Chapter 23
YOU BASTARD
RUNE
I am royally fucked.
Tavi knows it by the look she gave me earlier. I know it, and no doubt Elio knows it too. It’s one thing to pull Odi close, it’s another to have her straddled across my hips with her soft, warm thighs, her infectious lips clinging to mine as our tongues entwine in a passionate dance.
I wanted to inhale her. To drink her in until I drowned in her essence from the inside out. She was all consuming—the way her back arched into my touch as her hips rolled over my cock. Any longer and I would have come undone.
I would have torn the buttons from her blouse. Sending them across the room like tiny bone shards so that I might have complete freedom to explore her sun-kissed skin. To touch her, taste her, and watch her come apart in my hands.
Damn the seas.
Odelia is a walking ocean. Unpredictable. Dangerous. Raging. Calm. Breathtaking. And I’m drowning in her.
What am I doing? Father would rage if he knew that I had a pirate in my bed. Selene would scold at first, and then she’d want to know all about Odi. Dash would probably cheer me on . . . in secret of course.
Mother would have asked when the wedding date is.
I have this overwhelming desire to reach for Odi every time she’s near.
She doesn’t need me to protect her, gods know she can hold her own.
I’ve seen her face her fears head on, rallied her bravery against hopelessness.
She’s strong like she’s schooled it into an art.
And yet, there’s something in the way she feels pressed against me, the way her breath hitches when I brush her lips with mine, the way her eyes soften when she thinks no one is watching.
All of that makes something sharp and fierce coil in my chest. I want to shield her. Guard her. Keep the world’s teeth off her skin.
Little doe—you’re not making this easy.
I wasn’t entirely surprised by her little weapon stash, but why hadn’t it occurred to me to search her sooner? She still can’t be fully trusted, right?
She’s still a Viper.
Pirates hunt to kill. They cling to the old tales, the ones where water elementals whisper secrets of the oceans treasures.
And my mother is—was—one of them . . . a water elemental.
She told us how the tales were true, how the greedy would capture her kind and bleed them until everything they knew spilled out onto the deck.
The elementals keep what is lost in or taken by the sea, and Odelia has to know how precious one of their maps would be.
What wouldn’t she sacrifice to find a wealth like that?
She’s only using me. My ship. My crew.
She has to be.
So why do I feel this need to pull her closer instead of pushing her away?
A diffused flicker of white light behind dark, ominous clouds flashes on the horizon as I make my way from my room to the quarter deck. The storm is approaching abnormally fast, yet there is still time to pull the ship round and head southwest.
Unkind winds whip around me as I step out into the open. Elio is already halfway up the ratlines, trying to get a better view. He flicks his attention to me as I approach. “That’s the biggest storm I’ve seen in a long time.”
I plant my palms against the railing’s edge, straining my eyes into the distance. Soraya appears beside me. She doesn’t say a word. She doesn't need to.
Boots thud on the deck as Elio drops from above. “Cap?”
“We should’ve been at the next island by now,” I growl in frustration. I’m mad at myself, at this damned map. Whatever trick it’s playing is made worse by the angry gale that promises much, much worse. “At least then we could have gotten the injured to higher ground.”
Soraya twirls to face me. “You didn’t know it would change direction.”
My jaw cracks as I grit my teeth. “I should have been prepared.”
“Well,” Elio chirps, “there’s no point dwelling on that now, what do you want to do?”
There is really only one thing we can do, and it's going to require all hands-on deck. We have to outrun the storm before it tears the ship apart and sends us to the bottom of the cold, vicious sea.
I push off the edge of the ship, twisting to face the sleeping quarters. “Get everyone up here.”
Neither Elio or Soraya need any more instruction. With a nod, they scatter like soldier crabs.
Pear and honey wrap around me, and my chest constricts. I turn to face Odi, who appears out of the shadows that grow as the sky darkens ahead of the storm. My gaze travels from her flushed cheeks down the curve of her neck, across her delicate collar bones all the way to the swell of her breasts.
Ten minutes ago I’d been teasing her perfectly taut nipple with my lips, and if I had control over the weather, I’d still be holed up in my room with her moaning my name as I gave her every pleasure she demanded of me.
“I thought I told you to stay in the room,” I say, taking a small step towards her.
Odi squares her shoulders, her eyes flicking to the mass of dark, angry cloud approaching. “Looks like you’re going to need all the help you can get.”
