Chapter 14
Soon, Reiven was well enough to move around, though he always had me worried.
Chatting with me seemed to keep him relatively entertained, so I continued to answer his questions, and took care of him despite his constant complaints that I was babying him.
Ashkade came and visited a few times to give me a break, playing card games with Rei and rambling about Calinia's presence.
According to him, Lyneca let her take the room attached to the galley, and she kept to herself in there, sniffing that she was going to stop him from getting the Voidtome.
Poor Ash didn't know what to do with her.
One evening after he finally left, I headed to the hutch to retrieve fresh bandages for Rei's wounds. Our nightly routine. The only ones left happened to be on the top shelf, barely visible even as I stood on my toes. I strained and growled and cursed quietly, trying to decide if I should attempt to climb on the hutch’s countertop and risk it falling over, or go to Ash's room to borrow his stool.
While I was lost in irritation, the warmth of Reiven's bare chest against my back made me jump as he leaned over me. His height and longer arms let him reach the top shelf easily.
“Damn, you're short.”
“No, I'm not.”
“You're barely taller than Ash, small fry,” he said with a smirk, handing over the bandages. Then he anchored his hand on my waist and squinted as he dug around the glass bottles and vials of medicines. “You're not hiding any alcohol in here, are you? I've been dying for a drink.”
I carefully turned toward him, trying to keep a bit of distance between us, though he made it difficult with how close he stood.
A grin split his face as he grabbed a stout bottle of liquid. “This has to be rum.”
“That's not the kind of alcohol you drink, dumbass. Give it here.”
Reiven laughed as I snatched the bottle from him.
He genuinely laughed. I had seen him smile a few times during our time spent together while he recovered, and he chuckled a few times, but this was the most real, non-condescending laughter I had ever heard from him.
A bit of warmth spread through my heart, and I had to fight off the urge to smile, too.
“What are you going to do? Beat me up?”
“I might resort to violence if you keep moving around.” Off in the corner of the room, my hammock thumped against the wall as the ship groaned with a sudden swell.
Rei braced himself against the hutch behind me, and I grabbed his shoulders to keep myself steady.
Numbing heat crawled across my cheeks. I avoided his eyes, murmuring, “Go lie down.”
“You're like a damn prison warden, Blue. You know I'm fine. If you don't let me get some activity in, my muscles might wither away to nothing.”
Before I could come up with an argument, he picked me up by the waist with ease, setting me down on the edge of the hutch’s countertop. I sputtered uselessly at his touch and finally managed to say, “Y-you’re going to reopen your wounds and bleed to death.”
He clutched his chest mockingly. “Wait, you might be right. I think I moved an inch too far. Now I’m dying.” At my unamused glare, he laughed again. “Calm down. Let me stand while you wrap my bandages.”
I reluctantly agreed and started on his arm bandage, pleased to see that his wound was healing nicely.
I scooted forward so I could see what I was doing, and he stepped closer, between my knees, without a word.
An odd quiet fell over us as I worked, but I wasn’t about to break the silence or look in his eyes.
As I started next on his stomach wound, Rei finally cleared his throat. “You seem to enjoy taking care of people.”
I squared my shoulders and finished tying his last bandage. “I think you just like having all your needs taken care of for you.”
“True. I should get wounded more often if it means being tended to like this.” Rei’s grin widened. He reached out to touch my cheek. “Your cut healed up pretty nice.”
It took my mind a moment to catch up to his words, to disregard the odd numbness his touch paralyzed me with.
To free myself from the way his dark eyes beckoned me closer.
The real smile he gave me reminded me, again, that I was starting to enjoy seeing him smile.
I gave myself a shake and ordered myself to ignore those out-of-place feelings.
“It was just a small cut.” I couldn’t take the way he stared at me, resting his fingers against my face as if he cared. I had to get away from him. Surely that would calm the hurried pulse in my veins, and the warmth that bloomed across my face and neck. “Go to bed.”
“Wait.” Reiven didn’t move, keeping me blocked there on the counter. “Uh…Ash, he…he said I should tell you something, and—er…”
Why is he being so awkward?
Reiven cleared his throat again. “Look…Thank you.”
