Chapter Twenty-Nine
Twenty-nine
Faolan
I take the stairs two at a time, pulling a strip of leather from my pocket to tie around my hair and keep the wild tangle back.
The cuts on my chest still smart, their poison caught like a chill in my blood, though the healer’s remedies are hard at work.
A sensible man would stay in bed as the night grew darker. Rest up and let his wounds heal.
But for all my legendary virtues, patience has never been among them.
At the main floor of the Tit’s Tempest, I hover above the last steps, cocking my head to listen for the wolves, Kiara, or any more patrons lingering about.
It’s blessedly quiet.
Unnerving, but helpful nonetheless.
I hurl myself over the wooden bars, my landing muffled by the thick wool rugs blanketing the floor. It’s almost a clean getaway—until a dagger sails through the air, pinning my sleeve to the post at the end.
“Headed somewhere, Captain?”
Nessa turns from her seat at the bar, another blade gleaming between her fingers. Her eyes glint alongside them—the sharp blue usually blunted by a cheeky grin and a handful of sparks across her cheeks.
The freckles are still there, aye, but streaked with red from crying.
And there’s not a smile in sight.
“You wouldn’t be running off into the night alone, would you?”
Working my jaw, I rip the knife out by its leather-wrapped handle. “I’m just going to handle something. It’ll be quick.”
“My apologies, I see I wasn’t speaking clear enough.” She raises the other dagger. “Are you heading to a tavern full of the same feckin’ pirates who nearly killed us all alone?”
“Nessa.”
“Answer the question, mate.” Tavin slips away from a table tucked in the shadows, down-turned lips sinking even further at a fresh wave of noise from the stairwell. “Stars above. Did you and Kiara not just go through this?”
The blade clatters as I toss it onto the bar. “Things have changed.”
“Oh, aye, they have.” Nessa snatches up her dagger, spinning it from one finger to the next. “We nearly had to mourn Lorcan, and now you’re wanting us to spin a shroud for you as well?”
“There won’t be any need for it—we’re talking about Rian, for feck’s sake.”
A cloud passes over Tavin’s face. “Rian, who you humiliated in front of his crew this summer, trying to chase down Saoirse’s bone ring? The same Rian who’s been pushing into our territory ever since? Who just attacked the wolves out in plain view?”
“That’s the one.” My smile’s weak. Even I know it. “Desperate times, and all that.”
I start forward, but Nessa steps in my way, her lips twisting in an attempt at their old humor, but the scar going down her cheek makes the effort into a joke itself.
Another mark of my own failures. “You don’t actually think you’re making it past us, do you?
” When I don’t say anything, she smacks the back of my head.
“Bloody eejit—we’re trying to keep you alive! ”
“And I appreciate that, but after Lorcan—”
Grinding my feet into the rug, I lean heavily into the bar top as that same wild panic eats through me that I felt when I saw my bosun drop. We’ve lost wolves over the years—sailors who joined us from one port to another, chasing adventure or merely running away—but never one of our closest circle.
Never a member of the pack.
“Think of the reward, never the risk” is our chant to one another: a mark that we’re made different. Untouchable. Legendary.
But it didn’t stop Saoirse from nearly drowning at the Teeth when I pushed her to dive. It didn’t stop the near slaughter when Maccus jumped us on the Isle of Lost Souls. And last night, it didn’t keep Lorcan from collapsing.
Lorcan, who’d warned me against the impulse—who I’d brushed off.
“Listen.” The wood creaks beneath my weight as I lean onto the bar’s edge. “Last night changed things.”
“Oh really?”
I cut Nessa a look, but there’s no real heat behind it.
“Seeing Lorcan drop like that, I—I couldn’t bear it if I lost one of you.
And I meant what I said when you all signed on.
Legends don’t die. But people do.” My shoulders collapse as I shake my head.
“The Wolf of the Wild’s nothing without his pack. ”
“Then why the feck are you trying to go it alone now?”
Nessa glares at me as I chew on my cheek, then slip a hand into the satchel and pull out a tiny marbled orb: ivory laid with gold veins and an iris crafted of pure emerald.
“Because I’m the only one of us who could approach without starting a fight. So long as I have this to bargain with.”
“Is that…Winds o’ fury, you’re not serious.” Tavin rakes a hand through his mane of hair, onyx strands casting shadows across his face. “Of all the things you could have salvaged from the shipwreck, that’s what you chose?!”
“Damn clever, if you ask me.” I turn it over with a flick of my thumb. “I was twenty-one when he challenged me for the Docklands, remember? Swore up and down to the whole of the Merrow he’d put me in my place.”
Tavin snorts, but there’s a painful lack of humor to the sound. “Aye, we know the story well enough, but do you really think he’ll be less likely to gut you if you show up with that in your palm?”
“He’s had nearly six years to get past it.”
“Or six years to plot.” Nessa falls back against the bar, pounding a fist twice into the sleek wood. “Dammit. You’re not going in there alone.”
“Nessa, I—”
“What are we supposed to tell Saoirse if you get run through before you can talk to him?”
“You won’t have to.”
Nessa turns her eyes skyward. “This isn’t a moment to think of the reward, never the—”
“You won’t have to,” I continue, “because I have something else he wants.”
Tavin’s eyes blacken as he narrows them. “Treasure?”
“Territory.”
Another sound echoes down the stairwell behind me—a door creaking, and heavy steps. It catches Nessa and Tavin enough off guard to let me slip between them, heading for the exit. “Look, you lot can mutiny as soon as I return, but right now—”
“That’s the most melodramatic shite I’ve ever heard.”
We all three whip around to see Lorcan at the top of the stairs, shaking and covered in sweat.
But he’s alive.
Alive.
Nessa’s the first one to run, climbing the stairs three at a time to throw her arms around him, even as he stumbles and falls back to sit down.
