“Why, of course, my lady.” He returned to her side before quickly scooping her up.
“Wait. No. I can ride on your back.” She wiggled in his arms.
“As if I am some common pack mule? I think not. Now stop struggling, or I might lose my hold and have you topple into the very cold river.”
Niya stilled, looking wholly awkward as he carried her in his arms. The river continued to rush beneath them as they slowly made their way over it.
“You can put them around my neck,” he suggested.
“What?”
“Your hands. For a better grip.”
“I’m gripped just fine.”
“That you are.” Alōs held her tighter so her hand fell flat to his chest.
She plucked it away.
“Interesting,” he mused, his mind instantly going to the last time she had touched him there. When it had been skin against skin. Despite their current surroundings, a wave of dark desire washed over him.
“What?”
“Well, you were not so skittish about laying hands on me the other night. Yes, I’m bringing it up,” he said in response to her widening eyes. “How shocking. The lost gods know we have both been thinking of it since.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“Okay, speaking for myself, I’d like to do it again. Many times, in fact.”
Alōs knew it sounded crass, but by the Fade, it was the truth.
Niya surprised them both by laughing, the warm sound vibrating through him.
“That amuses you?” he asked, looking down at her.
“Thoroughly.”
“And why’s that?”
“Who wouldn’t want to sleep with me again?” She gestured to her ample bosom and devious curves.
“My, my,” tutted Alōs as they drew closer to the opposite riverbank. “How arrogance suits you, fire dancer.”
“Yes, I think so,” she replied smugly.
Despite himself, Alōs laughed in kind, a deep chuckle that was met with Niya’s inquisitive stare.
“What?” he asked.
“I think that might be the first time I’ve heard you laugh.”
“Nonsense. I laugh all the time.”
“Not like that.”
Alōs shifted her slightly in his arms, a ripple of unease going through him. “Like what?”
“Like you were actually happy for a grain fall.”
Her words fell like blows. But rather than pain, they only had him settle deeper into his growing warm resolve regarding the fire dancer.
“Yes, well”—his eyes held hers—“it appears I have found more moments to actually be happy in.”
He watched as her cheeks turned pink, a rare occurrence of shyness that Alōs found he enjoyed thoroughly.
When he placed Niya down on the other side of the river, he realized at some point her arms had wound around his neck.
For a breath, they remained there. A tingling of awareness shot between them before Niya stepped away, letting a cool whip of wind replace the heat of her touch.
“If you must know,” Niya eventually said as they headed into the next stretch of dark, damp jungle, “yes, of course I enjoyed that night, but it changes nothing.”
“What does that mean?”
“Just because we find pleasures with one another, just because we have this . . .”
“All-consuming sexual tension?” he suggested. “Unstoppable power when together?”
“Thing between us.”
“I preferred my description.”
“Doesn’t mean I have forgotten our past,” she went on.
Alōs held back a frustrated groan. “Niya, how many times must I explain myself?”
Her jaw set in stubbornness. “Many times, it seems.”
He shook his head. That familiar weariness gripping him, as it did when he’d held her in his arms those nights ago. That no matter what he said, she would never forgive him. Never give him a chance to prove that he was not the same man, that he was no longer the same pirate, despite how she might have witnessed him opening up to his crew earlier on the ship. An act he never would have done before she had come aboard, before her burning fire had worked its way into his heart, keeping it from ever truly being able to freeze over again. “I know what I did to you was ruthless, but you of all people must see why I did it, understand. We each live in a ruthless world.”
“Of course I know the world we live in,” she said in a huff. “And I might now empathize with your past, yes, but—”
“But nothing. If I were to judge your entire character on a single action in your life, like those souls you have danced into the Fade as a performance piece, I would say you were a vain, heartless monster.”
She flinched as though hit. “Those prisoners were killers themselves! Traitors to the—”
“But I don’t, Niya,” he said, cutting her off. “Because we are all a complicated tapestry, a tangle of decisions and actions. I have seen your good along with your evil. Where you let some people in and push others out. We have experienced enough together by now that I would hope you would have found similar nuances in me.”
The sounds of the woods buzzed around them. Niya’s lips set in a firm line.
“What exactly is it you want, Alōs?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” asked Alōs. “You.”
Niya blinked.
“You may never forget our past,” he went on, “but let us move beyond it. We will always find reason to fight, you and I, but let it not be as enemies.”
“Alōs—”
“Why do you resist this?” He stepped toward her, sensing her magic as it skittered confused along her body, a red vibration. A wall. “Why do you resist what you know is possible between us?”
“Because,” said Niya. “Just because it feels good doesn’t mean it is.”
“You still do not trust me.”
“How can I? You’re you.”
It was as if she’d spiked him through the chest.
So there it was. She truly could not see anything beyond the ruthless pirate. The selfish man. The worst of it was he could hardly blame her. Alōs had made sure his reputation preceded him.
“I see.” He spoke coolly, feeling the cold veneer from the past reforming along his bones, locking tightly across his muscles. His suit of armor despite his newly thawed heart. “So the courageous fire dancer will deny what burns between us because she fears repeating the past?”
“It would appear so.” Her chin tilted up. “Because even I know the hottest of flames are the quickest to burn out.”
They traveled the rest of the distance in silence, Niya deciding to swim the final river rather than be carried, then using the heat of her magic to dry herself quickly when back on land. Alōs was glad of her choice. He didn’t need to feel her against him, hold something close knowing he could never touch what lay inside.
She did not trust him, nor forgive him, and Alōs believed she truly never would. His life’s work seemed to only involve seeking clemency for past actions. And he was tired of it. Once all this was done, he would set himself and his pirates to sail a new course, search for fresh waters. Once all this was over, he and Niya could finally go their separate ways. He was not about to force the fire dancer to remain with him any longer than he already had because of their binding bet.
“By the stars and sea,” said Niya, her words bringing Alōs back to where she had stopped to peer over a thick tangle of bushes.
He pushed aside a branch and looked upon a cutaway section of the forest.
It sprawled endlessly, deep into a gorge.
And there, spilling out wide from the center, was the home of giants.
Massive buildings with expertly thatched roofs and neat, brick-laid streets.
“It’s all so . . . large,” breathed Niya.
“Yes,” said Alōs, his resolve returning to what had brought them here, what he prayed lay within this beast. He hungrily took in the city, his gaze landing on the largest of the homes at the very back, a hulking four-story dwelling. “And we’re about to be its mice. Now”—he looked to Niya—“let’s go steal some cheese.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE