Chapter 22 #2
Our Harmony. A blush of warmth flowed through me.
Tom claimed me as if…as if we really were family.
The warmth tugged at my heart and my eyes blurred a little.
I would have to leave this place, sooner over later, but to know that someone thought of me as part of their people…
it touched me. Not even Druzilla or my pseudo brothers had ever claimed me. Only ever Pawpaw and Molly.
And now Tom.
“What is she doing now? Causing Smithson grief?”
The warmth didn’t fade despite Hook’s sharp tone.
“No, she’s amazing,” Smithson waved his hand toward me. “Whatever her Tideblessing be, I don’t know. But I’d offer her a full partnership if she’d take it.”
“No.” Hook’s tone brooked no argument. “She belongs to me.”
The three of us stared at him and he didn’t stammer.
“She’s part of my crew, is she not, Tom?”
“Yes, boss, she is.” Trick-Eyed Tom didn’t miss a beat. He stood and offered his seat to Hook, then came over to me, and kissed me on the cheek. “You come see me when you’re done. I’ll heal those hands up right quick.”
I looked down to see the blisters forming on my palms. Callouses were all well and good but to have those blisters that quick…the speed of making the dagger had done it.
“Thanks, Tom.” I kissed him on his cheek right back and he guffawed and gave me a wink.
I could almost feel the anger radiating off the third man—Hook was not pleased. Which just made me smile.
Tom left and Smithson motioned for me to go on again.
But it was Hook who put the limit on it. “Time’s wasting. You have an hour.”
I could have argued but I wasn’t going to bother—an hour would have to do.
“If she can make that knife in under an hour, she can make that cap for her whip in thirty minutes.”
“Like to gamble on it?” Hook offered.
“Damn straight. That woman there is a treasure. I’d marry her if I wasn’t an old codger. She’s got magic in her veins like I’ve never seen.”
It was my turn to blush. “Smithson, you talk like that to any woman, you’ll have a wife in no time.”
“Phaw.”
I turned away and did my best to ignore the sensation of Hook watching me. Not that this was private or anything—I mean I’d apparently put on a show for Tom and Smithson, but the weight of Hook’s dark eyes was a palpable thing.
I picked up the horseshoe and got to work.
I pulled two gold coins from my hip pouch, paused and looked to Hook as a thought rumbled through my mind. “Can I trade you a gold coin for a gold coin?”
Hook frowned. “Why?”
“I just…I think I need two different gold coins.” Again, I couldn’t say why, just that it was a feeling. As much as I needed part of this to be from Alabaster and my world there, I needed a piece from this story too.
Hook flipped me a gold coin that I caught in the air, then I tossed him one of my own. He’d surely wonder at the inscriptions on it, but gold was gold. It would spend the same.
I laid the two coins side by side. One had the castle and motto of Alabaster, “To the Strong go the Spoils.” The other was stamped with a skull and crossbones, the words “The Pirates Life till Death” etched around the rim.
A third coin. I needed a third coin. I frowned. It wasn’t the right time to build this particular cap for the whip. I took two Alabaster coins and started the process.
Neither man questioned, though again I could sense Hook watching my every move. Just like in the dreams, I couldn’t escape the weight of his presence, but there was no time to waste.
I heated the horseshoe enough that I could cut it in half, and stuck one end into the water barrel.
I’d use some now and keep the rest for later.
Neither Hook nor Smithson said a word as I began to process the two metals together.
It was not an alloy that I’d ever heard of being done and I knew that my bold statement that I could do it, and would do it, was all that had gotten me this opportunity to work in Smithson’s forge.
Heating the horseshoe up, I straightened it out and flattened it. Then created a divot on each end, just big enough for a coin. This was where it got tricky.
Gold melted fast.
Iron didn’t.
I took a breath and wove my magic down through my arm, and into the gold coins. A headache started right behind my eyes, but I pushed it aside as best I could. Pulling my jeweler’s loupe out, I set it over my right eye.
My magic was wrapped around the coins tightly as I carefully put the iron-that-used-to-be-a-horseshoe back into the coal. Keeping the gold coins protected while I heated the iron took all my concentration.
