Damon spent most of the next morning behind Vel at the ship’s wheel, helping her make minute corrections to The Reunion ’s course, with Myr whispering advice into his ear.
“There!” said Myr as Vel clicked the wheel onto what seemed to be the exact bearing.
Damon reached out, setting his hands over Vel’s. “Set it right here for the next few minutes.”
“Are you sure this time?” she asked.
“No, but Myr is.” He grinned and tapped her knuckles, turning to leave.
“What happens when we get to this Ocean Klykia, Damon?” she asked.
“I… suppose I’ll figure out a way to dampen it, like Myr first suggested. It won’t be simple, but we didn’t come this far to—”
“After that,” said Vel. She turned around in her seat to look at him, a thoughtful, anxious frown on her face. “What happens to us? Should I… plan on going back to Silke?”
“Do you want to go back to Silke?”
“I don’t know. I suppose… not really.”
He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and kissed her on the top of the head. “Then stick with me. I figure I’ll go back to the tower, or maybe go on a tour with this ship, or… whatever. Something cool.”
“How wonderfully vague and unspecific that sounds.” She rolled her eyes, but Damon didn’t miss her smile.
He kissed her on the cheek and rustled her hair.
“Make sure to hold that bearing,” he said. “I’m going to watch from on deck.”
The sensation of the wind at the frontmost point of the ship always reminded Damon of when he’d been using his myrblade’s full power and could simply turn himself into ice and move as he pleased through the air. He pressed up against the guard rail, narrowing his eyes at the distant horizon.
It was cloudy, one of the first less than idyllic days since they’d encountered the storm. Damon wasn’t entirely sure, but he thought he could see a smudge of something ahead. Not necessarily an island or even another ship, but… something.
“Interesting.”
Damon spun about, caught off guard by Ria’s voice. She was barefoot, clad in a loose maroon gown that he was pretty sure she’d borrowed from their aesta.
“I didn’t hear you approach,” he said.
“I can be quiet when I so choose,” she said, smirking.
“Not all the time.” He slid over, making space for her at the front of the railing.
“We will be there soon, no?” she said, more of a statement than a question.
“Yeah. Today, or tomorrow.”
Ria went quiet. Her hair caught in the wind the same way Damon’s had, but the effect had a sense of wild beauty to it, strands of silvery-green dancing with perfect, uncoordinated vitality.
“If this does work, the havens will be able to breathe again.” She took a breath of her own, as though testing the theory. “I will not have to shepherd them, not in the manner I do now.”
“I want that as much for you as I do for them,” he said, looking at her seriously.
She nodded slowly. “My people have a… tradition.”
“Your people have many traditions, as I understand it.”
“For newly bonded couples.” Her fingers went up to the matridai marks on her face, tracing them in thought.
“Merinians have certain… traditions.” He stepped behind Ria, pulling her into a soft embrace. He could almost rest his chin on her shoulder if he slumped forward a little, taller than him as she was.
“Would it be foolhardy for us to take the time for… such things?” she asked, voice so much more vulnerable than Damon was used to. “I know we are not truly newly bonded, and I know that there is much else which might steal our attention, but I… would truly want this for us, husband.”
“Nothing would please me more,” he said. “I did tell Vel that I’d be going back to the tower for a time.”
“After last night, I would think her more open to the idea of sharing than she once was,” said Ria. “She could even join us for some duration of whatever adventure we chose.”
“Adventure?” he said, chuckling. “You’d have us so quickly jump back into the path of danger after what we’ve been through here.”
She turned around in her arms, favoring him with those playful, confident eyes. “We are at our best at such times, I think. Do you not agree, young Damon?”
He would have agreed with just about anything she said in that sensual, purring tone. Pure seduction.
Damon blinked, looking past her for a moment. He felt his mouth drop open as he struggled to find the right words.
“Has our destination entered into view?” asked Ria.
Damon shook his head. “Watch… whatever that is! True Divine! Aesta needs to see this!”
He sprinted into the main cabin, slamming through the door and attempting to explain the problem to Malon, who was in the middle of doing dishes and suitably surprised.
“There’s something in the water!” he said. “Like a… an abyss, in the ocean.”
“A whirlpool,” said Malon. “Ahead of us?”
“Getting closer by the second.”
“Tell seta to stop the ship. I’ll go out on deck and get a sense of what else can be done.”
He nodded. Malon hurried by him, and Damon made his way upstairs into the glass cabin. Vel was already alternating between killing the ship’s acceleration and attempting to steer it onto a different course.
“I don’t know what to do!” she said. “We’re stuck in the current!”
Seeing it from the higher perch magnified Damon’s horror by tenfold. The whirlpool must have been a mile across, at least. He could see the depth of it, like a swirling valley in the middle of the sea, descending so far down that the center point was no more than a pit of swirling blackness and absolute death.
He couldn’t even look at it for more than a few seconds without being struck by a sense of vertigo that made it feel as though the ship was doing somersaults. He squeezed Vel’s shoulder and took a breath.
“Keep trying,” he said. “I’ll drop the anchor.”
He sprinted downstairs and onto the main deck. Ria had apparently gotten the idea before him and, with the help of a heavily cloaked Lilian, was rapidly turning the release crank. The ship slowed momentarily as the anchor dropped, and then started picking up speed on its former path, straight for the whirlpool.
Damon pulled his shirt off and kicked his boots loose. Ria grabbed him as he started toward the railing, fingernails digging into his shoulder.
“What are you thinking?” she snapped.
“I’ll follow the anchor’s chain!” he said. “I can freeze it to the seabed.”
“You stand no hope of swimming deep enough in time,” said Ria. “It is suicide, husband.”
He took a breath. She wasn’t wrong, but it was a problem that had a solution.
“Pull the anchor back up,” he said. “I’ll hang onto it, ride it down, freeze it to the seabed, and push myself back up with an ice pillar.”
She shook her head. Damon pulled loose of her grip and grabbed the anchor’s crank. It was a powered mechanism relying on some of the force generated by the furnace, but he still strained his muscles as he turned it as fast as he could.
“Ria’s right!” shouted Lilian. “It just isn’t a good idea. The currents could run under the water even more powerfully than they flow up here, and you’re assuming the anchor can even reach the seabed in the first place. If you dive down there, you might simply be swept away with no possible chance of rescue.”
“And if I don’t, we all die,” said Damon. “This will work. This has to work.”
The anchor appeared above the surface of the water. Damon didn’t waste another second arguing. He swung over the edge of the ship, wrapped his arms and legs tightly around the anchor’s metal stem, and glared up at Ria and Lilian.
Ria closed her eyes, dropped her gaze, and started turning the crank. Damon sucked in a deep breath and hoped it would be enough.