Vix looked pretty tied up at the dock, but it wasn’t the same as coming around the corner and seeing Cormorant. I didn’t love her the way I’d described to Markos—she wasn’t home. Even lying tamely in the harbor with her canvas strapped down, she was intimidating. I still hadn’t forgotten all the times when the sight of her terrified me to the bones.
It was funny—her painted lettering still read “Victorianos,” as it always had, but I thought of her only as Vix now.
I limped up the plank, pausing to slide my hand along her polished rail. “All right, Vix,” I whispered. “So here we are.”
A hatch slammed shut. I was unarmed, but both my hands flew to my waist out of instinct.
It was Markos.
He stood alone on deck, hand resting on the hilt of his sword. When he saw me, he froze. His eyes were sunken, reddened.
“Who are you?” he said flatly. “You aren’t her. I don’t believe it.”
“I don’t care.” I stepped down, battered boots rubbing the raw blisters on my heels. “I’ve been walking for miles, and I’m sunburned. I have sand everywhere a person could possibly have sand on her body, and, yes, I do mean everywhere. And I’m starving.”
He blocked me. “What did Caro do the first time I tried to kiss her?”
“You know what I did. We were both there,” I exclaimed in exasperation. “Oh, I see. This is a test.” I rolled my eyes. “I slapped you. And dumped a bucket of cold water on you.”
He felt my salt-stiffened shirt. I hated how haunted his eyes looked. “You were shot. You went into the water. The drakon surely swallowed you up.”
“She would never eat me.”
“Then you drowned.”
I whispered, “She would never let me drown.”
Roughly he shoved aside the neckline of my shirt. Fingers splayed, he felt his way across my skin.
“What are you—?” Then I realized. Seizing his hand in mine, I brought it an inch lower, to the frayed hole in the right side of my shirt, under my collarbone. The sea had washed the matted blood away.
I stuck my finger through the rip in the fabric and waggled it. “All right?”
He let out a ragged breath. “Caro. I don’t even—there’s a scar. But—it’s all healed.” The look he gave me was so intense it took me by surprise.
I rolled up my sleeve. “And here’s where the Black Dogs shot me. The very night we met. As you ought to remember.” I pushed past him. “Now, if you’re finished manhandling me, can I come on my own ship? Need I mention I was recently shot?”
I fixed my shirt, wondering if he could hear how fast my heart raced. My ears burned. I had to put space between him and me, to restore things to their normal state. I swung through the hatch and onto the ladder.
“I thought you might be a shadowman. An assassin from the Theucinians.” He pelted me with questions. “Where have you been? Why weren’t you eaten by the drakon? And how did you get to Valonikos?”
I hopped down the last two rungs. The remnants of a meal were laid out on the table. “Don’t know.” I grabbed a block of cheese and bit right into it. I’d never been so hungry. “This is where I walked out of the sea,” I said around a mouthful of cheese. “Just south of the city.”
Markos stared at me, dazed. Or maybe he was just appalled by my table manners. “What do you mean, walked out of the sea? Not from under it?”
“Markos, I’m fine. She would never let harm come to me.” I swallowed. It seemed strange to be speaking of such magical, personal things in conversation. We might as well be talking about the weather.
“You spoke to her.”
I picked up a hunk of bread. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You really spoke to a god.”
“Markos.”
“Are you alive or dead right now?” He looked at me as if I was not quite human.
“I feel alive. I’d rather not think any harder about it. Where is everyone?” I sucked in a sharp breath. “Nereus is still here, isn’t he?” The terrible thought occurred to me that maybe his task was finished and the god in the sea had taken him back. I hadn’t gotten to say good-bye.
“He took Daria to see the fish market. The Bollards have rooms above their offices here. That’s where your parents are staying. And Kenté.”
I dropped the butter knife with a clatter. “Markos, how stupid are you? You shouldn’t be alone here!”
“I wanted to be alone. My cousin’s wife insists on fussing over me incessantly. I came down here for quiet. To think.”
“About what?”
He raised his eyebrows. “What do you think?” The silence that followed was both significant and awkward. He broke it by clearing his throat. “Would you like some ale?”
“I think not. I need water, and lots of it.” My throat and skin felt tight and parched.
He reached across the table to refill my tin cup. I smiled. It was funny to see him pick up the jug and serve me—something he would never have done when we first met. I marveled at how comfortable it felt to be eating with him.
“What happened, back at the island?” I asked. “I don’t understand how Kenté hid you from the shadowman. Are those meat pies?”
