Chapter 26
Reva
“Idon’t know about you,” Finch muses. “But there’s a stink in the air. The scent of betrayal.”
I frown up at him. “You think someone orchestrated what happened? I’ve been wondering about that. But I can’t wrap my head around how that would be possible. It’s not like we know we’d break the wards or what would happen after...”
After all the sex magic.
I don’t know quite how to put it into words without making it sound crude or feeling like my cheeks are on fire.
“Your friend,” he starts. “She speaks to the crew. Spends a lot of time around them, doesn’t she?”
“Frannie would never betray our location to anyone.” I leap to defend her instantly. “Plus, it’s not like she knows anyone who she could tell. She’s lived a pretty sheltered life.”
Finch holds up his hand, an amused smirk lifting the corner of his mouth. My eyes lock onto the movement until I realise that I’m staring at his mouth and have to tug my gaze away.
“I’m not accusing your friend, Reva, love,” he says. “I’m hoping she might have heard something, if there were whispers among the crew, of people talking to the wrong people while they were out on a supply run.”
“Oh.” That does make sense. She’s not part of the crew, so I wonder if they talk more freely around her.
“Aster, too,” I add. “People still don’t seem to realise he can understand them.
I bet if anyone had secrets to hide, he’ll know them.
But if he knew anything big like that, he’d have told us already. ”
“But he might not have realised what he was hearing,” Finch says. “I doubt any of the crew are foolish enough to speak of betraying us all without having some layer of code to disguise their meaning.”
I shift my weight in the chair, wincing slightly as it lets out a loud creak. “You really think one of them could have done something like this?”
“I think some people might be more tired of this life than they let on. Never settling for long. Not being part of the rest of the world while it keeps on turning. After some time, it’s bound to breed resentment.” He huffs, leaning back on his hands as his tentacles play idly with his hair.
I watch for a moment before asking, “Is it something you’ve had to deal with before?”
He shakes his head, not seeming aware that he dislodges both tentacles from their activities. One droops as if disappointed, while the other reaches out to touch my hair instead.
“We’ve had people leave the crew before,” he replies. “Decided a life on land was for them. One where they had to watch their own backs and hide who they were, but a direction they’d chosen for themselves.”
I let out a distracted hum as his tentacles begin to untangle some of the knots in my hair, working deftly at the tangles and massaging my scalp whenever they pull too hard.
When I glance up at Finch again, his attention is on an entirely different corner of the room, and he seems totally unaware of what they’re doing.
Clearing my throat, his eyes snap back to my face. “Kit told me you’re always a dozen steps ahead of everyone else. Playing a different game to the rest of us,” I tell him.
His eyebrows bunch before his face breaks into a slow smirk that has the corners of his eyes wrinkling. “He did? Well, he’d be right. Most of the time anyway. Sometimes, people can still take you by surprise.”
I dampen my lips with my tongue, a movement he watches with avid—if slightly baffled—interest. It feels like I’m currently being carried along by other people’s whims. First, heading to the beach’s sanctuary until we could recuperate and I could try to get Noush back, and now moving on because that sanctuary has been broken into smithereens.
And I hate it. I hate feeling like my fate is entirely in other people’s hands.
Especially when one of them is a king who doesn’t think that people like me should exist, meaning we’re treated like we’re less than dirt.
He doesn’t care that we’re hunted. Doesn’t care that we have body parts removed for magical spells.
The same king who created and lost a small army of weapons that he created, who took the entire crew and physically altered them until he’d ruined their lives.
“If we’re captured, we’re as good as dead,” Finch says. “And we’re in no position to start a war with the bastard king. We could travel north and try to persuade the Witch Queen we’ll fight alongside her to bring him down.”
A shudder runs down my spine. Despite knowing that Aster is a witch, I’m not about to start trusting their kind willy-nilly, not after spending most of my life terrified they’ll pluck out my eyeballs just to make potions to make their dicks harder.
Finch doesn’t miss my involuntary reaction, and to my surprise, he reaches forward and squeezes my hand with callused fingers.
“We don’t want to fight a war, love. Alternatively, we could find some way to disguise our ship with magic and continue along the coast, destroying his ships.” His grin widens.
“But Jack and—”
He nods, and I cut off. Of course, the captain won’t leave them to rot in the capital, regardless of whatever might have happened to get them there.
“It’s a myopic option,” he says. “One that we’ve been languishing in, probably for too long now.” He pauses, still playing idly with my hand while his tentacles continue to play with my hair, although he’s no longer looking at me.
