Chapter 7
I aimed for his neck. He must have gotten lucky and noticed something in my eyes, because he just barely leaped a step back, letting my saber catch the air before him with a wicked whoosh. I held it at an angle in front of me as he guffawed and clapped his approval.
“So, that saber is real heavy, huh?” He smirked at Gatelo, who had joined with the crowd of crewmen to watch this spectacle, and was surely pouting that I lied about the weight of the sword.
He’d forgive me. Probably. For now, all that mattered was that cute image of Reiven plummeting into the waves below, a former pirate who, for some reason, disliked the water. With him distracted by mocking Gatelo, I swung again.
Reiven drew his cutlass and blocked in a smooth motion. That cocky smile on his face didn’t even falter as he kept our blades crossed. “I knew I was right about you. Vicious.”
He shoved my blade away, but I lashed out again. I delivered blow after blow after blow in a flurry, and although he blocked every attack with ease, he had no choice but to back up a few steps to keep the power behind my strikes from knocking him over.
“I can see what you’re trying to do with that carpenter boy,” he panted after another clang of steel on steel.
“Please, don’t be jealous, Reiven.”
“You’re just as Sirens were described to me. Dangerously charming and undeniably treacherous.”
“Aww, how nice of you to say I’m charming. Is that why you hate Sirens, because you fear our allure?”
“Full of yourself too, aren’t you?” His pinched expression made me want to laugh, but instead, I slashed at his knee.
He didn’t even have to look as he blocked it.
“I hate Sirens because I was warned they use their charm and beauty to prey on the weak. The tales all say your kind are evil, and I won’t be another man who allows himself to be sung to his watery grave. Unlike your bilge rat over there.”
Reiven took a swing at me for the first time, but it was an easy parry. Rather than attacking again with his cutlass, he kicked me square in the stomach.
Air rushed out of my chest. I nearly toppled over, but I managed to keep my balance through sheer refusal to lose to a prick like him.
“Well, you’re a former pirate, so of course that would alter your perception of Sirens, and of course you’d fight dirty.
” He gave me a derisive bow, pressing his non-sword hand against his heart.
“And why is that? Why former? If you ask me, that kind of lifestyle seems like it would fit you perfectly. Lying, stealing, killing—smoking.” I dramatically coughed as I stepped closer.
Honestly, it was such a disgusting habit. I couldn’t fathom why Humans liked it. But whatever he smoked wasn’t a pirate’s usual acrid tobacco, and I hadn’t yet figured out the source of the bittersweet aura surrounding him.
I aimed another swipe at his neck, but he leaned back so my blade missed him by an inch.
“Why protect a boy genius like Ashkade?” I asked.
“The Timebreaker pays well, and protecting him is far cushier than piracy.”
A desire to do something simply for the coin was an answer I absolutely expected from a pirate.
From a man who held money, and the comforts and pleasures it could buy him, above all else.
It reminded me of someone I’d tried not to think about in a long time, and that just pissed me off more.
Yet…something rang hollow in Reiven’s voice.
Our blades clanged together again and again, flashing silver in the sunlight.
“Besides,” he continued, mid-parry, “I think I’m the only one on this ship who can protect him from you, and if that’s my lot in life, so be it.”
He aimed a slice at my side, forcing me backwards a few steps, but he was the one who wobbled and almost lost his balance. His brow furrowed over his dark eyes. And those lovely bags under them.
Getting a little tired, are we, Reiven?
“I can see from a hundred leagues away how fake you are to all of them. Drawing them in with imitation sweetness as you plot to stab them in the back.” Our blades met again, and he took a half step back, forcing me to stumble closer.
Far closer than one ever wanted to be in a duel.
The corners of his lips lifted into a smirk as he considered me. “You’re poison disguised as sugar.”
I growled and shoved him away, slashing wildly at his arm, and my saber finally found its mark.
Fueled by the trickle of blood that slipped down his bicep, I repeatedly swung for his ankles.
Reiven didn’t even flinch at the tiny cut I had inflicted on him, and instead of blocking my strikes, he danced backwards along the railing.
I had to chase after him until we reached the mainmast’s shroud, the web of ropes the crew used to scale the masts and rig the sails.
“Oy! You two, stop that right now!”
Pretty sure that was the captain’s voice, but neither of us were in a very obedient mood.
Reiven aimed a potentially life-ending swing at my midsection, forcing me to stagger back several steps to avoid it. With me a fair distance away, he sheathed his cutlass and began to climb up the shroud.
“Come on, Blue!” he taunted, and I swallowed my nerves and followed him.
Higher and higher, we climbed until we reached the crow’s nest. I didn’t expect it to be so…
unprotected. Clouds drifted by just overhead.
Every gust of wind threatened to blow us off the rectangle of wood, only large enough for us to stand apart, swords crossed.
No railing. Nothing but air between us and the deck far below.
I hazarded a glance over the edge of the platform, and my stomach plummeted at just how high up we were. If one of us fell—I shuddered.
