7. Hali
CHAPTER 7
Hali
I take my precious time eating. Drawing out the moments because I know what might come next.
Not might, Hali. Will.
The thought makes me queasy. I turn my attention to the table, trying out the variety of dishes. There’s a plate filled with thin cuts of meat, and I go to it first. I’m all too aware that Captain Erickson is watching me, his gaze riveted to my every move.
“Do you like it?” he asks quietly as I chew on the meat.
I smile weakly at him. I know I’m supposed to be shy, but he watches me so intently, I’m afraid of changing my expression. I don’t want to try too hard. He might sense the shifts in my demeanor and figure out my ruse.
“I like it very much,” I say kindly. “Thank you.”
“There mustn’t be fatty cuts like that on Morda, I surmise.”
“None at all. A lot of chooks, some fish…”
What else do they eat on Morda?
I’d barely been on that shithole island for a couple of days before Kai and I had received word from a bootlegger of the ship’s path. We chased after it knowing it would dock at Morda, and so when we got there, we hid in an abandoned home on the edge of a forest. Kai had packed us a lot of dried fish and cheese; at night, Kai would slip out and scout the island, eavesdropping on conversations to gauge what was going on. He’d mentioned how gross the food was. How the majority of the residents were male fugitives that enjoyed fucking the whores and getting rowdy at the bar. We made sure not to surface during the day until news spread of the Captain’s arrival.
Kai and I spent so much time in the squalor that we were in. He’d kept me warm, fed, and doted on me with what he could find.
Goddess, I love him .
Not for the first time, I wonder what we are doing here. It’s hard to remember the goal, but then I look up and I’m here, in the flesh, sitting across from a notorious man who has left behind nothing but turmoil.
Maybe Kai had been right about leaving after all.
“What about you?” I question next, keeping my voice small. “What’s the food like where you live?”
The Captain leans back in his chair. “Elegant.”
I blink, unsure how to respond to that. “Oh?”
“Fancy,” he explains. “Do you understand what I mean?”
“Food that’s pretty to look at?”
“The whole kingdom is like that. Unblemished, beautiful, utterly obsessed with perfection…” He pauses, flexing his jaw as a look of disdain passes over him. “It’s better out here, in the sea.”
“You like the ocean?”
“It beckons me.”
Now I’m intrigued. These aren’t the villainous sort of answers I expect. Tilting my head to the side, I study him. “It beckons you how?”
Erickson grabs a fork and stabs it into a piece of meat. He raises it up to his face, spinning it around. “I like what it gives me, Red.”
The riches he pulls from its depths, he means.
Like the tails of sirens…
I don’t taste the food anymore. My eyes blur with emotion as I recall my ocean home pillaged and destroyed under his command.
It was most certainly a villainous answer, Hali.
“Is that why you don’t go home?” I wonder, unable to stop myself. “So they don’t see that look in your eye, Captain?”
Now his eyes shoot up to meet mine. “What look do you see?”
The word tastes acidic on my tongue. “Bloodthirst.”
His hard expression fades as his eyes narrow on mine. “You certainly talk out of line for a timid whore.”
My heart beats faster as I struggle to look away. I can’t, though. My gaze is pinned to his eyes. He stares at me deeply, like he can pull me apart, and he knows, doesn’t he? He sees my ruse. I should be more frightened than I am. It’s just…I need to see his true self. I need to know that he’s callous and deplorable. That we’re killing him because he’s proud of the destruction he’s left behind.
“Tell you what,” he says next. “You tell me one truth about you right now, Red, and I’ll reward you kindly.”
“With what?” I wondered.
“Anything you want. If it’s safety from my crew, I’ll have you sleep in my quarters. If it’s more food, I’ll deliver a tray of whatever you desire to your room myself. What do you say?”
“I say you’re tricking me.”
Humor flashes in his eyes as his lips curve up on one side. “I’m not.”
“You want me to tell you a truth?”
“I do.”
“Why?”
He takes another bite of his food, chewing it, staring along my face and down my throat. His gaze lingers on my breasts, which are pushed up higher than I’d like. “I can’t figure you out, and I need to.”
“What if you’re wrong and I’m not interesting?”
“Doesn’t matter. I can’t shake you. My gut is telling me you’re no whore. It’s telling me you’re dangerous, but I can’t pinpoint why. And it’s fucking with my head a little. Because you have to be, honest to fucking Goddess, Red, one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen.” As if listening to his own words, he shakes his head at himself, eyes widening a little like he can’t believe he’s said that. His face hardens a fraction as his voice tenses. “A truth, Red. Give me one.”
I look away, my brain scrambling to fake a story about myself in Morda. Some sob story that I can hide behind and that he can feign pity at.
