3. Maren
3
Maren
“ D id it rain?”
I nodded, eyes trained onto the dying fire. Under the climbing sun, its smoke announced our location as clearly as chicken blood to a Juile shark. Pausing as I kicked sand over burnt logs, I shuddered at the thought.
Kye raised a brow at me, angling a squinted eye into the sparse clouds. “Must have been a deep sleep.”
He had slept deeply. But it hadn’t rained. Not unless the moisture in the air counted. I’d called it to wash the dirt from a basin in the rock, then forced the molecules together until it boiled itself sterile.
“I already drank plenty,” I said. "Don't worry about saving any for me."
Of all the challenges we might face in the days ahead as we roamed the Rivean coast back to Calder, clean water needn't be one. I just needed to ensure he didn’t catch me supplying it.
Soft slurping came from my back as I held up the assortment of knives Kye found in the dinghy. The fire had painted a thin blanket of ash over the steel, and I wiped them clean with a swatch of cloth, the fabric sanitized with liquor. Then made my selection—a dagger with the thinnest blade—and plastered a look of fortitude across my face as I turned toward him. My chest throbbed with each palpitation, palms damp with sweat.
Kye wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, studying the blade. The corked bottle in my opposite hand. The fishhook and line wafting around the bottom. “You know what you’re doing?”
I pursed my mouth. “No.”
He didn’t flinch at the admission. Instead, he turned, offering me a side view of the shaft. “If an arrowhead separates, it’s almost impossible to find under fat and muscle. You’ll have to extract it from the very tip using the knife.”
“Easy,” I lied, my voice a fraction weaker.
He closed his eyes, wiggling his arm carefully out from the sleeve of his stolen pirate shirt, jaw hard against the pain of movement. I peeled the rest of it off him, holding my breath at the bare canvas of his powerful back, then carefully tugged the arrow through the rip in his shirt.
“It missed my subclavian,” he explained, indicating along the ridge of his own shoulder.
My fingers twitched over the dagger handle. “What does that mean?”
“It means I have a major artery right here, so try to avoid nicking it.”
I swallowed, my belly suddenly queasy. “What will happen if I do?”
He gave a dark laugh. “I’ll only be around a few minutes to tell you.”
My knuckles flared white. I stared at the knife in my hand, then at the shaft. “I don’t think this is a good idea. Let’s figure out something else.”
“There’s nothing else,” he said. “I can’t lift this arm without feeling the arrowhead slice deeper in my shoulder. I’m walking around with a knife in my back. I might sever the artery myself if I wait for a physician. And I don’t trust Rivean doctors.”
My breath bounced off his neck in quiet, ragged waves. The view of the shaft jutting from his shoulder curled my empty stomach into a tangled patch of thorns and vines, and I fought the sudden wave of light-headedness that washed through me. “I don’t think I can do this.”
Kye reached along the compact dirt behind him, gently grasping my knee. He squeezed. “You can. I trust you.”
He couldn’t see me from where I sat, his head angled down and to the side. He didn’t catch the way I stilled at his words. Sparks danced along my skin where his warm palm curved around my kneecap, his dark lashes flickering as he studied the rocky corner he faced, waiting for my response.
I shook hair from my eyes, swallowing the small dregs of my fear. Each one lodged, talons in my gut. The pirate alcohol burned my fingertips as I sprinkled it on, igniting the small cuts left under my nails from scratching the wooden deck of Darkness’s Hourglass for purchase after I'd turned it over. Kye sucked in a hiss as I gently grasped the arrow.
“Ready?” I asked, my gaze locked onto the shaft, though I wasn't sure which of us I was asking. Buried deep into his muscle, I couldn’t see the arrowhead at all.
“Just do it."
I loosed a short burst of air as a bubble of nerves rushed from my belly. One hand pulling his skin taut, I leaned in. Kye clamped a piece of driftwood between his jaws.
Cautiously, I pried his wound open with the tip of the dagger, driving it in against the arrowhead.
Blood drained.
Kye made no noise, though his body grew rigid. A sudden heat rolled off him, desperate and fierce. I could have prodded deeper until I found the tip of the arrow, but I pressed my hand against his back instead, calling to the water in his body to tell me where to find it.
Had he been made entirely of liquid, I could’ve coaxed the arrow out of him by pulling water. But his flesh was too swollen, his muscles too tight. I wiggled the arrow against the flow of his blood, just barely, and heard his breath catch.
Stuck fast. I’d have to pull it out by hand.
The seconds ticked, achingly slow. Nervous sweat surfaced across my brow. I tugged, keeping the shaft in a straight line. Each stitch of his muscle and sinew vibrated under my fingertips. Inside his body, fluid and blood popped and pumped.
The sounds of the world faded. The wind, the tide, the soft, arrhythmic panting from the man before me. Tickles from hair stroking my cheeks faded, the rocky floor less sharp under my shins. The salt hovering in the seaside air, the iron-forged scent of blood. I lost it all as I closed my eyes, opening to the world under my hands, mapping out the fluid in his muscles as Selena had once taught me to do with pathways in a palace.
Little by little, I worked it free.
