Chapter 20
A Straightforward Stitching
S itting on the edge of Eli’s bed, Tam did his best to pretend that sweat wasn’t beading along his hairline.
He knew that what was about to happen was going to hurt. So while he waited for Eli to retrieve the bottle of moonshine that was absolutely necessary at that moment, he tried thinking about anything other than getting stitched up on a rocking boat by an assistant who most likely hadn’t sewn closed that many people, particularly not at sea.
For one thing, Captain Kwon of the pirates they had just evaded had mentioned a creature that was sinking boats along Zinfera’s northern border.
Was it the dragon?
None of the Daxarian crew members had said anything.
I’ll ask around the harbor when we arrive. We’ll rest for a couple of days and stock up on supplies for crossing the desert. Mum said our guides will meet us at the docks. Hopefully they don’t quit when they find out Luca is with us…
The cabin door opened a crack and Eli slipped in, the bottle of moonshine, thankfully, in hand.
“Alright, my lord, we should hurry. Luca is getting restless the longer you are away.”
Tam nodded, not bothering to muster the strength to speak. He stripped off his torn black vest, followed by his tunic.
In his injured state, he barely registered that Eli’s eyes went round and her cheeks started to burn as she took in his bare torso. She probably wasn’t used to the sight of blood. Well… it wasn’t like there was any other option. So as unfortunate as the present reality was, there was no escaping it.
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As she had suspected during their training, Tamlin Ashowan had a build that he kept well hidden. Now, though, Eli no longer needed to speculate about his physique. There was some bulk in his arms and shoulders, but the rest of him was lean muscle.
Tam tossed his bloody clothes onto the cabin deck. “Sorry about the mess.” He lifted his chin and stared at Eli, who was startled by the wave of tingling that rushed through her.
She was spared from him noticing her flustered state when he reached desperately for the moonshine in her hands. Though it took her another moment to realize what he was doing… in a spell of madness, she’d briefly thought he was trying to hold her hand.
Awkwardly, Eli thrust the bottle at her employer. He gratefully took it, uncorked it, and gulped down the liquor like it was water.
“M-my lord? You said that was to clean the wound!”
Tam lowered the bottle to stare at her, a flush already appearing in his cheeks. “You think I’m going to sit perfectly still while you jab me with a needle twenty or more times in a row without anything for the pain?”
“Some men do!” she blurted before noticing that she had accidentally insinuated that he was weaker than some men.
Tam seemed to take no offense, but he did raise his eyebrows and give a quiet chuckle.
He blinked leisurely then spoke. “I’m willing to bet that if these men you know had the option to take some moonshine when they were injured, they would. And if I were to lose that bet? I still don’t see why I should suffer pointlessly because someone else is willing to. Now, would you prefer me to lie down on the bed or the floor?”
Eli swallowed.
It was probably just because Tam knew she was a woman that she felt so uncomfortable. Still, the idea of him lying half naked on her bed was making it very hard not to squirm, and so she jerked her chin downward.
“Floor. It looks like they cut you straight across so it’ll be easier to reach over you,” she explained.
Tam nodded and, with a rumble in the back of his throat, eased himself off the edge of the bed with its dull-blue wool coverlet, and onto the floor.
Eli sidled over to her desk, plucked up the needle and thread, and slipped the needle through the flame of her lantern to sterilize it. “You’re lucky—it doesn’t look like they punctured any important organs,” she noted conversationally.
“True enough. Though I’m starting to think my family is cursed when it comes to boats and traveling. My sister had her own incident when she was sailing to Troivack, and then she got stabbed a few times while there… And now here I am, almost gutted by pirates.”
“Did your sister discover she had an illegitimate child as well?” Eli questioned drolly, hoping to distract herself from Tamlin Ashowan’s muscular torso.
“No… Though she did have a scandalous marriage.”
“I remember.” Eli threaded the needle.
“Do you miss Troivack?” Tam asked abruptly.
Eli scoffed. “Why yes, of course I miss enforced labor while being under investigation for crimes against the Daxarian and Troivackian crowns.”
Tam stared at the ceiling of the cabin, wincing at his insensitive question. Then Eli sloshed the remaining moonshine on his wound, and he flinched for a whole new reason.
“Gods dammit that’s— Shit.” Tam clenched his fists at his sides as he tried to take deep breaths through his nose.
Eli refused to look at his face from then on. The less distracted she was, the sooner she could finish. And so without waiting for the evident throbbing pain from the moonshine to stop, she set to work closing the wound.
“Zinfera!” Tam gasped out. “Tell me about Zinfera!”
Due to her attention being focused on her task at hand, Eli actually answered before calculating her words.
“Zinfera… If there is a corner of that kingdom where its people aren’t selfish or self-serving, I’d be shocked. I wasn’t born into a poor family by any stretch of the imagination, but they still sold me off to the emperor to acquire even more prestige and wealth.”
Tam’s body relaxed as he listened.
“What did you think about the Zinferan food?”
“The food was… food. I didn’t think much about it.” Eli squinted, unsure if she was looking at a wide spot of injury, or if it was just that blood had smeared more heavily in that area. “The tea is the only thing I truly miss about it.”
“Was your family… involved in the tea trade…?” Tam wondered with a faint grunt as Eli worked closer toward the space below his navel.
“They weren’t until after I was sold off. They actually invested in rooibos distribution. Not many Zinferans thought it would be successful, because rooibos technically comes from Lobahl like I mentioned a while ago.”
“How old… were you?” Tam bit down on his tongue until he drew blood as the cold needle went through him.
“When they handed me over to Chin? Eight.”
“Chin?”
“The emperor’s mother, Chin Taejo. She was the one who insisted that the emperor adopt me.”
“That must’ve been hard,” Tam said slowly. He wondered if she realized she had just revealed that rather than being a mere servant at the emperor’s palace, she had been one of the adopted children… He decided not to draw attention to the fact in an effort to keep her talking.
Especially as this profound discovery was distracting him magnificently from the pain he was in.
Eli’s mouth twitched, her mood turning brittle. “It was a blessing in a way that I left my mother and father’s home. I was happier with Chin than I was with them.”
“You lived with the emperor’s mother? Instead of the other children?”
“The emperor’s adopted children are usually sponsored by other concubines or officials in his court. Most of those people jump at the chance to back these children, since it means they can increase their odds of having someone they can control inheriting the throne,.”
“But no concubines were interested in you? Was it because your family aren’t nobility?”
“No. They are nobles. But my mother complained about my magic to their peers and anyone else who would listen, and it influenced everyone’s opinions of me.”
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Tam’s gaze slid from the ceiling to Eli’s profile. He could see the weary irritation in the set of her mouth. “I take it that when the emperor’s mother died a few years ago, you were abducted and sold off?”
Eli knotted the end of the thread and looked around for a knife. When she didn’t find one, she shrugged and set to biting off the ends of the thread. It put her mouth a breath away from Tam’s abdomen, and he was suddenly in a whole new world of discomfort.
In order to alleviate his troubling symptom of distress, he closed his eyes firmly and started thinking of Lord Dick Fuks striding nude around the castle in Daxaria.
Finished with her task, Eli leaned back on her haunches, though Tam could still feel the goosebumps near his hip where she had hovered moments before.
“It took a few months after Chin died, but yes. Without Chin looking out for me or managing the emperor’s concubines, I was abducted by people working for one of the more influential women. They intended to have me die slowly in slavery, but… well…”
“You used magic?” Tam guessed without moving. He wondered if the conversation would proceed naturally if he just kept lying there.
“Yes. And the slave traders figured out I could be useful.”
“How is it you met Eric Reyes?” Tam wondered, his mind turning to his brother-in-law, the Daxarian king. What was his history with Eli, when he himself had been mysteriously missing for four years?
“He was abducted for ransom a year into my stint with the traders. It was thanks to him I was freed for a while.” Eli let out a long steadying breath. “My lord, I’ve shared a good amount about myself. I’d say I’ve earned a few answers.”
Tam’s eyes snapped to her poised expression. So she had shared some of her secrets intentionally to leverage him. He pushed himself up with a subtle groan of pain, then eased back to lean against the planks of the cabin wall. “I never agreed to that exchange.”
