Chapter 13
THE SIREN PRINCE
ODELIA
The amount of bodies inside the captain’s quarters is near suffocating, but none of us volunteer to be the one who leaves.
Otto runs his long fingers over the red stains on Rune’s trousers.
Their captain lays, pallid and sweat soaked, in the centre of his bed.
The barbs protrude a hands-width long, their tubular stems leeched of colour like whatever they intended to do is long done.
The spiral of sucker marks on his forearm is swollen and weeping blood from tiny ringed circles.
Otto speaks quickly, his eyes glued to the wounds. “That one’s a thrall squid. The saliva will keep him bleeding for a while. I have to go get my poultices from the galley. Can you guys get the barbs out? Don’t pinch the tops, try to grab it as close to the base as you can.”
Tavi just watches Rune’s uneven breathing.
Elio is the one that answers. “We’ve got it, Otto. Do what you need to.”
The boy shuffles out, leaving the three of us to decide who gets the honour of removing the barbs. I stay stock still, my fists clenched under the arms crossed over my chest, certain they won’t let me touch him.
He’d gotten the key.
Or a piece of it. The box clutched under his arm had fallen when the poison took hold, though it had been promptly removed from my care the moment we’d made it back to the ship.
I hadn’t argued. Now, fresh anxiety swims through my veins, and I can’t tell if it’s for the piece that’s just out of reach or the man half-dead on the bed.
Elio steps forwards with a small dagger and begins to cut Rune’s pants away, being careful to avoid knocking the barbs.
Rune’s legs are thick and as muscular as the rest of him, but blood beads over his skin, leaking from each protrusion.
I flick my attention between Elio and the barbs as he reaches a hand out like he means to reach for one, but Tavi cuts him off.
For once, her every thought flashes across her face—and her hands are trembling, dancing a breath away from the hooks embedded in his skin.
“I can show you how, if you want.” I don’t even recognize the voice as mine. It’s soft. Gentle in a way it has no right to be.
Her eyes slice across the room, her gaze landing on mine. The ship creaks as it shifts. Even the crickets had gone silent. By the time we’d limped back, it was dark, and for a breath I wonder what waits on the island in the quiet of night.
When she says nothing, I speak again. “I’ve dealt with my fair share of barbed bolts.”
“So have I.” Her eyes are tired.
Depending on the shape, barbs could do even more damage coming out than they did going in. The worst kind need to be cut out, but these are a stiff, plant-like material, a route for poison rather than the killing blow.
I step towards Rune, putting my weight on my uninjured ankle.
I don’t let myself look at his bloodless face before pressing a hand against his leg with my thumb and fingers on either side of the embedded stem.
When neither of them object, I push in, spreading the flesh, then snap my other hand to the stem’s base and yank as fast as I can.
Rune whimpers as either Tavi or Elio hiss in sympathy. There are two more lower down on his legs, but the one I’m most worried about is near his hip, leaking more blood than the others.
They say nothing as I work, and I pretend not to notice when Elio brushes the back of his hand against hers.
Rune reacts less the next time, and dread pools in my gut, followed quickly by irritation.
We should have waited. If we’d have made a plan, we could have found a way to go down together, my fear of the water be damned.
But his over-confident ass thought he’d be noble and shoulder all the danger.
He probably planned to do it the moment we found the cenote.
The last one on his leg catches, the drag of ripping flesh sending a cringe down my arm, through my aching ribs, and along every strained nerve in my body.
Fresh blood coats my fingers and he groans as I apply more pressure, trying to fix the problem I caused.
Otto returns. The boy’s arms are stacked full of bottles and wraps that clink terribly when he dumps them on the bed.
Several land on Rune, and I make the mistake of looking at his face.
My stomach swoops. His brow is pinched, his lips parted softly.
Beads of sweat slip from his temples to mingle with the wetness of his hair.
