by Hazel Grace
“It’s beautiful, thank you.”
“I’ll bring you some of that cheese I was telling you about next time,” he conveys. “I just didn’t have the chance to this time around.”
“I’m hoping it won’t be for awhile,” I concede.
“Why?”
I shrug. “Just lonely when you’re not here.”
“But you tried to get me to stay away last time.”
I peer up at him. “You know why.”
“Sometimes I think you want to either get me killed or you really do care for me, I’m not sure which yet.”
“How could you say such a thing?” I rebuff. “I’d never let anyone hurt you.”
He shrugs. “Nor I, Princess, but—”
“There are no ‘buts’. I’m protecting you from my father, who doesn’t care if you’re my friend or saved my life.”
“Which he doesn’t even know about.”
“Tobias,” I warn. “Why are you trying to pick a fight with me?”
He averts his gaze. “I’m not.”
“You are because you’re upset with me. Because I’m—because you know I’m still adjusting to—”
“Another prisoner, eh?” My body stiffens immediately. I didn’t hear him coming, normally his large boots give him away against the tiled floors.
Which makes me wonder if he purposely snuck around because he heard someone speaking.
“Who the hell is this?” Tobias whispers, well, more like seethes. I inhale a deep breath because I’ll need one to deal with the nosy Viking and now an agitated friend.
“We’ll talk about it when he’s—”
“We’ll talk about it now,” he counters. “Who and why is—”
“You keep pirates in your company,” Dagen announces. “Can’t say that’s surprising with the—”
“Who are you?” Tobias carps, looking over my shoulder.
I turn on my heels to find Dagen leaning against the door panel, looking in on Tobias with his burly arms crossed over his chest. Like he’s looking in on something bad that I’m doing, as though he just caught me.
Dagen nods toward me. “I’m her prisoner.”
“Oh, Davina,” Tobias murmurs with concern laced in his tone. “You didn’t.”
“I did,” I tell him. “Because he trespassed on my island.”
“He’s a Viking, Princess,” Tobias warns. “He’s not an injured sea creature you picked off the ocean floor.”
“He’ll be free when I find out how he got past the veil.”
Tobias’s head snaps to me. “He got past the—” I stop him when my head whips in his direction to give him a glare. “How? There’s no possible way that he could—”
“You can hear her?” Dagan chimes in, staying grounded to his spot. I knock into Tobias gently, warning him to watch his next words.
“I can hear her,” Tobias claims, which is immediately followed by my pinching him. “Ouch.”
“Shut your mouth,” I seethe. “The less he knows about me the better.”
“Why?” he asks, rubbing his bicep. “It’s not like he can do anything.”
I mean, he’s right, he can’t, but I don’t want him passing along the information to his people.
“Do you walk around telling all your pirate friends about how you’re able to come here? That you come here at all?”
“I don’t have—”
“Why is it that I don’t hear you, Blood?” Dagen digresses, apprehending my attention again. “Are you scared of me?”
I scoff while Tobias chuckles next to me.
“I wouldn’t push her, mate,” Tobias offers. “She’s not as fragile as she looks.”
“Trust me—” Dagen pushes himself off the panel. “—I know.”
I watch him stride toward us, dressed in brown slacks that I was able to get for him from one of our enforcers and a white shirt that stretches tight over his chest. His hair pulled back and his facial hair, now longer over the course of the week, still not hiding the overconfident quirk of his lips.
Dagen’s focus stops at Tobias. “Who are you?”
“Tobias Nathaniel, the Prince of—”
“The Black Sea,” he finishes for him. “I’ve heard of you.”
Tobias stands taller. All of a sudden pleased that his dumb name has been passed around while quickly forgetting that he’s talking to my prisoner not a friend. “Yeah? I didn’t know my name went up that far north.”
“It does,” Dagen states. “But nothing that you should brag about. Might want to leave that off your introduction next time.”
“What? Now, why?”
“It doesn’t matter why,” I snap. “Who cares what men like him think about you?”
Tobias shifts his weight. “I care because I’m not a cut-throat asshole who goes and steals ships and—”
“Rapes women,” Dagen fills in. “Steals from other sailors who carry aid for villages and—”
“I don’t rape women.”
“That’s not what’s spoken about you when I’m—”
“What’s raping women?” I ask Tobias. He looks down at me with furrowed brows, looking upset and angry. My head snaps to Dagen, and I step forward, extending my arm for him to leave.
He upset my best friend, and I’ve had enough of him already.
Dagen gives me an amused look. “You can’t just tell me to go?”
My brows deepen further.
“Did I make your friend mad?”
Another step from me.
“What are you going to do, Blood?” he taunts. “Throw me across the room again?”
I reach around my waist and pull out his blade, which does nothing to his straight-laced face.
“Killing a man with his own knife,” he marvels. “Classic barbian right there.”
I close the distance between us, stopping when our chests brush. My eyes barely meet his shoulders when I peer up at him. His blue eyes entertained as our gazes lock.