“You—skies of fire, Lorcan, why didn’t you call me over to help?
! You almost died from stabbing and then decided it was a good idea to hurl yourself down the stairs? ”
“Guess so.” His hand fumbles on Nessa’s back, then grips the stair railing as he winces, bandages wrapped tight over his flesh. Already some of the cuts are scarring at the ends. We paid good money for the best healing Frozen Hearth could provide.
Still, I scowl and step forward. “Get yourself back to bed.”
Both his brows shoot up, a spark glinting in his eyes as Tavin starts up the stairwell. “You do realize I have a mother upstairs, Captain. One whose scolding puts your attempts to shame.”
“I’m not saying it as your mother—I’m saying it as someone who watched a bucket’s worth of your blood spill between the shop and that room. Even magic herbs have their limits.”
“I’m standing here, aren’t I?” Lorcan blinks. Falls heavily into Tavin’s side. “Leaning, anyway.”
“That’s not—gods, we don’t have time.” Saoirse’s face floats across my vision, cradled between my palms. The worry of last night, carrying Lorcan in here. The mess I’ve made of it all. “Nessa, get him back to bed. Tavin, tell Kiara’s crew to start readying the ship.”
“For what?” His voice comes hard, a hand on Lorcan’s back as more footsteps crowd the top. The Tempest’s flock has shifted from the sickbed to the gossip.
Brilliant. Feckin’ brilliant.
“For our return to the Isle of Lost Souls.”
“What in shade’s realm is going on?” Kiara pushes through the crowd then, dark smudges under her eyes, short hair a mess about her face. “Faolan, I thought I told you to handle this.”
“I have—I am. I’m going to get the apothecary now, and then we can—”
“You’re going after Sionn?” Aidan emerges from a cluster of chairs near a window, dark hair falling into his eyes as he blinks sleep from them. “I’m coming.”
“No. You’re not. Nobody is coming. I’m going to the Merrow alone.”
Kiara’s eyes widen as she folds her arms. “The Merrow?”
I swear. “Don’t follow me.”
“Not sure if we can do that, Captain,” Nessa says, not budging an inch to follow my command. She tucks into Lorcan’s side instead, propping up his arm with her shoulder. “I’m afraid you’ve just given us permission to mutiny—”
“After I get back!”
“The funny thing about mutiny, though, is that you don’t really need permission.” Tavin cuts Nessa a slight smile, and it’s like claws sinking into my muscle all over again. “In fact, one might say it defeats the purpose.”
“Captain.” Lorcan grips the wooden railing with a faltering hand, the humor in his eyes fading. “Did you really save my life only to abandon me here?”
The dagger nearly drops from my hand. “No.”
“Then why—”
“Because you didn’t sign up for this!” I finally snap, shoving the blade into its sheath. “None of you did! You agreed to follow the Wolf of the Wild—not me!”
There’s quiet.
And then a spluttering, strangled sound as Nessa buries a laugh in her hand. “Gods, do you hear yourself?”
I startle back. “I’m serious.”
“No, really.” Nessa turns to Tavin, who catches his lip between his teeth. “Does he hear himself?”
“Honestly, at this point, I’m not sure.”
“Mate.” Lorcan starts to his feet—then gives up, leaning a heavy shoulder into Tavin’s side as he shakes his head at me. “What the feck do you think we’ve been doing all these years?”
“I—” My hand misses the bar, hip catching its rigid edge. “When I offered you all places on my crew, I promised you adventure. Stories. Gold.”
“Aye, and?” Nessa looks me hard in the eye. “We’ve had all that, and plenty more. Stars, Faolan, we could have that on any crew in the Crescent.”
“Exactly.” I rub at the place the bar struck, trying to make sense—to make them see sense. “And a right sight more protection.”
Tavin scoffs, kicking a boot up onto a higher step. “Since when have we needed protecting?”
“Since I roped us into a bloody war with Rí Maccus and nearly lost!”
Nessa glances at the other wolves, then squeezes Lorcan’s arm and pushes herself to her feet, starting down the steps.
“We signed on to this crew because we believe in you, Faolan.”
“I know. The Wolf—”
“It’s not about the Wolf.” Nessa stops, tilting her head.
“Or it is, at least in part, but—feck’s sake, I don’t know how to get it through that thick skull of yours.
You’re the thing we’re here for. If all we were after was a decent story to tell at the taverns, or an extra sack of gold, we would’ve legged it after the Isle of Lost Souls. ”
“And maybe you should have.” My heart’s a damn racket in my chest. “Maybe you should have carried on with your lives and left me to figure this out without keeping yourselves in constant danger—”
“Gods, shut up, would you?” Lorcan heaves himself to his feet, trusting Tavin to bear his weight down the stairs. Eimear, Lorcan’s mother, hovers at the top, gripping the railing as she watches with wide, hungry eyes.
She’s not the only one.
I stand like I’m paralyzed until the three of my wolves face me at the bottom stair, Lorcan’s clothes still bloodstained, his legs quivering with the effort it took to stand.
But when his hand falls to my shoulder, his grip’s never been so strong.
“I took a knife for you. You’ve taken swipes for me during battle. Nessa got her face cut open, Tavin lost a fair bit of dignity. We’re all willing to take risks for things—people—we believe in. That includes you.”
A nasty voice unfurls from the creature inside my chest.
Do you even believe in yourself anymore?
“Captain?” Lorcan’s grip tightens, a bead of sweat lining his temple.
I swallow down the last bit of shame.
Smile hard.
“All right. You win. Only—get yourself back to bed. As for the rest of us?”
I look at Nessa, Tavin, then past their shoulders to those sharing our sails.
Gods help them if I’m wrong.
“To the Merrow.”