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It’s just after sunset,the sky a watercolor painting of moody lavenders and blues. A few stars are starting to appear, announcing their arrival by dancing. Though we can’t see the land yet—least I can’t with my somewhat ordinary eyes—you can tell it’s near. You can smell it, the vague scent of vegetation and earth in the air.
Sorrow hangs in the air, too.
We had our funeral for Henry this morning, before the sun rose. Ramsay has been beside himself with grief, so Sam and I got to taking the boy’s body and Lothar fashioned a raft from planks and wreckage from theNightwind’smany wounds. We put Henry on it and adorned it with all the trinkets and toys that he liked, little dogs and bears whittled out of wood by Drakos, plus his favorite items of clothing and his favorite books. Sedge took what was left of the coffee beans and scattered it around him like petals, since Henry had only recently taken a serious liking to the drink.
Many a tear were shed. They may be pirates, but the crew of theNightwindare an emotional bunch, always wearing their hearts on their sleeves. Even the normally unmoved Thane was brought to tears and hugged Lucas and Sam extra tight.
And poor Lucas is grieving as much as Ramsay is. He seems to be doing alright after being shot at, though the top of his ear is gone and his head bandaged, but he lost his best friend, and to see him die in front of him like that—to have nearly died himself—will be a hard thing for him to get over. I doubt he ever will.
So with Cruz playing a heartrending tune on his violin, Henry was lowered into the sea and the raft was set alight. We watched as it drifted off into the rising sun, the flames growing as it rose over the horizon, bathing us all in glowing light.
Then he was gone.
The only one of us who wasn’t present at the funeral was Nerissa, but it wasn’t because she was in her cage. After I dove down to retrieve the key from the bottom of the ocean, thankful that we were over a seamount which meant I didn’t have to dive for thousands of feet, we decided to let Nerissa go free. Ramsay seemed to have given up entirely, not caring if the sea witch wanted to wreak havoc on his ship. As for me, I was starting to believe that Nerissa was someone we could trust. I know she would have saved Henry if she had been able to, or at least she would have tried, and from what she said, the moment she saw Ed Smith crawl in through the balcony, she had tried to contact Ramsay using her mind, the only thing she was able to do.
So now she’s staying elsewhere on the ship, having found herself a corner there, and the crew avoids her like she has the plague. I don’t blame them, considering Henry’s death and her arrival are probably tied in their minds, but I know there’s no correlation. Naturally, Ramsay has told her she’s free to go but she’s determined to stay on the ship, at least until we reach the Bay of Banderas, which will be our first contact with land.
The thought of that, of reaching New Spain and Acapulco, and being closer to Limonos, has my heart in knots, more so than it already was. How do we even find Edonia? Will Nerissa help us? What if she doesn’t want to be found?
The bigger question is, can the crew go through another battle like that again? TheNightwindtook a savage beating from the navy ship, but she’s still standing. In the end, the navy ship was destroyed and nearly all their crew was killed. Thane took a few prisoners alive and put them in the hold as sustenance for later, and Ed Smith was never to be found after Sedge shot him in the face. It’s possible that he’s swimming somewhere in the middle of the ocean, but we would have left him far behind by now.
But while cannons and guns are one thing, the Kraken and magic are another. Unless theNightwindcan physically fight back, the Kraken can take down a ship this big without a care. It can tear apart the Brethren with its tentacles, all at Edonia’s doing. We may have lost Henry with this round against the Royal Navy, but we still won, we still survived. Next time might be the death of us all.
Which is why I’ve decided that I will need to seek Edonia on my own. Maybe Nerissa will help me, maybe she won’t, but I can’t let my need to fix my regrets endanger anyone else. This is between Edonia and I and no one else.
If you’re even going to go through with it, I remind myself as I slowly walk along the deck, staring up at the sky as more stars appear.
I sigh and make my way down the stairs. I should go to my room or perhaps pester Sedge to make me something to eat, but instead I need to check on Ramsay. All he’s been doing is keeping to himself, locked in his head, and I’ve been giving him space, but I know that grief isn’t something that is dealt with in a day.
I knock on his door and wait to hear if I can come in. Lothar welded a new lock for him and I try it with my hand, even though there’s only silence.
It opens and I step inside and see Ramsay rolling over in his bed to face me.
“Maren?” he asks quietly, voice raw.
“It’s just me,” I tell him, closing the door behind me. “I only wanted to check on you and see if you needed anything.”
I walk over to him and stop by his bed. In the dim light of the cabin I see that his eyes are bloodshot, his hair a mess, and my eyes briefly trail down over his bare chest, the rest of him covered by his blanket.
“You,” he says hoarsely, holding out his hand for mine. “I need you.”
I place my hand in his and he pulls me into the bed on top of him. He puts his hands on both sides of my face, fingers into my hair and gazes up at me. “I need to escape this hell, Maren. I don’t want your platitudes.”
“I don’t have any,” I tell him. “I’m just here to be with you, to listen. Nothing I can say will give you comfort, I know this.”
“Then kiss me,” he says.
I lean in and press my lips to his and he immediately envelopes me in his kiss, wet and open and hungry. I’m pulled in, like he’s reaching up from the depths I’ve been too afraid to swim in and I can’t stay afloat any longer. He’s the undertow and I’m powerless against his pull.
“You are delirium personified,” he rasps against my mouth, his hands in my hair, giving my strands a sharp tug. “You’re a fever in my soul, for which there is no cure.”
He releases my hair with a groan and reaches down, trying to undo my stays. “I need to feel your skin against mine,” he says with urgency, his fingers grabbing hold of the ribbons. I quickly reach back and try to help him but in a fit of desperation he rips them in half with a great tearing sound and tosses my stays across the room.
Then my shift is pulled over my head and he’s pushing back the blankets, taking me by the waist with a bruising grip and placing me on top so I’m straddling his muscular thighs, the hard, thick length of his cock sticking up along his stomach.
“I need you to help me forget, luv,” he says, his fingers pressing into my skin as he stares up at me. “I need you to be with me like this.”
I feel completely on display riding him but for once he’s entirely nude as well. I take a moment to rake my eyes over his body, his smooth skin a light gold and without flaw, I suppose due to the fact that his skin doesn’t scar. His muscles are well-honed and taut and he vibrates with strength and virility. There’s scattering of hair at his chest, then down a narrow path over his tight abdomen to where it gathers at the base of his cock.
