by Ann Fisher
Culan jumped on the table and began to lap at her abandoned stew. She stroked a hand down his back. “Legend says that when they built the Raven, the Keepers sacrificed a man and bound his spirit to the ship to watch over it forever.”
Janek didn’t look particularly horrified. “I didn’t realize that Keepers practiced human sacrifice.”
“They haven’t for a very long time, but this is a very old ship.”
“How old is it?”
“There are songs my grandmother sang about the Raven.”
One of Janek’s brows arched. “Surely she sang of another ship by the same name.”
“Perhaps.”
He smiled slowly, and her heart turned over. “Don’t tell me you really believe it’s the same ship? That the spirit of some unfortunate wretch has been protecting it all these years from pirates and dry rot?”
She shook her head slowly. “Our Keepers don’t bind living spirit to dead things. That’s a necromancer’s game. Kenna says bloodwood holds spells better than other wood. But Culan is the guardian of the Raven.”
Janek looked at the cat who’d paused to lick broth from his claws. “You’re joking.”
Lorel laughed. “I don’t believe it myself, but don’t tell Kenna. She takes Culan very seriously. She’d worship the creature if I let her.”
Culan lifted his head as if aware they were speaking of him and blinked once before going back to bathing himself. The meal was finished and the flask was nearly dry. Janek was watching her with warm interest, but seemed content to let her take the lead. There was no longer any reason to delay telling him about Conri, but she hesitated. Once the words left her mouth, he’d have questions. It would change everything.
She didn’t know how he’d respond, but it was unlikely he’d sweep her into his arms and take her to bed without talking. And she wanted that very badly. The bed. Janek’s hands on her. She let the moment spin out…
Some of the warmth in Janek’s gaze cooled. “Lorel, if you’ve changed your mind, I will abide by that. Whatever has passed between us, you certainly don’t owe me anything now.”
Except the truth. She took a deep breath and let it out. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
“That sounds serious.” He frowned and set his cup aside. “Come here?”
She took his extended hand and let him draw her up. His chair screeched as he pushed it back so that she could sit on his lap. His arm came around her. “The way you said that… Is it something that happened after I left Erys?”
“Yes.”
“And you think it will disturb me to hear it?”
She turned the word over in her head. Disturb? Yes, he might be disturbed.
“I don’t know how you’ll feel about it. I want…. I hope…” Back to hope. She shook her head. “Janek.”
And words escaped her again. He cupped her jaw and angled her head up. She blinked as his mouth descended, falling on hers softly. It felt like a first kiss, tentative and searching, just a light pressing of his lips to hers.
When he pulled back, his eyes locked on hers. “Do you still want me?”
“Yes,” she breathed.
“If you don’t wish to share this burden with me, I’m content to wait until you’re ready to do so.” He stroked the side of her cheek from the corner of her eye down to the edge of her mouth. He lowered his head to kiss her again, this time coaxing her to open for him. His tongue slid between her parted lips, sweetly teasing. Her eyes drifted closed, and she moaned softly into his mouth.
“Let’s go to bed,” he said against her lips, his voice low and intimate.
She’d missed that rasp to his voice. She’d missed the feel and smell and strength of him. But she couldn’t go to the bed, not yet. She needed to tell him first. Despite what he thought, this wasn’t something that could wait much longer, not if she intended to sleep with him. Once she stripped off her clothes, Janek—who noticed everything—would surely notice that her body had changed. No matter how rattled by desire he was, he’d notice that.
Placing her feet on the floor, she pulled away and stood. Averting her gaze from his searching look, she gathered up their cups and dishes and dumped everything back into the crate.
“I need to drop this mess off in the galley before Stasa comes back for it. And I should speak with Dani too.” She needed fresh air and a clear head before she spoke the words that would change everything between them. “You…just make yourself at home. I’ll be back shortly.”