Maybe he’s the savior type. But I shake my head to myself.
No, not this man. He is the kind of person that would watch a drowning man flounder until he was on the cusp of his last breath before he even thought of pulling him out.
He would push me to my limits, if given the chance. So no, I don’t want to be a fake pity case. I don’t want to lie at all, actually. Because I sort of want this game to go both ways.
Licking my lips, I pause to take a sip from a glass full of wine by my plate. The taste is rich on my tongue. For a man who hates fanciful things, his booze speaks otherwise. I look down at the glass for a few moments, deciding my words wisely.
Then I think, to hell with it. “When I was a little girl, I watched my sister get killed. She sacrificed her life to make sure I was hidden. I watched her get cut apart like a piece of fish, and I was too much of a coward to help her.”
Clara had visited me during her shift. I had begged to see her. I was ten, and I’d never seen a siren in true form. Sneaking out of my house to meet her at the docks of an old marina, I remember feeling so happy that she was doing this for me. It was a big risk. Sirens weren’t supposed to be near shore at all, but she knew how much it meant to me.
I remember the joy I felt. I couldn’t believe how beautiful she was. A dazzling sea creature with shimmering red hair, like mine, and a glowing form. She’d come straight up to me on the dock, rested her elbows on the boardwalk and smiled up at me.
“You look like a star,” I beamed.
“It’ll be your turn soon,” she’d said. “Hold tight. Some years yet, Hali, and we’ll be doing this together.”
There were no words to describe my happiness. Life had been hard. Our family had very little. In fact, what we did have we owed to Clara and her work as a seamstress. She held us up.
It’s why I blame myself for her death.
Within minutes of admiring her, dark shadows had fallen over us, and I felt a jolt at the back of my head. The hit was so sudden, everything had gone black. By the time I blinked my eyes awake, men were searching the waters and another was hovering over me, a knife to my throat.
“That fucking siren better show herself,” a deep voice said. “Or we’re going to cut you up, little miss.”
With their words, Clara did.
I had blood running down my face. A hand had been wrapped in my hair, tugging tightly at me by a stinky, filthy man with missing teeth.
But the other men—those who were calling her out, were dressed far too well. When she had emerged her head, her terrified eyes locking to mine, one of the men said something to her. Something that made her eyes glisten with tears.
I was scared, but I knew Clara would use her siren song to stop them from hurting me. I kept waiting for it to come, but her lips merely wobbled with emotion.
I wouldn’t understand until later that a siren’s song waned close to shore. That we needed the power of the ocean to carry it.
Without fighting, she let them drag her out of the water and set her down on the boardwalk beside me. Still dazed, I sobbed for her as she pleaded for them to give her a few minutes to tell me goodbye.
“Run, Hali,” she whispered in my ear. “You must pack your things and run. Never look back.”
She embraced me as I lay there, barely able to move, my head throbbing as I realized they were going to hurt her. She embraced me, and then she offered herself to them. I crawled back, watching them form a circle around her, feeling a fear so thick, it felt like a weight around my throat. They paid me no attention as I hid behind the water barrels used to refill docked ships. I watched everything unfold, hanging on to every word as they mercilessly stole the best and most beautiful person I had ever known.
I don’t like to think about it.
Of the vile things they did. Of the promise of riches they later exchanged to one another. Of how they were going to sell her tail, and they knew just the right buyer.
I grew up in that single moment. My childhood was gone. I was never the same again. I can’t remember what life was like before that night. I just knew there was a single name they uttered, the name of the buyer who would make them rich.
Staring at Captain Erickson, I wait for his response.
My eyes are surprisingly dry as I think about my sister. I’m not emotional, as I usually am. In fact, I’m full of barely restrained rage as I stare at the very man that purchased my sister’s tail.
This is personal, I remind myself. I need to be here. To look into the eyes of the man that still has a piece of her.
“Your turn,” I say next, and it sounds unlike the meek girl I’ve pretended to be.
He stares at me for several moments. “My turn?”
“I can have whatever I want,” I remind him.
“And what do you want, Red?”
“I want a truth from you.”
His brows lift minimally. I detect the surprise in him. Of all the things I could want—the food, safety, the comfort of his quarters—I’m instead asking for the same thing he did of me.
He takes a drink of his glass. It’s amber liquid. Tougher stuff I can tell by the hiss he blows out as he presses the drink back down. For once, he’s quiet, like he doesn’t know what to say. He’s always been taking the lead; begun and ended every conversation, treating me like a pawn, but it’s different now. There's tension in the air.
When he looks at me, he’s not just loaded with that desire, but curiosity, too. It’s so thick in him, it might even outweigh the desire.
