Chapter Twenty-Five A Scar for a Scar
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
A SCAR FOR A SCAR
Panting, Reya sent another ball of glittering light crashing into the sea with a splash. She’d come up here every morning since they’d set sail, when the ship was near silent in the long hours before dawn and moonslight spilled like silver paint across the rippling surface of the Salt Sea.
They were sailing into wilder, darker waters now, and without any landmarks or passing ships to mark their progress, only the stars told her they were making headway. Reya’s entire world had become blue above and blue below on a ship that was growing smaller and smaller by the day.
One hand on her sword, she threw another sphere and another, easing the building pressure of her magic off the stern where no one could see or judge. The ocean foamed beneath the onslaught. This was the only tactic thus far in her great battle plan against the Kraken: poke it full of holes.
We’re all going to die.
Reya shoved the thought aside. She would need to summon more power than this when the time came.
But every time she closed her eyes, temple walls crumbled in her memory, burying her alive.
The more power she took, the more fragile her hold.
If she broke the floodgate and went into a Rage, she might kill them all on accident.
Thance’s words weighed on her. There will always be a pull in you to protect that life.
That night in Port Talluah, Caelan hadn’t moved out of the way of the dagger because he’d trusted her. And in a single moment of instinct, she’d trusted her magic to save him. Trusted herself. The question was, could she do it again?
Hands trembling, she released her grip on the sword.
An image of the Acadia splitting down the middle and Caelan clawing for the surface as he sank into the black water had her slamming her eyes shut.
She let down the floodgate a little further and this time drew out the light like a flaming arrow, mimicking the action of nocking and pulling a bow. Sweat trickled down her temples.
She saw war and fire and death. Heard two thousand voices inside Bladestone Prison crying out for help.
The arrow flared brighter, and she gritted her teeth as she set it loose. It plunged into the water like a falling star, sending a spray of foam into the air. Her knees shook, and she grabbed the balcony railing to steady herself.
That was enough magic for now.
Her violet Ire faded back into her skin, dimmer than it had been an hour ago. It hadn’t changed color since that day in the Cleary, and she hadn’t been able to swallow her pride long enough to ask Caelan about it. Reya climbed the stairs back onto the aft deck. She was exhausted. And starving.
For years she had been limiting herself physically, all to make herself appear more human.
But aboard the Acadia, there was no need to hide.
If she didn’t continue to build endurance, to leverage her immortal strength, it wouldn’t matter how much power she managed to summon.
She would weaken too quickly to use it. Even Thance had politely suggested she continue to exercise.
Judging by the shifting color of the sky, she had roughly an hour before the galley opened and she could eat.
Reya glanced up at the complicated network of the ship, at the nets and pulleys that connected the various systems of parts.
There were no alleys to hide in, no rooftops or bridges to serve as exits.
How did Kalúe stand it? Reya needed to push through her fatigue, and if the polished wood beneath her boots was all that stood between them and oblivion, she needed to learn its secrets, to use her surroundings to her advantage.
The ship had to be at least two hundred paces long, and that wasn’t including the height of the masts.
It took her a moment to see it, but when she did, she grinned.
She would make the ship an obstacle course.
Reya rolled up the sleeves of her tunic and sank into a crouch. She thought of the way Caelan’s hands had slid over her jaw, how he’d groaned as he tasted her mouth like a fine wine.
Her skin prickled as the Ire raced down her arms.
She was a flash of violet across the ship, leaping over rope spirals and barrels and up and down the stairs of the various deck levels.
Sea spray and mold coated the nets at the base of the mizzenmast, and she was unnerved by how they swayed beneath her as she climbed.
She pretended she was back in Edris, scaling the side of some beautiful, ancient building.
When she reached the top, she touched her hand to the Kalterran flag snapping in the wind and began her descent. The locale was different, but this, at least, was not altogether unfamiliar. And she liked the challenge.
The mainmast was higher and more complicated. The old man in the crow’s nest was not pleased by her intrusion.
“Sorry,” Reya panted, and he mumbled something in Kalterran from behind his pipe as she climbed past.