“Question is,” Dagen continues. “Do you have the gall to do it?”
I believe gall means courage, and if that’s the case, I’m surprised the Viking doesn’t recognize that I do.
Then again, I read that Vikings were stubborn creatures who were tunnel-visioned and tenacious.
“Pretty little thing like you doesn’t like hurting—”
“Watch it,” Tobias seethes behind me. “I don’t know how y’all treat women at home but you won’t be talking to her like that.”
Dagen doesn’t look at him. He doesn’t even blink at the anger lacing through Tobias’s tone. What he does do is lean forward, coercing me to smell the leather that always trails off him.
“You don’t need a bodyguard,” he mutters, holding my agitated stare. “Especially a pirate who’ll rob you blind and—” The sound of boots echo behind me, and I know it’s Tobias stomping toward him.
“That’s enough,” I order Tobias. “Stay where you stand.”
“Two minutes and I’ve already had enough of this man,” he shouts. “You should’ve—”
“You don’t have to live on this island day in and out,” I counter. “And I need information out of this man. I need to know how he got by the veil. How do you get by the veil? He’s the second man from another civilization that has come here without my permission.”
“We’ve been through this,” Tobias replies. “All I know is that it’s just me.” I want to press him further, but we’ve been back and forth on this subject. He claims he doesn’t know, and I’ve accepted it, but with a watchful eye.
“You’re a man of power,” I tell my best friend as Dagen glances down at my lips. “Your body exceeds it. Something about you makes no sense, you don’t remember your father or mother but you weren’t affected by Kali’s singing that day when Rohana was taken. You must come from—something.”
He must be something unearthly because there is no way he should be here. But Tobias fails to believe it while I know he’s in denial. He doesn’t like to speak abo
ut his past, doesn’t remember much, he claims, and Isolde has a hard time reading him when she shouldn’t.
“A man that’s about to be attacked doesn’t just stand around for it to happen,” Dagen exceeds through our conversation. “I’ll finish my half of our conversation later.”
He leaves the room, his boots now making a reverberating sound off the pristine tiles so I know he was eavesdropping before.
“I don’t know how I’m able to cross through,” Tobias mutters. “I’m sorry, Davina, I know it leaves you unsettled.”
I turn to face him, his chin tucked into his chest that is decorated with a long gold chain that I gave him years ago. A ruby pendant hangs off of it, the color of my hair to remind him of me whenever he has to go back off to the sea.
“We’ll figure it out,” I convey, not believing for a second that we will.
There is only one person who might be able to help, and even then I’m hesitant about learning the truth that she’ll discover. Taysa is nothing but honest, brutally so, that it’s hard to swallow. I’m afraid that whatever Tobias is, it won’t be something I can deal with.
“I’d never hurt you,” he proceeds. “Ever.” His hands cup my face while his thumbs gently brush my skin. “You need to get into the water, you’re getting dry.”
I attempt to pull my face away. “I’m tired of swimming in a tidepool of water when the sea is not far from me.”
“We’ll find a way for you to go back,” he promises, keeping me within his grasp.
That hope he tries to fill my head with, I gave up on it a long time ago. Without going to Taysa and giving up Zeus knows what, I’ve abandoned my hope of feeling the salt water soak into my skin again. The morning swims with the orcas and fish.
“I won’t fail you,” he whispers. “I promise.”
I glimpse back at him, those chestnut-brown eyes have always looked at me the same way he is now—optimistic.
My nose is nestled into Tobias’ shoulder, my whole world turned upside down within seconds. Ones I still wouldn’t change if given the opportunity.
“It’s going to be okay,” he coos, brushing my hair with his hands. “We’ll find a way.”
A wrecked sob is his answer as he holds me snug against his body. He’s always been a cushion of comfort, someone I can rely on because he saved Rohana and me that night. And my gift back to him was a scar along the left side of his face.
“I promise,” he continues. “I’ve never broken one. I’ll protect you from anything.”
My voice never comes. It doesn’t because it can’t. I earned my sisters’ freedom off the island by giving up something that made me who I am—my voice.
“Just nod if you understand.” I do, while inhaling a deep breath. “We’ll tell your father that—” My head jerks up.
He can’t.
My father would be furious if he found out that I befriended a young pirate, let alone one that ran with Hunters.
Furiously, I shake my head, strands of hair slapping me in the face.
Tobias latches on to my cheeks. “Stop.”
I bite my lower lip to keep myself from going into a nervous fit.
“Then I won’t,” he alludes. “I won’t if it’s going to upset you.”
A harsh wave of oxygen leaves my lips. I’m relieved that he listens to me. That he always listens to me. He’s the only one in the world that I confide everything to, but it shouldn’t be this way. He shouldn’t be my rock.
He shouldn’t be anything.
It hurts, but it makes sense, I wouldn’t fully believe me either. But honestly, I don’t know how I’m able to pass the veil. Davina says it’s magic, that no one but a Siren can pass through, and I’m neither a Siren nor any sort of magical creature. If I was, I would’ve found my brother already.
