21. The People We Become
The People We Become
Ilearn more about his last three years on the ship. He tells me how he properly met Riss when they got assigned as officers on the same mission – and he found her completely insufferable.
“Really?” I ask, grinning.
“Absolutely! She kept bossing everyone around. Even the first officer who was with us. But then we got talking properly at the next morale booster. And I realised she was great.”
I offer him stories of my own, from my three years in Hevalla without him, and it’s like we’re meeting each other for the first time again.
He asks after the people in our village, and we reminisce about the time we rescued Tam Protcher’s flour. A relatively new watcher had left it outside the bakery in the sun, and it was attracting bugs. Protcher was so thankful he made us a cake.
Cosmer asks about Eric, and I tell him he’d been joining me on the fishing boat the last couple of years, and often worked harder than I did.
“Is he still superstitious?” he asks.
“Worse than Old Mother, sometimes.”
I miss them.
I miss them.
I miss them.
I nuzzle into Cosmer’s shoulder while he strokes my hair. Slowly. Like he’s lost in thought.
“I know how you feel,” he says eventually. “I miss my mother, too. Worry about her all the time.”
“You should write to her,” I murmur to his skin. “Let her know you’re alive.”
“I don’t know. I’ve left it too long now, haven’t I?”
I tilt my head up at him. “Why did you leave it so long? You gave me one of your vague answers last time.”
“If I’ve ever given you a vague answer, it’s because you’ve not asked me a clear question,” he jokes.
“And… it’s like I said. When you’re up here, and every day could be your last, it changes you.
You think about the people you left behind – of course you do.
But the war becomes everything. Nothing else even feels real. ”
The truth is, I think I know what he means. I’ve been feeling like it, too.
He lets out a low, long breath, and holds me closer.
“Ara. I’m sorry. I haven’t been entirely honest with you. I probably could have visited you all on a couple of missions I’ve been on. But there was a reason I couldn’t.”
“What was it?”
He hesitates. “Is it okay if I tell you when we’re back on the ship? I just don’t want anything to spoil this perfect morning.”
The sentence hangs between us.
What reason would mean that our morning would be spoiled?
Something Riss had said gets caught and reeled in my mind.
He actually looks pretty good, considering.
“Want me to finish your massage?” he asks, bringing me back to this island, here, with him. “You seemed really tense.”
“Can I sit up this time?” I ask.
“Sure.”
I do, and he gets behind me, rubbing my shoulders. I relax more. His fingers on me, touching me in such sensitive places…
The feeling is back.
I find myself reaching for his hand, and pulling it around, and down right to where I’m seated on the sand and already getting wet.
He wastes no time. Touches me urgently, perfectly. It’s a good thing he’s done this to other girls, I try to tell myself. It made him get better at this, for me.
After a few more strokes, I stop him by placing my hand over his.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
I spin to face him.
He’s aroused.
Good.
“Can you get that tonic?” I whisper, trying not to blush.
He frowns. “I thought…”
I bring my lips to his. “I want you. And if we’re not going to do it here, in what must be the most beautiful place in the world…”
“I want you, too,” he breathes.
“So, have me,” I say.
He crashes into me, kissing me hard and fast.
With one hand, he fumbles for his jacket on the sand. Next thing I know is, he’s holding a tiny vial.
“It might hurt, your first time. But I can stop at any time. Just say.”
“I’m ready,” I promise.
“Do you want to lie down?”
“No. Let’s stay like this. If we can.”
He nods and uncorks the vial. Quickly, he dabs some of the clear liquid on his fingers and then slips them inside me. The tonic tingles inside me quite pleasantly. I do feel wetter.
He kisses me more.
And then it’s happening. I’m being angled backwards slightly. There is no space left between our bodies, like our hearts might start syncing time with one another.
One hand around himself, one around my waist to keep me steady, he pushes in. I gasp.
The pressure being released feels like uncoiling a spring I didn’t know was coiled. He feels so deep in me. Fills me whole. Like I never should have been empty in the first place.
He’s moving. I do feel pain. But also, pleasure. I respond to him, my hips lifting. I thread one hand through his hair. I grasp his back with the other, digging my nails right into his skin.
A moan almost leaves my lips. Instinctively, I stop myself.
But he whispers, “You can be as loud as you want here.”
So, I am.
Then, I’m aware of other sensations. My whole body is tingling. Pain prickles up and down my arms. My head starts ringing, blocking out the sound of the waves and the gulls and even our heavy breaths.
I can’t fathom why I’d be getting the lingering blood magic symptoms right now. I feel so hot, like one more push and I could burst into flames.