It wasn’t until she reached the foremast that she lost her footing. She screeched as she slipped, grasping for a hold. When she caught a rope, her hands burned as they slid on the ribs. Heart in her throat, Reya dangled there like an amateur, waves churning beneath her.
“Come on,” she grunted, and swung her legs forward and back, gaining momentum. With a prayer, she threw herself onto the lower nets and made purchase with a whoop of victory.
Reya decided to end the cycle by leaping onto the bowsprit and trying to touch the head of the sea serpent that jutted out over the water.
This is just like the city bridge, she told herself. This was better, in fact. At least if she fell over the net below, she would hit water and not cobblestone. It would hurt, though, given the speed at which they were moving.
Slowly she shuffled her feet across the beam.
When the ship rose and fell over a cresting wave and Reya nearly tumbled to her death, she shuffled right back to safety with a screech and began the course again, ignoring the strange looks from the night crew.
With every lap, she pushed herself faster, fighting the urge to check her speed or strength.
When she failed to touch the serpent’s head for the twelfth time, she promised herself that when she reached it, she would take one of its sapphire eyes as a reward.
Looking down at the deck, she spotted Zantae leaving the captain’s quarters.
His shirt was buttoned wrong, and his hair was disheveled.
There was only one reason he would be coming out of the captain’s chambers at this hour looking like that.
Reya thought of how Zantae had pulled Kalúe behind him, how he looked at her with such awe and devotion, and felt an unwelcome pang of jealousy.
When Zantae saw Reya hanging from the rigging, he merely gave her an odd look before climbing below deck.
By the time the sun crept over the horizon and there were too many people on deck to move freely, she was on her twenty-seventh cycle.
She received no shortage of questioning looks from the day crew when they noticed her propelling up and down the masts with frantic speed, hair plastered to the sides of her sweat-damp face.
Reya kept to the same routine every morning for the next five days, wielding her power to the knife’s edge of a Rage before sprinting and climbing the ship until she crumpled to her knees with exhaustion.
By day three, the crew had begun to take bets on how many tries it would take her to touch the head and when she would inevitably fall.
Even Kalúe had emerged one morning to watch.
It was her one hundred and thirty-fifth cycle, at the kiss of dawn, when she finally plucked the midnight-blue gem from the serpent’s eye and sent the crew into a riot of whoops and hollers.
She gave them all a dramatic bow and was grinning like a damn fool when she saw Caelan propped against the rail, watching her. He lifted his hands in a slow clap.
“How are you feeling?” Reya asked.
The door to their cabin clicked shut behind her, muting the noise of the ship.
They’d been at sea for eight days, and though Caelan’s face was carefully schooled into neutrality, she knew he was in enormous pain.
The dark circles below his eyes had turned a bluish purple.
For now, it could pass as seasickness, but the moment the curse mark spread beyond what his clothes could conceal, they’d be in trouble.
He scrubbed at the back of his neck. “Aside from the fact that I’m slowly dying, I’m fine.”
Reya snorted. “Humor. That’s a good sign. Or perhaps not. You weren’t very funny before.”
That earned her an almost-smile.
“I made you some more salve.” She held out the tin she’d spent the last half hour refilling for him.
Caelan didn’t hide his relief, and she was grateful because his eyes had stopped changing hues, which made reading him in the way she’d become accustomed maddeningly arduous. “Thank you.”
He loosened the laces of his tunic with one hand almost lazily, a movement that was, like everything else Caelan did, effortlessly suggestive.
Clearing her throat, she turned toward the wall as he tugged off his shirt, advising herself that lusting after him in his current state of wellness was inappropriate.
But there was so little space in the room that it was awkward, so she gave up and turned back around, surprised when Caelan didn’t comment.
When she saw him scoop out the salve—which she’d painstakingly ground and mixed—with all four fingers and goop it onto his naked chest, she squeaked, “What are you doing?”
He gave her an odd look. “What does it look like?”
“You have to massage it into the skin! Otherwise, the excess will get absorbed into the bandages, and it’s wasted. I don’t have an infinite amount of supplies.”
