"Pull faster!" Silverfin hollered. He floundered in the water for the length of rope, trying to pull himself forward, kicking against the waves. If he were free he could dive away, swim to the bottom and hide in the rocks for safety. If he were still a Mer it would be no challenge. But tied to the boat like this he might as well be wearing a glittering sign that said "Shark Appetizer."
“Up, up!” he pushed Hank upwards, into the air, and to safety as he scampered up the rope, feet quickly moving along the hull.
“Come on, Finn!” Hank’s hand extended down towards him.
Silverfin. Mami Wata sends her regards. And a reminder that cheaters never prosper.
"What?!"
The deal was forallyour hair in exchange for two legs.
“No!” Silverfin leapt out of the water, propelling himself towards Hank’s outstretched hand as he did so. Realization of the danger he was in dawned only too clearly.Fuck no, no, no!
But Mami Wata was not to be denied. As the crew hauled Silverfin from the water, the shark leapt after him, teeth closing around the end of one dangling leg. Searing pain shot through him, and Silverfin nearly let go.
Don’t fuck with Mami Wata!
The taunt of the marine asshole assassin rang in his ears as a half dozen hands caught hold of him, dragging him up over the rail of theOrcato safety. Beneath him, the dark waters ran crimson with his blood.
"Fucker," Silverfin muttered, and the world around him swam away into darkness.
Hawk's day had gone from bad to worse to nightmarish. First, Captain Tyson had fled Port Royal - along with the munitions Elizabeth had supposedly secured. Of course, neither of them had known the cowardly privateer had been holding the remains of another pirate crew prisoner in his hold. No wonder the fucker ran!
There wasn't, strictly, a code of honor among pirates, but certain things went unsaid. Pirates standing together against civilization was one of them, and that included the privateers. Targeting another ship was idiotic when half of a pirate's power came from the fear of piracy itself. The more ships there were to terrorize the seas, the more likely a merchant ship was to give up their cargo, nice and peaceful-like. But if merchant crews knew they were weak, squabbling amongst themselves and taking out each other, that was the kind of knowledge that encouraged men to fight back.
Rescuing - then recruiting - theHecate's prisoners was an unexpected bright point in the night. One that wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for the clever, perceptive eye of a certain beautiful idiot.
The same beautiful idiot who was currently unconscious in his cabin, minus the better half of one leg. Thank god they had a doctor on board; Doc LeBaron, a former privateer he'd picked up on Saint Domingue, was as deft with a surgeon's tools as he was a sword.
Hawk could only hope his talents would come through for Silver.
“Guess we’re stuck with him now,” Ruiz said quietly as Hawk buried his head deeper and deeper in his own hands, until it began to feel dangerously as if he was about to push his eyes back into the inner recesses of his skull. “We owe him Hank’s life, we do.”
“The crew will take care of him, Captain,” Hank Thompson had chimed in. “I’ll take care of him, personally. He saved my life.”
“What the hell was that idiot even doing in the water?” Hawk cussed, clinging to anger. Anger was safe. Anger could push away that terrible heart stopping moment of pulling Silver from the water, only for that beast to leap after him. The powerful jaws snapping, the spray of blood, the moment he thought he'd lost Silver entirely.
Everything was a nightmare. There was probably noEstrelain the first place, and the gods were just taking the piss at his expense.
“He was saving me!” Hank pronounced with indignation. “Or would you rather he had leftmeto the sharks?”
“I’m happy you’re safe, Hank,” the captain sighed. “Honest to god, I am. That was an incredible thing that Silver kid did.” Incredible, heroic,stupidthing, rash, incomprehensible thing. It appeared that Silver had quite possibly not only saved Hank from a dark and watery fate, but possibly also Hawk himself. Who knew what kind of a price he might have to pay letting Ruiz's favorite muscle perish on his watch?
Surely, it was worth it. He couldn’t very well have afforded to have Hank Thompson lose a leg, but Silver was... dispensable. He was loved by the crew - inexplicably - yes, but whatexactly was he contributing to Hawk’s life other than being an inexplicable pain in his ass?
And yet... it didn’t quite feel like such a relief.
Hawk had walked slowly back to his cabin, where Doc LeBaron had laid out his latest patient after having stitched up the remnants of Silver’s leg, cleaning and dressing the wound. It had made sense to place him onto a makeshift bed by the windowsill; it wasn’t as if he could very well go on using a hammock below decks, and the captain’s quarters were certainly big enough for two.
The copy ofEdward IIand his Lamentable Death still lay on Hawk’s desk, where Silver had left it when they had begun their chase of theHecateearlier in the day. Now, as the sun set, it felt like a lifetime ago.
Silver himself still lay in half-sleep, half-swoon by the ajar storm window. He looked somehow angelic in his sleep, his dark lashes fanning out over his tan cheeks that had somewhat paled from blood loss, his curls clinging stubbornly to his sweat-drenched forehead, framing his face to accentuate its inappropriately heart-shaped outline.
Hawk found himself moving to the bed, sinking down onto the edge, almost as if bespelled against his will. He reached out a hand to push a dark curl from Silver's forehead, frowning as his fingers brushed against burning skin. It was sweltering in the cabin, far too hot for a man feverish from his injury. Hawk pushed open the storm shutters. A cool breeze drifted into the cabin. The Spanish warship that had cost them so much was nowhere in sight.
At the edge of the horizon the night sky had darkened to shades of gold and purple and flame with the sunset, turning the waves the same terrible crimson as they'd been in the aftermath of the shark attack.The wine-dark seaindeed. The approaching night made Hawk think back to when he'd sat here so recently, mind addled with rum, heart aching with loss. The black sea below had seemed so inviting, soforgiving.
But that hadn't happened, had it? He'd been left behind in Port Royal, drunk, and woken up on the docks. And then this idiot had come along...