Slick clumps of it stick to his neck, his cheek, and my fingers itch to brush it back, but my hands are sticky with blood.
The sensation is familiar enough I know how to block it out, how to push through when it feels like it may never wash away, but I doubt any of them would find it comforting.
Otto has been chattering since he walked in. Tavi has already moved to the barb in his hip. She braces, and I know my eyes are too wide when they meet hers. If this one’s bleeding like this now, it hit something, and pulling wrong may kill him before the poison can.
She tugs, the movement deceptively graceful. Blood streams onto the blankets, but Otto is there, shoving some sort of fibrous material inside a split second before Rune jerks away from his touch.
“Deeproot will help stop the bleeding, but keep putting pressure on it,” Otto says.
Tavi obliges, leaning in, and Otto moves to me, offering more of the red, feathery fibers. When I step back instead, he steps in, packing the wound with expert skill.
“Don’t we need to clean it?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “The deeproot will help with that too. It works especially well for ocean-based poison or infection. I have a theory it works especially well for sirens too because—”
“Otto,” Tavi chides, jerking her chin at the salves still waiting on the bed.
“Got it. Got it. So I don’t know which of these might help but we’ve got a lot of areas we can test on with the way the thrall squid wrapped around him.
I don’t recognize the barbs, but with the amount of time it takes the squid to work I wonder if whatever it injected had a numbing element to it. Maybe he simply couldn’t feel it.”
Elio clears his throat. He hovers at the bed, his eyes flicking between the ship’s unlikely medic and the pained expression on Rune’s sleeping face. “We’ll never know if we don’t get him to wake up, eh, Otto?”
“Right!” Otto spins to the poultices again.
Gingerly, he tips the bottles onto small squares of fresh bandage and sticks them to individual spots.
First, one labeled bitter pipevines. Then another named orange bloodleaf.
On and on it goes. The golden markings on Rune’s arm are all but faded.
It seems clear now that they’re part of his heritage.
Siren Prince.
The words lurk in the back of my mind, the fearful strategist in me refusing to wait before leaping to theories.
If he’s a prince, why would he need treasure?
Why would he be risking his life hunting pirates topside at all?
Part of me whispers about vanity, but the more time I spend on this ship, the more I question that sickly confident facade I’d met that first night on The Gilded Hart.
And the crew held their own against the beast on the island—none had turned tail and fled. No, this ship isn’t just for show.
But why risk it for the map?
“His hip’s bleeding again,” I say, just as Otto finishes wrapping over the small bandages on Rune’s forearm. A rush of nerves sends my heart racing, but I shove the feeling down, filling my lungs till they feel near to bursting before letting the breath loose again.
“Good!” Otto quips, leaning close to examine the slow drip of blood oozing down Rune’s pale skin.
I blink. “Good?”
Elio sighs. “The king’s going to kill us if he dies.”
“Kill you. He loves me,” Tavi says, though it’s impossible to tell if she’s joking. Elio’s smile tells me he can see something I can’t.
“Yeah,” Otto says, ignoring them. “They can’t be completely closed or we won’t be able to draw the poison out.
The deeproot filters and acts as a block while it begins to clot, but it dissolves.
Now”—he leans and grabs a larger dark bottle that’s buried beneath the others, then begins to mix several inside—“we can make the drawing salve. It’ll have to be applied every two hours or so. ”
I cross my arms. “I can do it. I’ll be in here anyway, right?”
All eyes assess me for a moment.
Elio nods slowly. “We’ll do shifts. In pairs.”
Otto lifts an arm to scratch at the back of his head. “Well, I’ll have to be the one to keep an eye on him for the next several hours to check the thrall squid marks.”
“And this is where I sleep,” I offer.
“Then you two will pair together,” Elio says. “Tavi and I will be checking in regardless. No one stays alone with him until he’s stable.”
Otto makes a show of acquiescing. “Yes, Captain.”
“Don’t—” Elio’s eyes widen. “Ah, shit.”
