Chapter 41
Amaya sat with the teenagers for several hours, letting Grace braid the top layers of her hair while Mouse practiced his reading.
None of Edmund’s books were especially easy, but he was doing well.
Grace quickly proved to be a far superior teacher to Amaya—which made sense, given her tutoring experience.
“Island,” she said, peeking over Amaya’s shoulder at the atlas Mouse was working through. “Not ‘is-land.’”
Mouse looked up and frowned, turning the book toward her and pointing at the word. “But the s.”
“I’m aware of the spelling, but it’s pronounced ‘island.’ The s is silent.”
“Silent letters are dumb,” Mouse grumbled, causing Grace to giggle. “How the heck are you supposed to know when an s is silent?”
“It’s just one of those things.” Grace tied off Amaya’s braid with a ribbon and went to sit beside him. “There aren’t many silent s’s, though, so don’t get hung up on it.”
Mouse’s shoulders dropped. “I’ll never figure this out.”
“Don’t be silly, Phineus. Even remarkable idiots can learn how to read, and you are not an idiot.”
Mouse chewed his lip. “Well, how long did it take you to learn?”
“Oh.” Grace paused. “Well . . . I was reading Common Tongue when I was two. But that’s not typical. You mustn’t make comparisons.”
“Two!?”
Amaya laughed and leaned against the wall. Her head retained a dull ache from last night, but it was easy to relax with Mouse and Grace. She didn’t have to guard her expressions or measure her words—she didn’t need to speak at all, actually, and hadn’t in almost an hour.
“I never could have done all those impressive things you talked about at Starcrest,” Grace said, trying to regain some common ground.
“I made some of that up, though.”
“Which parts?”
“Well, the captain part. I’m not a captain.”
Grace giggled and nudged him. “Now seems like a good time to remind you I am not an idiot, either. I knew that instantly.”
Mouse’s shoulders slumped. “Really?”
“Of course. It was very cute, though.”
Amaya tilted her head, somewhat following their conversation, but sensed she’d essentially faded into the woodwork for all the teenagers cared. They didn’t even notice when she slipped out.
The Maelstrom was airborne now, soaring through fluffy clouds into an endless sky.
Amaya tugged out her braid to let the wayward breeze comb through the loose waves of her hair, the fresh air filling her lungs with hope and possibility.
She still hadn’t fully unpacked last night’s events, and had no idea what lay ahead now that they knew Graven had Genesis, but it felt good to be back. It felt right.
With no particular destination in mind, she meandered to the bow of the ship. They were western-bound, and that meant an incredible sunset was on its way. She leaned her forearms on the rail, letting the vivid sky and pink candyfloss clouds encompass her entire field of vision.
Amaya felt infinite here. Like nothing could touch her. Like all the problems she’d left behind in Sorrento were just gone. That wasn’t true, of course. But the illusion of freedom that came with hurtling through the stratosphere stole her breath away.
“I hope I’m not interrupting, Miss Sinclair.”
The warm sound of Will’s voice yanked Amaya from her reverie and sent her heart thumping. His voice was the one she wanted to hear the most, and it would have made her smile—if not for what he’d called her.
Miss Sinclair.
It was so cold, so impersonal. Amaya looked down at her hands instead of turning to him, picking at her nails.
“You know I hate that.”
“A little hypocritical, don’t you think? You never called me what I asked.”
Will rested his forearms next to hers, a familiar red brocade sleeve brushing against her skin. The black veining of Aetheric Decay crept out from the sleeve’s cuff.
“I wanted to thank you for what you did for Ed and Bas,” he said.
Amaya sensed his eyes on her, focused and intense, though his voice was frustratingly void of emotion. Even Malcolm was less robotic.
“You shouldn’t thank me.”
“Yes, I should. And I understand you leveraged Westbrook to do it.”
Ah, there was the emotion. Will spat out Victor’s name like it was poison.
“I wasn’t sure how you’d do it,” he continued, “but it was brave. Smart.”
Biting her lip, Amaya clasped her hands together to cover the offensive diamond ring. Nothing had happened between her and Will; there was no reason to feel like she’d betrayed him. They hadn’t made any promises or crossed any lines.