He doesn’t look at me, his eyes drawn to his wrist. I watch as he rubs at a bracelet there; his eyes losing focus, and for a moment, he’s very far away. I look down at the bracelet, wondering what emotion or memory it is attached to.
He lets out a long, shuddering breath. “Me, Red? I’m cursed.”
I wait for the punchline. For something vicious and cold. There is none.
Clearing my throat, I feel a little unnerved by the attention he gives to his bracelet. He nearly looks like a lost man. Someone you’d find tucked in the corner of a bar, drinking his sorrows away. There’s so much pain in that single look, I have to look away.
I’m being ridiculous.
There’s nothing there.
I’m simply searching for what can’t possibly exist, and so what if he was sorrowful about something? It doesn’t excuse the long history of treachery he’s left behind.
Still, I can’t help myself.
“Cursed?” I whisper.
I keep my eyes trained downward as I wait for his response. He shifts in his chair, and I sneak a glimpse up, watching as he licks his bottom lip, glistening it, and goes to speak.
BANG! BANG!
The knocks on the door are so sudden, I jump, my heart lodging in my throat.
BANG! BANG!
The Captain lets out a long sigh. “What?”
The door practically crashes open as an elderly, tall man steps through. My eyes widen in surprise as he tugs behind him a small body.
Oh, my goddess.
“Captain,” he hisses in greeting.
“Grimy,” the Captain replies, cutting his eyes to the boy in Grimy’s large hold. The large man is fisting the boy’s collar, shaking him about, and it nearly makes me jump out of my seat to pull the boy away from him.
“Your son was caught hidden under one of the tables in the entertainment room…where the women are performing for the men.”
My vision spots as the shock knocks me cold.
Son?
No, no, no.
This can’t be.
I fight to contain my shock, but it feels like the world has tilted on its axis.
I had no idea the Captain was traveling with a child.
His son .
Looking at the boy, I see he has all his father’s dark colorings. He’s beautiful too, like his father. His body is small, thin. He can’t be older than twelve.
The goddess is cruel.
The child glares up at Grimy, but his cheeks are red and he looks embarrassed to have been caught.
Captain Erickson’s voice hardens and his expression becomes fierce with quiet disdain. “James, I brought you onboard to shape you into a man. You still have a long way to go. You left a privileged world and you still think you are owed luxuries you simply wouldn’t know how to possess. It is my greatest disappointment, having you grow up in such vile splendor. What makes you think you deserve to enjoy the temptations of the flesh if you are unable to control yourself?”
James clamps his mouth shut, his face falling as he looks down at his feet. The words were so biting, I feel conflicted for the boy. Where is the affection? The gentle lesson that sometimes a boy is too young to understand this side of men? Even as I ask that to myself, I nearly want to scoff. If you’re taking a young boy aboard a bloody ship where vile shit like this happens all the time, what fatherly affection could there possibly be?
“I understand your curiosity,” the captain continues, “and as much as I look forward to the day you get to experience the many… joys life has to offer, you simply wouldn’t know what to do with a woman if you got given the chance. Or am I wrong?”
His son shakes his head stiffly, quietly muttering, “No, father.”
The captain looks at the man named Grimy. “Take him to his room. Lock it if you have to. He will get properly punished in the morning. Maybe I’ll have him polish that room he spent so much time gawking in.”
Even Grimy looks upset by the captain’s words, but he stiffens a nod. “Yes, Captain.”
His hold on the boy becomes gentler as he steers him out. The door shuts, and I look at the Captain now, watching him viciously twist around the bracelet, his teeth clenched. His mood has turned sour. In the blink of an eye, he went from looking sorrowful to vicious. I clench my hands, rattled by the uncertain mood in the air.
“Why are you upset, Red?” he questions then, like he’s itching for a fight.
“Your son is beautiful,” I whisper, walking on eggshells.
“He’s a boy ,” he hisses back, defensive.
“He looks like you.”
“That is where our likeness ends.”
“I can see that.”
That answer doesn’t please him.
Not one bit.
The captain then downs his drink and slams it on the table. Whatever thoughts he is having, he is transformed. His eyes cut to mine, and I know what’s coming.
“Enough,” he says icily. “No more talk. We’re going, Red.”
“Going where?”
He stands up, and the chair screeches back, loud as the screams in my soul because I already know.
“I want you in my bed, Red. I want you now or I might end up taking advantage of that porcelain flesh right here, within earshot of my men.”
I’m in trouble. Glancing nervously at the door, I feel the world close in on me. If I screamed for Kai, would he hear me?
We’d be as good as dead if I did that.
Deep breaths, Hali.
The shift is coming.
Your hours with the captain are numbered.
As is his life.