I say the first thing I can think of, mirroring his words to me from Eidyllio. “I’m pretty sure I got rid of you already.”
Elian’s cheeks dimple and he casts a look over his shoulder. Kye, Madrid, and Torik are gathered in a tightly grouped line behind him. They came. Not just for their captain, but for the stowaway. The strange girl they found floating in the middle of the ocean. They came for me.
When he turns back to me, his eyes flicker over my face. His lips tense to a thin line as he notices the scrapes burning into my cheek. The blood that covers me, so much of it my own and so much of it not mine at all.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
He shrugs. “What I do best.”
“Getting on my last nerve?”
“Saving you,” he replies, picking up his sword. “This is the second time. Not that I’m counting.”
It’s the third, actually, if we count how he pushed me from Rycroft’s path on the deck of the ship. Elian may not be counting, but I am.
“I can’t believe you came back for me,” I say.
I don’t bother to keep the gratitude from my voice.
Elian taps his belt, where his knife sits happily. “I actually came back for this,” he says. “Rescuing you was mostly an afterthought.”
I level a glare. “I don’t need rescuing.”
For the first time, Elian glances down to the body sprawled across the decaying floor. It’s like he only just realizes that the leader of the infamous Xaprár, kidnapper of pirates and princes alike, is bleeding out by his feet.
“Remind me not to get on your bad side,” Elian says.
“Too late.”
He grins. He’s still grinning when I see Rycroft’s head rise from the floorboards. The pirate’s hand is at his waist in barely any time at all, and when he lifts it into the air, I’m surprised to see that the pistol is as black as squid ink. Just as Elian turns his head – as his crew lurches forward in panic – a shot fires out.
It’s not the first time I’ve heard a gun fired, but the sound seems louder. It shudders through my bones and drums in beat with my heart. Everything is a rush of sounds. The smell of gunpowder and the awful scream of warning that shoots from Kye’s lips. And then Elian. The way his smile drops when he notices the dread in my eyes. Three life debts.
It’s almost a reflex when I push him out of the bullet’s path.
There is an instant quiet that blankets the room. A fragment of a second when the world seems to have lost all sound. And then I feel it. The pain of scorching metal tearing through my human skin.
29
Elian
I DIED ONCE AND I haven’t been able to do it again since.
I was thirteen at the time, or some other number just as lucky. About a mile out from the Midasan shore, there’s a lighthouse on a small stretch of floating meadow. The sea wardens use it as a vantage point, while my friends and I used it to prove our bravery. The idea was to swim the mile, touch the soaking tufts of grass, and stand on top like the proud victor.
The reality was not drowning.
Nobody ever made the swim, because anybody stupid enough to consider it was too young, and anyone old enough had learned the usefulness of boats. But the fact that nobody had done it – that if I could, I’d be the first – only made the idea more appealing. And the roar of my brain begging me not to die turned to a quiet whisper.
I made it to the lighthouse, but I didn’t have the strength to pull myself up. I did, however, have the strength to scream before my mouth filled with water and I let the gold wash me away.
I’m not sure how long I was dead, because my father refuses to speak of such things and I never asked my mother. It felt like an eternity. After, the world must have felt particularly sorry for me, because of all the crazy, deadly things I’ve done since – which far outweigh a mile-long swim – I’m still alive. Untouched by another brush of mortality. Made invincible, somehow, by that first fatality.
The moment the bullet whizzes through the air and I feel Lira’s cold hands at my back pushing me to the ground, I’m angry at that. At my invincibility. My flair for survival while those around me continue dying.
“No!” Madrid screams, pitching forward.
She cracks her boot against Rycroft’s chin and sends teeth in so many directions, I can’t focus. Kye grabs her by the waist, holding desperately as she tries to tear herself from his grasp and finish off the pirate. The one who stole her captain. Who may or may not have sold her into slavery. Who just shot a girl right in front of her.
Madrid screams and curses, while Lira makes no sound at all.
She frowns, which seems louder, and presses her hand to the hole in her side. Her palm comes away wet and shaking.
She looks down at the blood. “It doesn’t burn,” she says, and then buckles to the floor.
I rush to her, skidding underneath her frail body before it cracks onto the wood. I catch her head in my hands and she lets out a choked sound. There’s blood. Too much blood. Every time I blink, it seems to pool farther and farther until the entire right side of her dress is soaked through.
I lay my hand on her rib and press down. She’s right: it’s not warm. Lira’s blood is like melted ice running between my fingers. The harder I press, the more she shudders. Convulsing as I try to stop any more of the cold seeping from her.
“Lira,” I say, the word more like a plea than a name. “You’re not going to die.”
I resist looking at the wound again. Not wanting to, for fear that she might actually die and my last words to her might be a lie and what a jackass thing that would be.
“I know,” Lira says. Her voice is steadier than mine, like the pain is nothing. Or at least, it’s something less than she’s felt before. “I’ve still got a mountain to climb.”
Her head lolls a bit and I steady my hand, propping her up. If she loses consciousness now, there’s no knowing if she’ll wake up.
“This evens the score, you know,” I say. “But I’m still a point up.”
Lira shifts. “Quick,” she says. My fingers are webbed by her blood, shirttails damp against my hip. “Take this to make up for it.”
She lifts a shaking arm and a small pendant falls from her hand to mine. Bluer than her eyes and far too delicate to hold so much power. The Págese necklace.
She got it.
I laugh and consider what smart comment I could make – telling her that it’s not really my style, or that maybe I already have it in gold – but then Lira’s eyes quiver back and there doesn’t seem to be much point in being funny if she isn’t the one to hear it.
“Captain!” Madrid yells, Kye’s hands still clinched to her waist. “She needs a medic.”
Torik shadows over me, squeezing my shoulder with his mighty hands and bringing me back to reality. I swallow. Nod. Stand with Lira far too light in my arms. Run from the dregs of Rycroft’s shitty ship, leaving a trail of blood in my wake.