My heart stuttered at his earnest gaze. The moment the words came out of his mouth, I realized I had never heard him say “thank you” before. Not to me, not to Ash, not at all.
“I understand you had no choice but to save me on the island. But you didn’t have to take care of me like you have been for the past few weeks, s-so…Thank you.” There was a hint of shyness in his voice I never would have thought I’d hear from a former pirate bastard.
I had to laugh to hide my surprise. “Oh my. What’s next? Are you going to start saying ‘please,’ too?”
“I’m not in the habit of saying please.”
“Go to sleep, Rei,” I said, patting his chest so he’d step away.
I put away the medical supplies and promptly curled up in my hammock as Reiven eased himself to lie on his cot.
What’s wrong with me? Allowing another Human to worm his way into my good graces sounded like another tragic mistake waiting to happen.
Ash was the only exception to the rule, and besides, Reiven hated me.
Hating him ought to be as easy as swimming, no matter how much spending all this time with him made me think maybe he wasn’t so bad, just like Ashkade said.
Forget the way his smile made my heart skip a beat.
Forget his newly good-natured jabs that made me giggle.
I peeked over my shoulder at him in the dim light of the lantern he insisted we leave on at night.
The music of the waves against the ship must have lulled him to sleep quickly, because he was still, peacefully so.
He almost looked innocent when he slept.
It was hard to believe how easily he had killed those pirates on the island.
As if he sensed me watching him, Reiven jerked about in his sleep. Quiet, incoherent moans slipped from his mouth. He did that almost every night. I wondered if he had nightmares like I did.
An urge to go comfort him welled up inside me. I would never admit it, but I really did enjoy taking care of him. I was glad to see another side of him, that he gave me an opportunity to talk about the Abyssal Deep, and that the hatred in his eyes had devolved into a sparkle of warmth.
We were still asleep when Ashkade came crashing into our room the next morning, jolting us both awake.
“God damn it, Ash! Whatever happened to knocking?” Reiven sputtered, yanking his shirt on and hurrying to button it.
Our teenage friend limped back and forth with a massive grin on his face as he reached into his pocket and victoriously produced a platinum ring. “I did it! It took months of tinkerin’, and I think I fractured a few strands of time doin’ it, but look!”
We stared at the unassuming ring, waiting for something to happen.
Clearly, we didn’t understand the greatness the Timebreaker had created, so he puffed out his cheeks and explained the ring had a piece of time magic locked inside it.
Touching the symbols he had painstakingly carved into the outside of the metal would elongate a fraction of time, essentially slowing it down to less than a crawl in a small sphere.
We still didn't get it, but we gave him half-hearted congratulations anyway.
“You two are hopeless. Look!” Ashkade pulled out a pocket watch for us to see, then ran his finger around the outside of the ring, and the symbols began to glow.
I blinked.
In that brief flash of darkness, the details of our cabin inexplicably changed.
The bandages and ointment that had been organized on a shelf in the cabinet of supplies moved to a different shelf and were now in disarray.
Some clothes I had folded for Rei were thrown haphazardly on the floor.
It was like invisible imps had taken charge of our room and disorganized it in a flash.
“See!” Ash shouted. He had moved from where he burst through our door and now stood beside Rei’s bed, like he had teleported somehow.
Just like when he paused time in the underground lab in Kirdiak.
The watch he held now ticked one mark further than before our room was thrown into chaos.
“Activatin’ the broken time in the ring made time slow down for y’all, but left me unaffected.
Before you guys even finished blinkin’, I rearranged a bunch of your stuff!
And it was mostly contained within a small space, so I didn’t break time or slow it down for the whole world! Can’t ya see how useful that would be?”
Reiven scoffed. “Not really. Unless it’s being used to cause mischief for whoever is stuck in the bubble with you.”
“Are you blind?” Ash turned to me, looking for some support.
I considered ways to put it to use, but Rei’s unkempt shirt buttons had me distracted, so I absentmindedly went to fix them for him. “Hmm…If you’re being attacked, you could activate it and disarm your opponents while time is slowed around you.”
“Exactly!”
Seeing Ashkade so proud and brimming with excitement at the success of his new tool pleased me, too, although his face fell a bit when the ring around his finger exploded into silvery dust. Apparently, not even platinum was enough to maintain the power of time magic for long.