Chapter 38
Thirty-Eight
Cali woke up to darkness. The journal had slid down her chest and rested in the crook of her arm, the feathered quill tucked between two pages like a bookmark.
She blinked at the low ceiling of the cabin, listening to the hull breathe around her.
A glance at her mug told her the chai had gone cold, and the moonlight filtering through the porthole told her she’d slept through dinner.
Cali swung her legs over the side of the hammock and dropped to the floor, leaving the journal behind as she slipped from the room and slunk along the corridor.
Muffled laughter from behind a closed door meant that some of the crew were probably playing cards, and the distinctive sound of iron wool on metal from the end of the hall was a good sign that the kitchen was in the midst of clean-up.
She paused outside the captain’s door and held her breath.
There was no sound from inside except the usual murmur of the ship around them, and she half expected no answer when she rapped her knuckles on the door.
“Come.”
Even though the voice was muted, Cali’s tail twitched. She opened the door slowly, peeking her head in first and half-expecting the captain to be in bed. She wasn’t.
The bed hadn’t been disturbed, but the remnants of dinner littered the round table—a dusting of breadcrumbs beside an empty soup bowl, one unused bowl, and the dusty rind of a hard cheese. The candles had burned to waxy knobs in the candelabra, their wicks drooping to one side.
Hells and cinders. She’d slept through dinner with the captain on their last night. She could have kicked herself from one end of the ship to the other.
Bonnie sat at her desk, papers fanned around her, a fresh candle burning close to her elbow, and her eye patch discarded to one side. She looked up when Cali entered, and something in her expression softened.
“Nice nap?”
Cali felt the heat creep up the back of her neck. “I didn’t mean to—”
Bonnie waved a hand and pushed back from the desk. “It was only dwarf stew again. You didn’t miss anything worth losing sleep over.”
“Still.” Cali looked again at the unused soup bowl and felt the waste of the time they could have had together.
Bonnie leaned against the edge of the desk instead, arms loosely crossed, and she studied the pantheri. “We haven’t talked about what happened before we left Claw Island—or after. I wanted to give you space, but I also want to make sure you’re okay.”
“You mean Adelaide?” Cali asked, surprised that saying the name didn’t cause her as much pain as it used to when she even thought it. “Or Marina?”
“I could see that Marina caused you no lasting damage.” The captain tilted her head. “But it’s not every day that you discover the love you’ve been searching for is actually a selkie.”
Cali couldn’t stifle a laugh at this. “Not for me, at least.”
The pirate gave her a crooked grin. “I suppose some of us have a higher chance of that than others.” Bonnie’s smile dimmed. “Do you still love her after all this time?”
The question settled into the hush of the cabin, and Cali considered it honestly before answering.
“What I felt for her all those years ago was real.” She thought of chestnut hair in firelight, of a slender hand holding her paw around a campfire.
“As was the ache of lost love when she left.” Cali allowed herself to pause, as if searching herself for a residual pang.
“I realize now that the love and longing softened over time into a love for what we’d once shared. ”
Bonnie watched her, but didn’t interrupt.
“I understand now why it couldn’t have lasted and why she had to leave,” Cali continued. “Knowing that is enough to let me move on. I now know that you can love someone completely and still be headed somewhere they can’t follow.”
Bonnie nodded slowly, then she picked up a paper from her desk and turned it over once in her hands before setting it down again, as if she’d reached for something to say and changed her mind.
The quiet stretched until Cali cleared her throat. “You look like you’ve been hard at work.”
“Drawing to clear my mind,” Bonnie said. “Nothing important.”
Cali frowned at the captain. “Just because you do something for yourself doesn’t mean it isn’t important.”
Bonnie’s pinched expression eased. “You’re right. Clearing my mind is important work, especially if it means I don’t bark at my crew so much.”
“I’m sure your crew appreciates it. If they knew, they might start gifting you charcoals and parchment.”
The pirate shook her head and laughed. “I would never tell them, but I wouldn’t mind the supplies.”
Cali wagged a claw at her. “You should tell your crew. They’d be more supportive than you think. Thrain suggested my stories might make a good book.”
“A book recounting your adventures, eh?” Bonnie glanced at the books lining her shelves. “Am I to expect that my crew and I will appear in a book someday?”
Cali bobbled her head back and forth. “Only the parts that aren’t secret.”
“You mean Tris?”
“I mean all of it.” Cali’s teasing tone became solemn. “The ship. The name you bear. I won’t write any of it without your say-so, and if I never have it, I won’t write it at all.”
Something shifted in the captain’s expression, and when she spoke, her voice trembled. “One day I’ll shed it. The name, the secret. One day I think I’ll want the world to know the whole story.” Her gaze found Cali’s and held it. “When that day comes, I’d like you to be the one to tell it.”
Cali didn’t trust herself to say anything immediately, so she looked down at the desk instead. Her eyes landed on the sketch of The Cruel Mistress, the mermaid at the bow fierce and beautiful.
She picked it up, fighting to keep her voice steady. “This one would make a wonderful cover for a book.”
Bonnie looked at the sketch in Cali’s paws. Then she reached over, and instead of taking it back, she pressed it gently into the pantheri’s grip. “Then it’s yours.”
In that moment, Cali was aware of nothing but the pressure of the warm hand over hers and the fact that tomorrow she would walk back down the dock at Eldu and leave Bonnie behind.
Suddenly, it seemed impossible that she’d only known the woman for a short time.
It felt like they’d been sharing secrets and stories and candlelit dinners for ages.
Yet it also felt like they’d only brushed the surface of everything they had yet to share.
“I have nothing to give you in return,” she said, her heart pattering and the tip of her tail vibrating. The air between them hummed, the shadows cast by the candle making Bonnie’s blue eyes flare dark.
“You don’t need to give me—”
Cali forgot caution and reason. She ignored the fact that she was about to leave the ship and the captain.
She didn’t care that they were traveling different paths that might never cross again.
She didn’t even care when she cut off Bonnie’s protest by grabbing the front of her blouse and yanking the woman’s mouth to hers.
The captain’s lips were warm and tasted faintly of apple brandy, and even though she stiffened in surprise, she didn’t pull away. After a few moments, she sank into the kiss and sighed into Cali’s mouth, her hands reaching up to tangle in the pantheri’s hair.
Then Cali remembered where she was, what she was doing, and all the reasons she shouldn’t.
She snatched her lips away and turned quickly, with the drawing clutched to her chest. She didn’t look back as she staggered from the room and pulled the door shut behind her.
Then she stood in the dim corridor with blood rushing in her ears and the sketch pressed against her chest.
The ship bobbed from side to side, the creaks like rapid claps.
“Not a word, Tris,” she whispered.
From somewhere deep in the hull, came the faintest crackle of amusement.