13. Rafe
RAFE
After they'd finally separated, neither of them speaking, Isla had pulled a blanket from the bedroom without looking at him. He'd taken it. She'd gone through the bedroom door. He'd stood in the dark kitchen staring at the stove before spreading the blanket on the braided rug near the hearth.
He hadn't slept well. His wolf had opinions about the closed door between them, loud ones, but Rafe overruled it because whatever had happened on that counter didn't give him the right to her bed. Not yet.
She'd kissed him first. He kept coming back to that.
Standing in her kitchen with the candle throwing light across her face, her eyes holding his with something fierce behind them, she'd grabbed the front of his jacket.
Pulled him down to her mouth. And the moment she had, every line he'd been holding went taut.
The scent of her, the taste, the heat of her body pressed against his.
He'd known what it was. The bond, the recognition, every primal thread his wolf had been pulling since the first touch outside the inn.
It had moved through him like a current finding ground.
She didn't know. That was the part that sat heavy now.
She'd felt something, he was certain of it.
The way she'd looked at him before she kissed him, confused at her own want, frustrated by it.
She'd asked him why he was calm. She'd told him things she didn't tell people.
She'd put her mouth on his like she couldn't stand not to for one more second.
But she didn't know the word for what was driving it, didn't have the framework.
She just knew something about him pulled at her.
After their first exchanges, she was probably furious about that.
Morning light came through the kitchen windows, pale and clean, the storm wrung out of the sky overnight. The lake was visible through the glass, flat, silver, quiet. He folded the blanket and set it on the chair. He found his jacket where it had dropped on the floor and put it on.
He was standing at the stove checking the embers when the bedroom door opened.
Isla came out dressed in a clean shirt, her silverish hair loose over her shoulders, still damp from what he assumed was a basin wash. She stopped in the kitchen doorway. Looked at him. Looked at the folded blanket on the chair.
"Morning," she said.
"Morning."
A pause. She crossed to the counter, filled the kettle, put it on the stove. Her movements were measured. She stood with her back to him while the water heated.
"Tea?" she asked.
"Sure."
She made two cups without turning around. Set one on the table near him and took the other to the window seat. She sat with her knees pulled up, cradling the cup with both hands, looking out at the lake.
"Quite a way to spend a stormy night," she said.
He couldn't tell if it was deflection or an opening. He drank the tea. It was chamomile, mild, nothing like the black coffee he ran on, but he wasn't going to comment on it.
"I should get back to the dock," he said. "There’s still ots of work to do."
"Okay."
He set the cup on the table. The kitchen was small enough that three steps would put him next to her at the window seat, close enough to touch, close enough to say something that would change the shape of the morning. He didn't take the steps.
"The plank's still on the porch," he said instead. "The hull piece Freya sent me about."
"I remember."
"If you get a chance to look at it."
"I said I would."
Another silence. The kettle ticked on the cooling stove. She watched him from the window seat. Her eyes were guarded but not cold. Something underneath was working through her, something she hadn't sorted yet.
"The ship repairs," he said. "I could use another pair of hands for the rigging refit. You mentioned you knew rope work."
She let out a short laugh. "I didn't mention that. You assumed it because I had a coil on my shoulder."
"You had a coil on your shoulder, a proper butterfly coil, not a yard wrap. That's someone who's handled line before."
"My father was a dock man. I grew up around rigging."
"So I'm not wrong."
"You're asking me to come work on your ship."
"I'm asking if you were serious when you said you owed me for the damage."
The laugh that came out of her this time was sharper. Disbelieving. She looked at him over the rim of her cup like she was checking whether he'd lost his mind during the night. Then she saw his face.
"You're serious," she said.
"I don't joke about my ship."
Looking out at the lake, something in her expression shifted, the edge softening by a fraction. "I might stop by. I'm not sure how useful I'll be."
"I'll take what I can get."
"That's very gracious of you."
"I'm a gracious man."
Her mouth twitched. Not a smile, but close.
She looked back at the lake, both hands around her cup, her shoulders carrying tension she was trying not to show.
He could feel how scared she was. Not of him, not of what had happened between them.
Scared of reading into it. Scared of wanting something that could be pulled away.
"Last night," she started.
"Doesn't have to be anything," he said. "Unless you want it to be."
She held his eyes as if she was trying to evaluate his answer.
"I'll see you at the dock," she said.
He nodded once. Left the hull plank on the porch on his way out and walked the western path toward town with the morning cold on his face and his wolf pacing behind his ribs.
The dock was already busy when he reached it.