He pushed the tray at me. The pies were cold, but I hardly cared. “Actually she didn’t. We were behind that stack of barrels on deck. When Nereus yelled, it woke me up just enough to remember we were in danger. I grabbed Daria and dove behind the barrels.” His face colored. “Well, it was more like she grabbed me. I think he’d been concentrating on me, you see. It was the strangest thing. I was so confused.”
“I know. I felt it too.”
He went on. “It wasn’t until Cleandros started shouting at Kenté that I realized he hadn’t seen us hide. When we didn’t reappear, he thought it meant she was more powerful than him. That’s when he got angry and shot you.”
As I ate and drank, he told me what had become of our allies. Five days had passed since I’d gone overboard. Nereus had taken Vix into Iantiporos, where Kenté visited the offices of Bollard Company. The Bollards had sent ships to retrieve the Antelope’s crew and transport the Black Dogs to the appropriate authorities. Pa and Ma took it upon themselves to make sure Markos and Daria reached Valonikos safely. Ma almost sent Kenté back to Siscema, only Daria pitched a fit and refused to sail without her. Meanwhile the wherrymen had bid them farewell and begun the journey back to Hespera’s Watch on Conthar.
“Do you still have my things?” I asked.
“In the captain’s cabin.” He pushed back his chair. “I’ll—”
I also stood. My heart pounded. “No, I’ll get them.”
The cabin had been cleaned, the bed made up with fresh sheets and blankets. I found my belt on a shelf. Sliding one of the pistols from its holster, I traced the mountain lion. Then I touched the brim of my three-cornered hat, sitting on the shelf beside it. They looked the same. But everything was changed.
I spun to find Markos leaning in the doorway. My eyes dropped to his jacket. It was the one he’d bought in Siscema, though the rest of his clothes were new. I longed to run my fingers down that gilt trim. It was a very attractive coat, especially on him.
“Still wearing it.” He stretched like the lions on my Akhaian dueling pistols and grinned. “Would you like me to be Tarquin Meridios again?”
“Why would I?”
“Admit it, you found him handsome.”
By all the gods, he was flirting with me, barely half an hour after I’d come back from the dead.
“There were things I wanted to say to you,” I blurted out. “Not to Tarquin Meridios. You.” My cheeks warmed. “But you were dead.”
“I felt similarly,” he said. “But then you were dead. Please, go on.”
I was suddenly shy. “You first.”
One side of his mouth twisted up. “Very well.” Angling his eyes away from mine, he said, “I finally realized why it wouldn’t have worked when I first tried to kiss you.”
I crossed my arms. “Because I’m not the kind of girl who kisses boys she just met the day before yesterday?”
“No. Well, yes. That too.” His voice was steady and serious. “All my life I expected people to respect me because I was the son of the Emparch. But you didn’t. At first that made me mad. Infuriated me, really. You have no idea.”
I had some idea.
“But now I know you better.” Hesitantly he wound one of my curls around his finger. I didn’t stop him. Emboldened, he brushed his hand over my hair. It tickled, but tiny fireworks lit up all over my body.
“Now I see.” His voice dropped low. “You respect people who take care of other people. People who are bold. And brave. I couldn’t figure it out at first. Why you thought more of common wherrymen than you did of me. You respect people because of the things they do. You were different from everyone I’d ever met. You knew what I did not—that it’s the things we do that make us who we are.”
I knew what I wanted to say, but I also knew what would happen if I said it. “Markos.”
He braced himself in the doorway, trying so hard to appear casual that even I was nearly fooled.
“I think you’re the bravest person I know.” I stepped backward into the cabin.
“You’re going to bed. Of course. You’ve been through a lot.” He stuck his fingers in his hair. “I mean, you were dead. I’ll just—”
I placed my hand on his shirt, spreading my fingers wide. The solid heat of him made me feel bold. “When you kissed me in Casteria, I didn’t know if it meant anything.”
His chest lurched under my fingers. “As if I would kiss someone like that and not mean something.”
“Oh, wouldn’t you?”
“Not,” he said, clearing his throat, “like that.”
“Perhaps you just wanted to kiss a girl before you died.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Perhaps I didn’t want to die without kissing you.”
“That’s what I just said.”
“You know it isn’t. Not at all.” He whispered, “Can I please stay? I swear, I won’t do anything.”
He backed up, putting the length of the cabin between us, to prove his intentions. But the cabin was tiny and he was too tall for it. I felt his presence, a warm physical thing, taking up the whole room.
