“The damage?”
“Two of your lashes went pretty deep. There’s a lot of swelling and will be a fair amount of bruising but no lasting injury. Mika believes she’ll be fine come the storms.”
Alōs nodded, swirling the amber liquid in his glass. He hated that this news both relieved him and angered him. Foolish girl, he thought. Why could she not follow orders like the rest?
Because she’s not like the rest, an unwanted voice responded in his head.
No, she is not, agreed Alōs, though that made him feel no better.
“And you?” he inquired to Kintra. “How are you faring with her behavior?”
She paused before answering. “I said she’d be trouble.”
“Aye, you did.”
“But you assured she was worth it. So I must ask . . .”
He waited.
“Is she still?”
Alōs took a deep breath in, letting the question settle, a prickling of unease along his skin.
“She now knows my history in Esrom, who I was there.”
“We all know you were a prince, Alōs. And just like always, no one cares. Everyone here has a past.”
He shook his head. “She also knows of the Prism Stone.”
Kintra’s eyes went wide. “And yet you did not have her killed?”
“We’ve amended her binding bet. She’s to do all in her power to help me find the other part, and once it’s back safely in Esrom, her sentence with us will be served.”
Kintra snorted her disbelief. “Surely she cannot be as valuable as that?”
Alōs drew his brows together, not enjoying his decisions being questioned. “She has connections of great value, or do you not remember who showed up to save her? Plus, it is because of Niya we were able to find where the other part of the stone resides.”
“We could have found that out without her, and you know it.”
“Perhaps,” said Alōs. “But not as quickly, nor without making a dangerous enemy out of Cebba.”
“We have many dangerous enemies. What’s one more?”
Alōs threw back his drink, letting the burn of the whiskey calm his growing irritation. “It’s one more I’d rather not deal with.” He hated that he felt his quartermaster’s inquisitive stare as he rounded his desk. With a frustrated sigh he sat.
“How are you, Captain?”
The question momentarily startled him. No one ever asked how he was. But this was Kintra, he reminded himself. “I’m . . . tired,” he answered truthfully, leaning his head against his chair’s back.
Their eyes locked, her brown gaze filled with understanding, before she went to retrieve the decanter. She refilled his drink. “I didn’t have a chance to tell you before, but I’m sorry for your loss.”
Alōs swallowed the discomfort edging up his throat as he waved away the sentiment. He had become an orphan long before his parents had died. “It is nothing more than what most of us have already lost.”
“Still, I am sorry for it.”
“I imagine not half as sorry as you’ll be for what still lies ahead.” He sipped his drink.
“I knew that sailing with you would mean many adventures.” She smiled, showing a few of her gold-capped teeth.
Alōs laughed at that, the sound foreign even to himself. He used to laugh a lot. “I ask you to remember that sense of adventure once we reach the mist.”
“I expect you’ll be near to remind me.”
Alōs studied his companion, always thankful for her steady way of being. She had shaved new lines into her strip of hair, and a few more gold rings lined her ears. “Tell me honestly,” he began, “are you okay with where we sail? We haven’t returned to the west lands since—”
“My feelings don’t change the fact that we must. It seems we are all revisiting old lives lately.”
“Yes, the lost gods test us.”
“So let us win.”
“I am working on that.”
“I know,” she said.
Alōs ignored the bit of sympathy in her tone.
“I must ask,” Kintra went on. “While I believe you when you say Niya has value, are you sure she can be trusted until the end? There’s no denying she’s a bit of a wild card. She may end up more in our way.”
“With her binding bet ending earlier now at stake,” said Alōs, “she will be better behaved.”
Kintra didn’t respond, merely sipped her drink.
“How about this,” said Alōs. “If she’s not, I’ll let you deal with her. The lost gods know I’m over being her wrangler.”
Kintra gave him a grin. “It would be my pleasure.”
He snorted at the joy in her tone. If only she truly understood how much of a fighter Niya was. “I cannot wait for this entire bloody thing to be over,” said Alōs before finishing his second glass, the burn a strange comfort along his frozen resolve.
“It soon will be, Captain,” assured Kintra. “And we will be laughing at the entire memory as we have with all our past adventures.”
“This is why I keep you around.” He leaned forward to refill each of their drinks, Alōs suddenly desperate to feel numb, to quiet all the responsibilities swirling through his mind. This was the easiest road to get there. “One of us must be the foolish optimist. Now, come”—he raised his glass—“let us drink to laughing at impossible tasks.”
“And to seeing how well a wooden ship contains fire,” Kintra finished with a wry grin.
Alōs hesitated, remembering Niya kneeling before him, strong and determined and not crying out once as his whip hit his mark. He had seen none of her orange magic seep from her, despite knowing how it must have wanted to erupt and lash back. She had kept it controlled.
She had contained her fire.
But for how long?
Was this still what Alōs wanted from such a powerful creature as she? To cage her?
Alōs shook off his confused thoughts as he sipped his drink.
He waited to feel the soothing warmth down his throat.
Yet this time, the burn held no comfort.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Niya smelled like a chamber pot as she knelt, scrubbing the upper deck.
The crew walked all around her, busying themselves in their duties as they sailed through the colder western seas, but none had yet to utter a single word to her.
Though it had been a week since Esrom, since her lashings, it seemed the pirates were still holding strong to the memory of her spelling them. Despite her even being loaded with extra chores on top of her own, all while her back had remained raw and needing to heal.
The only crew to show her any sort of forgiveness was Mika, as Niya had come to him each night in his kitchen. There he’d given her clean dressings and helped her wash the blood out of her shirt, which had inevitably gotten restained each day until her lashes had scabbed over.
“We’s a proud sort,” he had said to her one night as she’d stood with her back exposed, allowing him to gently clean her wounds. “And we’s don’t forget easy. But give us time, Red. You’ll see more of us comin’ around soon.”
Niya was still waiting for that “soon.”
What sensitive children, she silently grumbled as she sat back on her heels, throwing her scrub brush into the bucket of water at her side. Her fingers ached from the work, and she wiped the sweat from her brow, taking in a deep breath of the cool, salty air.
Though she still did not regret her choice to follow Alōs or spell the crew, she did not exactly enjoy being a pariah on board. She hated to admit it, but she missed Bree’s incessant chatter as they lay in their hammocks and Therza’s unhinged laughter after she made a rather disturbing joke as they worked together to clean the cannons.
Now there was only silence when Niya drew near, whispers, or backs turned to carry on conversations without her.
It was all rather . . . lonely.
Niya stood with a sigh, stretching her sore muscles before cringing as the movement pulled at her wounds. She still could not sleep on her back, which made finding a comfortable position in her hammock rather difficult to accomplish.