Chapter Eight
Cold seeped through my bones before my eyes opened. I pushed up, my arms shaking with the effort. My jaw ached where Russo had hit me. My clothes were stiff with dried salt, clinging to my skin like a second layer.
Hay and animal smell filled my lungs. Pale light bled through the cracks in the boards overhead. A barn. How did I get here?
Jina was beside me, still asleep, her breathing slow and even. Ranis sat against the far wall, knees drawn up, watching us.
“You’re awake.” He said it like he’d been waiting a long time.
“What happened?” My voice came out rougher than I expected.
He exhaled. “When the oclego released its hold, the captain docked the ship to the nearest port to fix damages. His men loaded you onto a wagon.”
“And we’re in a barn while he’s warm in a tavern somewhere,” I scoffed. The bitterness came out sharper than I intended. “How long was I out?”
“Since yesterday. It’s late morning now.”
“Why are you here, Ranis?”
I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful. But I didn’t know what to say to someone being kind without a reason.
He picked up a piece of straw, face flushed, not meeting my gaze. “His crew is dishonest. They sometimes do things to women without their consent.” He turned the straw over in his fingers. “I told the captain I’d keep watch so he wouldn’t send anyone else.”
I had underestimated him. Every interaction on that ship I had read him as compliant, weak, someone caught between loyalty and guilt. But this boy sitting on a cold barn floor through the night to keep two women safe, I hadn’t expected from anyone on that ship.
There were good people. You just had to be lucky enough to find them.
“Thank you. I hope one day I can repay you.”
He finally looked up and reached into his shirt and held out my shell dagger carefully, two fingers wrapped around the handle, keeping well clear of the blade. “I picked it up off the floor during the chaos. Thought you might want it back.”
I took it from him. “Thank you.”
Those two words didn’t seem enough. He didn’t know what the dagger meant to me. Minha had made it with her own hands. I slipped it into the secret pocket of my pants where it belonged and made myself a quiet promise. I would find her. Whatever it took.
“This is your chance to escape. If you don’t take the opportunity, there might not be another one.”
A dark and large animal shifted in the stall at the far end. Its breath made small clouds in the cold air. I had never seen anything like it. I pushed to my feet and crossed the barn, one hand out. It turned its long face toward me, nostrils flaring, ears pricked forward.
“You’ve never seen one before?” Ranis asked.
“No. My first time.” I pressed my palm flat against its neck, warm and solid beneath short coarse hair, and felt the slow steady pulse.
“It’s called a horse.”
“Horse.” I chuckled lightly at the word. Everything out here had a name I didn’t know yet.
Jina stirred and stretched. I went to her as she yawned and rubbed her eyes. When she opened them she beamed a smile, then jolted upright.
“Where are we? What happened?”
After I repeated what Ranis had told me, Jina was quiet, her lips moving in that familiar count, especially when I got to the part about escaping.
“I’m afraid.” Her voice came out small. “We shouldn’t do this. What if we get caught? He’ll hurt you again.”
“I’m afraid too, but we can’t be with that monster. He’ll beat us down. We were nearly broken in the cavern, and I can’t have that for us again.”
“I’m not brave like you.”
I cupped her face. The pale light bleeding through the boards caught her hazel eyes—green and gold and brown shifting together, like sunlight moving through shallow water.
“Yes, you are, Jina. You must believe it. We all have bravery inside us. We just need a reason to let it out.”
“Sis is right.” Ranis grinned, his green eyes bright with hope.
She nodded and pushed herself to her feet, then brushed the hay from her clothes. “Let’s go then.”
I had known Jina my whole life. I had always been the one to move first and she had always followed. This was the first time she had stood up before I did.
We reached the door, and just as Ranis peered out, he was shoved back by Captain Russo’s men. That small act of courage lasted one second before the world reminded us where we were.
“Going somewhere?” one drawled, his hand on the sword hilt.
For the love of gods. Why can’t we get a break?
Ranis pushed back his shoulders. “I was taking them to Captain Russo. Now, step aside.”
The men gave Jina and me a slow once-over, then trailed behind us, Ranis in the lead.
The tavern was nothing like I had imagined—big, low-ceilinged, thick with the smell of tallow candles.
Tables were occupied. In the corner, two women draped themselves over a pair of merchants, giggling in high-pitched tones, their fingers trailing along the men’s arms. At the long table near the fire, a group of men sat hunched over their cups, speaking low.
I had never been in a place like this. Never seen people choose where to sit and choose what to drink. In the cavern there had been no choosing. Here, everyone moved as if the world belonged to them.
There, in the corner, Russo sat with a few of his men at a table near the back, a cup in one hand, maps spread before him weighted down with another cup. He didn’t look up, nor did his crew, not until we were close enough and the candlelight caught the scar along his jaw.
My stomach filled with acid at the sight of him. I loathed that man with every fiber of my being. He had hit Jina. He had locked us in the dark without food or water. He had put his hands on me. If given the chance. I would make sure he never did any of it again.
A chair scraped.
Russo was out of his chair, his hand fisting in my hair, yanking my head back hard enough to sting. I didn’t cry out. I refused to give him any satisfaction. He forced me down to the floor by his table, and Jina dropped beside me without being touched.
The floor was bare wood, sticky and grained with filth, cold through my clothes. I kept my eyes forward and my hands flat.
“That’s for not producing,” he hissed.
I’ll add it to the list of things I intend to repay you for when I kill you. The words sat at the tip of my tongue. I swallowed them. Not for his sake, but for Jina’s.
The tavern didn’t pause. No one looked over. This was not a place where anyone intervened or cared for female mistreatment. Russo dropped back into his chair and picked up his cup as if he didn’t insult me.
