Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
On the days Weston and Sig bring out the training weapons, the mood on deck is always light and playful. Everyone can learn something new and blow off a little steam, which builds up in a group of people that only leave the ship once every nine days.
When I stepped back on deck yesterday with my bow slung over my chest, Fin was so excited that he started begging Weston to let us practice.
The moment he saw the training swords in their hands this morning, he let out an enormous cheer and started running around the deck in circles, only amplifying the excitement among everyone.
Weston doesn’t demand I partner with him this time, and instead works with Eirlik on his footwork, so I grab a couple full quivers and find Fin. After setting up the target bales at the bow of the ship and getting Fin in position, Auralie wanders over and asks for a lesson.
I demonstrate for a few minutes, then hand her my bow and start moving her around in the proper stance to get her started. Stassia comes along a few moments later, plopping down on the deck next to us before laying flat to soak up the sunshine.
Fin’s shots are all over the place, and arrows fly everywhere, but he isn’t deterred. Auralie takes to the bow quickly and starts hitting the bale after only a handful of attempts. I stand over Stassia, making sure not to shade her as I watch Fin and Auralie, offering comments when I need to.
“So, Lennox,” Stassia says from below. “How’d you convince Captain to give you your weapons back?” Stassia asks as Auralie’s arrow strikes the target on the second ring. I shoot her a smile as she excitedly grabs another arrow and lines up her next shot.
“I didn’t have to convince him,” I say, glancing down at her. “He bet me for them, and I won.”
“He bet you? What was the bet?”
It sounds like Weston doesn’t make bets very often, and I hide that away in my mind as just another thing he’s done with me and not everyone in the crew.
“I showed him I wasn’t completely inept with a weapon. Did you know he’s a terrible shot?”
I feel him before I hear him, and I know he heard me, but that doesn’t make my statement any less correct.
“Careful, princess.” His voice rumbles behind me, sending involuntary shivers down my spine. “I still can take them away.” Weston steps up beside me and crosses his arms over his chest as he surveys our practice.
“I won fair and square,” I say. “Besides, I’m not wrong. You completely missed the target once.”
“The tree was far away. It was supposed to be hard.” He sounds defensive, but in a playful way.
A friendly way.
“Well, I didn’t miss.”
Stassia smirks up at the sky as she listens to us, her eyes closed against the rays. Weston looks down at her and chuckles.
“Looks like you’re getting a lot of good practice in, Stass.”
She gestures to her supine body with both arms. “This is important work, Captain. I can’t be rushed.” She drapes an arm over her eyes, blocking them from the suns, and he smiles again.
We stand side by side in silence for a while, watching Auralie and Fin shoot with Stassia laying at our feet.
Fin jumps and cheers when he strikes the target, and the sounds of training and laughter still ring out across the deck.
After yesterday, and everything Weston revealed to me, this silence and proximity feels oddly comfortable, and I don’t want to know what that means.
Suddenly, I get an idea. I’m nervous to ask, because I don’t want to do anything that will force us to be closer together, but I want to learn. It shouldn’t feel different from sparring with any of the guards back home.
Fuck it.
I turn toward him quickly so I don’t go back on my decision.
“Can you teach me how to do that thing? That you did in the cave?”
He glances down at my sudden movement, and his lips curve into a smirk.
“You’re going to have to be a little more specific than that, princess.”
“When you took my dagger. Can you teach me how to do that?”
My face heats when I remember back to the fight, so similar to when I tried to escape in the night, yet so different, so much having happened in the time between.
Shall I disarm you again, princess?
My spine tingles, and I stare up at him, waiting for an answer.
“I’m not sure it’s in my best interest to teach you how to disarm me.” His eyes flicker with mischief and I roll mine. It feels good to be more like myself, more how I would act with Brynne, even though my first reaction is to fight back at him or challenge him whenever I can.
“I have a feeling you’re going to teach me anyway.
” I rest my hands on my hips and stare up at him, waiting for the ‘yes’ I know is coming.
He hasn’t turned down anyone’s request to learn how to defend themselves, and even during the last training session, he told me ways to improve.
