CHAPTER FIVE
“Dear gods,” Zahara murmured under her breath, unsheathing the blade strapped across her back before I even blinked. My own dagger pressed deep within my palm at the crew’s reaction to the interruption.
The winged male jumped toward us from the railing, as if not afraid of the glinting metal we held, bearing himself with fearless poise and unshakeable confidence.
Possibly even cockier than Calvin.
“Gods? Arrived,” he announced dryly, gesturing to himself. “Not that most prayers ever reached me anyway.” Strands of vermillion hair blew across his face, drawing attention to the fiery scars ripping through his skin.
A god. No memories surfaced of gods walking amongst mortals, but I was damned sure the one before us had only selfish gains from our company. Confusion surged beneath my skin, but it felt odd as if misplaced… or an emotion not my own.
He sidestepped Zahara, pushing the blade from his face with a bare hand and strolled to the round table holding the map.
His eyes flitted across me and stuck again like a wild animal caught in a trap, brows scrunched as if inspecting.
My feet betrayed my uncertainty—my fear—stumbling into retreat until my back hit the helm’s siding.
He looked away and leaned over the parchment, studying it with a cock of his head. His fingers trailed the continents in silence, invasive and calculating.
“You’re Noctis. The God of the Forsaken,” Calvin whispered with certainty.
The name curled itself around my ribs like a serpent, strangely warm, strangely sad.
“Was. I was the God of the Forsaken. Then, I was forsaken. It’s a bit ironic, isn’t it?” Noctis elaborated, his focus glued to the map. “Now, which route are we taking to Shadeborne?”
Mute stillness settled like a held breath. My heartbeat rang through my ears, though like a broken metronome, increasing by each second of silence.
Noctis sighed as he rose to his feet, his flame-colored wings unfurling behind him in a slow, shadowy sweep. His icy cyan eyes rolled with all the weight of someone far too tired of the world. Or the luck he’d been granted in it. “The trident can only be forged by a god, descended or not.”
“What about a banished one?” Calvin offered a quip edged in tension, his voice still low. Noctis glared at him with such murderous intensity, he shuffled slightly at the discomfort.
Banished? What was in it for him?
“Yes, even a banished one. I’m still divine. Just banned from the fruitless, annual god-summits, which as you should know are hollow endeavors."
Banished and banned didn’t seem like a deal worth making.
Zahara slowly inched her sword into its sheath along her back, nodding for the others at her side to follow suit. I hesitated, something whispering in my mind to grip the blade tighter instead.
“What’s behind your interest in joining us?
It isn’t heard of for gods to mingle around us mortals,” she questioned, her words veering on rashness.
Uncertainty and trust could get us killed, but even I knew the mission’s impossibility without him.
If Noctis spoke the truth, the chances of finding a god to forge the trident would be a feat greater than retrieving the pieces themselves; however, the coincidence of his joining at that precise time wasn’t lost on me either.
Noctis’s cerulean gaze passed me, lingered for a second, then met the pirate’s. “After you defeat the operations between the land and sea, I want the titan for myself.”
Holy shit. The power the god would have with his own powers as well as the titan’s would surely be enough to end the realms all together.
“That can’t happen,” Zahara snapped back nearly before the words escaped his mouth.
“Listen here, pirate. I’m the only god you’ll find willing to come to land, forge the trident, awaken a titan, and go nose-to-nose with a goddess, much less one as strong and hot-headed as the Ocean Mother. So, unless you have any other plans, I’d suggest you get quaint in my company.”
Okay, definitely more cocky than Calvin.
“No,” Zahara growled. “You’ll get your turn after the Ocean Mother falls, after the Royal Vanguard is dealt with, and after I’ve had mine. You wait.”
“Bringing in a dark god and the sacrificed, hunted merfolk sounds more like a risk than a plan,” Jun murmured behind his hood, his dusky charcoal eyes scrutinizing.
I agree with Jun.
“Deal,” the god pronounced, ignoring him all together. “Since we are sharing everything now, where will I sleep?”
Calvin walked the god and I around the ship, giving a tour of the main deck, the door that hid the pirate’s quarters, the food galley, cargo hold, and lastly, the tight crew quarters.
His hesitant eyes shot back and forth toward Noctis at his back.
Warmth found me at the crew’s acceptance, a quiet recognition of belonging I hadn’t known I missed; however, an inkling of mistrust paved its way through me of the god as if there were something misplaced or wrong.
Calvin opened the door of the crew quarters, revealing a net stretched across the barren room, lantern light filtering in through the cracks between the wooden beams above us. It was a shadow-choked nook, barely wide enough to lay in—four arms-length walls tethered together by iron nails.
I shot a harrowing look at Calvin.
“There’s only one place to sleep? Where do you and Jun sleep?” My eyes frantically scoured the room for another hammock.
One bed. Would it be so bad to jump back into the sea?
Calvin winced. “Sorry, Cae. Jun and I cleared the map room when we joined the crew.”
“No need to ripple your scales over it. I’ll take the floor,” Noctis crooned, making his way to an empty spot and stretched out a blanket he found in a heap. His wings swept the chamber wall-to-wall before he drew them in, flattening himself to the grimy floor.
“Scream loud if you need us,” Calvin whispered and stalked out, leaving the god and I alone.
“He does know that all of my senses are amplified, right? God blood, and all.”
Just when I believed I’d be safe with the crew, they threw me into the grasps of a banished, lying god.
I didn’t respond, only tiptoed over him and stared at the hammock. I had no inkling how to get inside of it, how to climb in without flipping myself straight to the floor.
“Your entire body goes into it,” Noctis smoothly drawled, his eyes closed. Shadows cast over his face, the scars illuminating in the night like lightning bolts cutting through his skin, raw and angry, as if a jagged blade had torn through the flesh itself.
I carefully placed my knee into the netting and pulled myself over it. It shifted savagely, my heart pounding at its motion when I nearly toppled over, a high-pitched squeal escaping my lips.
Great. Weak looking already.
The god huffed in amusement, his eyes still drawn closed.
The irony wasn’t lost on me—rocked to sleep in a cradle of knots, when my kind were made to escape them.
“Tell me, Caelyn,” Noctis murmured from the floor. My heart pounded against my chest as his words filled the room. “Do you have any memories at all? Or did the Ocean Mother steal them like she normally does?”
There was no reason for him to know what ran through my head. It would make me weak, and as my body began to detest the panic and weigh it down as exhaustion instead in his presence, I needed him to know I was anything but powerless—even if that’s exactly how I viewed myself.
“It won’t stop me from eating your heart.”
He chuckled, but I caught the emptiness in the sound. “You wouldn’t have struck me as a cannibal. I’m sure that organ of mine would be foul, though.”
“Probably.”
Silence settled like layers of dust. Every shuffle of his body against the wooden floor panels startled my eyes back open.
A specific word spoken that day spun within my mind over and over, raking its invisible nails against my skin and leaving behind flesh bumps.
“What is a Thirstling?” The question spilled from my lips without second thought.
Noctis remained silent, the hanging lantern light dancing across his face. His eyes slowly peeled open, brows downturned as he met my questioning gaze.
“Young blood drinkers. Freshly turned.”
The feeling lingered, as if I had missed something important, while my body strained to open the gates within my head. Except, it failed miserably, the tidal wave of emotions surging through me much more miserable than the sacrifice itself.
However, the day’s adrenaline had waned, so when I unsheathed the dagger from my thigh and held it across my chest for defense, sleep found me in seconds.
I’d get answers in the morning. If I survived it.