“They need food and water.” Ranis’s voice was steady, though his hands behind his back were not.
Russo said nothing. Didn’t even look at him. Instead, he took a long drink.
Ranis crossed to the bartender without waiting for permission. Jina’s hand found mine on the floor between us. I squeezed once and didn’t let go.
When Ranis handed us bread and a wedge of cheese, Russo shifted in his seat. He drained his cup and set it down hard.
“Tell me why I’m feeding them,” Russo said it to his men at the table. “They are wasting space.” He shoved his seat back, swaying, then his fingers closed around Jina’s arm. “Time to earn your keep.”
Jina’s body went rigid, bread still in her hand, and I knew that look—the look of someone going somewhere else inside themselves just to survive what was coming. Whatever he had planned, Jina might not survive the trauma. I had to get her out of this.
“Wait. Take me instead.” The words came out before I’d thought them through. But I had the dagger inside my secret pocket. Whatever he intended for that room, this might be my only chance to use it on him.
Russo glared at me.
“She’s no use to you.” I kept my voice even. “She’ll shake. She’ll cry, but I won’t.”
Calculation passed across his face. He released Jina. “Keep an eye on that girl.” He nodded at Ranis, then he grabbed my arm. “This one owes me.”
He dragged me up the narrow and steep stairs, the wood groaning under each step. I glanced back once. Jina sat on the tavern floor where Russo had left her, knees drawn to her chest, one hand pressed over her mouth. Her lips moved beneath her fingers, counting.
I stumbled twice, my feet barely keeping up. He didn’t slow. He shoved a door open and into a room with a bed shoved against the wall, a window with a curtain pulled shut. He released me and turned the key in the lock.
“Take off your clothes.”
“No.” The word came out quiet but stern.
“You don’t learn, do you? I take what I want.” Anger shifted behind his eyes, and he backhanded me across the face hard enough to turn my head.
The sting spread across my cheek, down my jaw where he’d already hit me once before.
He grabbed my arm and threw me onto the bed.
The mattress gave beneath me. Before I could roll off, he was on top, his weight pinning my hips, one hand in my hair. Up close he smelled of sour grain, soaked into his skin and his breath. My stomach turned.
I pushed against his chest. He didn’t move. His hand found my waist, sliding upward, then stopped when he pressed his fingers against my ribs, frowning.
“What’s that? What are you hiding? Are those my pearls?”
His hands moved harder now, feeling the shape of my breasts and the pearls through the fabric, while I twisted to get him off me.
Play smarter.
I went still.
The fight drained out of my body, or appeared to. I let my hands fall from his chest. Let my breathing slow. Let him read it as surrender, because men like him expected it.
“Let me show you.” My tone softer and playful. “But first, my pants.”
His eyes lit up, then his grip loosened as his attention moved back to my waist, fingers working at the lacing.
I slid my trembling hand to my secret pocket, my heart pounding. The hilt was cold and familiar against my palm. I closed my fingers around it.
He never saw it coming.
I drove the blade into his throat, rage consuming my soul. “I hope you rot in hell.”
He made a sound that wasn’t quite a word as his eyes went wild.
I pulled the blade free and drove it in again. “For Jina.” His hands found my wrists, weakening, the shell poison spreading fast. Another strike. “For the dark room.” Another. “For treating us like we’re only worth our labor.”
His hands fell away.
“I told you I would do worse.” I leaned close enough that he could hear me. “I keep my promises.”
He swayed above me, eyes still wide, then toppled sideways off the bed and hit the floor loud as a sack of potatoes. I jolted up, the dagger still in my hand.
I stood over him. His chest rose once, then didn’t rise again. The wounds at his throat had begun to change—the edges darkening, spreading outward beneath the skin in branching lines like frost creeping across glass.
I waited until the black lines stopped moving across his face. Then I wiped the blade on the bedsheet, tucked it back into the secret pocket, and crossed to the door.
My hand found the handle. I stood there a moment, fingers wrapped around the cold metal, and my legs simply stopped holding me. I slid down until I hit the floor, knees drawn up, one hand over my mouth to keep the sound in. Then I fell apart and sobbed.
Yes, he deserved it. But a life was a life, and my hands were the ones that had ended him. I had never been violent being. Now I had been forced to become one. I had thought about killing Agusto and Russo more times than I could count but thinking and doing were different things.
Th act of killing was a monster incarnate that had settled into my bones and changed me.
When the shaking eased, I wiped my face and stared at my hands.
How was I supposed to face Ranis? I had killed his captain. I doubted he’d mourn the man. I had seen enough in Ranis’s eyes to know what he thought of Russo. And worse, the moment Russo’s crew found out I’d killed their captain, Jina and I were finished.
We had to run, but no amount of a head start would be enough. But we couldn’t stay. And we couldn’t ask Ranis to help us carry the weight of what I’d just done.
I looked back at Russo on the floor. Why couldn’t you just have been a decent man?
I had to think. And I had to think fast. How to get Jina and me out of here? I could run downstairs. Tell them a man entered and someone killed the captain. They would believe my story, right? Who would think a woman could kill a man his size?
Then as everyone climbed the stairs, I’d grabbed Jina and run. And if luck was on our side, Ranis would help and come with us. All sounded like a good plan until I opened the door. A man blocked my exit.
He filled the doorframe—tall, broad through the shoulders, one hand resting loose on the hilt of his sword. Dark coat. That ridiculous hat pulled low over his face. Hair pushed back from his face, shoulder-length, giving way to hard lines and features that had no business being that well-made.
The man who had bid up the price without buying. The one who had watched me with those steady, assessing eyes and given nothing away.
Those kissable lips curved into a smirk.
My heart pounded. Not from fear. From something I refused to name.