Page 90 of Valour

Hester scoffed, then fell silent as she turned his words over in her head, examining them with a sudden knot in her stomach.

Afraid…

Impossible.

“I fear nothing and no one, and certainly not you. I told you that,” she hissed.

“I don’t believe you are afraid of me, no.” He leant further down, his nose inches from hers. “I believe you’re afraid of us.”

She closed her eyes, as if shutting off that sense would shut off the others, and she wouldn’t be able to hear his accusations. “Us does not exist. How can I be afraid of something that does not exist? That will never exist.”

He let her go, shoving the spoon into his coat pocket, sitting back on his heels. And then he had the audacity to smile at her knowingly.

“Don’t act like I don’t understand you, little witch. I know what I said struck a nerve. You keep coming back, like a moth to a flame. A moth who’s afraid of getting her wings burnt. I’m not going anywhere, you know. Is that what you’re afraid of?”

Her mind reeled, memories flashed of his snarling face as he’d tried to out her as a witch in front of the crews, of his tying her to a chair and threatening to sink the Valour, of him bellowing that he hated her when the Intrepid sank.

And before she could stop the words, she shouted, “But you did! You did go!” She clapped a hand over her mouth, her brows shooting up. She had not meant to say that. Had not meant to say anything. But now she’d started she couldn’t stop. “I let you closer, and I did get my wings burnt. I let you in. I don’t let anyone all the way in, and you pushed me away.” She bellowed the last words.

His brows bunched together. “You were—or I believed you were—instrumental in the sinking of the Intrepid. I needed space.”

Hester got to her feet and dusted the ice and snow from her coat. He had abandoned her. Abandoned her just as she was letting him in. Just like everyone else. She gave him a withering look and stalked off between the tents.

After stomping around for ten minutes, her heart rate would not settle.

She was afraid of nothing. Had hardened herself over the years of her childhood to need no one but herself, to be utterly independent. She had been trying to let him in the only way she knew how, and he had shut her out. And after he had finally forgiven her, she had tried again, only to find that he had undermined her, ordered the lifeboats to be lowered on her own ship. And yet.

And yet.

She had to get out of there. She ran for the sleds and harnessed Snowball and Romeo up, then hopped on and cracked the reins.

Hester raced over the snow, the dogs pulling hard. His words rattled in her head, in her chest.

You are afraid of us.

She didn’t know what to do about the words, or what to feel.

When she could no longer see the camp, she brought the dogs to a halt at the edge of a floe, a few feet of water between it and the next sheet of ice. She knelt at the edge, removed her gloves and pressed her already frozen fingers to the snow.

There was a pain, a longing in her heart.

But she was tired of being abandoned. First by her parents, by Victor, by Fliss, and by him.

The numbness she’d felt on the way here melted, anger rising like a flaming tide, and she wondered that it didn’t melt the ice, so hot and sharp did it feel.

“I am not afraid,” she gritted through her teeth. “Not of him, not of anything.”

“Is that so?” a voice to her left rasped.

She spun, scrambling to her feet, and there, standing on the ice, was a man. He looked like a Viking god, enormous and stacked with muscle, silver-grey hair down to his chest. But his skin was black as the depths of the sea, blacker than a starless night, with thick white stripes swooping over his brows, thighs and up his stomach.

He was naked, save for strands of kelp slung around his hips.

Hester backed away, spluttering in shock. Was she seeing things now? She pulled her snow goggles onto her forehead. “Who the Hell are you?” But she knew. Had stared at that page of Charlotte’s book of myths often enough.

Devil.

He twirled a familiar-looking harpoon in his hand, and she sucked a breath through her teeth.