Caelan cocked both brows. “You do realize I’m a healer, yes?”
“Apparently not a very good one. My mother might not have been a legendary Sage healer, but she was a great midwife, and she taught me how to properly apply a healing salve. Give me that.” She scraped the mixture off his hands before swatting them away and took the tin, schooling her expression into indifference as she knelt before him.
Caelan went so still she thought he’d stopped breathing. “May I?”
Reya wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him so…
at a loss. She waited for him to nod before she proceeded, gently sliding her hand over the spidery, blackened veins.
They twisted beneath his skin as if in reaction to her touch.
The ground poppy petals were bright red against his ashen skin as she massaged the salve with as faint a pressure as she could, spreading and thinning.
It clearly hurt, but he didn’t stop her. He watched her intently the whole time, wincing on occasion. His Ire was now a mottled red. He must have lost his healing magic since leaving port.
“Is it working at all?” she asked tightly as her fingertips dipped into the artwork of muscle contour. Caelan didn’t answer, which was all the answer she needed. “Really? It’s not doing anything?”
“It takes the edge off,” he conceded.
“Well, I suppose that’s better than nothing.”
When she reached the scar over his heart, his whole body tensed. The grooves in the raised flesh were deep, and again she wondered how he’d gotten it. She went around whatever memory was lodged there, afraid if she touched it, he would make her stop.
“I’ll trade you a scar for a scar.” When he didn’t reply, she lifted her shirt just enough to show him the long scar on her right hip.
“I got this on a job when I was seventeen. A foreign competitor was smuggling goods into Edris without paying Lennox a cut, and he wanted it stopped, so he sent me to the docks to light the ships on fire while the Bluehoods confiscated what had already made it into the city. There was a man guarding the slip. Biggest man I’ve ever seen—bigger than you.
He cornered me on the end of the docks while the ships burned.
He was so angry, spitting as he screamed.
To this day I wonder what more might have been on those ships—if I missed something.
” Her chest constricted under the weight of her guilt. “He nearly killed me.”
Caelan’s stomach went rigid.
“Gavin found me. Carried me back to the Bear and the Bard, where a surgeon fixed me up in the back room. I’d never seen Lennox look so furious, raging through the bar for blood and retribution.
The next day, the crews of those ships were strung up over Westgate, and Lennox threw the foreign crime boss at my feet so I could decide how he died.
” Reya swallowed. “You see, in his own strange and twisted way, I believe Lennox cares for me, much as he can care for anyone.”
She carved out another helping of salve with her two middle fingers and began working her way down his sides, but stilled when Caelan gripped her chin and pulled her face to his.
“I know you want to believe that. But what happened was as much an insult to him as it was life-threatening for you. You cannot love someone you own.”
He waited for the words to sink in before he let go, and she dipped her chin to hide the rising flush in her neck. Caelan pointed to a scar on the inside of his own hip, part of which was obscured beneath the band of his pants.
“Kellstone blade,” he said. “Never really healed right. A Rhiterran general got right between the plates of my armor. He was a good fighter, much as I hate to admit it, and I’d already taken two arrows to the chest. I returned the favor with a sword to his gut, though.”
Reya couldn’t help but think of her brother. She wondered if one day Caelan would have to face Leo on a field. Feeling nauseous at the thought, she took several strips of linen from her bag and used them to cover the center of the mark.
Caelan didn’t take his eyes off her as she cleaned her hands and capped the salve.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. “I’m not… used to someone taking care of me.”
Reya half turned, trying for humor to keep her face from flushing.
“Well, I did almost kill you. And before that I robbed you and poisoned you.” Wondering if perhaps she should not have reminded him of that, she asked, “Why did you tell Thance not to come after me when you found out I was going back to Edris?”
She counted the heartbeats until he answered. “I knew you would come back on your own.”
“How?”
There was not an ounce of hesitation in his voice. “Because I see you.”
Her eyes burned. Before she could say something infinitely foolish, she climbed into her hammock and curled up on her side.
“Good night, fire fingers.”
“Good night, thief.”
She no longer thought he meant it as an insult.