So why did she feel the need to justify what she’d done?
“I didn’t know what else to do,” she said. “It was the only way he would listen to me. My father wouldn’t even talk about it. I didn’t think Victor would take it that far until it was too late.”
Amaya chewed her bottom lip, thinking back to how small she’d felt.
“I was so angry. The second I stepped back inside that house, they treated me like a child. Like I was hysterical and needed to go lie down while the men took care of everything. They’ve always treated me like that.
And it was always annoying, but it’s never made me so angry.
And I’m sorry I didn’t make it back sooner.
I had a plan, it just . . .” Amaya shook her head.
“It had to wait until after Camden’s memorial. ”
Will shifted his weight. “How was it? The memorial?”
“Awful. They found his body in the lake but it was too decomposed for the coffin, and I was so sick over it. And then my father barely let me leave the house, and Victor was suffocating, and I just wanted to talk to you, and . . .” Amaya sniffed, brushing away tears that had gathered on her eyelashes.
“I felt like I was shutting down until Grace snapped me out of it. And I know you were dealing with so much more here, and I’m so sorry—”
Will shook his head. “It’s not a competition, Amaya. And it’s not just you. For what it’s worth, I shut down the second I saw the ship on the ground. And a thousand times over once I stepped on board.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better.”
Amaya couldn’t even imagine the Maelstrom on the ground. A chip of her heart broke off at the thought, and she slid her hand across the railing to cover one of his.
Touching him was almost too much. How could he be so close and still feel out of reach?
“I’m still sorry,” Amaya added. “And it’s not your fault.” She knew he was blaming himself for the lives lost during Graven’s attack, because she was still blaming herself for Camden.
Will was silent for a long beat before he spoke again, flipping the subject back to her.
“You suppressed how you really felt for a long time in Sorrento, I bet. Now that you know what it’s like to be free of it, it’s painful to put yourself back in that box.”
In his effort to not talk about his own feelings, he’d managed to put words to the feeling Amaya couldn’t describe on her own. The ache in her chest tightened, a longing for something she didn’t understand seeping into her bones.
“I don’t want to go back in the box.”
Amaya whispered the words as if it was a secret to be ashamed of. And maybe she was ashamed, just a little. How callous could she be to completely turn her back on her home? Her father? Daisy?
But how could she go back?
The heat of Will’s stare lifted, finally pulling Amaya’s gaze up and snapping the string of tension that kept her hand over his.
She released him, watching as the burgeoning sunset cast warm rays over his tan skin and deepened the gold of his hair, flicking at the metallic thread woven through his coat.
“Do you have to?” he asked. “Go back?”
Amaya looked at her ring. “I don’t know. I made a commitment.”
“Who says you have to keep it?”
Before, Amaya would have said she needed to keep it because of the ways Victor might retaliate. But after the way she’d abandoned him last night, broken and humiliated, that was kind of a moot point.
“Human decency?” she said instead.
But no—that wasn’t it. The truth was that rejecting Victor seemed to carry the weight of rejecting her entire life in favor of a different one.
“It’s your life, Amaya. Fuck human decency.” Will turned to face her, a war raging across his features. “Westbrook doesn’t deserve you. He doesn’t deserve any of your curated selves, and he sure as hell doesn’t deserve the real one.”
Amaya blinked. “You saw him for all of two seconds, how could you possibly—”
“I saw him at the Coil,” Will snapped, fisting his hands on the rail.
His face flushed red, heat radiating off him.
“I was there. He acted like he’d just won a lottery and talked shit about you and your father while making sure everyone knew exactly how revealing your dress was.
And I swear, I’ve never wanted to end a life so badly. ”
Shadows danced around Will’s fingertips, loading his declaration with promise.
Although Amaya didn’t want Victor dead, it was disturbing how attractive she found Will’s threat. How it made her heart pound, her breath catch. He’d kill for her—not just to protect her from harm, but because Victor had dared to slander her in front of his peers.
It was entirely unhinged.
It should terrify her.
It didn’t. Not anymore.
