Chapter 55 Samson
SAMSON
We are not good people, my love, but we have suffered enough.
—from The Odyssey of Goromount: A Play
Samson clambered onto the Lord of Sea after the others.
Suns ago, he had once stepped onto this deck in the grey cage of a Jantari uniform and been hailed a traitor.
But now cheers greeted him. Sesharians, laughing as free men, called to him, and their joy brought a raw, fierce swell of pride in his chest. This was the victory he had dreamed of.
This was the destiny he had been born to.
He accepted a beer. It was warm, far too old, but he savored its bitter taste anyway. A nervousness jittered through him. Where was Elena? She had disappeared in the throng. He searched the deck but did not find her.
“Blue Star,” a deckhand said. His friends turned, grinned. “They said you were coming.”
“I told Maya she was full of shit—”
“I held hope—”
“—the way you slid up was badass—”
“—did you see the Ravani queen and her fire?”
Their questions overwhelmed him, but it was the last one that snagged him.
“Have you seen her?” he asked the man, his heart tremoring in his throat.
The deckhand smiled inwardly, and his friends grinned, some chuckling with a mischievous look in their eyes.
“The last I saw, she was heading to the captain’s cabin. Something about making tea.”
His heart quickened. “Thank you.”
He clinked his beer against the deckhand’s and hurried to the cabin, each step increasing his nerves, his excitement.
Why did his belly feel as if it was filled with hornets?
It was only Elena. Only Elena. He had just seen her.
They had just spoken. Of course she would run off without telling him. That hard-nosed, impossible woman—
He came to the entrance of the cabin and stopped.
Elena looked up from bandaging her arm, her eyes meeting his.
His heart stuttered, slowed. Then flared up again, quicker than a tempest.
“Y-you’re hurt,” he said.
Her gaze slunk down his shoulders, his chest, his legs, and Samson felt hot and cold all at once. The edge of her lip curved into a soft smile. “So are you.”
He stepped in and did what he had wanted to do the moment he had seen her within the inferno: He swept her into his arms and crushed her against his aching chest. She laughed, and the rumble of her laughter against his skin thrummed through him like quicksilver, bright and joyous.
“Samson, you brute,” she said, her voice muffled by his shoulder.
“Elena, you terror.”
She smelled of ash and blood and sweat. She was dirty and covered in grime that clung to his clothes, his skin.
But he did not care. He only held her closer, his face buried in her hair, his arms wrapped around her small back, and felt, for once in his life, a lucky, lucky man.
Finally, after some time, he pulled away and she looked up, smiling.
“I should have known it would not be easy getting rid of you,” she teased.
“You’ll have to try harder next time.”
Though she remained smiling, he noticed something change in her eyes.
That quick shift. That look he could never catch but ached to know.
There was so much he wished he knew about her, so much he wished to rectify.
All those arguments, all those fights, seemed petty now.
He saw the faded marks on her neck and swallowed his hot tide of guilt.
She touched the rim of her nose and drew away flakes of blood. “Strange,” she muttered.
“What is it? Did the Jantari hurt you? Did they…” He trailed off. He could never forget the muffled screams of women as Jantari officers pulled them from their beds within the mines. The taste of his bitter rage, the acidity of his own helplessness.
Elena caught the look in his eyes. “No,” she said gently. “It— I am just tired, that’s all.”
Out of habit, he reached for her Agni. And recoiled.
It was like touching a beam of steel, baked in the sun.
But then the feeling passed, the pain subdued with a corded disquiet, and he tasted something spoiled.
Wrong. There was a taint in the immaterial shape of her spark, small and nearly translucent.
He would have missed it had he not been familiar with her Agni.
If Elena felt something amiss, she did not show it.
She sighed and rubbed the blood off her fingers, and he thought, It’s because she’s tired and She still cannot sense when I probe our connection.
Elena turned back to the desk and reached for the kit.
“C-can I?” he said, pointing to her arm.
She sat on the edge of the desk as he unrolled a fresh strip of bandage. His fingers brushed the tender underside of her arm, and Elena stiffened. But his eyes fell to the sudden rise of her chest, the quick intake of her breath. He slowed. Kept his touch gentle, light.
“Doesn’t look too deep of a cut,” he whispered.
Elena turned, and he felt the intense heat of her gaze graze his jaw, his neck. He tried not to focus on how the soft hairs of her arm were brushed gold in the light, or how the lines of her throat quivered as she swallowed, or how his breath became smaller, shallower.
“Here, would you…?” He raised her arm and set her hand on his shoulder so he could wipe the dried blood on her elbow. Her fingers pressed into his skin, firm, warm.
“Who taught you medical aid?” she asked.
“Yassen, actually.”
“Really?”
“I’m not sure where he learned, but once, when I was stupid and injured, he taught me how to clean my wounds.”
“Stupid and injured. Sounds like the lot of us.”
He chuckled, and he felt the tension slowly seep off her shoulders.
“I once bandaged Yassen’s arm like this,” she said with a wistfulness that sent an ache through him, not in jealousy, but because he could feel the memory of her pain beneath it.
