Chapter 18 #2
“Because I'm so sick of you twitching while I'm trying to sleep,” I said. My feeble attempt at a playful explanation fell flat to my own ears.
“Sorry about that…What, you aren't going to make me beg on my knees for your help?” Rei tried, just as weakly as me, to lighten the mood, and failed. “Does it hurt you to do?”
I had to explain three times that my Siren power only tired me out if I overexerted myself before he gave me the go ahead. I reached into the sea of pain inside him and drew it out slowly, watching relief and torment simultaneously fill his eyes. He tensed and stared at me until I finished.
“Why…” he whispered again. “Why are you able to get rid of it so easily? I’ve been carrying it with me for years, but you have the power to just…make me feel whole again.” With his arms still around me, he pulled me to lie fully on top of him. “Thank you.”
“Wow, saying ‘thank you?’ Don’t be so nice, or I might start to think you actually like me.”
The smile he gave me was real and perfect. “Never. I despise you, Blue.”
“Well, I despise you more.” I leaned closer to press my lips against one of his dimples, savoring his contented sigh and the lazy pattern he drew on my back.
“I thought you were better at faking things,” he said. “You're not very convincing right now.”
I went back to trailing my fingers down his face and hair, humming the lullaby I had been singing to him since we boarded the ship. It echoed within the confined walls of our quarters. The waves outside seemed to react, hushing their continued crashing against the hull to listen.
Eyes closed, Reiven drank in my voice as if it brought him new life. “Your voice is like magic…I never would have thought a Siren’s song would make me melt like this.”
And I never thought I’d feel so comfortable and safe in a man’s arms.
I gave him a cheeky smile. “Do you want to know a secret about this lullaby? My people say that if you don’t listen for it, you’ll never get close to the Voidtome. Only Sirens are supposed to know it, but…you should know it by now, too. The Song of the Void.”
“Ah, the Druinn general mentioned that on the island. That's why he's still after you. And you didn't tell us because you didn't trust us?”
I winced. “Well…not quite.”
There was no judgment there in his eyes as I explained everything.
My vicious plot to leave them to die after I stole the Voidtome, the destruction I planned to sow across Arvensis.
Saying it so plainly—it felt cruel. Was that the kind of person I was going to be?
Ash wanted peace for our world, and Rei would do anything to protect Ash and his ideals.
Maybe the best thing—for me, and for the future of the world—was actually to help them.
Not steal the Tome for a crazed, hateful plot to destroy an entire country.
Rei just gave me a smile without a trace of anger.
“I don’t think that you would have done any of that, sweetheart.
Not that you’re incapable of it, but you’re just too…
kindhearted. You’ve been through so much, but you still showed someone like me gentleness and care.
If something happens to me, I’d trust you to keep Ash safe, and I’d expect him to do the same for you. ”
I sat up and stared. “Nothing’s going to happen to you, Rei.”
“There’s something I need to tell you—about me. About why I became a Siren-hunter—”
I waited expectantly, but he seemed to struggle to put together words. His lips parted, and no sound came out. Was he just overcome with nerves? Whatever did he do in his past?
A Siren-hunting pirate.
I suppressed the shiver that crept across my skin.
Rei avoided my eyes and frowned. “I guess…maybe it’ll have to wait. Just know that I never intend to be that kind of person again.”
I rested my palm against his cheek and let myself drown in his dark, warm gaze. “Reiven…Maybe we don’t have to hate each other just because of what we are.”
An ex-pirate. A vengeful Siren.
To Mourner Hell with it, I wanted to trust in him. That he would never hurt me, that I meant something to him.
I opened my mouth to tell him that.
But a thunderous boom in the near distance startled us both out of our intimate conversation.
Fear sunk its claws into my heart and lungs, and I barely managed to whisper, “Cannons.”
A sound that had grown bone-chillingly familiar to me after spending so much time in the hold of Vaetrik's ship.
My thoughts jumped to the horrifying possibility that the sound was, in fact, bursting from a pirate ship, and even worse than that, a particular pirate who happened to be traveling in the same direction as us.
Reiven and I yanked on our boots and regular clothes, and he dashed out the door with me on his heels.
“Ash!” he shouted.
We weren't the only people on the move. The crew’s boots thudded against the deck as they rushed to follow Captain Larsel's barked orders, preparing the sails and readying what meager weapons we had on board.
Ashkade was already at the deck's railing next to Calinia, their bodies mere silhouettes against the dark blue sky, awash with the orange of the rising sun. They didn't look our way as we ran up to the railing beside them, following their glares at the two ships off our starboard bow.
A maroon civilian ship had been halfway swallowed by the sea.
Holes from cannon balls had ripped through the hull and shattered the main mast. The ocean around the ship bubbled and roiled as it sank deeper and deeper beneath the surface.
No visible survivors, though I spotted a few bodies floating nearby.
Fishermen. As if they would have anything of value to loot.
But one glance at the pirate ship before us told me exactly why this happened.
After all, Vaetrik was the type to fire the cannons at civilians first, loot second, and ask questions later.
The Ocean's End was a four-masted behemoth of a ship that made the Maiden of Blue look like a child's plaything. Darkened, weathered gray-brown wood had been painted with splashes of black and yellow near the front, in the shape of a cutlass slicing into a full pouch of gold. The symbol of the Eventide Brigade. Cannons poked through the gun ports on the ship’s side, ready for the order to fire.
On the deck, waiting by the railing just like us, were Vaetrik and Shaddan. The Druinn general levitated a single cannonball over the tip of his finger, moving it up and down in the air as if he were playing a lazy game of catch with himself.
Captain Larsel joined us. “What’s our move here, Timebreaker?
” she asked in a low voice. “We have no cannons and minimal weapons to fight them off.
They'll sink us in no time.” Her hand rested on the pistol at her hip, and I wondered how her aim was.
If she used to be a naval officer, probably pretty good.
Ashkade silently stared at Vaetrik and his ship, but all of us ducked behind the railing for cover as the boom of cannon fire cut through the air.
Reiven seized Ash and me and covered us with his body.
Wood splintered and cracked, but it wasn't near us; it sounded closer to the bow of the ship, where one cannonball had found its mark.
The others splashed harmlessly into the water, but that wasn't because their aim was poor.
Vaetrik's powerful voice rang out over the waves, halting the cannon fire. It sent a shiver down my spine. “Young Timebreaker boy, I’d like to parley with you.”
“No. No, no, no,” I gasped.
Reiven found my hand and squeezed my fingers.
“I believe you have something that belongs to me. I would have my pet returned, Timebreaker, otherwise your pathetic journey to Hell will be over in but a few minutes, aye?”
“We're not giving her to him,” Rei growled at Ashkade. “Let's fight. I’ll kill them all, and if they sink the Maiden, we'll just commandeer their ship.”
I appreciated Reiven's apparent willingness to die for me, but there was more at stake here than just me.
Vaetrik had weapons, cannons, and more ruthless fighters than our skeleton crew of simple sailors.
Reiven wasn't going to be able to fend them off himself, despite his bluster.
I'd be all but useless if Vaetrik got involved, and then there was Shaddan—
Speak of the devil, Shaddan's voice laced the wind buffeting the loosened mainsails. “I can’t believe you've thrown in with the Humans, Calinia. With the fucking Timebreaker. It's a shame, but I may just have to kill you.”
Calinia had already drawn her bow and nocked an arrow to the string, manipulating the metal heads of the arrows out of her quiver to float nearby. She gave Ash a hard look but didn't bother to answer Shaddan. She wasn't the only one preparing to fight, either.