,” he says. “You don’t know Athos like I do.”

Anna glowers. Aramis pulls free of her grip. He gives me once last guilty look, then chases after his brother.

Anna heaves a long-suffering sigh. I look at her quizzically. She turns her soulful gaze on me. “They’re always like this with each other,” she says.

“I didn’t know Aramis had a brother,” I offer. The way he’d talked, I thought he was an only child. Didn’t he say his drasili had run off, leaving him and his vati behind?

“They’re technically cousins,” Porthos corrects. “Athos’s father is Aramis’s uncle. But when Aramis’s father ran off, the Count took pity on his sister and welcomed them into his household. When his own wife died not a few months later in childbirth, Aramis’s mother became something like a mother to Athos.”

“Oh,” I said. “That sounds complicated.”

Porthos lets out a huge guffaw. “It is! Which is why they simply call themselves brothers—much easier.”

“They might as well be,” Anna says. “They were raised together.” She sighs. “The difference, of course, is that Athos is his father’s son and heir, so he stands to inherit everything when the Count passes on.”

“Not to mention Athos is very much the favorite,” Porthos adds. He gazes around the deck. “As you might see—theRiggerwasn’t nearly so grand as this vessel.”

I glance about surreptitiously, noting the greater expanse of the deck, the intricate carvings in the wood, the glint of gilding under the light of the lanterns. It is nicer.

Anna shrugs. “Aramis does his best, but his uncle will always see him as second-best.”

“He ends up with the dregs of everything,” Porthos says.

“Which is probably why Aramis doesn’t want to reveal too much about you to Athos,” Anna says.

“Aye,” Porthos sighs, closing his eyes. “There’s no doubt in my mind that Athos will try to horn in on Aramis’s discovery.”

I blink. “What discovery?”

“Why, Mythos, of course,” Porthos says.

Anna chuckles humorlessly. “Don’t worry,” she says, “it’s what these white people do—show up somewhere and claim they ‘discovered’ it.” Her smile is bitter. “They did it here, even though my people were clearly already living here.”

I suck in a breath and shake my head.

Porthos glances down at me. “What was that about the gold?”