The darkness emboldens me. I reach over and brush the sliver of ink. Swift’s spine goes rigid under the pad of my finger, and I jerk my hand back.
She smirks, her gaze fixed on the distant line of the horizon barely distinguishable from the dark of the night. “One of Mom’s best stories was about a Greek king and a man named Damocles. One day, Damocles goes to his king and starts sucking up, telling him how great his life must be and how wonderful his power is. So the king offers to switch places with Damocles, to give him a taste of what being king is like. Of course the sucker accepts, so the king lays out a lavish banquet for him, and Damocles is jazzed. Then the king shows him where he’ll be sitting. It’s a throne, totally tricked out, but suspended above it by a single thread of horsehair is a sword, pointed right at the seat. Damocles gets it now—he understands that with great power comes a shit-ton of danger. So when Santa Elena asked where I wanted my tattoo, I decided to put it where it would remind me of that story. ’Cause you’re at the top of the world—you’re the most powerful thing on the sea when you’re serving under her—but there’s a cost. There’s always a cost.” She trails off, staring out at the dark waves.
“Is it worth it?” I ask.
“Why, you thinking of signing on?”
My lips twist, as does an invisible dagger in my gut. It’s an innocent-enough joke, but there’s weight behind it. With rescue ships inbound, my days on the Minnow are numbered, no matter what happens when they catch up. As much as I hate to admit it—which isn’t very much, I’m finding—this ship’s become home in the past few months.
Swift snorts, folding her arms against the chill sea winds. “It’s never going to end,” she groans. “That’s the worst bit. I … I dunno, when I signed on to this crew, I thought it’d be over someday, or at least I’d be the one calling the shots in the end. Y’know, I was a kid. I thought I could change, I thought I could get out. I thought I wouldn’t end up like … ” There’s something breaking inside her, something that’s pushing her close to tears, but she bites down on them, ducking her head to keep me from seeing. “I’m trapped.”
“Yeah, me too,” I tell her, and her watery gaze snaps up, her bright blue eyes fixed on mine. “I mean … I used to want more than anything to get off this ship, to go home, to do some good in the world. But after … yesterday, after what I’ve done—” I break off, trying to collect my thoughts. “I’ve spent my whole life fighting pirates. It’s in my blood. It’s what I do. And then three months on this boat and I’m just one of them.”
“Am I ‘just one of them’?” Swift asks, miffed.
“No. You’re so much more.” The traitorous truth slips from my lips far too quickly for me to rescind it. I can feel a blush building in my cheeks, and from the stunned look on Swift’s face, the darkness is doing nothing to conceal it. “I mean—”
“Oh, shit.”
“If it weren’t for … everything … ”
She buries her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking with laughter.
“Quit it,” I yelp, swatting her on the shoulder. “It’s not funny.”
“It really isn’t,” Swift says, but she’s giggling still, and I can’t help but laugh with her. It’s ridiculous. It’s outrageous. Bao could tap dance across the NeoPacific right now and it wouldn’t seem that out of place, because I’m in way over my head and I’m falling.
I’m falling for her, she’s fallen for me, and the whole thing is so desperate and stupid that we’re both reduced to fits of laughter that ring out across the Minnow’s deck. We’re two trapped girls with nothing but each other on a ship of people who’d be better off with us dead, and somehow on top of that we’ve managed to do the one thing we shouldn’t be able to do.
Three months ago, Swift dragged me on this ship and I punched her in the face. And now I’m so tied to her that my heart aches at the thought of having to leave this boat. Home used to be Reckoner pens, Mom’s lab, Dad and Tom in the kitchen. But the Minnow’s taught me a truth that’s been hiding in plain sight my entire life.
Home is what you kill for.
And I killed for Swift.
But even though I want to, even though there’s an energy crackling between us right now that’s almost impossible to deny, I know we can’t do anything about this. I know how that would look. No matter how you swing it, I’m still a prisoner on this ship, and Swift is still one of my jailers. We go this far, no farther.
She catches my eye and grimaces. “Equal footing, huh?” she says, as if she’s read my mind.
I nod, knowing it crushes her, knowing it crushes me. We’re oceans away from a world where Swift doesn’t have power over me, power I can’t ignore, power I can’t afford to expose myself to. And until we stand on the same level, absolutely nothing can happen between us.
And it sucks, because all I want to do is kiss her. It’s infuriating how perfect it would be to kiss her right now, perched on a cannon on a pirate ship under the stars. That sounds like something off the pages of an adventure novel. But my life isn’t one of those stories. My story is a hurricane, and here with Swift is just the eye.
And so I stare up at the constellations she outlined and listen to the engines churning below us, the waves sliding off our bow, and somewhere under that, the gentle sound of her breathing, and let that be enough.
30
Santa Elena holds court the next evening.
She puts out an all-call after dinner, and the entire crew packs into her throne room. My newfound invisibility has me pressed up against the back wall, trapped behind a sea of bodies that block my view of the dais where the captain sits. From the glimpses I catch between shoulders, she isn’t dressed up like the last time we were in here; instead she’s armed to the teeth and decked out in a sleek set of body armor. The pursuit is coming, and our captain is ready for war.
“Cassandra,” she barks over the grumble of the crowd, and silence washes over the room. I push off the wall and make my way forward, nudging my way past the crew members that block my path.
Santa Elena steps off the dais to meet me as I approach. She wears a predatory grin, but underneath it I can see the stress that’s eating away at her. The whole room aches with tension. My gaze flickers to Swift, who sits on the dais’s edge with Chuck and Varma. Lemon’s off in the navigation tower, keeping watch over the instruments and the horizon. While Chuck and Varma keep their eyes fixed on the captain, Swift’s are locked on me.
I draw my lips tight, trying not to give anything away as Santa Elena circles around me, her hands folded behind her back.
“We have a bit of a situation here,” the captain starts. “Which is to say, we have a complete clusterfuck on our hands, and it’s centered around you. Your IGEOC friend’s got hell raining down on us, and from what I’ve gathered, we’ve got ships with Reckoners of their own inbound to bring our merry little adventures to an end.”
A discontented mumble rises from the ranks, but Santa Elena quiets it with a wave of her hand as she stalks back around to face me. She lays her hands on my shoulders and I wince as her nails bite against the cotton of my shirt. “Fortunately for us,” she says, her gaze unflinching as she stares me down, “you’re also our way out of this mess.”
I can’t blink. Not now. I shift my weight, but Santa Elena’s grip stays rooted in me.
“You did a fine job with the quadcopters. I’m genuinely impressed with how far the beast’s training has come. But it’s become clear to me that our endeavor with him is not sustainable. We’re abandoning it.”