Chapter 16
Curses were not natural magic a specific nation could tap into.
They were born of dark magic, the kind anyone could use, so long as the price was paid: their eternal soul, sold to some sinister being that lay shrouded in shadows beyond the Spirits and the god of time.
A being without a name, beyond comprehension.
Occasionally summoned by those desperate or greedy enough to sacrifice their own eternity for the sake of power in the present.
I hadn’t heard of a single instance of dark magic previously.
“Before I met Ash…years before, I was a different person. The worst kind, really. Rich, powerful, and reckless,” Rei said in a dull voice.
“My family had so much influence, it didn't matter if I destroyed things or hurt people because they could cover it up.
So, I caused destruction everywhere I went for the hell of it, and I didn't stop even if people got in the way. I was behind so many unnecessary deaths, people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
A piece of me wanted to recoil.
“I killed…the wrong person, and a curse was laid upon me,” he said. “Looking back now, I think I deserved it.”
“And…that’s why you’re always in pain?”
He nodded and held up his cigarette. “These things are supposed to be therapeutic, but they haven’t actually helped me in a long time. Now they’re just a toxic distraction. Surely there’re faster ways to kill myself, right?”
His quiet, derisive laugh unsettled me as he flicked the cigarette into the darkness of the water.
Why was he talking like that? Was his suffering so horrible he didn’t even want to live?
Was that why he gave up so easily when he had been shot?
I didn’t like that at all, not when helping him like I did at Redsand Cove cost me nothing but a bit of energy.
I impulsively rested my palm against his face. “Well, maybe you should stop using them. I can take your pain away for a while, if you’ll let me.”
Reiven rested his hand over mine and pulled it away from his face. “I thought nothing would ever make me feel normal again, until you touched me when I was wounded. But I can handle pain, so don’t worry.”
“Does Ash know?”
“No, and I’d prefer to keep it that way.
” Crushing, oppressive silence enveloped us as he paused, rubbing the back of his neck before clearing his throat a bit too loudly.
The half-smile he cracked made my heart sink into the sea.
It couldn’t push away the gloom weighing over us, no matter how he tried to act carefree.
“Ha, odd that a Siren is offering to help a former pirate bastard.”
I wasn’t about to forget about this, but he obviously wanted to stop talking about it.
I filed away the rest of the questions I had about his curse—who he killed, who put it on him, and how it could be broken—in the back of my mind for now.
I folded my arms across my chest and leaned back against the railing.
“Well, you never know. If you actually help me get revenge on Vaetrik, I might have to take you off my shit list. Maybe I’ll even grace you with my friendship. ”
“Me and a Siren? Friends?” Rei said, chuckling in disbelief. “You can’t fathom how bad of an idea that is.”
“I guess you’re right. Then, when this is over, and Ash’s pretty dream of a peaceful world comes to pass, you and I will part ways as traveling companions who barely tolerate each other.”
He moved before me, moonlit eyes glowing with mirth. “Damn right. So, for now, that makes us…temporary allies.”
“Roommates, unfortunately.”
Rei brightened like a child being told he could have sweets for dinner. “You mean you’ll come back to our room?”
I pursed my lips as if I wanted no such thing and tried to blame the galley bedroom as being too small for more than one person. He definitely saw right through my excuse.
Reiven pulled his pack of herbal cigarettes out of his pocket, squinting at the expanse of dark water in consideration before hurling the small box with a soft grunt of effort.
The rewarding plunk of it hitting the water somewhere in the night prompted him to give me a sly grin.
“You told me to stop using them. Now you’ll have to deal with me being insufferable while I have withdrawals, Blue. ”
I sniffed. “I hate to break this to you, but you’re already insufferable.”
“Fair enough.” Reiven stuck out his hand, I thought for that silly Human tradition of a handshake.
But rather than moving my hand up and down, he pulled me closer to him, examining my face as if he were searching for something he wasn’t sure existed.
“For a Siren, I think you may not be as ferocious as I was warned,” he said with a genuine smile.
He turned his hand over, so that my pale blue, smaller one rested in his gloved palm.
It felt as though he was admiring my hand at first, but then he noticed the ring Ash had given me.