He let her go, but she could see by his slight frown that he was confused by her retreat. She hadn’t lied. She did have things to attend to before she retired for the night. Otherwise, there would be people knocking at her door within a half hour. She wanted more than a half hour with Janek so it was best to attend to them now. She straightened her shirt and buttoned her vest, slipped her knife back into its sheath at her belt. She reached past him for the crate, but left the flask of wine behind. She suspected she’d want more of that when she returned.
When she got to the door, she glanced back. Janek’s elbow rested on the table and his thick fingers stroked the stubble along his jaw. The new shirt she’d given him was too small and the seams stretched at the shoulders. At some point, a few of his buttons had come undone. He regarded her through narrowed eyes. Rumpled, dangerous, and more tempting than any man she’d met before or since. He was dangerous to her in so many ways.
She reached for the latch on the door. “I won’t be long.”
It took longer than expected before she was able to return to her cabin. The moon was up, full, and half-obscured by thin clouds. It gave her more than enough light to see by as she made her way across the deck and down into the belly of the ship. Dani had spotted another ship, delaying Lorel’s return to Janek. The ship turned out to be a trader, a Casilian cutter that had been whipped by the tail end of that unnatural storm and was limping toward the nearest port. Lorel brought them close enough to signal, determined they were well enough off to make it in without aid and then watched as they continued on their way. Two wasted hours. By the time it was done, it was nearly midnight and Lorel was anxious to get below deck. Her thoughts had never been far from Janek.
She swung open the door to her cabin and locked it behind her.
“Dani spotted another ship. It was nothing, but I—” The words died on her tongue at the sight that greeted her. Janek was seated on her bed. There was a strange tension to his body that brought her up short, dried the words on her tongue. Not sure if it was better to run, she took a cautious step closer.
Head bowed, Janek stared down at a piece of fabric spread across his lap. Dread settled in her stomach. She didn’t need a closer look to know what he held. She was drawn to him anyway. Conri’s gown. She’d found it the other night wedged between the wall and the mattress. It still smelled like Conri, which is why she’d shoved it beneath her pillow. It looked so tiny compared to Janek’s bulk.
She missed Conri desperately. Cursed the day she’d agreed to take the ship for Cinn. Except that it had given her an opportunity to see Janek again, to speak with him, touch him, have this very necessary conversation. She swallowed past the lump in her throat as he lifted his head.
He was so very still. There was no expression in his eyes or on his face. Everything was neatly tucked away behind the mask he wore when he was most vulnerable. His large fingers lay where Conri’s chest would be in a gesture that looked nearly protective.
“Who does this belong to?”
It would be easy to lie. There were any number of women aboard, and he knew that this was not where she normally slept. Except it wasn’t easy at all, and that was a good thing, wasn’t it? She’d worried that these last years had made her hard, but she wasn’t so hard that she could easily lie to someone she loved. Her heart wasn’t so hard that she couldn’t love. Her heart was reckless, stubborn, and soft. Though this wasn’t the way she’d hoped to start the conversation, it was the very reason she’d pushed him away ea
rlier. Even if she ended up having to fight him to hold onto her son, Janek deserved to know the truth.
“Your son,” she said. “When you…after you left, I found that you hadn’t left me completely alone, after all. I had a baby. Your baby.”
“My son.” He wasn’t so much questioning the statement as repeating it. His mask slipped just a fraction before he glanced down at his lap again, lifted his hand slightly and then settled it softly to the worn cloth. His voice was gruff when he spoke again. “I left you alone in Erys with my child. I should have been there with you. With him.”
“You never made me any promises.”
“The making of a child is a promise. Or it should be, I’ve always thought.” There was an edge to his voice that she didn’t understand. She wasn’t sure what reaction she’d expected from him, but this wasn’t it. Cautiously, she stepped forward and touched his shoulder.
He looked up sharply. “You weren’t going to tell me about him?”
“I was. I didn’t know how to begin. I started to and then…I didn’t want to be interrupted.”
Also, she was a coward.