“How do Sirens feel about heights?”
I silently considered my options. Both of us already had our heels almost hanging off the wooden platform, so there would be no prancing and dodging like we had been on the railing. One misstep, or one well-placed cut, and it would be over.
Reiven drew his blade along mine, the grating of metal like a goading invitation. “Yield.”
I’m not yielding to this fucking Human!
Rather than slashing, I stabbed straight for his stomach.
His pure strength overwhelmed my attack as he knocked my blade to the side.
I didn't react fast enough to swing for him again before he snatched my sword arm by the wrist, rendering my blade useless.
While I was off balance, he rested his cutlass against my neck. “Yield, Blue.”
I strained against his grip, leaning backwards with all my weight. “Go fuck yourself.”
“Hm. You have a filthy little mouth, don’t you?” With nothing more than a smile, he released me.
A puff of air escaped my lips as I toppled backwards over the edge of the crow’s nest. Before I could scream, his hand clamped around my wrist again, halting my fall with a jolt of pain.
I glared up at a gloating Reiven, seriously considering stabbing him in the neck with the saber I barely held on to.
Nearly powerless in this position, my last resort was to respond with all the venom I hoarded inside.
“Where does the pain inside you come from, Human? I feel it every time you touch me, and yet outwardly, you appear perfectly healthy.” I raised an eyebrow and reached for that sea of agony twisting inside him. “Are you dying?”
If he wasn’t lying on his stomach gripping my wrist, I thought he would have staggered away from me, like he did in the alley.
His face slackened into shock, then hardened back into hatred.
My wrist had begun to ache from bearing my weight, but I almost feared my arm might snap when his fingers tightened like a vise around it.
“Stop,” he warned. He yanked me closer, no doubt trying to pull me back up to escape my touch and my tampering with his sensations.
I bared my fangs and slashed at his arm. The tight grip he had on my wrist faltered long enough for me to jerk my arm away from him, and I had a split second to be proud of the horror that flashed across his face.
Then I remembered I was falling.
Rushing wind filled my ears as I plummeted towards the deck, whipping my hair in tiny stings against my face. I flailed to try to catch a handhold in the mast, a stray rope, something, anything—
My hand brushed against the rough fabric of the mainsail, that vast sheet of white that propelled us forward with the help of the breeze.
Purely desperate to keep myself alive and mostly intact, I shouted with effort and stabbed my saber into the sail.
An awful ripping sound accompanied the gaping tear in the fabric as all my weight dragged the sword through the sail.
But as I hoped, it slowed me down enough that when I slammed onto my side on the deck, instead of breaking all my bones, I only heard a tiny crack.
Pain shot through the arm I landed on, but I was fairly certain it wasn’t broken or dislocated. It just hurt like Mourner Hell.
“Zephra!” Captain Larsel boomed, beelining towards me like a starved tiger shark.
I scrambled to my feet, nursing my tender arm.
My entire right side pulsed with an odd mix of numbness and pain.
The captain’s face contorted as she turned her glare on me from the pieces of the sail that now flapped uselessly in the wind.
“What was that? You just ruined our mainsail!”
“She didn’t have a choice, Captain. She would have broken her neck falling from the crow’s nest like that,” Gatelo said, snatching his saber away from me.
“What were you two fighting about?”
Reiven’s carefree voice floated from up above. “It was an honest duel, Vetti. Calm yourself.” He swung down from one of the rigging lines and alighted on the deck on his feet, far more gracefully than my crash landing.
Captain Larsel raised an eyebrow at him. “That’s ‘Captain’ to you, lad. If it was truly an honest duel, then you both are to blame for the damage to my ship. I’ve half a mind to throw you two in the hold until you get along.”
Reiven scoffed. Good to know that he wasn’t only an asshole to me. “We’re passengers, not crew members for you to punish, Captain.”
Lucky for Reiven, Ashkade chose that moment to poke his head out of the door that led belowdecks. If he hadn’t, Captain Larsel might have actually blown his bodyguard’s head off his shoulders with the double-barreled pistol she carried at her hip.
“Timebreaker!” she shouted. “Permission to punish these two idiots for destroying our mainsail with their foolishness? I say a minimum of three nights in the cell in the hold.”
“Uh…” Ash’s eyes darted between all of us as he tried to put together what had happened. “They’re probably sorry—”
“I’m not,” Reiven said immediately.
“I’m only sorry I didn’t stab him in the dick.”
Ashkade rubbed his forehead like a tired grandfather, rather than the sixteen-year-old boy he was. I almost felt bad for giving him so much trouble. “What happened? I heard a massive thud.”
I jumped in with a colorful explanation of our fight, with Reiven interrupting occasionally to make a snarky comment.
“Rei, you coulda killed her, droppin’ her from that high!” Ash said, throwing his eyebrows up.
“I had a perfectly good grip on her until she slashed my arm.”
“Captain.” With a nod, Ash sealed our fates. “Throw ‘em in the hold.”