by Megan Crane
Tait knew she was lying. Or anyway, hiding things from him. The way anyone would after what he’d said to her, of course. He got the distinct impression that she was challenging him to do something about it, because, of course, there was no way he could. Not without showing that she wasn’t alone in these feelings he’d made it so clear neither one of them was supposed to have.
Tait didn’t like it at all.
But he let her go.
6.
Everything had changed, and Elenthea should have been grateful.
When she’d first seen Tait she’d expected to plan his funeral. Surely him alive and breathing was better, even if he was ready to go breathe somewhere else.
He was a raider warrior, hewn from his own kind of steel like the blades he wore. A being from another world, as far as she was concerned. The things he’d done to her body made her shiver every time she contemplated them. But he wasn’t of the Raft. He didn’t belong here.
Dead or living, he was never meant to stay.
Elenthea had spent the past week or so collecting provisions, as he’d asked. It was while she was stealing dried meats from the house’s stores—a drowning offense, which should have petrified her, but didn’t—that she’d realized how much everything had changed.
She didn’t care what happened on the Raft, or to her. She cared about Tait. She more than cared about him. The things she felt for him weren’t about all the magic he did with his body, though that certainly made it all that much more explosive. But it wasn’t just sex.
He talked to her. He laughed with her. He saw her.
Her, Elenthea. Not just another nameless low-ranked girl, drab and uninteresting and easily blended into another. She was a person to him, full and fascinating.
Tait had turned everything upside down.
Before him, she hadn’t been able to muster up much of a response to anything, really. She had vague memories of burning bright as a child, but she’d learned since then. She kept her head down and her thoughts to herself. She didn’t distinguish herself in any way, either in the House’s furs or out. She hadn’t been anything like happy, but she hadn’t been distraught, either. It had just been life. Cold spray on her face when she walked the pontoons, piles of mending every day, and twice a month on her back. A good life, really, compared to others she could have had here. Certainly nothing to complain about, which was why she hadn’t.
But now nothing about the life she’d always known seemed to make any sense any longer.
She realized then, concealing packets of dried meats against her skin and wrapping them tight in her lengths of wool, that she couldn’t go back. There was no sinking back into that grayness after Tait.
If she’d had any doubt about that, he disabused her of it. Every time he took her now it had an edge. Something sharp and wild, as if he knew that it was only when he was with her, buried deep inside her, that she was truly alive.
“You need to watch yourself,” one of the other house girls of low rank whispered one morning while they were bent over their mending.
Elenthea had managed to overcome a lifetime of apathetic sewing in the last month, because she was always so determined to finish with enough time to spend the bulk of the day with Tait, and that also required her to make her stitches close enough to perfect so that no one could accuse her of shrugging off her duties.
Next to her sat Gerina, whose sullen and rude demeanor had already gotten her several lectures from the Council this winter. Gerina tended toward brooding silences, not chatter like all the rest of the girls in the sewing pontoon. Elenthea didn’t know what was more surprising—that Gerina was speaking to her at all or that she appeared to be offering a friendly warning.
“What do I need to watch for?”
Gerina eyed her balefully. “The mistress and her little pack of phonies have been sniffing around lately. They’re starting to pay attention to who comes and goes and when. Someone said the Council was looking to cull the low-ranks before the stores run out.”
Elenthea had never heard Gerina speak that much. Much less to her.
“You must have me confused with someone else,” she said softly, still bent over her pile of mending so no one could see that she’d stopped working. That, in fact, she’d gone cold with fear. “I’m always here. Where else would I be?”
“Whatever,” the other girl said with a snort. “You’re like me, sister. It doesn’t matter if you work hard or stay out of sight. No one will care at all if we’re weighted and tossed. They’ll celebrate it because it means fewer mouths to feed. Maybe think about that the next time you run off the way you do.”
But Elenthea knew too much now. She knew what it was like to have someone notice her. Really notice her. Every small thing about her as well as what she did or didn’t do. Tait had spent an entire afternoon obsessing over the line of her neck as he’d been buried deep inside her. He asked follow-up questions when she mentioned throwaway things about her day. She hadn’t known anything like that before.
Elenthea couldn’t go back. And she shouldn’t have to, of course. She knew how to distinguish herself now. Griggs had come down with a vicious cold, throwing the House schedule out of whack, or she would already have had the opportunity to try out the new skills Tait had taught her.
She’d talked herself through it a thousand times. It would be simple. She’d just pretend the House was Tait and proceed from there. How hard could it be?
It was too bad the very idea of touching the old man made her feel sick.
And then one day when she slipped across the pontoons—ignoring Gerina’s warning, because she wanted every last second with Tait far more than she wanted to stay safe—she found him waiting for her. Not the way he usually did. There was no smile, no sweeping her into his arms as a welcome. No taking her up against the side of the cabin because he couldn’t wait. He stood on the dock next to the boat he’d worked on so diligently and regarded her stonily.
She knew, then. She knew he was leaving. Today. Maybe right now. He didn’t have to say a word.