His frown called her a liar, but he didn’t voice the accusation. Instead, he asked, “What did you name him?”
“Conri.”
Despite his stillness, he wasn’t unmoved. The emotion in his eyes churned as violently as the black storm he’d summoned earlier. “I like the sound of it.”
She smiled. “It means wolf king in the old tongue. And he is, as fierce as a wolf and solemn as a king. He was born on this ship, on this bed actually though the feathers have been changed since then so don’t worry about that. We were nearly to Desilon then with nowhere to anchor and no midwife aboard. Cinn caught him and he ruined her favorite leathers. She calls him a little pirate, but he’s not. He’s a good babe, strong and healthy. When we took him ashore for the first time, he screamed all night. I was so worried I had Dev row me back to the ship to fetch enough money to hire a healer, and as soon as I set foot on the deck Conri fell sound asleep. It wasn’t until the last few months that I managed to settle him on land and that only with a cradle. Dev says that means he’s mother blessed but then, they say that about all of the sea born. Have I told you that Dev is alive?” She was rambling, she knew it, but now that she’d started talking she couldn’t seem to find her way to stopping. Janek stared. “Conri has your eyes.”
He reached out and gripped her forearms, pulled her slightly forward. “You’re telling me he’s still alive?”
He’d thought…? “Yes. Yes, of course, he’s still alive.”
His grip tightened. When she winced, he eased his hold but a little. “Where?”
“On Erys with Dev and Cinn. It’s the first time I’ve left him, but I had to make this run. It was to be my last one.”
“He would be nearly a year old now. You’ve had him aboard this ship all that time? Aboard the Raven?”
She jerked her arms free as he rose from the bed. “You don’t get to criticize my decisions.”
“I don’t…That’s not what I meant to do.” He ran a shaking hand through his hair. “This is my son.”
“Whom you’ve never met. Never would have even known about if the Order hadn’t chased you into my path.”
He drew in a sharp breath, but then closed his eyes and rubbed at his forehead. “True. That’s true, and it doesn’t change anything now that I do know about him.”
“What doesn’t change?” she asked warily. Did he care so little? But then he opened his eyes and the expression on his face erased any doubt she might have had about how he felt about her news.
“It doesn’t matter that I have no right to him. He’s mine, Lorel. Rights or no, I will claim him.”
“You’re not taking him from me.”
“That’s not—” Janek’s head lifted sharply, staring at the beams that held the ceiling. “Damn it all. Not now. Can we not have ten minutes of privacy aboard this gods forsaken ship of yours?”
His exasperation pulled a smile from her. “It’s not my ship. What’s wrong?”
“I felt a tracking spell. Subtle, but too damn close. They’re here. The Order has found us.”
He stood, but he didn’t set Conri’s gown aside. He fisted it in his hand and stuffed the rag inside his shirt as he walked toward the door.
7
Lorel scanned the horizon, searching for the ship, but saw nothing. Though the moon had risen and the night was clear, it was too dark for her to see much of anything. “You’re sure they’re out there?”
“They’re still several miles off, but they’re coming straight for us,” Janek said. “The tracking spell is keyed to Caden.”
She lowered the spyglass. “Caden’s sister is aboard the Charmoc then?”
Janek nodded. “I believe so. There’s no one else left alive whose blood they could use.”
That complicated matters considerably. In a battle at sea, it was impossible to spare the life of a single person. She studied Janek’s face, but it was impossible to tell what he was thinking. His expression was closed down, shuttered. If she’d shaken him with news that he was a father, there was no sign of it. She badly wanted to finish that conversation. She needed to know exactly what he’d meant when he said he intended to claim Conri. She wouldn’t give up her son. But there was no time for that now. Dani had gone below deck to wake up Kenna, Caden and Jamie. The others would join them any minute now.
“I’ll be able to see for certain when the ship’s closer,” Janek said. “It’s possible they’re using a spell I’m unfamiliar with. Serat wouldn’t risk losing Mira if he had another choice.”