I suppose it’d been a stroke of luck, an arrow in his back. I’m not sure I would have been brave enough to close my eyes and feel my way through his body had he been able to watch me. He ceased all movement as I worked, holding his breath until a small pop pulsed through my fingertips, and I glanced down to see the progress I’d made.
Then I saw them—the barbs of the arrow. Another smooth tug and they were free. The entire thing came out, the arrowhead unbroken, its tip still sharp. A final surge of blood streamed out of his shoulder, thinning to a slow dribble. His back loosened as it left him, disbelief tugging my mouth agape.
But it wasn’t over yet.
“Ready?” I breathed the word a second time.
Kye’s hands flexed into fists. I heard him swallow, knowing what came next. “Just do it,” he ground out, voice muffled through the wood clenched between his jaws.
I poured the liquor over the hole in his skin. It hissed and foamed as it kissed his blood.
Kye seethed into the driftwood, the noise somewhere between a growl and a grunt, then leaned forward, cradling his forehead with a shaking hand. He released a trembling gasp, all the tension in his body escaped with the arrow.
I watched the watery crimson trickle down his back, and something shifted in my chest. A lump thickened in the back of my throat as I pressed a swatch of clean fabric into his shoulder. One I couldn’t quite swallow. Kye seemed to fold in on himself with relief, but waves of nausea crashed through my body from something entirely different.
The arrow in my hand wasn’t even bloody. It had come away clean and perfect. Smaller than I would have thought.
Small enough to fit through a pair of ribs. Insignificant. Almost harmless.
My thumb grazed over the tip of it, and I watched a bead of my own blood grow. It should have stung. I hardly felt it.
What if I hadn’t been able to get it out?
Fingers curled around the wooden shaft and pulled, gently taking it from me.
I met his eyes, gold and sparkling as he studied my face. Sunlight laced its fingers through his hair, wind ruffling his curls like a lover in bed. His scent traced the edges of my consciousness, a clean and bracing rainfall, even after weeks spent in the cabin of a ship.
Turning the arrow in his hands, he swallowed, a question hovering in his gaze. I waited, not knowing what it was.
It had been three days since I’d shoved mist-born water down Aleksei’s throat, drowning the pirate over a dry floor. After what I’d done to help Hadrian, I knew Kye would have questions. He’d seen me call to water twice now. Even if he didn’t understand what I’d been doing, he'd seen me doing it. Did I want him to ask?
No, a voice inside my head immediately answered.
Liar, a second voice whispered.
I trust you.
I exhaled slowly, hands empty in my lap. But Kye didn't say anything.
He trusted me to pull an arrow out of his back. He didn’t trust me to tell him the truth. Otherwise, why wouldn’t he simply ask?
The thought carved a small cavern in my chest.
It’s not as though I could have answered him. Not without revealing my Naiad heritage. Without breaking my blood vow to Thaan. And even if I wanted to tell him…
The exact words of my contract had blurred in memory over the past few months, but if there was one line I remembered as sharply as the edge of a blade, it was that the life of the human I revealed myself to would be forfeited.
I wasn’t sure how Thaan would know I’d revealed myself to a human, and maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe my own blood would betray me—force my body into killing him with song and hands. I wasn’t keen to risk discovering by accident.
My throat rumbled as I cleared it, reaching for the fishing hook and line. I waited for Kye to turn back around, but he remained where he was, carefully examining whatever look I wore.
“Why did you drink the Valeriany that first day on the ship?” he finally asked, his voice smooth and soft.
I blinked at him, stunned. Hadn’t it been obvious? But he stared back at me, a flicker of doubt in his eyes, as though he almost wanted to take the question back.
“I watched them try to kill you,” I murmured, gauging him as hard as he gauged me. “I was powerless the moment they chained me to the wall. Kriska gave me an option. I had to take it.”
Kye nodded softly, eyes never leaving mine, though something twitched between his brows, tightening his lips. It was the answer he’d asked for. But under the intensity of his stare, my breath grew long and my skin grew warm, and I wondered if it was the one he’d wanted. He shifted his weight to turn around, and I reached for his arm, stopping him.
“It was my fault we were captured.” I couldn’t help the urge to do something with my hands. The desire to weave baskets from pili grass threatened to invade my fingers, and I gripped his wrist so I couldn’t squirm. The arrow remained in his grip, still as the dead. “We were outnumbered, and they were gaining the upper hand.”
“You tried to make them lose their memories,” Kye said, though he didn’t pull away. “Like Thaan did to me.”
I nodded, gesturing to his hands. “I can’t control who falls under its spell and who doesn’t. It’s not an arrow I can aim.”
He sighed, gently tossing the arrow into the spent campfire. “But they were ready for it.”
The springy leaves of shield weed flashed in my memory, unfurling in the center of Captain Kriska’s hand. “They were ready for it,” I ceded.
“Leihani.”
Palms flat against his thighs, he leaned forward, ensuring he held my full attention. “If it ever happens again,” he said softly, “next time, don’t hesitate. If you have to choose between me or running, just run. Take their memories and run. I’ll catch up.”
I shook my head. “You couldn’t have. It’s more than just memories. I stole your mind on the beach, Kye.”
He chuckled darkly, some private joke rippling in his gaze as he turned for me to stitch his shoulder. “A good distraction for them, then.”