12. On a Night like Tonight #2
The angry calls and cheering crowd grow louder the closer we get to the tavern.
I deeply miss the quiet of that moment on the rocks as we reemerge into the torchlight of Nassau to find men fighting in the street, pistols cocked and voices rising above one another as they scramble, their weapons poised.
I follow Captain Night quickly through the crowd.
It parts before him, whispers following in his wake.
He stops inside the circle outside of the tavern where three people stand out from the rest of the gathering crowd, his brow knit, fury written across his features as he scans the scene.
Astra is crouched in the sand at the center, a hand pressed to their nose as blood pours down their lips. Their hat is crumpled in the sand, and it’s only then that I see a man screaming a few feet away, one of Astra’s knives lodged through his foot, pinning him to the ground.
My jaw drops as Astra meets my gaze, their expression unconcerned. “They provoked me,” they say. “Kept going on about how Captain Night needed someone else to do his dirty work for him.” I extend a hand, and they accept it, standing and tilting their head back.
I reach out to take a look, but they swat me away. “I think you broke it,” I say.
“Probably.”
Someone shuffles close, and I watch as Captain Night grabs a second man standing inside the circle and hauls him forward by his shirt before wrapping his hand around his neck and squeezing. I don’t recognize the stranger, but the crowd certainly seems to.
“You dare show your face after you ratted on us?”
Oh shit.
Captain Night drags him closer, and the man tries to fight, shoving and yanking on him, but it’s no use. My captain’s hold is strong, and by the veins popping in his neck and forehead, he’s furious. “You crossed the wrong man, Peter.”
“I didn’t mean to,” the man—Peter—wheezes. His face darkens from red to purple as Captain Night’s other hand reaches for the knife in his belt.
“Say it again,” Captain Night warns.
Peter laughs. “You were always a joke of a captain, you know that? No one took you seriously. You were all about fairness and taking care of your crew, but you could never bring yourself to raise your sword when we needed your might. It’s why we starved!
” He grins as Captain Night’s hand tightens around his throat.
“You never did have the backbone to do what needed to be done.”
Captain Night’s chest heaves. I think for a moment that he’ll let go, show him mercy, but he doesn’t. His hand only tightens around Peter’s throat as he raises his knife.
I’m frozen in place, one hand on Astra’s arm, the other at my side, fingers itching to pull him back before he can cross that line.
But there’s no stopping him. This was always unavoidable, even I know that.
Captain Night lost half his crew because of this man, and I can’t blame him for wanting revenge.
I just didn’t want to be privy to the details.
This is who he is, Laszlo. This is the man you almost kissed.
I don’t want to see him as a killer, don’t want to see the pirate in him come to life, but there’s no looking away from this. Though I tried to ignore it, I heard the gunshot on that merchant ship. And I may not have been certain it was him who fired, but on some level, I knew.
Teeth gritted, Captain Night drags the knife across Peter’s throat, blood spraying over him.
I flinch, my free hand balling into a fist at my side.
Peter gurgles, and Captain Night drops him before stooping and wiping his bloody knife on the man’s shirt.
He sheathes it at his belt, turning to survey the crowd.
“Go,” he orders the other man. Frantic, Peter’s companion pulls the knife from his foot before turning and limping through the crowd.
There is a warning in Captain Night’s look, a message conveyed.
He is covered in blood, crimson droplets splattered over the rich cobalt blue of his jacket, over his face and stubble.
Jaw clenched, he strides forward and wraps an arm around Astra’s waist, and the crowd lets us pass as we help them toward the tavern.
My blood turns cold, and my hands start to shake. I can’t hear anything but a high-pitched ringing in my ears. Captain Night says something to me, his finger tapping my hand on Astra’s lower back to get my attention, and I blink, trying to focus as we enter the tavern.
Adelphine is at the bar and speaking to someone, but she stops mid-sentence when she spots us. She apologizes quietly before coming our way, scowling. “What have you done?” she hisses, tugging us toward the stairs.
What I knew he could do.
Since the day I set foot on his ship, I’ve always known exactly who he is. He’s a pirate. He’s a killer. Attractive and alluring as he may be, I was a fool to think he could ever turn his back on revenge.
We follow Adelphine up to the second floor. I try to ignore the sounds of pleasure emanating from behind both open and closed doors as we’re led past them and up another set of stairs to a third story.
