“That’s from the Blood Tide.” He nods at it.
I look back at him, blinking. “The what?”
He smiles. “They’re wee games here. Every four years.”
“Oh.” I perk up, understanding. “Like the Olympics?”
Jamison shrugs. “Sure, but people d?nnae really die at the Olympics.”
I frown up at him. “But in these, they do?”
“Aye.” He nods.
“Why?” I ask nervously.
“They’re fighting beasts.”
I give him a dubious look. “Like what?”
“This from a lass who fought a minotaur.” He gives me a tall look. “This is another world, here. Last games, I fought a typhon.”
“And you lived?” I stare up at him.
He gives me a proud smile. “Aye, I won.”
The Blood Tide, Jamison tells me, happens every four years. Anyone over the age of sixteen can enter, but barely anyone does, just a handful of people each time.
Jamison says it’s for glory and for nothing else.
There are four tournaments, one after each of the elements.
In each game, there’s a creature they battle. For example, in the last games, Jamison and the others had to battle a Midgard serpent for the water challenge, and the fire beast was a salamander. No one or nothing has to die for there to be a winner, but often, Jamison says, people (and beasts) do. There’s a totem hidden somewhere—first to find it wins. Each player also has a personal talisman that they have to collect to qualify into the next round. You can play the next round even if you didn’t win it, but you can’t if you don’t collect your talisman.
At the end, the person with the most totems is the victor.
“You have so many.” I peer at them. There’s six.
“I’ve won the tournament twice,” he tells me with a shrug, and he tacks on a smile at the end. “If I win next year, I’ll have won more than anyone else has before.”
“There’s one next year?” I blink.
He nods. “You’ll like it,” he tells me.
“If it’s dangerous, I’m not sure I will.”
Jamison rolls his eyes and puts his totem back up on the shelf.
“You’re dangerous,” he says, backing me up into the bookshelf with a thump, and he starts kissing my neck.
I flick him a look.
“Ye are.” He nods, resolute. “Look at that face.”
I roll my eyes.
“I’d fight fer that face,” he tells me with a nod, and then his face goes solemn almost. “Sure, but I’d die for that face.”
Then he kisses me and carries me back to bed.
We don’t leave his cabin the entire day.
Not because we’re animals but because I love it here.
It’s so nice to be in a room with walls and a ceiling. It’s so nice being in any old room with him.
In the afternoon, we sit in his bed and read next to one another.
That evening, we take a ridiculously squashy bath. Briggs isn’t pleased with the water spillage, but I enjoy myself, Jamison behind me, me leaning back into him.
I’m the happiest I’ve been since I got here, and I feel silly that it took me so long to realise it.
We do go outside the next day, and I feel like the cat who got the cream being on Jamison’s arm.
He holds my hand, fingers interlocked, as we wander through his little village.
He greets people, smiles at them, kisses me in corners.
We wander towards the edge of town, where the village starts to fade into the jungle. There are a couple of boys fixing a rowboat under a palm tree.
Orson’s snoozing away, loosely overseeing the project, when I spot someone I think I recognise— I blink a few times.
That can’t be…
“Brodie?” I stop in my tracks.
He looks over his shoulder and stands up, dropping his hammer.
“Daphne!” His face lights up, then he shakes his head as he walks towards me, arms open for a hug. “You remember me.”
“Of course I remember you.” I frown at his silliness, then I look from him to Hook, gesturing between them. “Sorry, Jem, this is Brodie. He was—”
“A Lost Boy,” Hook tells me.
Brodie gives a strangely solemn nod.
And I stare at him, bright eyed and confused. “What are you doing here? Peter said you found your brother.”
Brodie’s face pulls, and he looks over at Hook, eyebrows up.
Jem puts his hand on my waist and starts guiding me away. “Aye, we should have a wee talk.”
“Okay.” I frown up at him, hands on my hips. “What?”
“For some time now, I’ve ken thon when the lads age out—”
I shake my head. “What does ‘age out’ mean?”
Jamison gives me a sobering look. “When they get too old.”
I stare over at him, shaking my head. “Too old for what?”
“When they turn sixteen, Bow, Peter leaves them on an island t’ die.”
“No.” I shake my head.
He doesn’t. No. There’s no way.
“Yes.” Jamison stares at me.
“No!” I shake my head, moving away from him. “No, he said he found Brodie’s brother and they—”
“He left Brodie.” He speaks over me. “On an island, the same as he left Orson—his brother—five years prior.” Jamison lifts his eyebrows. “When Peter found them on a sinking ship off the coast of Alabaster Island.”
I keep shaking my head. “That can’t be true.”
Jem crosses over the small distance I put between us, places a hand on my face. “It is, my love,” he tells me gently, and I stare over at him.
I swallow, and it hangs there for a couple of seconds.
I stare up at him, my face still in a residual strain from what he just said before.
“You’ve never called me that before.”
“I ken.” He nods, his cheeks going a bit pink. He gives me a little shrug. “Thought I’d try it out.”
“And?” I ask, eyebrows up and waiting.
He nods. “I like it.”
I smile a little bit. “I like it too.”
He presses his lips into mine for a few seconds before he pulls back. “He’s bad, Daph.”
“Jem,” I sigh. “Sometimes he plays and he forgets, and I’m sure it was an accident.” I stare up at him because I am sure.
He wouldn’t do that.
“Peter probably thought his brother really was there on the island still. Peter’s thoughtless. He’s not—he’s not murderous.”
“Why did he leave Orson on an island in the first place?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug, desperate to believe it’s not true. It can’t be. “Maybe he didn’t realise, or—”
Jem shakes his head and turns away from me. “Forbye, heed what you need to then.”
“I’m not trying to fight with you.” I walk after him, grabbing his arm.
He turns back around and gives me a solemn look. “Nor I you.” He touches my face. “It’s just half my crew are men I found about marooned on islands by yer boy.”
I dig my chin into his chest and give him a look. “He is not my boy.”
“Then why are ye defending him like he is?”
I breathe out my nose. “I just think there’s some kind of misunderstanding.”
Jem cups my face in both his hands. “I hope, my love.” Then he kisses my forehead before he nods his head another direction. “Care to take a dander up the mountain?”
“No, I’m happy enough in town.” I shrug.
Jamison’s face pulls. “We d?nnae want it getting back to him, sure we don’t.”