“You’re a fair man,” Eli argued, clearly nervous that he wouldn’t allow her underhanded negotiation to pass.
And if it weren’t for the moonshine that was making Tam’s head feel fuzzy, he might not have. “You should know better than anyone that when it comes to survival, things aren’t always fair.”
At the flash of hurt and anger that moved through Eli’s eyes, Tam yielded a few breaths faster than he had planned. “Fine. My magic… Part of the reason I don’t talk about it is that I don’t understand it myself. But if I say as much to any of my family members or the coven, they’ll suggest experimenting—and I do not want to try anything with my ability. What happened today was because I couldn’t control it.”
“Then your power is that you… emit darkness? Or night?” Eli speculated with a frown.
Tam’s head flopped forward. “I disappear, and anything I happen to touch or am near goes with me.”
Silence flattened the air between the pair.
“Where do you disappear to exactly…?”
“No idea. It’s nothing but blackness. I don’t even have a body if it completely overtakes me. I have no sense of time, place… anything. It’s just me, but lost in a void.”
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Eli tried to imagine what he was describing. Being in absolute black nothingness…
“Why do you have a mage crystal?” she plunged on, though she hadn’t fully wrapped her head around his previous answer.
Tam looked at her dumbly, then back down at his chest. “It helps me not disappear when my magic starts getting the best of me. Kind of like… well, the stars. It’s something I can hang on to and keep an eye on to make my way back. I’ve always found constellations and their stories interesting. They’re comforting because they tell you where you are when everything is gone. I got the idea about using a mage crystal years ago after I had an… an outburst. It took me a long time to convince the mage school to give me one, and I had to do a lot to earn it, but I got it in the end.”
“Was the outburst the time you made an entire wall and desk full of important paperwork disappear?”
Tam stared at Eli blankly. “Who told you about that?”
“Her Majesty Queen Alina heard about it from Her Grace your mother, when some important documents regarding the coffee trade went missing—”
“And you found out because you were working alongside Likon, most likely to draft whatever paperwork needed to be re-sent,” Tam surmised with a grunt of irritation. He closed his eyes.
“By the way…” Eli hedged, already angling her tone so she could maybe yank free one more answer from her employer—even though she had just been told secrets that no one else knew about Tamlin Ashowan. “Are you aware that your eyes turn black with your magic? Are you able to see when that is happening? Or is it like when Her Majesty your sister is overcome with her own abilities? Not that I’ve seen her use her power, but I’ve heard multiple accounts about what it’s like when she does.”
Tam’s attention snapped back up in alarm at the description of his eyes during his magic incident.
Apparently, he hadn’t been aware of that. And unfortunately, the question broke his streak of direct responses.
He looked around the cabin. “You wouldn’t happen to have a tunic that fits me in here, would you?”
Not bothering to mask her disappointment, Eli stood. “No, my lord, but I’ll go get you one. I’ll let Luca know you’re on your way back to him.”
“Thanks.” Tam reached for the bottle of moonshine and took another mouthful while Eli slipped out of the cabin.
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Tam stared blindly ahead of himself, his head light and his body throbbing in pain, but warm from drink.
He already regretted revealing the truth about his magic.
Why the hell had he confided in Eli? He barely knew her, and she could be a spy for someone. She could have made up her entire backstory! Besides, if she let it slip about his power? The Coven of Wittica would be breaking down his father’s door, demanding more information about his abilities while insisting it was just to ensure he wasn’t a threat…
Anxiety wormed its way through the throbbing in his gut and the alcohol.
Why had he lost control of his power when faced with the pirates to begin with? He had been in far worse situations thanks to his secretive line of work with his mother. Had it just been because he was trapped with nowhere to go in the middle of the sea?
Or was it that he now had a child? He wouldn’t have been so sloppy during the fight and gotten hurt if he hadn’t been watching out for Luca and Eli…
Tam allowed his head to thump back against the cabin wall.
He hadn’t even arrived in Zinfera, and already everything had spun far out of his control.
Maybe I should’ve been more understanding of Kat growing up… Things really do just happen sometimes.