She’s not wrong. Again.
At first I hesitate, then I jerk my head towards the lower deck. “Join the others, and do whatever Elio tells you.”
The corner of her perfectly pink lips tugs up in one corner. She runs her eyes over my face before letting them stall on my mouth, and then she grins. “Yes, Cap.”
Fire erupts in my soul, spreading wildly through my body as I watch her dash away. I genuinely need to get a grip on myself, or she will be my undoing.
“Odi!” I call after her.
She spins, her dark hair swirling around her with the wind, eyes wide with anticipation. “Tell Elio the crew needs to get their weapons ready—they’ll know what I mean. I don’t know what to expect with this storm.”
Her brow pinches in the middle, but she nods once and then she’s gone, melting back into the shadows from which she came. I run a hand over my face and release a sigh. Just when I thought I’d have a restful night.
The horizon’s gone black, swallowing sea and sky in the same breath. The wind howls through the rigging, snapping ropes taut, and every creak of the hull feels like the ship’s bones groaning under the weight of what’s coming.
Sheet lightning continues to roll across the clouds, washing the deck in ghostly white before plunging us back into half-light.
I can taste the storm in the air—iron, salt, and something sharp that claws the back of my throat.
The waves are already rising, heavy swells that punch the hull and spray cold brine over my face.
A storm like this doesn’t just test a ship.
It tests the men on it. And it’s coming for us fast.
There is no time to waste as I race for my room.
Thrusting the door open, I dart across for the weapon that is more part of me than my bone sword.
The halberd gleams from its stand on the wall even in the dim light, its shaft carved from dark driftwood, smoothed and reinforced with strips of galanthor bone.
It’s etched with curling tide marks like the ones that shimmer beneath my skin.
The blade isn’t plain iron—no. It’s hammered from a metal with the sheen of abalone, colours shifting with every tilt. Blue, green, silver, like the skin of a fish beneath sunlight.
I strap it across my back, the weight familiar. It isn’t just a weapon. It’s the ocean itself, forged into something sharp and loyal.
Once it's securely in place, I double check the sword by my side, and then I leave the room, slamming the door behind me. By the time I’m back on deck, so is half the crew, looking grim as rain begins to lash at us.
Elio finds me halfway up the stairs to the sterncastle deck. His emerald eyes are filled with concern. He knows this storm isn’t normal. “Everyone’s headed up.”
“Where is Tavi?” I ask. Our boots pound on the stairs in unison as we reach the top.
Elio glances towards the sky. “She’s in the crow’s nest.”
“Tell her to switch places with Nico. I need her down here.”
Elio nods and races off.
The storm chews at the ship, every plank groaning under the weight of the sea. I shove my shoulder into the wheel and wrench it hard. The timbers scream, the rudder dragging through water thick as iron.
“I’m not getting any purchase!” My voice is swallowed by the wind. Salt lashes my face, stinging my eyes. The wheel bucks in my grip, fighting me, the ship yawing just shy of where I need her to go.
Boots slam the deck beside me. Elio returns, dripping from the rain, his clothing plastered to his chest like a second skin. “Tavi will attend to the crew on the main deck. Need me to check the rudder?” he yells above the braying winds.
I hesitate, knuckles white on the spokes. Sending him down there in this—when the ocean’s churning like a beast—feels like tossing him straight into its jaws.
But we’re out of options.
“Fine,” I growl. “Be careful.”
He nods once, and then the change takes him.
Scales ripple down his skin, catching every flash of lightning in gleaming green.
His legs fuse, stretching into a long, sinuous tail that ends in fins sharp as blades, emerald bright even in the stormlight.
Gills flare behind his webbed ears, and for a breath he looks half-man, half-something older, born of tide and storm.
Elio vaults onto the railing without hesitation. One glance back and a grin on his lips—then he dives, cutting clean into the chaos below.
The sea swallows him whole while I keep my grip on the wheel, holding the ship steady. She fights me with everything she has. “Hold on, girl. We’re going to get out of this,” I mutter to her sails.
My gaze darts across the deck below, taking note of every crew member. Is everyone accounted for? I search for dark, chocolate hair. Umber eyes. World shattering smile. Yet, she’s nowhere to be seen.
Surely she hasn’t slipped from my grasp so easily.
No. There is no way she would venture out into this monster.
Where are you, little doe?