“Do you think the Archmage is aboard the Charmoc too? Serat would trust her with the Archmage, wouldn’t he?”
If they could take out the Archmage, Serat would be vulnerable. Caden would have a clear road to the throne and Erys would be free.
Janek dashed her hopes with a shake of his head. “Demir won’t move from the capital until he knows Ghadria is secure. His position is too precarious.”
“Which is why he might risk the empress’ life in order to kill Caden.”
“Exactly.”
She tucked the glass into her vest. “Well, now that we know for sure they’re tracking us through Caden, there’s no point in running.”
Janek grimaced. “There has to be a way to get Mira off that ship.”
The question was—how much was Janek willing to risk in the trying? Her life and his? The lives of her crew? Probably. Caden’s life? That was likely what he was pondering now.
Her hands tightened on the railing. “This crew signed up for a simple trading voyage. I won’t order them to their deaths. Any plan you come up with, you’ll need to convince both me and them it’s worth the risk. I won’t leave Conri an orphan, and I won’t lead the Order to my son. Just so you know, if it comes down to a choice between Caden or Conri, I choose Conri. If it comes to a choice between Erys and Conri, I choose Conri. I choose Conri every time.”
The silence stretched for a moment. “Do you think I would willingly place you or my son in danger? I saved your life once. Caden was at risk because of my actions then. It’s not a choice between one life or the other.”
But it could easily come down to a choice, and she didn’t know which way Janek would choose. She didn’t know if he knew it himself.
Still in her nightclothes, Kenna came up on deck, wrapping a black shawl tightly around her shoulders. She didn’t join them immediately. Instead, she looked up to study the wind in the sails and then out at the gently rolling sea.
“The ship is still a good ways off,” she said as she approached. “Is there any reason we need to talk in this gloom? They already know where we are.”
“I had the lamps doused earlier,” Lorel said. “I’d just as soon leave it that way. The Order uses physical weapons as well as magical ones.”
“A temporary light then.” Kenna lifted her hand and a ball of soft golden light appeared above her palm. She blew
on it softly and it lofted into the air like thistledown. The light seemed to expand and disintegrate as it lifted, breaking into a thousand tiny sparks.
Kenna gestured in the direction of the Charmoc. “I can buy us more time, but they’ll only catch up again. It’ll take the last of my strength to push them off course with the wind so low.”
Janek’s attention sharpened on the Keeper. “How do you store energy? You don’t use receptacles like a mage. I thought the heartstones served the same purpose, but they don’t, do they? They don’t look like receptacles in the nexus.”
Rather than answer, Kenna looked accusingly at Lorel, angry that she’d shared sacred secrets with a Ghadrian.
Lorel lifted her hands. “I only told him why the heartstones were important so that Serat would stop trying to ship them off to Ghadria.”
She didn’t know the Keepers’ secrets. How could she have shared them with Janek?
Kenna pursed her lips. “You think knowledge will stop them? I didn’t think you were so naïve, Captain.”
She wasn’t naïve. There wasn’t anything she could have said to Serat that would have stopped him from coveting the stones, but Janek? Janek was careful with his power. He didn’t blunder through the world taking what he wanted and leaving a swathe of destruction in his path. She opened her mouth to say so, but then she thought about the black storm that was probably even now touching down along some unsuspecting stretch of coastline. She held her tongue.
Kenna looked archly at Janek. “The heartstones are none of your concern. Keepers are not mages. And we are most definitely not sorcerers. You have your way of channeling power and we have ours.”
Janek cocked his head slightly to the side. “Channeling is an interesting word choice.”
A flicker of annoyance crossed Kenna’s face, but she turned away as Dani, Caden and Jamie joined them. Janek caught Lorel’s gaze briefly and she saw her own amusement reflected in the captain’s eyes. He shrugged unrepentantly, and she shook her head before turning to face the rest of the group.
“Are they in sight?” Dani asked, moving across the deck with a light, rolling gait.