“Yassen was jumpy about injuries. I bet he couldn’t sit still.”
“No,” she laughed. “But to be fair, he required stitches.”
“Oh, I’m sure Yassen had no problem being pierced by you,” he said.
Her eyes lifted, crashing into his. “Would you?”
Somewhere between his chest and his throat, between his destiny and his desire, she caught him.
Samson felt too bare, too seen. Heat licked down his neck and spine.
But something else threaded beneath his discomfort.
A breathless exhilaration, like the first time he had sailed.
Or the first time he had commanded Agni and felt power rush through his veins.
He felt hers now, still open, still unaware.
How could she sit here so calmly and eviscerate him so easily?
As Samson looked into her eyes, he felt his despair surrender, his alarm heighten.
“You terrify me,” he said softly.
She stilled. “Why?”
He imagined telling her the truth: That if she wanted, she could pry away his Agni. That he could do the same. They were each other’s destruction, and he could not deny that there were days when he wished he could have it all. He had almost broken his restraint that night in the pit.
He almost told her.
“Because…” he began.
Almost.
“Because we may have a problem with the Yumi.” He winced inwardly. He had agreed with Jaya to break the news together, after she had spoken with the Arohassin, but he’d rather tell Elena now than his own terrible truth.
He sealed off her bandage and stepped away. Elena tracked him with her eyes, and he felt a nervous, intoxicating sensation of being studied so intently.
“What happened?”
“Daz was going to retreat and race straight to Tsuana without the killdoms. Jaya and I protested, but then he bound us, and we fought and, and…” He looked away. “Afira is dead. Rhumia jumped overboard. But Daz is still alive. We’ve told the other Yumi that he was injured and needs rest.”
“Mother’s Gold.” Elena skated her hands through her hair. “Shit.”
“You were right, though. About Jaya. She is useful.”
“How is she?”
“Battered and bruised, but alive. I don’t think I’ve seen Akaros this murderous before. If Yassen and I were harmed on missions, he could have cared less. But with Jaya…” He shrugged. “You should see her.”
“I will.” She rose and began to pack the bandages and salves back into the kit.
Samson watched, quiet. There was more he wanted to say, questions he wanted to ask.
What would come once they reached Tsuana?
How would they approach the council? But those were exigent questions.
There was another one, a simple and possibly insignificant question, one he found himself returning to more often.
She caught him watching. “If you’re worrying about the Yumi, I’ll handle it. I can talk sense into Daz. Or we can keep him on the bounder, away from the others, until we’re done in Tsuana.”
“All right.” He tapped the desk, hoping to drum up courage. Elena set down the kit carefully, stopped his drumming.
“What is it?”
He looked down at her hand on top of his. “I, uh, I.” He shook his head, laughing bitterly. “Skies above, it was easier asking in your throne room.”
He thought she would withdraw her hand, almost sensed her arm tensing, but Elena did not move away. Gently, firmly, she pressed her finger beneath his chin and forced him to meet her eyes.
“What do you want to ask me, Samson Kytuu?”
His heart stilled. He did not have courage, but she had given him it, and he almost asked her then and there.
“Will you”—become my queen in marriage—“have tea with me in honor of my name day?”
A slow smile bloomed across her face, and he forgave himself for not asking, if only to hang on to that smile longer.
“Your name day? Is it today?”
“Well, officially, it’s a month from now on the fifteenth, but since we’re in the mood for celebration—”
“A month?!” She smacked his arm, then grinned. “Fine. But only because we’ve won.”
“You know, Samson is not my true name.”
“Really? What is it, then?”
“Ruru.”
“Ruru?”
“It’s my middle name. Well, actually, it’s Ru. But growing up, I used to say things twice, so my mother started calling me Ruru. It stuck.”
Elena blinked, then laughed. “You liked to say things twice twice?”
“Quick and fast fast.” He smiled. “I grew out of it.”
“Ruru.” Elena said the word slowly, curling the r’s as if to relish how the name rolled off her tongue. It sent a thrill through him. “What does it mean?”
“Son of the sea,” he said. “But it also means lover. Tender-fleshed. He who would give half his life for his beloved.”
“Ruru,” she whispered, almost as if to herself.
Why did his born name on her lips sound like a prayer?
He wanted her to say it again. In his ear.
On his lips. Again and again, until it was chant that reverberated through him with the sweet succor of the divine.
Later, he would chide himself for not seeing it then.
How her smile did not quite meet her eyes.
How it faltered, just for a moment, before she righted it again.
“Well, Ruru.” She waggled her brows. “Let me get the tea. One dollop of honey, yes?”
“Someone once told me it’s better with two.”
She blushed then. It sent an electric charge skating down his spine, vicious and potent.
She showed him the captain’s selection of tea and laughed when he told her she had given him too much honey, and as the night waned, as their laughter unspooled, easy and warm, Samson buried his earlier question.
Later. When this was all over, when they were finally at peace, he would ask her.