Those suggestions could be used against him, just like this.
He beckons me with a flick of two fingers. “Come this way.”
We move into the center of the bow, far enough away that if something goes wrong, we aren’t going to accidentally injure someone. I reach in my waistband and pull my dagger from the sheath, holding it out for him to take, but he shakes his head.
“I’ll show you a few times, and then we’ll practice, alright?”
I nod quickly and watch as his fingers close around mine, wrapping them firmly on the hilt and adjusting my hand position so I’m ready to strike. Tingles erupt on my skin everywhere we are in contact, and I refuse to look at him, keeping my eyes trained on my hand so I can pick up the movements.
“I’ll start slow,” he says. Shifting his hand, his fingers wrap around my wrist, pressing into the tendons there, then angling my hand until my fingers become slack.
I can’t keep my grasp on the hilt, my hand loosening just as his moves again, quicker this time, fingertips sliding slowly against my palm.
My chest shutters with a sharp intake of breath, as the trickle of heat following his fingers on my skin makes me squirm. I hope he didn't hear it.
The dagger falls into his palm and he pulls it out of my hand, then flips it in his fingers so the blade is facing the right direction, ready to stab his opponent.
I watch the whole thing, my mouth agape at how easy the moves are for him.
“Do you want me to show you again?” he mumbles.
I slam my mouth shut and swallow hard. “Nope, I think I got it.”
That didn’t feel like sparring with the guards back home.
“Your turn then.”
Inhaling a deep breath through my nose, I focus on the task, trying to remember each of the movements in order.
He points the dagger at me and I fumble through the steps, each one more difficult than it looked because of the sheer size of his hands.
I have to learn how to adjust my grip, all the while trying not to think about how intimate this feels.
Unlike the last training session when I was too flustered and too pissed off to focus on anything other than beating him, this time Weston is a good teacher.
He doesn’t get frustrated or impatient. When I struggle, he shows me the movements again and again, or offers constructive words until I get the feel for it.
After countless tries and a mediocre performance, my hand starts cramping, so I take the excuse to step away from him.
“Now I just need to learn how to do the flippy thing you do at the end,” I say.
“I would highly recommend you try learning that with a practice dagger, not this one.” He flips it again, so the blade lays across his palm and extends it toward me.
The skillful way he handles a blade shouldn’t surprise me, with the years of practicing in Dawnlin under his belt, but sometimes I wonder if there is more to it than that.
“Thank you for teaching me,” I say as I slide the dagger back into its sheath. “I’m sorry I kept you to myself today.”
When his lips turn up in a smirk, I realize what I said.
“I mean, not you, just your instruction. You didn’t have to spend so much time with me,” I stammer, trying to dig my way out of the embarrassment that is consuming me.
“You don’t have to thank me, princess,” he says, smiling softly. “It’s my job.”
The crew around us has calmed after spending hours beneath the blazing suns training. Many sit around in groups in the shade, eating and laughing, and weapons litter the floor.
“It’s not really a captain’s job to teach everyone how to defend themselves.”
“Maybe not, but it is mine.”
“Captain!” someone calls from behind him.
Weston steps backward, his eyes locked on mine until the last moment, before he turns on his heel and heads across the deck.
There’s a small flutter in my stomach at his attention, but I turn away and walk back toward Stassia, who has barely moved.
I lay down next to her, Auralie and Fin having disappeared in search of some lunch, so we are alone.
I close my eyes, letting the heat and sunlight soak into me and let loose a sigh at how amazing it feels.
“I could lie here all day,” Stassia says. “Especially once the shirts start coming off.”
A giggle erupts from my throat, and I reach my arms up, stretching out my forearms.
I’m going to be sore later.
“Yours included?” I ask with a smile.
“You’re lucky it isn’t already,” she says, and something tells me she is not joking.
“We don’t get any sun in Blackwood,” I murmur. “It’s one part of Dawnlin I will definitely miss when we get home.” Light dances over my closed eyes as the sails rustle in the light breeze. Returning to my cold and wet kingdom isn’t enticing, despite knowing I need to get back home for my people.