Bringing the metal back out, I bent it over, folding it on itself. Over and over, I repeated the process, losing count of how many times I bent and blended.
Like making bread, I kneaded the two ingredients together, watching as the gold slid through the iron in veins, and then further, coloring the entire thing.
Releasing my protective hold on the gold, a burst of colors rose up from the forge and I quickly pulled the newly minted bit of metal out as it sparked and spit.
“Flux,” I barked as if Smithson was the apprentice and I the master.
But he grabbed the can of flux that would help weld the metals together and tossed it to me.
I sprinkled the white crystals over the metal and began to shape the piece into the cap for the whip.
Thinning it out first, the gold-iron alloy moved like liquid under my hammer and the shape came together quickly.
The tip was as sharp as any arrowhead, and the cap would cover four inches on the end of the whip. I thinned out the bottom four corners, pulling length from them so that I could weave them through the leather. That would stabilize it, and give it better balance too.
Still…
“Something is missing.” I whispered, feeling the push and pull in the metal, trying to find just what was wrong. I put my hand over the nearly finished cap, my eyes throbbing and my head responding in tandem.
“Oil?” Smithson offered.
I shook my head and pushed my magic deeper into the metal. Something else. “No, I can’t quite pin it down.”
I knew that if I’d used the coin from Hook, there would have been something missing too. But this was different. Like an ingredient that would be needed to even have the basic model of this done. I kept my hand over the whip cap and let my magic move through it, searching for the missing link.
Accuracy. Brutality. Violence. Blood. That was missing?
Ingredients that didn’t make sense.
“You have five minutes left.” Hook said. “Then I will drag you from here, slung over my shoulder if I must.”
I lifted my eyes to glare at him, and my eyes drifted to his hook. Iron. Accurate. Brutal. Bathed in blood?
That was what was missing. A piece of something that already imbued the traits I needed.
The pattern in the hook opened itself to me, showing me clearly what was there. I nodded. “I need a piece of your hook.”
His laugh was sudden, as he threw his head back, and filled the forge.
Smithson flinched. I didn’t so much as budge. I knew what I knew.
Getting a hold of himself, Hook stared at me, his laughter fading. “You’re shitting me.” He held up his missing hand. “You want a piece of me?”
“No, I am not kidding, nor am I shitting you. I don’t need the whole thing, just like…” I looked around for a file. “A filing.”
“It won’t ruin the integrity of your weapon, Captain,” Smithson said. “And if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to see this through on her end, I’ve never witnessed this kind of magic. I can always make you another hook if you are worried.”
He talked about my magic like it wasn’t of their world.
Which of course, it wasn’t.
Hook stared at me. Not angry, not furious, but thoughtful. “I do not know what to make of you.”
“Thank you.”
“It was not a compliment.”
I flashed him a smile. “To me it is.”
He must have wanted to see this forging through too, because without any more argument, he let me file a bit of his hook over the finished product. I put my hand over his wrist to steady him, feeling his heart beating steady under my fingertips.
I made the mistake of looking up at him.
His eyes were already dark and yet they seemed to deepen into a land of midnight hours and hidden secrets. His heartrate kicked up, thumping harder against my fingers.
Hard to think when we were frozen, staring at one another as the space between us heated more than any forge I’d ever touched.
“Get it done,” he growled, his voice husky and thick with something like desire.
Shit.
“Yes, on it.” My stupid voice wasn’t much better than his, breathy and full of something I’d almost call need. Fuck my life and my stupid hormones.
I gripped him a little tighter and made one pass across the middle of his hook, the metal protesting only a little.
The smallest amount of iron, a single piece only, fell and sunk into the cap of the whip, absorbed into the metal as if it had been liquid and not solid.
I let go of Hook and stared at the cap. “That’s it.” I turned to thank him just in time to see the door just before it slammed shut.
Hook was gone.
“Never seen the captain run from anything before. Funny that it would be a slip of girl like you,” Smithson mused.
I swallowed hard and stared at the door. I’d sent him running, huh?
Did that mean I unsettled him as much as he unsettled me?