Rowan and Rafe’s crew had the hull partition open, the damaged planks stacked on the pier for assessment.
Orick was running inventory below. Pell sat on the dock rail eating something wrapped in paper from the bakery, looking like a man who'd slept twelve hours instead of six.
Dex was waiting for him at the gangway. He had two cups of coffee from the dockside tavern balanced in one hand, the other shoved in his jacket pocket. His face held the particular blankness that meant he had something to say and was deciding how to say it.
"You look rested," Dex said, handing him a cup.
"Don't start."
"I haven't started anything."
"Your face started something."
Dex fell into step beside him as they walked the dock toward the Ashvane's stern. "I was at the dock tavern this morning. Early. Petch opens at six for the freight crews."
"And?"
"And the conversation at the bar was interesting."
Rafe stopped walking. "How interesting?"
"There was a table of three. Two north channel runners I've seen before, one man I haven't.
They were talking about you." Dex's voice was level.
Conversational. The voice he used when the information was bad.
"Specifically about you being seen walking to the stormcaller's cottage last night. Before the storm hit."
Rafe's hand tightened on the coffee cup. "Who saw that."
"That's the question. The men at the table didn't claim firsthand knowledge. They said they'd heard it, which means someone told them, which means someone was watching the western path last night. Deliberately."
"What exactly are they saying?"
"That the Ashvane's captain has been spending time with the fae woman who controls the weather.
That it's convenient, a merchant captain with a stormcaller at his disposal.
" Dex pulled a folded paper from his inside pocket.
"It gets worse. This was posted on the supply board at the tavern this morning.
Petch pulled it down but not before six or seven people read it. "
Rafe took the paper. It was a modified version of his supply manifest from the Vanewright run, the same document format, the same layout, but with additions.
Handwritten notes in the margins citing weather-related losses on competing routes that corresponded, line by line, with dates Rafe had been running the same stretch of river.
The implication was surgical. Every storm that had cost another captain cargo in the last three months was matched to a date Rafe had been in the area.
None of it was true. The correlation was manufactured. But it was built well enough that a tired freight runner glancing at it over morning coffee would see a pattern.
"This isn't mine," Rafe said.
"I know that."
"Someone altered my manifest. They had access to my route schedule, my delivery dates, my cargo documentation." He read it again. The handwriting in the margins was practiced. "This took time. This wasn't thrown together this morning."
"No. It wasn't."
Rafe glanced at the dock, the tavern, the tree line beyond the eastern bank. The morning was bright. Clean. The kind of morning that made last night's storm feel like something he'd imagined.
"The timing," he said. "Me going to Isla's cottage, the rumors at the bar, this manifest showing up on the board. All in the same twelve hours."
"Someone was watching you," Dex said. "They saw you go to her place. They had the manifest ready. They planted both at the same time."
"Malrick."
"That's where my money is."
Rafe folded the paper carefully. Put it in his jacket pocket.
The anger that moved through him was not the explosive kind.
It was slower, colder, the kind that settled into muscle and stayed there.
Someone had watched him walk to Isla's cottage.
Someone had been close enough to the western path to see it.
Then they'd gone to the dock tavern and laid the groundwork for a story that tied him to a stormcaller in a way that made every captain on the river nervous.
"He's not just going after my routes," Rafe said. "He's building a case. Tying me to her publicly, making the connection look strategic. If the river traders believe I've been using weather magic to sabotage competition, I lose every contract I've got."
"Which is exactly what he wants."
"And Isla becomes the weapon in the story whether she knows it or not."
Dex was quiet. He eyed the coffee in his hand like he was considering its merits against something stronger.
"I want the name of every person at that table this morning," Rafe said. "Who they run for, what routes, how long they've been on this stretch. I want to know who the third man was, the one you didn't recognize."
"Already working on it."
"And I want to know how Malrick got my manifest. The original is in my cabin. The only copies went to the Vanewright account and the harbourmaster's office."
"Corwen's office." Dex said it flatly. "Anyone with dock access could have pulled the filing copy overnight. Corwen locks the front but the side window hasn't latched properly since the last storm."
Rafe drank his coffee. It was bitter, over-extracted, the way the dock tavern always made it. The Ashvane was sitting in her mooring with the hull partition open, Rowan's men working steady, the bow rail still bare where Silas's bracket hadn't come back yet.
He was stranded in this town for at least four more days. His ship was open. His manifest was compromised. His presence at a woman's cottage was already turning into a weapon. Every hour he spent here gave Malrick more material to work with.
He finished the coffee. Crushed the cup and threw it in the dock bin.
"Get me those names.”