“If we get home.”
“Yeah, if.”
“I have a feeling we’re about to get a heat wave,” she says after a few moments.
“You mean it gets hotter?” I say, popping up to look at her.
“Oh yeah. It’s going to be glorious.”
I lay back down with a groan. Though it took me time to get used to the heat, I’ve grown to enjoy it, knowing that if we ever do make it home, I likely would never experience heat like this again. The thought of it getting even hotter, however, is not something I am looking forward to.
We fall into silence, enjoying the calm of the deck and the break from our daily tasks. Even though my arms are heavy and exhausted, I feel good. Strong. Like how I felt after a great training session with Brynne.
It’s been a while since I felt that way, especially since being here.
“Why do you hate us?” she asks suddenly.
Her question takes me off guard. I didn’t think I’d have to explain myself, that I don’t really hate them, especially her and Auralie and Sig. Friendly feelings toward all of them have been developing more and more each day, despite still having deep-seateded reservations.
“I don’t hate you, Stass.”
“Obviously, you don’t hate me. But all of us. Why did you? I was a Voyager too, remember? We all were. We know what Dane tells people. But I still saw the good in us.”
“Do you expect me not to question it when people are being taken against their will and hidden away? You all were taken, and you just choose to ignore it because people can still have good in them?” I push up onto my elbows and look over at her, but she still lays unmoving, eyes closed.
“Captain has his reasons,” she says.
“But no one will explain them to me, Stass. I don’t understand why he is keeping everyone here. He says he is looking for a way home, but he won’t let anyone go back to Dane and just ask to be sent home.”
“You’re smart, Lennox,” she says. One of her eyes opens and squints at me against the light.
“I have a hard time believing that you never had the thought that maybe Dane is the one trying to keep everyone here. Maybe the person in charge of who comes and goes is the reason people come, but never leave?”
I shake my head. “It’s not about the dust. It’s about Weston wanting to steal the healing waters. That’s why he’s taking everyone.”
She closes her eye again and straightens her head, looking back up at the sky.
“If all he wanted was to steal the healing waters, why would we be looking so hard for a way home without them? Don’t forget, none of us have them. Does that explanation even still make sense?”
Her words settle between us.
She’s right.
Why would he want to help everyone leave empty-handed, if he was just trying to bring the waters back to our world to use for his own gain?
Especially if he was telling the truth that he came here for someone.
He doesn’t seem like he wants to get home, just to have money or power, at least not how he’s been acting recently.
“But Dane said that Weston killed the last Guardian,” I say, forgetting that important detail.
“It seems to me like you’re getting to know him a little better. Ask yourself, does he seem like the kind of person who would just kill someone?”
My jaw slackens as I sit, stumped, but Stassia continues on.
“Dane says Weston did, and you believe him. But if Weston said he didn’t, would you believe him?”
“I don’t know who to believe anymore,” I whisper.
“The island,” she says. “We always trust the island. It hasn’t steered us wrong yet.”
Stassia is right. Dawnlin hasn’t been wrong, even if I don’t agree with it and question the magic. Dawnlin gave me the means to make a map, which helped me find the waters, but after leading me to it, deemed me unworthy. It doesn’t make sense.
If empty handed you leave by dust, in the magic of Dawnlin, you must trust.
Every one of the Castaways left empty-handed, but the island specifically told us to trust it, and if it has been hiding them for all this time, maybe not trusting them is wrong.
The island led me here, led me to the Castaways.
Led me to Weston.
Is this where I was supposed to be all along?
Sometimes I catch myself thinking it feels like…home.
“Can I be honest with you, Stass?” I murmur.
“Hmm?” She hums in response.
“I don’t really have friends back home. Being here, on Dawnlin, is the first time in my life I haven’t been lonely. Whatever happens, you and Sig and Auralie, you all are important to me. I just wanted you to know that.”
She turns her head and smiles at me, reaching over to squeeze my hand.
“Careful Lennox. You’re starting to look like you actually like it around here.”
I chuckle and squeeze her hand back before she releases.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “We all care about you, too. And your secret is safe with me.”