Page 45 of The Song of the Void

“Fair enough.” Reiven stuck out his hand, I thought for that silly Human tradition of a handshake. But rather than moving my hand up and down, he pulled me closer to him, examining my face as if he were searching for something he wasn’t sure existed. “For a Siren, I think you may not be as ferocious as I was warned,” he said with a genuine smile. He turned his hand over, so that my pale blue, smaller one rested in his gloved palm. It felt as though he was admiring my hand at first, but then he noticed the ring Ash had given me. “What the hell—that damn kid. Did he propose to you the moment I was out of the way?”

Was it just me, or was he actually perturbed, seeing the ring on my hand?

I had to chuckle. “He didn’t propose to me. He’s a child.”

“You have it on the wrong finger, then.” He slid the ring off and put it on my index finger. “There, now people won’t assume that you’re married.”

“You’re sleep-deprived,” I teased. It felt strangely right, wrapping my fingers around his hand to pull him to our room. “Come on, I’ll sing for you.”

Over the next few days, though Ashkade appeared happy that Reiven and I were getting along, it seemed like we were getting along too well for his taste. He eyeballed the way I’d laugh at something Rei said, or how Reiven’s hand would linger on my back or shoulder when he passed by me. How we’d smile at each other. Ash must have been expecting us to go back to our needling, antagonistic ways, not…whatever this was.

Spirits. We’re not flirting, are we?

I absentmindedly watched Reiven’s disappearing back as he headed downstairs to the galley to make the four of us some tea. The waning twilight sun caught in his dark hair and eyes when he glanced over his shoulder to grin at me. Ash, Calinia, and I sat on barrels and boxes around a large, low crate that became our makeshift table on the quarterdeck, near Captain Larsel’s usual place at the helm. The whispering, orange-tinted waves drew my gaze, but Ashkade clearing his throat pulled it back to the ship.

“You two are actin’ weird. I dunno if I like it,” he said, setting down his hand of playing cards to give me an uncharacteristically hard look.

I frowned. Ashkade kept trying to bring up the petty ways Reiven and I provoked each other before, like he was trying to evaluate my reactions. But the more I looked back and thought about it, the more I began to see the things he had done in a different light. The light of a man who couldn’t completely bring himself to hate a Siren he claimed he did. Ash told me Reiven had sworn up a storm at him for not noticing my cut after we got back from Redsand Cove. And that he had used his earring to tell Ash to let me out of the hold after our duel, claiming that my whimpering was annoying him. And that Reiven had been the one to tell Lyneca to bring me to the dolphins after I had started crying. Noticing things like a minor injury, my homesickness, and the remnants of my trauma at Vaetrik’s hands…it just reinforced the soft feeling that wrapped around me when I looked at him.

He was worried about my tiny cut when he had been shot multiple times.

An idiotic smile spread across my face.

Calinia let her cards form a bridge between her hands. She was badly losing the game the three of them had been playing, so she held most of the deck. It was called “Deception,” a game where one could lie to win, but lying about the cards they played face down always came with the chance that someone could call their bluff. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised, but Reiven was truly the most devious out of the three players, and he had won every game they played so far.

The ship swayed and creaked beneath us as I shifted uncomfortably on the short wooden box Reiven made me share with him. “Do you think he hates me, Ash?”

“Obviously not, and that’s got me all confused,” Ash mumbled.

Calinia slammed her hand, full of cards, onto the crate and glared between us. “He has me confused, too. There’s no way he can win every single game we’ve played honestly. He must be cheating.”

I had thought the same thing, and I was glad for a distraction from Ash's musings about Rei and me. No way he was that good of a strategist, was he? Calinia was probably right; he was enough of a cunning bastard to be cheating this game somehow.

His cards sat face down beside me. I shot my companions a fox-like grin and picked the cards up. But shockingly enough, his hand was almost perfect for the current state of the game. Maybe he was just exceptionally lucky.

Ash was right behind him in the number of cards in his hand, so after peeking at Reiven’s hand, Calinia and Ash swapped cards so Ash would win in a round or two. An evil scheme surfaced in my mind, so I had to fight to hide my smile as Reiven returned with a tray of steaming cups of black tea.

He set them on the crate in front of each of us and resumed his spot on the box next to me. Honestly, he could have pulled over another box like a normal person, but he chose to spread his legs to take up as much room as possible, forcing me to scoot over until I only had half my ass on the box. I scowled up at him and his obnoxious, charming grin.

“Sun’s going to set soon. We need to finish this up,” he said. He threw two cards face down. “Two sevens.”

I tried to shift closer to Rei so that he had to give me more room on the crate, but he sat solid as a barnacle on the underside of the ship. Fine then. If he was going to continue to be an ass, I was absolutely going to make him pay.

“Rei-ven,” I sang. “You're cheating, aren't you?”

“Prove it, Blue.”

I took a sip of hot, sweet tea to hide my smirk. “I don’t need to. But I’ll make a bet with you that Ashkade will win this game, despite your underhanded tactics.”

He smugly agreed to my bet with the condition that the loser had to obey the winner’s orders for the rest of the night. Endless wicked ideas of how to torture him when Ash won flooded my mind, each one better than the last. I tried not to overwhelm myself with all the possibilities right away.

As play continued, I carefully watched Reiven's cards. It wasn't until he was down to four that he had no other choice but to bluff, yet he remained as confident as ever. I could practically feel him oozing with spite from his self-assured victory—until I rested my hand on his thigh. The muscles in his neck tightened and his eyes went wide, but he pointedly didn't look at me. Rei almost dropped the card he was about to set down, stuttering the wrong number in surprise.

Calinia and Ash blinked at each other. “Deception,” they both said at the same time.

Of course it was a deception, and a glowering Rei had to gather up the entire pile of cards and add them to his hand.

I allowed myself a quiet snicker as they continued to play, and it wasn't long before Ash crowed at his victory. I fluttered my eyelashes at Rei. “That makes you my servant, Reiven. I hope you're prepared to bow to my every whim and jump at every order.”