And Elenthea had known it was coming. On some level, she told herself, it was a relief that it was finally here. No more waiting.
The question was—could she bear it? Could she handle saying goodbye to this man when he’d altered the whole of her world simply by washing up one day? Because she knew exactly what waited for her on the other side of his departure. All those gray, listless years, spooling out in front of her, shuffled from house to house until the mistresses stopped allocating her a rank. Cold, cramped winters and soggy summers, becoming more and more invisible with each new morning, until it wouldn’t matter if they tossed her over the side of the Raft or didn’t. The effect would be the same.
Elenthea would simply disappear.
As if she’d never existed in the first place.
If she was brutally honest with herself, before Tait had come she’d been halfway there already.
She walked out onto the little dock where he stood but stopped far short of where she normally did, because she didn’t trust herself any closer to him. Tait didn’t move from where he stood against the side of his boat, as if he didn’t trust her either. Or himself.
Elenthea unwound her outer layer and took the last of the items she’d gathered for him from where she’d stashed them all. She rolled them up in the fine wool wrap, and then set the whole package down at her feet.
“When are you going?”
“Today.” His voice was forbidding. His face matched. “Within the hour.”
She found herself thrown back to that first day, when she’d thought he was a log. Then when she’d known he was some kind of warrior at a glance, bold and glorious from head to toe even when she’d thought he was dead. He was even more astonishing to her now, when she had a much better understanding of the things a man could do with a body like his. When she’d experienced it personally.
The difference was, today she was the one who was as good as dead.
That
was how her heart felt. A shattered thing inside her chest pretending it knew how to beat. It took everything she had to keep from rubbing her palm over it to ease that jagged, raw feeling. Because she knew it wouldn’t solve anything and also, she didn’t want him to know how much this was hurting her.
It was all her own fault, she knew. He had never belonged to her. And she certainly didn’t belong with him. Elenthea was a low ranked girl destined for nothing but a short, gray life of no distinction, no elevation, and nothing to show for it. Not even a girl child.
Tait, by contrast, was so bright. A beacon across the winter sea. He was color and heat.
And he wasn’t hers to lose. He’d never been hers at all.
“If you take the boat out of the slip and sail out of the marina, they are likely to notice,” she said as coolly as she could manage. “And possibly come after you once they do.”
Tait still stood with his arms folded over his wide chest. His blades were strapped on over his thermal, and he’d pulled his braids back into that knot at the nape of his neck that made Elenthea feel a little bit giddy. He looked fierce and untouchable. Infinitely dangerous, as if he’d never known a moment of weakness in his life. And if she wasn’t mistaken, he looked as if he’d very much welcome taking on the Council.
The entire Council.
“They can try,” he said quietly, as if he very much hoped they would.
They would try, she thought. And what if they succeeded? How would she live with that?
Elenthea had never felt so fragile. As if one wrong move would set her to shattering. Or as if, when she’d been paying attention to something else, she already had.
“Don’t worry,” she told him. “I can distract them.”
One way or another.
There was a gleaming thing in his gaze then that she didn’t recognize. Was it indulgent? Was it . . . soft? Neither of those things seemed at all like the man she’d come to know. She told her heart to stop its madness, especially when he crooked his head to one side.
“Do you think you need to protect me, baby?”
“It’s not about you.” She threw it out defensively, as a weapon against that tone he was using that made her want to cry, but when his brows lifted in that way of his, she firmed her chin and straightened her shoulders. And dug in. “It’s about me. If they see you steal a boat, they’ll wonder how you managed it. And I’d really prefer that the Council not spend too much time digging into the mystery of how a stranger thrived and prospered here. And then ran away with one of their boats and a sampling of their winter stores.”
“Elenthea—”
“Don’t.” Even she could hear that her voice sounded strangled and too tight, but there didn’t seem to be anything she could do about that.
“You’re going to be fine.” He sounded so sure that Elenthea was tempted to believe him. There was a kind of challenge in his gaze, daring her to disagree. “We did exactly what we said we would do. You learned everything that you needed to know. All the tricks you could possibly want. Now you can use them.”
It wasn’t her imagination that he sounded . . . something less than thrilled about that prospect. She could see the expression on his face. The tightness that wasn’t usual, as if he was holding himself back. In check, maybe.
And as if he didn’t particularly want her to see that he was doing it.
But it didn’t matter. He was leaving. He had always been leaving. It had only ever been the worst kind of self-indulgent fantasy to imagine there could be any other ending to this.
Elenthea wasn’t sure she’d realized, until right now, how very much she’d indulged herself on that score. And she should have known better. She’d thought she had.
“You’re right, I’ve learned a lot.” She meant that. So she didn’t know what demon in her shook itself to life then. She tilted up her chin and kept her gaze on his, because that it was that or accept the fact that her eyes wanted to go blurry with the emotion she refused to give into. Not here, anyway, where he could see it and say more dismissive things about feelings and intensity. “What makes you think I haven’t used it already?”
