Chapter 15 #2
“I hurt you. I didn’t mean to—” I grabbed his hands to examine the clumsily placed bandages that covered up his injuries.
“Let me fix these.” I made him sit on the stool next to mine, pulling his hands into my lap.
Thin scarlet slashes across his palms contrasted with the linen strips and his pale skin.
“I’m just fine. Barely nicked me,” he said with a smile.
While I nibbled on my lip with one of my fangs to focus on rewrapping his hands, Lyneca grabbed the pot of stew and ushered a glowering Calinia towards the entrance.
Right before she closed the door behind them, I caught the cook jerking her head towards Ash and her lips forming the silent words, “Talk it out.”
If only I knew what to say aside from, “sorry for stabbing you like a complete madwoman, Ash.” So, instead of talking right away, I painstakingly bound his injuries, slower than a sea slug.
His eyes were on me the whole time. I felt the idiotic, childish grin spreading across his face before I looked up and saw it.
“You’re much better at this than Rei.”
“I’ve always enjoyed healing,” I mumbled. “But I don’t think I ever wanted to heal a friend I wounded myself.”
The warmth of his fingers encircled mine, halting my bandaging. “I came to apologize to you. Rei was completely out of line.” Ash raised an eyebrow and spat, “I told him if he ever talked to you like that again, he’d be swimmin’ back to Redsand Cove.”
Hm, that image of a soggy Reiven, dog-paddling all alone in the blue expanse of the ocean, made me smirk. Didn’t Ash know he didn’t like the water?
I laughed and shook my head. “You wouldn’t do that to your big brother.”
Ashkade hesitated, watching my expert movements as I finished wrapping the bandages tighter around his cuts.
“I know he feels terrible. All he’s done since you left is sit and stare at his hands, tellin’ me about how awfully that pirate must have treated you to make you so afraid.
A real life monster who's so similar to him.”
My smirk faltered. Did Reiven really say that he was a monster just like Vaetrik? Guilt bloomed inside my chest and coiled around my heart.
“That’s not…true.”
“He used the man who kidnapped you to make you cry. I’m still tryin’ to figure out where all that came from, but it was unnecessarily cruel.
” Ash's brows tightened into a rigid line and he looked up at me with a kind of concern that, within the confines of my glass cage in Kirdiak months ago, I’d never expected to see.
And now that a haze of red didn’t cloud my senses like this morning, I saw the same thing in my memory of Rei’s dark eyes. Worse, when I replayed the lead-up to my screaming at him earlier, beneath words I took as malicious, I heard a soft, desperate voice.
“Fight. Back. Fight me if you need to. Just fight.”
I let my eyes drift closed. “I think in his own clumsy way, Reiven was trying to help me.”
“How do you reckon?” Ash asked dryly.
“I’ve been terrified of Vaetrik for years.
I can hardly move or talk when he’s near, but chances are high I’m going to run into him again on this journey.
Reiven challenged me to retaliate, even if only against him, to prepare myself for the real battle.
But…” I trailed off, opening my eyes only to stare at the floor.
“I don't think I'm ready to face Vaetrik. Maybe I'll never be.”
Finding him and making him pay was never a part of the plan, simply because I knew I wouldn't have it in me. All I wanted was never to see him again, even if he haunted my dreams.
“I know for a long time, you've had to handle vermin like him all alone. But you're not alone anymore.” Ashkade carefully pulled a ring out of his pocket. It was just like his last one, with symbols I couldn’t define etched into the outside.
He slipped it on my finger and showed me how to activate the thread of time locked inside it.
I admired the way it glittered in the firelight emanating from the stove and the lanterns on the wall. Emotion built up inside me like water behind one of those awful Human dams. I held my hand close to my chest, throat constricting as I staved off more tears.
“Maybe you’ll have to face a monster you're not ready for,” Ash said. “When that time comes, you'll face it head on. And you'll win.”
The dam didn’t burst; it slowly crumbled. Warm, salty tears slid down my face, into my mouth through the upturned corners of my lips. It was impossible to do anything but smile.
“Ash?”
“Yeah?”
“You really are my favorite Human.”
Pink clouded his cheeks, and he scratched the back of his head with a grin. “Shoot, really?”
“Mmhm. Always.”
Before he had a chance to say something equally sappy, Calinia stalked back inside the galley with a tray of three steaming bowls of stew in her hands.
Her eyes flared when she saw my tears. One of the steel butcher knives Lyneca left on a cutting board snapped to life.
It sliced through the air towards us, freezing in place with the sharp end right before Ash's throat.
“What did you do to her, you little insect?”
It took a few minutes to calm her down and explain that, yes, my tears were because of Ash, but they weren't tears of sadness. Once she released her hold on the knife and set her tray down to glare at Ash, I grinned and grabbed one of her hands.
“Ash, guess what?” I motioned for him to take my other hand. “Calinia told me she doesn't hate you.”
“R-really?” he cried. “Thank god. I can’t handle more hostility aboard this ship.”
The three of us ate hearty Druinnic stew together, chatting and laughing the rest of the day away. By the time Ash bid us goodnight, Calinia loosened up enough to soften her steely glare, though she regarded the new ring on my finger with distaste.
Our time together was wonderful, but something was missing.
I lay on my back on the galley cot, trying to ignore the strange restlessness invading my mind and instead focus on Calinia's warmth beside me.
Her slow, even breaths matched the waves against the hull.
Maybe that was it. Maybe I just missed the ocean.
Sleep wouldn’t rescue me from the disquiet, so I carefully sat up and tugged on my robe, shaking my hair out of the braid.
The wooden stairs creaked beneath my feet as I climbed to the top deck.
Darkness awash with streaks of pale-yellow moonlight greeted me, along with a cool, salty breeze.
Aside from the welcoming music of the waves and the thump of the rigging against the masts, all was quiet. Most of the crew was probably asleep.
A figure caught my eye, standing alone on the far side of the ship, staring out across the sea.
His dark form nearly blended into the night sky, leaving a black silhouette that blocked out the shine of the stars.
The cigarette in his mouth lit his downcast expression with a slight orange glow.
He fiddled with those gloves he never took off, as if they were making him uncomfortable. My heart went still.
He didn’t acknowledge me as I approached and placed my forearms on the railing beside him, mirroring his stance.
We stood in comforting, warm silence. The inky blue-black water before us looked particularly calm and inviting, broken only by the smallest waves and the reflection of the moon and stars.
It was like nothing I had ever seen before.
And if I never left the Abyssal Deep…I would have never had the chance to take in the beauty that lay on the other side of my home.
The salt-touched breeze lifted my hair off my shoulders, and it ruffled his hair, too.
Somehow, Rei managed to look perfect, even with messy hair and bags under his eyes.
His lips were drawn in a tight line, brows furrowed.
He continued to play with the fabric of his gloves, though not as noticeably as before I stood at his side.
I should…say something.