“What the hell—that damn kid. Did he propose to you the moment I was out of the way?”
Was it just me, or was he actually perturbed, seeing the ring on my hand?
I had to chuckle. “He didn’t propose to me. He’s a child.”
“You have it on the wrong finger, then.” He slid the ring off and put it on my index finger. “There, now people won’t assume that you’re married.”
“You’re sleep-deprived,” I teased. It felt strangely right, wrapping my fingers around his hand to pull him to our room. “Come on, I’ll sing for you.”
Over the next few days, though Ashkade appeared happy that Reiven and I were getting along, it seemed like we were getting along too well for his taste.
He eyeballed the way I’d laugh at something Rei said, or how Reiven’s hand would linger on my back or shoulder when he passed by me.
How we’d smile at each other. Ash must have been expecting us to go back to our needling, antagonistic ways, not… whatever this was.
Spirits. We’re not flirting, are we?
I absentmindedly watched Reiven’s disappearing back as he headed downstairs to the galley to make the four of us some tea.
The waning twilight sun caught in his dark hair and eyes when he glanced over his shoulder to grin at me.
Ash, Calinia, and I sat on barrels and boxes around a large, low crate that became our makeshift table on the quarterdeck, near Captain Larsel’s usual place at the helm.
The whispering, orange-tinted waves drew my gaze, but Ashkade clearing his throat pulled it back to the ship.
“You two are actin’ weird. I dunno if I like it,” he said, setting down his hand of playing cards to give me an uncharacteristically hard look.
I frowned. Ashkade kept trying to bring up the petty ways Reiven and I provoked each other before, like he was trying to evaluate my reactions.
But the more I looked back and thought about it, the more I began to see the things he had done in a different light.
The light of a man who couldn’t completely bring himself to hate a Siren he claimed he did.
Ash told me Reiven had sworn up a storm at him for not noticing my cut after we got back from Redsand Cove.
And that he had used his earring to tell Ash to let me out of the hold after our duel, claiming that my whimpering was annoying him.
And that Reiven had been the one to tell Lyneca to bring me to the dolphins after I had started crying.
Noticing things like a minor injury, my homesickness, and the remnants of my trauma at Vaetrik’s hands…
it just reinforced the soft feeling that wrapped around me when I looked at him.
He was worried about my tiny cut when he had been shot multiple times.
An idiotic smile spread across my face.
Calinia let her cards form a bridge between her hands.
She was badly losing the game the three of them had been playing, so she held most of the deck.
It was called “Deception,” a game where one could lie to win, but lying about the cards they played face down always came with the chance that someone could call their bluff.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised, but Reiven was truly the most devious out of the three players, and he had won every game they played so far.
The ship swayed and creaked beneath us as I shifted uncomfortably on the short wooden box Reiven made me share with him. “Do you think he hates me, Ash?”
“Obviously not, and that’s got me all confused,” Ash mumbled.
Calinia slammed her hand, full of cards, onto the crate and glared between us. “He has me confused, too. There’s no way he can win every single game we’ve played honestly. He must be cheating.”
I had thought the same thing, and I was glad for a distraction from Ash's musings about Rei and me. No way he was that good of a strategist, was he? Calinia was probably right; he was enough of a cunning bastard to be cheating this game somehow.
His cards sat face down beside me. I shot my companions a fox-like grin and picked the cards up. But shockingly enough, his hand was almost perfect for the current state of the game. Maybe he was just exceptionally lucky.
Ash was right behind him in the number of cards in his hand, so after peeking at Reiven’s hand, Calinia and Ash swapped cards so Ash would win in a round or two. An evil scheme surfaced in my mind, so I had to fight to hide my smile as Reiven returned with a tray of steaming cups of black tea.
He set them on the crate in front of each of us and resumed his spot on the box next to me.
Honestly, he could have pulled over another box like a normal person, but he chose to spread his legs to take up as much room as possible, forcing me to scoot over until I only had half my ass on the box.
I scowled up at him and his obnoxious, charming grin.
“Sun’s going to set soon. We need to finish this up,” he said. He threw two cards face down. “Two sevens.”