Page 26 of The Song of the Void

My inner pep talk didn’t work. The hatred and distrust of Humans that surrounded the truth in my heart like an oyster shell had shattered into pieces, and I couldn’t put it back together. All the sadness and despair I concealed with vicious, Human-hating bravado refused to be tamped down any longer. My heart ached.

I tried to take another breath, but when I went to exhale, it didn’t come out as a puff of air, or even another pathetic whimper.

It was a scream laced with all the anguish that lay inside me, buried beneath the hate.

Everything inside me hurt. The wounds I bottled up over six years of pure emotional torture chose now to explode in my face. Hot tears streamed down my cheeks, relentless in the wake of every tragic memory that railed against me.

I took another breath and wailed again. Surely everyone on the ship was staring at me, wondering why I was screaming as if I was being burned alive, but I just hid in the darkness of my palms and tried to forget about them.

I wouldn’t be in this situation if I didn’t listen to him, if I wasn’t so naïve.

My body wouldn’t stop trembling. Tears flowed in an endless river, and I wept and sobbed until my throat nearly closed up on itself. I didn’t know how long I sat there crying, but what finally calmed me was the sound of the waves against the hull. Rhythmic. Soothing.

I might have quieted, but by the time Lyneca gently took my shoulders and pulled me to my feet, I still quivered. She wrapped her arms around me like a mother would and ushered me over to the rope ladder slung over the railing. The crew had lowered the rowboat into the water, I realized with a start. They had dropped the anchor, too.

Why did we stop?

Lyneca urged me to climb down the rope ladder into the rowboat that bobbed up and down on the waves. I hesitated, but Reiven didn’t say a word, and Ash gave me an encouraging smile. What I returned to him felt too pathetic and shaky for a grin. Soon, Lyneca rowed us closer to the pod of dolphins that still played and swam near the ship.

“I don’t think you should get in the water,” Lyneca murmured.

I glanced back over to the Maiden. Reiven rested his elbows on the ship railing, completely ignoring Ashkade’s chatter beside him in favor of watching me. His shoulders were tense.

I returned my attention to where it belonged—the sea and the gorgeous dolphins that came curiously over to us. “Hello, friends. I’m Zephra.” More tears threatened to slip past all my walls and defenses, so I bit my lip to keep them at bay. One of the smaller dolphins swam up beside our boat, close enough for me to lean over to stroke his wet, smooth back.

“Will you please do me a favor?” I leaned further over the edge to speak to the dolphins. “If you see any Sirens…ask them to pass on a message to Casifera and Veleir Yukaris. Tell them that Zephra will come home soon.”

One dolphin dove underwater and zoomed away, only to return in a leap over our rowboat, a show of acrobatics I assumed meant they understood me.

“Come home soon, sister! Come home soon!”

They chirped and squeaked and splashed around us for a while longer, but soon they swam away, towards the blazing orange half-disc of the sun on the horizon. I kept my eyes on them until they vanished beneath the sunset-painted water.

Lyneca had been quiet the whole time, save for when she squealed as the dolphin jumped over our boat and showered her with water. But now she cleared her throat and gave me a smile. “You have every right to distrust all the Humans you come across. I have no doubt about that, love. But don’t forget that while there are cruel people everywhere you go, there are also good-hearted people. Even that one up there isn’t really an evil man, I think. You two seem to have decided to hate each other without trying to understand each other.”

“I know enough about him to hate him.”

Lyneca patted at her ginger curls, like she was trying to tame them down a bit. “I used to be a lot like you. But I was a pirate.”

It took me a minute to register her words. Lyneca? The sweet redhead who made sure we all had full bellies every day? The kind woman who brought me my scented water to bathe in when I was stuck in the cell with Reiven? A pirate?

She laughed at the horror on my face. “A pirate’s mortal enemy is the Circle of Gold’s naval fleet, you know? Can’t get caught, or they’ll send you straight to the gallows. I had the luck to get caught by none other than our own Captain Vetti Larsel, back when she was a naval officer. Hated her. I really did. But we got to talking—really talking, and we realized we hated each other for no concrete reason. In fact, we found we quite liked each other indeed. Vetti went against the laws she swore to uphold and freed me, and once she left the navy, she asked me to join her crew. Somewhere between cussing her out for locking me up and cooking for her on her own ship…I fell in love with her. What I’m saying is, sometimes you can look past superficial hatred, only to discover something that might surprise you, Zephra.”

With Reiven? Fuck no.

Lyneca dug the oars into the water and drew us back to my temporary prison on the Maiden of Blue. “Does the fact that I’m a former pirate make you hate me, too?” She grinned at my slow, frustrated head shake. “You know, we’ll be arriving to resupply at Redsand Cove in a few days, so just keep your chin up. We’ll have some fresh ingredients to cook with soon.”

While I didn’t want to go ashore on a blasted island full of pirates, I had a plan brewing in my mind and a tool named Gatelo at my disposal. If I played my cards right, I’d have the upper hand the next time Reiven and I went head to head. A weapon of my own.

“This is a terrible idea, Blue.”

Despite his continued protests, Reiven’s grip on my hand was relaxed, his strides long and quick enough that I almost had to jog to keep up with him.

Redsand Cove smelled so strongly of booze and smoke, I didn’t know how anyone who lived there could even breathe. I already missed the salty scent of the ocean, which had quickly been overpowered as we hurried down a sandy pathway that led away from the flotsam-ridden beach where we moored.

Ashkade had been concerned about docking at the main port when we arrived earlier today, so we pulled around to the quieter western side of the island. Captain Larsel and the crew went ashore first, with a bag full of Ash’s gold, to buy fresh supplies. It took several trips with the rowboat, but eventually the crew got everything aboard, and the captain offered all of them the evening off to have whatever fun they pleased on the island. Ash gave the same offer to Reiven, and much to my surprise, he didn’t sound remotely interested, so that meant I had to accept it for him. I made up some excuse about being curious about the island, and that convinced Ash enough. Reiven, not so much, but he went along with it, anyway.

The unfortunate truth was that Reiven wasn’t stupid. He had already thrown off my plan by demanding to inspect all the supplies the crew brought back. If he found a stray weapon in one of the crates or barrels, he’d put it together quickly that it was for me. Gatelo improvised by having the seller drop off the item at some undisclosed location, but he insisted I pay him before delivery, which left me with little choice but to go with him to retrieve it. And, of course, Reiven wouldn’t let us go alone.