He reached around and undid the laces, his fingers trembling as if he were the one who was freezing to death. He peeled it off of her, and Selena buried herself deeper onto the left side, hiding the wound in the pillows. Sebastian sidled up close to her and pressed his chest against her back.
He was shocked at her cold; like curling around a slab of ice. His own skin broke out in gooseflesh. He drew up the blankets over both of them and hesitantly put his arm around Selena, trying not to think of her nakedness, or the smooth skin of her back pressed to his chest. Her hair was damp and smelled of salt.
“You’re going to be all right,” he said.
She wept softly and her fingers dug deeper into her own shoulders.
He tried again. “No one was lost, Selena. You saved us.”
A sob escaped her. Her cold hand found his and clutched him. A feeble squeeze. Sebastian gripped her hand tightly for her.
After a time, her skin warmed and her shivering abated somewhat. She fell into a fitful sleep, but kept her wound buried in the pillows. Even in sleep, she guarded it and Sebastian wondered what would happen if he were to roll her to her back and look at it. It would be easy enough. She was naked beside him, and weak. She might protest but what could she really do?
She would consider it a violation.
His curiosity died instantly.
Sebastian’s own body began to drift toward sleep. Fear and panic had left him feeling wrung out. Niven would take care of Grunt. He could rest a few minutes, he thought, his eyes drooping. Selena fit perfectly in the curve of his body, and her skin, now that it had warmed, was soft as silk, like the white sand on his atoll. His eyes drifted closed.
The white sand was soft under his feet, and the sun hot on his neck. She laughed and threw her arms around him. Her lips on his were sweet and salty. Delicious. Her hair was free of the tight braids she always wore. It billowed like a cloud, brushing his face. He’d waited so long to touch her…
He reached up to bury his fingers in her hair…
… and drove the sword into her. Blood splattered in wide swaths across the sand and spilled into the perfect blue surf. Clouds boiled over the sun and shadows danced around him.
The hooded figured in black and red bent over him as he fell to his knees in the bloody sand.
“You accept.”
Sebastian bolted awake, a scream at the back of his throat. His gaze darted here and there, taking in his cabin, his ship. His breath came in short, harsh gasps. He glanced down.
Selena was beside him, curled in his bed. There was blood. Blood smeared on the blanket that shrouded her. Blood in her hair that was fanned out on his pillow.
I did it. My last job…
He reached out a trembling hand to pull back the covers, to see his handiwork and his breath caught…
But no, it was blood from the wound in his side where the broken pieces of his ship had pierced him that stained the sheet. And more blood from the gash on his palm. The sirrak. The dagger. The blood oath to save her. Selena’s chest rose and fell with steady breaths. She lived.
Because I saved her.
Sebastian withdrew from the bed as quietly as he could and dressed in pair of dry trousers and shirt from his trunk. His long black coat was still wet but he put it on anyway and lingered at the door a moment, watching Selena sleep. With a silent curse he went out, shutting the door behind him.
The spell had left Selena weak, pulled her relentlessly toward blackness. She had fought it with all she had so that she could savor the feeling of Julian’s body against hers, feel his breath against her neck and his hand in hers. But the exhaustion of the spell won out and she had fallen into oblivion.
Julian must have too, but he awoke with a jolt, waking her. A bad dream. Likely, he saw his ship break apart under the merkind’s maelstrom. She’d remained still, afraid to move, longing to move, to turn to him…
Ten years. It seemed impossible that it had been ten years since someone had touched her. She had forgotten how it felt, the pleasant weight of a man’s body pressed against hers, the scent of his skin, of his breath. Julian’s body took away the worst of the chill from her plunge into the ocean, leaving the usual cold of her wound. But it wasn’t merely his warmth she cherished.
Wasn’t it?
It didn’t matter. To face him nakedly would be to reveal her wound and that was impossible. Dangerous. He would turn away, disgusted. Or worse, it would draw him in and plague him with dark memories.
And he is not Aluren, she thought. It is forbidden.
She squeezed her eyes shut and banished the memory of Julian’s body against hers.
He is cruel and cold and he saved you to save his gold. That is all.
“That is all,” she murmured, but the words had no power. He is good. A better man than even he knows.
She settled back to rest against the pillow that smelled of him, trapping the stinging tears behind her eyes so that they could not fall.
The Edge
Sebastian emerged from his cabin and swore under his breath at the sight that greeted him. Water sloshed over the main deck and was slowly seeping out through scuppers cut in the bulwarks. He took in the snapped bowsprit and two missing sails, then upwards. The fore topsail yard was absent, now lying shattered at their feet, wearing its torn sail as a funereal shroud. The mainmast topsail was simply gone.
His crew stopped what they were doing. They watched him in silence, unmoving. Sebastian quickly glanced at the sky and saw the sun was dropping.
Hours. I’ve been in there with her for hours.
“What the bloody Deeps are you gaping at?” he bellowed. “Get back to work!”
He stomped over his deck, over the broken bits of the topsail yard that had stabbed him and went to Grunt who was resting on a crate, his leg pillowed on a pile of sodden burlap. Niven was sitting with him, looking pale and drawn.
I tended to Selena before my own crewman. Before Grunt.
“How are you, old man?”
Grunt grunted and patted the young adherent’s hand with his gnarled, sunburnt one. Sebastian inspected Grunt’s leg, remembering how misshapen it had been. Now it was puffed and bruised from ankle to knee, but straight.
“A few more prayers,” Niven said with a tired smile, “and he’ll be up and about in no time.”
Sebastian nodded. “Get him belowdecks.”
Grunt shook his head and held up a flask. He smiled a wobbly smile and then waved Sebastian away.
“Aye, then. Rest up.”
“Can I help Paladin Koren?” Niven asked.
“She’s fine.”
The adherent’s eyes dropped to Sebastian’s side where blood seeped through his shirt.
“Can I help you, Captain Tergus?”
“Later. How is Ilior?”
“Warming himself at the oven. I lit it, like you asked, but what if the merkind come back? Isn’t it very dangerous to leave the fire burning?”
“If the merkind come back, spilled tinder will be the least of our concerns.”
“Oh. All right then.” Niven gave a nervous glance to the seas around them. “Grunt is stable. I’ll check on Ilior again. Unless I can help you…?”
“Go.”