“He doesn’t deserve you,” Will repeated when she failed to respond. “I don’t think . . .” He took a deep breath. “I can’t watch you marry him.”
“I don’t think you’ll be welcome at the wedding.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then say what you mean.” A sharp edge crept into Amaya’s voice. He wouldn’t look at her, so Amaya leaned over the railing to try and meet his eyes. “Give me a reason to walk away.”
He rolled his eyes. “What I just told you is reason enough—”
“No. Tell me why you can’t watch it happen.”
Maker above, he was so damn stubborn. He waxed poetic about her breaking out of her box one moment and closed the lid on his own box the next.
If he said he wanted her, that was it. Amaya wanted this man—this hotheaded, violent, ruthless man who protected her and empowered her and saw her—to be hers more than she wanted to draw another breath.
“I told you in Forthstead. I don’t like to share,” Will grumbled.
“I don’t want to be shared. But you haven’t claimed anything.”
When he still didn’t budge, Amaya almost screamed in frustration. What was holding him back?
If he asked, if he wanted her, if she knew she would have a place here with him . . . she’d do it. She’d turn her back on everything else in a heartbeat. But it wasn’t a trade she could make without reading the fine print.
“Will, if I do this, I need to know that you—”
“How does this end? You and I.”
The question caught her off guard.
How did this end?
Knowing how to shoot a gun didn’t make Amaya a pirate. And it wasn’t like Will could abandon his crew, his ship, the life he’d worked so hard and risked so much for to live in Sorrento with her. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t.
They didn’t make any sense together. But continuing to ignore this made even less sense. Amaya was tired of denying her unsavory desires and controlling her reckless impulses. She just wanted to be.
And she wanted to be with him.
She threw up her arms in surrender. “I don’t know, Will. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next hour, let alone the next week—the next year. All I know is that right now, I want you.”
The confession felt like holding out her too-heavy heart and begging him to stomp it underfoot.
“And I think you want me, too,” she continued. “But if you don’t, if I’m wrong and I’ve misread everything, that’s . . . that’s fine. I just need you to tell me, because—”
Amaya didn’t register moving, but the small of her back collided with the railing as Will pushed into her space, caging her between his body and the open sky.
His chest pressed to hers while his hands pinned her wrists to the metal bar, the combination of his heat and the cold metal setting her aflame.
He was so close, but still too far. The inches between them were the cruelest form of torture she could imagine, and she wanted to tear down every barrier—physical, emotional, cultural, geographical—that kept them apart.
Judging by the gleam in his eyes, he did, too.
“If I don’t want you,” he said darkly, as if it was the most ridiculous phrase he’d ever heard, “then hell has frozen over. I want you more than you can imagine, Bluebird. I want to make you mine. I want to ruin you for anyone else who even dares to look.”
His voice was a heady mix of anger and barely restrained desire that brought goose bumps to the surface of Amaya’s skin, amplifying her longing. She needed to hear what that voice sounded like when he came undone, when he whispered her name in the dark.
“I wake up wanting you,” he said. “I go to sleep wanting you. And I want you every damn second in between. Always.”
“Then do something about it,” Amaya challenged.
His eyes turned feral, his lips parting, and for a short, electrifying moment, Amaya thought he might finally take what he wanted and let her do the same.
Instead, his eyes found her ring and flashed, but not with desire. With hurt. Sadness.
“No,” he said. The single word was an insulator, instantly cutting off the electricity. He released her. “I won’t touch you, Amaya. Not until you’ve made your choice.”
“I’ve made my choice.”
“Then you wouldn’t still be wearing his ring.”
The cold finality of his statement sucked all the oxygen from the air, his words needling her open heart.
But he was right. She couldn’t ask him to commit to her when she was still committed to someone else.
Amaya glanced down at the diamond currently ruining everything. What was it with her and problematic jewelry?
Then she looked back up, and Will was leaving.
Fuck it. He didn’t get to walk away from this now, and she wasn’t losing him. Not today, not ever.
Amaya glared at Will’s retreating form as the engagement ring clattered against the wooden floorboards of the Maelstrom, the sound reverberating across the empty deck.
“How about now?”