“So, what are you thinking?”
“The way I see it, they stole our sanctuary from us, and we can’t go back, just like we can’t go back to our life from before. Since none of our attempts from afar worked out at cursing the king, we’ll need to do it up-close instead.”
I open my mouth and then shut it again, and Finch catches the movement and gives a nod of understanding.
“You’re wondering why we don’t just plan to kill him outright?
” He hums and gives an approving nod, clearly misinterpreting my dumbstruck expression.
“I appreciate the bloodthirsty attitude, love, but I’m afraid it would be too messy.
Killing him in person will cause an absolute load of hassle, and that’s the last thing we want, don’t you think? ”
That... wasn’t what I was thinking. Not even remotely.
My voice comes out slightly strangled as I reply, “Uh, yeah. Probably a bad idea to kill the king, unless we did something like make the entire kingdom forget he ever existed.” I let out a huff of laughter, but Finch blinks at me, cocking his head to one side in that curious movement he has every time he’s either intrigued or baffled by something.
“I wasn’t serious,” I rush to tell him, because he’s not laughing or telling me that would be an insane idea.
“Come on, I really was joking,” I insist. “Surely it’ll be hard enough to get close to him so that Kit can curse him without at least one of us getting arrested.”
“It’ll be challenging, that’s for sure,” he says. “Although, who says Kit has to be face to face with him? He can simply curse the entire city.”
‘Simply’ seems to be doing a lot of heavy lifting in that statement.
I’m still struggling to reconcile that this is happening again. We’d barely got Kit back and now he’s disappeared again. And this time we have even less of a clue what’s happened to him.
When I delve into my chest and prod the golden thread linking me to him, he doesn’t seem upset. Instead, he’s calm. Almost too calm.
Jack’s bond is quieter than the others; more muted. But my exhaustion is dragging me down, making my head fuzzy and my thinking slow, and maybe that’s affecting things.
“Anyway.” I slap my thighs and then freeze. For the life of me, I don’t know why I’ve suddenly taken on the mannerisms of someone’s grandad. “It’s late, we should—”
“It’s curious, though.” Finch doesn’t seem to realise he’s interrupted me as he continues his line of thinking. “I don’t know the who or the how, but the more I think about it, the more I have the strangest feeling that we’ve missed something very obvious.”
Blinking at him, I rub my tired eyes. “How do you mean?”
“Who else could have worked fast enough to kick things off while we were all distracted?”
My stomach pitches as I twist my fingers in front of me. “I still don’t think I understand what you’re saying.”
He gives me a smile that I haven’t seen before. One that’s far too soft and kind, like he knows all too well that I understand what he’s saying; I just don’t want to.
“Surely it makes most sense for it to have been someone in that room.”
One of my freshly minted mates, he means.
“You think one of them is working with the king?” I shake my head. “That can’t be right.”
Can it?
“We can literally feel each other’s stray emotions and I’m sure I’ve heard a random thought or two,” I say. “How would any of them hide something like that?”
Finch cocks his head to the side again, leaning forward and taking hold of my hand again. “You can feel our emotions?”
“I think so,” I say. “Not all the time. And it’s hard to work out exactly who they belong to. I thought I was just going insane for a little while, but I’m pretty sure that’s what was happening. I was catching snippets of each of your thoughts and feelings.”
“From all of us?” He presses the point, still not letting go of my hand even as warmth rolls through me at the unexpected contact.
I focus on the tangle in my chest, trying to parse through my memory of the time right after the bonds formed. “I only got the odd glimmer of yours,” I tell him softly.
Something about the words causes a shutter to form over Finch’s eye as he leans back, losing contact with my hand.
We did hear something, Noush says, giving me a mental prod. I then have the strangest sensation, like she’s actively tugging a memory forward to the front of my mind. It’s incredibly disconcerting, like someone else has their hand inside my head and is giving it a swirl.
She’s right, though.
I remember that voice.
“What did you do?” I repeat their words to Finch, my eyes going wide as I lean forward to grip his knee. “I remember someone’s voice saying those exact words right after that light appeared.”
But when I close my eyes and try to focus on the voice to work out who it belonged to, I can’t quite grasp the memory.
“I can’t remember who said it,” I tell Finch. “Everything’s too muddled.”
It doesn’t sound good, though.
It sounds a lot like Finch is right. And that one of my mates is to blame for the king’s men coming for our sanctuary.
But which one?