Page 38 of The Song of the Void

“I understand you had no choice but to save me on the island. But you didn’t have to take care of me like you have been for the past few weeks, s-so…Thank you.” There was a hint of shyness in his voice I never would have thought I’d hear from a former pirate bastard.

I had to laugh to hide my surprise. “Oh my. What’s next? Are you going to start saying ‘please,’ too?”

“I’m not in the habit of saying please.”

“Go to sleep, Rei,” I said, patting his chest so he’d step away.

I put away the medical supplies and promptly curled up in my hammock as Reiven eased himself to lie on his cot.

What’s wrong with me? Allowing another Human to worm his way into my good graces sounded like another tragic mistake waiting to happen. Ash was the only exception to the rule, and besides, Reiven hated me. Hating him ought to be as easy as swimming, no matter how much spending all this time with him made me think maybe he wasn’t so bad, just like Ashkade said. Forget the way his smile made my heart skip a beat. Forget his newly good-natured jabs that made me giggle.

I peeked over my shoulder at him in the dim light of the lantern he insisted we leave on at night. The music of the waves against the ship must have lulled him to sleep quickly, because he was still, peacefully so. He almost looked innocent when he slept. It was hard to believe how easily he had killed those pirates on the island.

As if he sensed me watching him, Reiven jerked about in his sleep. Quiet, incoherent moans slipped from his mouth. He did that almost every night. I wondered if he had nightmares like I did.

An urge to go comfort him welled up inside me. I would never admit it, but I really did enjoy taking care of him. I was glad to see another side of him, that he gave me an opportunity to talk about the Abyssal Deep, and that the hatred in his eyes had devolved into a sparkle of warmth.

We were still asleep when Ashkade came crashing into our room the next morning, jolting us both awake.

“God damn it, Ash! Whatever happened to knocking?” Reiven sputtered, yanking his shirt on and hurrying to button it.

Our teenage friend limped back and forth with a massive grin on his face as he reached into his pocket and victoriously produced a platinum ring. “I did it! It took months of tinkerin’, and I think I fractured a few strands of time doin’ it, but look!”

We stared at the unassuming ring, waiting for something to happen. Clearly, we didn’t understand the greatness the Timebreaker had created, so he puffed out his cheeks and explained the ring had a piece of time magic locked inside it. Touching the symbols he had painstakingly carved into the outside of the metal would elongate a fraction of time, essentially slowing it down to less than a crawl in a small sphere. We still didn't get it, but we gave him half-hearted congratulations anyway.

“You two are hopeless. Look!” Ashkade pulled out a pocket watch for us to see, then ran his finger around the outside of the ring, and the symbols began to glow.

I blinked.

In that brief flash of darkness, the details of our cabin inexplicably changed. The bandages and ointment that had been organized on a shelf in the cabinet of supplies moved to a different shelf and were now in disarray. Some clothes I had folded for Rei were thrown haphazardly on the floor. It was like invisible imps had taken charge of our room and disorganized it in a flash.

“See!” Ash shouted. He had moved from where he burst through our door and now stood beside Rei’s bed, like he had teleported somehow. Just like when he paused time in the underground lab in Kirdiak. The watch he held now ticked one mark further than before our room was thrown into chaos. “Activatin’ the broken time in the ring made time slow down for y’all, but left me unaffected. Before you guys even finished blinkin’, I rearranged a bunch of your stuff! And it was mostly contained within a small space, so I didn’t break time or slow it down for the whole world! Can’t ya see how useful that would be?”

Reiven scoffed. “Not really. Unless it’s being used to cause mischief for whoever is stuck in the bubble with you.”

“Are you blind?” Ash turned to me, looking for some support.

I considered ways to put it to use, but Rei’s unkempt shirt buttons had me distracted, so I absentmindedly went to fix them for him. “Hmm…If you’re being attacked, you could activate it and disarm your opponents while time is slowed around you.”

“Exactly!”

Seeing Ashkade so proud and brimming with excitement at the success of his new tool pleased me, too, although his face fell a bit when the ring around his finger exploded into silvery dust. Apparently, not even platinum was enough to maintain the power of time magic for long.

“Is the sphere centered on the ring, or the person who activated it?” When he replied it was centered on the ring, but the person who activated it could still move if they took it off, that gave me another idea. “Oh, maybe you could also activate it, set it down, and leave. The sphere would probably stay stuck in time while you, say, escaped your adversaries. How long does it last?”

“Ten minutes. I reckon I could make it longer, though.”

“Did you tell Calinia?” I asked.

He made a face. “No.”

“I bet she could help you improve it, Ash.”

Even Rei seemed to finally understand why he was so excited, but he just put Ash in a careful headlock. “Hey, listen to me: never bust your way in here without knocking again. She could have been changing, and I’m not responsible for what she’d do to you if you walked in on her.”

Ash scowled. “The door wasn’t locked or nothin’. Let go!”

Their antics made me snicker as I brushed my hair into my usual pearl-woven ponytail. Ashkade struggled against Rei’s iron grip until eventually Rei released him. Ash toppled onto the floor, but he popped back up like a bobber a second later to swing his crutch at Rei’s feet, hooking one of his legs to take him down. He pointed the end of it at Reiven’s neck and giggled, so full of energy.