He laughed then, though it wasn’t that rough bit of silk she was used to that made her long to wrap herself up in him. This was something bleaker.
“Then I can only hope you taught the fat old douche a thing or two. I expect nothing less.”
And Elenthea didn’t want him to sound like that, as if she’d stole the light from him, and no matter that it matched that shattering in her heart. She couldn’t bear it.
“The house schedule has been put on hold until Griggs gets over his cold,” she told him. It felt like a gift, somehow, to ease his mind. To both of them. “I haven’t taught him anything yet.”
Tait smiled a little and Elenthea felt something lurch inside of her, because he looked like someone else. He looked haunted.
“You make me wish I was a different man,” he said in a low, rough voice, as if it cost him something to say that. “But I’m not.”
And that was that.
Elenthea knew better than to keep pushing. She knew it wouldn’t get her anywhere she wanted to go. Because there was nowhere to go, not for her. There was no changing her life. There was only accepting it.
She thought that she was ready now. She thought that finally, she could do what she should have done a long time ago. What she should have known was her only possible course once she’d understood that she would never be one of those girls who tricked themselves out for the Houses. Who did what they had to do to get ahead.
Mistress Annet had been right. Elenthea lacked ambition.
She could do what was necessary, she understood then. But it wasn’t going to involve naked tricks in the House’s furs. There was no going from Tait, this glorious raider who’d turned her on and brought her to life, to a House. The very idea was sick-making.
If she couldn’t love Tait the way she knew she did, if that wasn’t something he allowed or needed or even wanted, she could do the next best thing.
“I don’t need you to be a different man,” she said softly, because there was so little time left to say the things she knew, somehow, she’d always wish she had. “I like you. Just you.”
Tait made a harsh sound, as if he’d sucked in a breath. Or as if he’d taken a blow. Or as if he knew exactly what she wasn’t saying out loud.
But Elenthea knew her time was running out. If she stood here much longer, she wouldn’t leave at all. She would throw herself at him. She would beg, plead, make a terrible scene. She would cry and worse, she would try to taste him through her tears once more.
And once more wouldn’t possibly be enough. Or even once. She knew that. If she was going to let him go—if she was going to walk away—she needed to do it now.
Or she wouldn’t, and she didn’t want to think about what it would be like if he was forced to make her leave. Her heart was already shattered enough.
“I’ll distract them,” she said again, more firmly. But she could hear the scratchiness in her voice, and she knew he could too.
He moved then, dropping his arms to his sides and stepping away from his boat as if he was closing the distance between them. That couldn’t happen. She wasn’t that strong.
“Elenthea. Baby—”
She took in his beautiful face for the last time. She memorized it, every bold slash of brow and fine bit of high, brown cheekbone. That gorgeous, maddening, delicious mouth that had tasted her everywhere. She took in the whole of him, a fierce warrior from head to toe and hewn from that raider steel, everywhere.
Bold. Fearless.
She would think of him like this, mighty and wild and never quite hers. She would hold that close while she did what she had to do. What she could do.
“Elenthea,” he said again, and it wasn’t an entreaty this time. It was an order.
But she couldn’t allow herself to obey him, no matter how much she wanted to—as if it was a physical need inside of her. She had to
save him instead. Because after all, wasn’t that what he done? He’d saved her from herself. From all the gray of the Raft and what passed for life here. He’d showed her that it was all untenable, and even though the not-fitting felt strange, she knew it was a gift.
Now she would prove it.
She lifted her hand as if, were they closer, she might have touched him again. One last time. But she couldn’t trust that she’d ever let go if she did.
She knew she wouldn’t.
“Tait,” she whispered fiercely, because she wanted his name in her mouth. The last little bit of him she’d get to taste. “I’m so glad you weren’t a log.”
And when she ran from him this time, she didn’t look back.
7.
None of this sat right with Tait.
His hands made fists of their own accord, and he couldn’t seem to uncurl his fingers to save his damned life.
He ordered himself to snap the fuck out of it and get the boat underway. It was going to be a rough trip no matter what he did, and waiting wasn’t going to make it any better. But he didn’t move. He stood for entirely too long right where she’d left him, staring after her until she disappeared into the clutch of center pontoons.
So he knew for a fact she didn’t turn around once. She didn’t so much as throw a parting glance over her shoulder. And Tait had to work overtime to keep from running right after her, just to get his hands on her again and demand she tell him how the fuck it was so easy to leave him.
He knew that didn’t make sense. He was the one who was leaving. He’d braced himself for what he’d expected would be an emotional, dramatic scene today. That was what happened when two people only fucked each other and got a little too attached. At least Tait had the benefit of knowing that it was only the extreme circumstances of being washed up on the Raft that had made it all seem so intense—or that was what he’d been telling himself, anyway. He was sure that once he got home and got back into his normal swing of things—which meant a whole lot of comfort pussy—he’d forget all about this odd little interlude in the middle of the bitch Atlantic on a floating pile of crap.