“Your greatest dreams realised?” Tavi says with a glint in her eye. “The crew will be eager for an update when the sun rises. Think you can handle it?”
Elio all but pouts. “Why couldn't he have made you first mate?”
She lifts a brow. “I don’t have your irresistible charm.”
“How long until we know if that drawing salve is working?” he asks, turning away from her to Otto. “If I’m still acting captain when the sun hits the ship I’m leaping overboard. I’ll never hear the end of it.”
Otto grins, and hope lights in my chest like a torch on a moonless night. “It’ll take some time, Cap,” he says. “But I think between the four of us he’s got a fighting chance.”
Otto is asleep in the massive green chair—his mouth half open as he snores softly—when the first light of the sun peeks through the porthole behind Rune’s desk.
For the first time in hours, the patterns on his arms shimmer faintly, half hidden by the bandages wrapped on one side.
The sunrise means it’s time to reapply the drawing salve, so I tuck one side of the blanket to the inside of his leg, keeping him covered in those intimate places that I am absolutely not thinking about as the rays through the window reach out, accentuating the hills and valleys of his upper body.
The peripheral thought has heat rising in my cheeks, remembering the solid heat of him beneath me that night he’d woken and trapped my chest to his.
The way my body had betrayed me by wanting to lose itself in that salt and oranges scent.
I let my attention sweep to Otto, double checking there’s no one to see the absurd red my face has certainly become.
Rune is infuriating. Arrogant beyond measure.
And seems to enjoy finding every way to bait and confuse me.
We have a plan. A deal. Our partnership is mutually beneficial.
Temporary. And it was entirely reluctant.
So why has something inside of me hummed with relief ever since the colour came back to his cheeks?
Spring has yet to relinquish the chill of night. When I’ve finished with the salve, I tuck the blanket back over his legs, and quietly place the jar on the nightstand next to the red-veined leaf from the island. If I was going to restart my collection, I’d need to find a safer place to store them.
Elio had brought extra chairs and mine is pulled nearly flush with the bed, keeping the captain in arm’s reach and my weight off my still throbbing ankle. Rune sighs and adjusts, but there’s no pain in the movement, and my heart flickers again as his face turns to me, though he doesn’t wake.
His unbandaged arm splays out, putting those golden patterns on display.
I’d have to ask him about them when he wakes.
They’re unlike any tattoos I’ve ever seen, but some shifters keep markings in their human forms. It’s something I would have realised sooner, had I not been so focused on looking at anything but him.
Now, I would have to be doubly sure to keep this wayward attraction at bay.
A siren prince and a pirate? It’s too risky. The opposite of a low profile.
And he still doesn’t know who I am.
It wouldn't have mattered. Nisse or no, if he had died and the ocean king had sought someone to blame, who better than the bloodthirsty, no good, pirate scum the prince had brought aboard on a whim? Hell, the crew would have tossed me overboard before the king had a chance, or tied me up and dumped me into the centipede tunnels. Or hung me from the bones of the sail. Or spilled my insides for the quail. And if they did find out they had Ivor’s daughter?
The panic rises in a wave, cresting with all the fear and worry and lack of sleep I’ve ignored the last few hours.
My own sleeve has torn, and the spade-shaped head of my viper tattoo peeks out.
I bury it in the rumple of the blankets, my fingertips brushing his.
Sensation spears through me from that small touch, and I don’t pull away, trying hard to ground myself in my current reality.
For now, I am safe. For now, he’s okay, and my secret is mine alone.
I let my fingers wander to the art on his arms, tracing each line, watching the way the light catches behind my touch.
A seed of warmth nestles deep in my chest, and for once, I don’t squash it before it can bloom.
His fever is gone, but his skin holds the same insistent heat as when he crushed me to him the night of our race.
I let the sensation and the memory anchor me, just this once, just until he wakes up and we go back to playing the parts of the hunter and his prey.