We’ve already proven that I’m not a living creature that can breathe under the sea. Nor can I sing, been told that several times from my men on the ship that it sounds like a dying whale the moment I try to belt a note.
Regardless, I’d do anything to make her believe me. When she turned into a walking being on this island, everything changed.
The way she looked at me.
The way she laughed.
She doesn’t do much of that anymore, and I blame some of that on myself. All I used to talk about was her being able to sit with me on the beach and how I could hold her close. Now that she has those capabilities, I don’t think she knows how to deal with being something other than a Siren in water.
“I know you promised,” Davina finally says. “And I believe you.”
I shake my head. “You don’t. Everything...everything is different now.”
“We’re just older now,” she replies with a shrug. “It happens to—”
“I think you loved me before and now you don’t.”
Her brows furrow. “I do love you.” I shift my weight.
It’s my fault—we’re two different species of beings. I have more emotions than her, and we just don’t mesh. I fell in love with a sorceress who never cast a spell or song on me, and I should’ve known better. I should’ve fought with everything I had to keep her away from my heart.
“You didn’t find your brother.” I shake my head because I can’t say the words out loud. It’s too much and too hard to swallow every single time I come back empty-handed.
“You will find him,” she pledges. I almost scoff, look who’s being naive now. The world is too big, and I’m only one person with a crew of fucking idiots that can’t keep Lorne in one place for enough time so I can catch up to him.
“I’ll help you.”
“How?” I leer. “You can’t step foot off this island.”
“I know someone,” she says carefully. “Someone who can help us find—”
“You’re not going to go back to Taysa and ask her for another desired spell,” I snap. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“She might be able to—”
“No,” I digress. “No more spells. No more magic. No more lies. No more—” I wave my hand in between us. “This.”
“What’s this?”
“The stupid little illusion that we’re friends when clearly we’ve just become—”
“Don’t say another word that you’ll regret later,” she warns. “I’m protecting you.”
I take a step toward her. “From whom exactly? When is the last time your father visited you?”
“Thankfully, not for a while,” she replies, crossing her arms. “He makes everyone nervous. He walks around judging and complaining about how nothing is good enough. He issues out—”
“This island isn’t good enough for you,” I vouch. “You don’t belong here.”
Her eyes slit at me. “Are you saying you don’t want—”
“Don’t say another word you’ll regret later,” I counter. “I wish for more than you could ever imagine.”
“But you’re scared.”
I perk a brow. “Of?
“What you men call rejection.”
I look heavenward. “You read too many books.”
“You bring me the books.”
“Going to have to start looking at what I’m bringing you next time.”
“I think you do,” she notes. “I’ve learned more from what you’ve brought me than anything I could’ve under the sea.”
“But?”
“You don’t act like any of the men in those books.”
“How?” My eyes widen a little when I think I see her cheeks flush a soft shade of red.
I’ve never seen Davina blush, she’s too impassive most of the time, and the rest of the time she’s either teasing or chastising me for something.
“They hold a woman in their arms and—” My arms think before my brain registers her body pressed into mine, my hands gripping above her hips.
“Like this?” She nods, looking into my chest. “What else?”
“You know what else,” she mutters as she slowly pulls her gaze to meet mine.<
br />
“I’m not going to kiss you, Davina,” I whisper. “You remember the last time I tried.”
She blinks.
She remembers.
I was on my ship, standing on one of the wooden planks over the hull. The closest place to the water where we could talk without yelling at each other. She would sit with me for a few minutes before her skin would start to dry out, and I went for it. The sun was setting, making shades of pinks, oranges, and purples color the sky. It illuminated her skin and the green shades of her eyes.
It ended with me getting a mouthful of salt water and wet clothes.
She apologized, saying she wasn’t used to people like me being so close to her. So I kept my hands to myself.
Until now.
Now I wanted to see how far she’d let me go, but I wasn’t about to get flung from the room like she did with her bed one time when I told her that I didn’t like how she went and made a private deal with Taysa that took her voice.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like her on land, I do, it just makes her extremely unhappy.
“Are you not a man?” she asks me innocently. I clench my teeth because, even though she doesn’t know it, she’s pushing me.
“In flesh and blood, Princess.”
“Then why won’t you—”
“Didn’t you hear what I just said?”
“Doesn’t mean I’ll do it again.”
“Do you want me to try and kiss you again?”
“I think you ruined the moment,” she hedges. “I’ve read that it’s immediate and, sometimes unexpected.”
“Next time,” I allude, releasing her from my hold and taking a step back. “You’re just curious, and you need to get rid of the Viking.”
“I need to know how he got through the veil first.”
“He isn’t going to speak, Davina. You think I’m stubborn, those men are downright fearless. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done to him, he won’t pierce a word from his lips.”
“I haven’t tried everything yet,” she retorts.
“Which is?”
“I don’t know.”
“You think your father will get upset seeing me here, imagine if he finds him here.”