He’s slowing down. His hand is flat against my neck.
“Are you okay, Ara? You’re burning up.”
“I’m fine,” I say breathily.
And it’s true. If anything, the pain is adding to the pleasure.
The fire in my blood seems to heighten every sense.
Colours around me are bursting. I can see every freckle on his face, the brown strands in amongst his copper hair.
The tiny gold flecks in his big brown eyes, which are so perfect.
They’re the colour of warm, freshly turned and watered soil in the growing season. The promise it brings.
“Should I stop?” he asks.
No. I don’t want that.
I pull him closer. Get myself straighter again. Move my hips over his in a way that gets my sensitive spot.
A white light is enveloping me.
I want you to feel the same pleasure I’m feeling.
I say it to him in my mind. Will it to be true.
And then he’s gasping, and his hands are in my hair.
“Fuck,” he says into my ear. “Keep doing whatever you’re doing.”
We move as one, a push and pull that only seems to make us more breathless, wrap around each other tighter. When he reaches release, he collapses into me, and for a moment, everything is perfect.
But then he’s separating himself from me.
There’s a look that scares me on his face.
He sort of slides backwards, until his back is against the tree. A tiny rust-red crab scuttles out from somewhere in the sand under him, like a little heart escaping its ribs.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Did you do something to me?”
My body goes rigid. “I don’t think so.”
“Are you sure? It started feeling different. I mean, amazing. But, different. Like I was high. Or on fire.”
Like he was on fire?
I wanted to make him feel what I was feeling.
Did I actually manage to do that?
I shake the thought away. It’s impossible.
Sounds like something Drake would be able to do.
Drake. Who had asked me if I had blood magic.
After I’d willed him, in my mind, not to pick up the knife. And he hadn’t.
Hadn’t I even done this to Cosmer before? I’d wanted him to look at me so badly at the morale booster. And he had.
I choke up. “Sisters. Cosmer, I’m so sorry. I think, maybe…” I search the beach, panicked. The clouds are expanding. The palms sway more. The pain in my arms…
Right where the track marks are.
“Ara. What’s going on?”
“Cosmer,” I whisper. “I’m scared.”
I shut my eyes. But when I open them, I notice, above his head, the outline of a ship in the sky.
He follows my line of sight and sees it too. He wraps his arms around me, bringing me towards him and the tree, and we huddle there like that until the ship passes.
He turns to me. “Okay. Please tell me what’s happening. Now.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I think I need to talk to Meg. Or Drake.”
“Drake?”
A man whose hands react with mine when we touch.
Riss’ voice. I would start thinking very carefully about how you’re going to break that wonderful news to Cosmer.
I don’t want to tell him.
But it needs to be done. We’ve slept together. I don’t want to feel like I’m hiding anything from him.
“There’s some kind of link between Drake and I.”
Cosmer blinks, twice. “A link.”
“And, if I have the same talent he does, somehow…”
Squinting at me, he says, flat as a line, “You can bend people’s will, too.”
“I know. It sounds impossible. I never had anything like this, until…”
I met Drake.
“Now,” I say instead.
Cosmer looks away from me. Reaches for his clothes.
“Are you angry with me?”
He slips on his shirt. “I don’t know how to feel right now.”
“I didn’t mean to use magic on you. I just wanted you to feel what I was.”
If your intention is good, but your choice was bad, are you a good man, or a bad man?
“You didn’t need to do that. I was enjoying it just fine.”
“I know. I promise it just happened. Cosmer,” I plead, because he’s pulling up his breeches, and then he’ll be fully dressed, and it will feel like something is over between us.
“What?” he snaps.
“Please forgive me. Honestly, these last few hours, I don’t think I’ve ever been happier.” I intake a breath. “Cosmer. You love me, don’t you?”
“I told you as much. Last night.”
I feel choked. “Well, I think I’m in love with you.”
He finishes dressing.
Looks over at me.
Then his face softens.
He crawls the short gap over to me. Pecks me lightly on the cheek.
“Okay,” he mutters. “Let’s forget about it. I know you’re not really yourself right now, and there are things going on we don’t understand yet.” He stares at me sideways. “Do you really mean that? That you love me?”
“I do.”
He gives me my favourite crooked smile. I think I fell for it as much as his kindness.
“You don’t know how happy that makes me.”
“We have to go now, don’t we?”
“Sadly, yes.”
If only we could just stay here.
I stare at his ship in the distance.
“Pilots could disappear with their ships,” I state. “Couldn’t they?”