“What happened?” Adelphine asks.
“It was Peter,” Astra says, voice muffled by the sleeve pressed to their nose to stanch the blood.
“And you?” Adelphine asks, focusing on Captain Night. “Why are you covered in blood?”
He clears his throat but says nothing as she opens a set of double doors and ushers us in, closing them quickly behind us. I don’t want to look at him, to be reminded of what he did, but I do anyway, my pulse thrumming as I survey the blood spatter staining his clothes and skin.
“No, I don’t want to know,” Adelphine mutters. “So long as it didn’t happen in my tavern.”
I scan the room as Adelphine pulls out a chair for Astra by a table in the corner before disappearing into an attached room at the back.
The inside of this room looks far superior to the main bar.
Miraculously, the paint on the walls isn’t chipping away.
There is a neatly kept desk before one of the windows, with rolled-up maps and scribbled-on parchment piled atop.
And behind the table and chair where Astra is seated, there is a silk dressing screen with clothes draped over it and a washing tub peeking out behind it.
Along the farthest wall sits a large four-poster bed covered in silks with a trunk at the foot. It appears to be locked up tight. I’m at once drawn to the lock, to whatever secrets are being kept behind it, but I jerk away as Adelphine knocks over a bucket somewhere in the back room.
Other than the furniture, it’s rather barren. I can’t tell based on the few belongings who, if anyone, it belongs to.
“Whose room is this?” I ask.
“It’s mine,” Captain Night says, shrugging off his jacket and tossing it over the changing screen. I turn away, suddenly unsure of where to look.
So it’s his room. It’s different from the cabin aboard his ship, and I yearn to yank everything out, to get to know him piece by piece. Did he pick out the furniture and the silks? Are those his clothes on the dressing screen? Where do the maps lead, and what does the parchment say?
He clears his throat as Adelphine returns with some fresh water and a cloth.
She sets up at the table and gently pries Astra’s hand away from their face before soaking the cloth and wringing it out.
Adelphine’s expression is soft and tender, and I blush, averting my gaze as if I’ve walked in on something I shouldn’t have.
My attention goes to the jacket over the screen for a fragment of a moment before I spin away.
This room is not a home. Other than the furniture and the few pieces of discarded clothing, there is little to suggest someone truly considers it so.
In fact, it reminds me a lot of my London flat.
There is nothing to indicate how often he comes and goes, whether he has built a life here, or how long he stays.
Not like the cabin on his ship, with its papers and books and pipe tobacco, and the single hook in the closet for his blue coat.
There, he has built a routine, a life in that space.
This room is a temporary place to rest, a temporary reprieve from a life at sea.
I turn as Adelphine helps Astra stand, the bloody cloth pressed to their nose, the spatter of blood across their face mopped up for the most part.
“Astra can sleep in my rooms tonight,” Adelphine says, stopping before Captain Night. I open my mouth to say something, but her eyes snap to me with a raised brow, and I press my lips into a flat line.
Captain Night follows them to the door. “Of course.”
I don’t know whether I’m meant to leave or stay. There’s a strange sense of foreboding in the air, and my feet yearn to move.
To follow them.
Throat constricting, I watch as Adelphine and Astra file out slowly and close the doors behind them, leaving only him and me in this small, unfamiliar space.
I wring my hands. They itch to reach out to touch him.
I don’t know why I’m still here. I shouldn’t be.
There is no reason for it, yet I don’t want to leave this place.
I don’t want to leave him.
Even despite what I saw. Even despite knowing what he’ll do, the lengths he’ll go to in order to protect his crew, to protect himself. How would he react if he knew the truth about me? Would he kill me, too? Dump me into the ocean and be done with me?
He crosses to the bloody bowl on the table, and gripping his shirt in his hands, he tugs it up and off.
Blushing, I force my gaze toward the ceiling and bite down on the inside of my cheek before my eyes find their way to his form once more.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find him incredibly attractive, even covered in blood, even having seen him kill a man, but I am increasingly lost as to why I’m here, in his rooms, watching him undress.
Unless I am that oblivious. Which, knowing my history, wouldn’t be entirely wrong. I’ve never been good at picking up on cues.
Oh, what the hell.
This time I stare like I mean it.