“Why do you say it like that?” I asked. “You won’t do anything. When if we were to do anything, and I’m not saying we will, it would be the both of us doing it.” I licked my lips. “Like, maybe I might want to do things. But then you talk like it’s up to you and take me right out of it.”
“I’m sor—do you?”
Realizing I’d gone slightly too far, I prepared to come about. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Are we talking about … I just want to make sure we’re referring to the same kinds of … things here.” Tension yawned between us. He stepped closer, as if there were a string connecting me and him, and I’d just tugged on it.
“Are there other kinds of things that happen between a girl and a boy?”
He gave me a sly grin. “Are you asking?”
I shoved him on the shoulder. “Shut up.”
He kissed me.
A girl who, at the age of seventeen, captains a pirate cutter she seized as a prize ought not to let her head be turned by kisses, even if they are from a boy who is the rightful Emparch of a whole country. Particularly not if the girl knows embarrassing facts about said Emparch that should make him wholly unattractive. Such as, he doesn’t know how to load a pistol or properly stow a sail, or in fact do anything of use except look good holding two swords at once.
I didn’t care. Everything went right out of my head, except how greedy I was for his lips and his tongue, even if I did have to go up on tiptoe to reach them. He smelled and felt and tasted like Markos. I simply couldn’t have been kissing anyone else.
It was all him. The silkiness of his hair as I finally twisted my fingers into it. The catch in his breath as he dragged his lips down my neck. We wrapped ourselves around each other until there was no space between us. Until I couldn’t tell whose throbbing heartbeat I felt.
He laughed softly into my shoulder. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“It’s all right,” I told him. “Tomorrow we can go back to not liking each other.”
“You think we don’t like each other?”
“I think I find you maddening.” I tangled my fist in his shirt.
“Well. That’s different.”
His voice was irritatingly smug, so I kissed him some more to shut him up.
“It’s most likely because,” he said, breath tickling my neck, “we spent so much time on that damn boat together. That’s all it is. A natural … mmm … thing,” he finished absently as if he couldn’t be bothered to think of the word. “Reaction,” he said several moments later, kissing his way up my ear. So much later, in fact, I barely remembered what he was talking about.
“I agree,” I said. “It’s definitely nothing.” I tried to climb him, wrapping my legs around his waist. His back bumped the wall, causing something on the shelf to shift and topple.
Eventually we found the bed, which wasn’t hard even in the dark because the cabin was so small.
“Markos.” I hesitated, unsure of what he would think. But it had to be said. “This isn’t … my first time. If that matters. Which it shouldn’t. It’s just—I thought you ought to know. In case—”
“Caro. You’re talking too much.”
Relief loosened the tension in my shoulders. “I almost expected you to make a rude remark about girls from the riverlands.”
I felt him freeze. “I was a pompous ass when I said that.”
I wasn’t about to argue with that. “What do you want to do?” I whispered.
My heart hammered with unvoiced fear. I was scared he would come to his senses and remember that this was a terrible idea. That the two of us together was something like what happens when flint strikes steel.
“Take off more of your clothes,” he said roughly, and that put paid to my worries.
His jacket hung from his left arm, where it had gotten stuck and we’d both forgotten about it. For my part, my hands were inside his gaping shirt. I’d always admired men’s shoulders, and his were particularly fine from all that sword fighting. I wrapped my leg around his, my bare toes making a trail down his calf muscle. I hadn’t ever imagined his weight pressing down on my body would feel so good.
“I meant, beyond that.”
“I hadn’t thought beyond that.” He tugged lightly on one of my curls, watching it spring back into a corkscrew. “I love your hair.” Casting his eyes down, he swallowed. “Caro … You know I can’t promise you anything. I … just can’t.”
“What—what do you mean—‘promise’?” I stammered.
“You know, marriage. An engagement. That kind of …” He trailed off. I saw him go a little dead behind the eyes, steeling himself for my reaction.
I shoved him back, propping myself up on my elbows. “As if I’d want that! I’m seventeen. I have more important things to do.”
He regarded me with a strange half smile. “You’re not like anyone else, are you?”
“And you’re a liar, Markos. You said you hadn’t thought beyond this. You thought enough to come up with that little speech, didn’t you?” I flopped onto the pillow. “Marriage. I’m going to be a captain and a privateer. I’m going to be the terror of the seas. Whoever marries you will have to wear pretty dresses and go to parties and learn the names of a hundred boring politicians.”
“Oh, pretty dresses. That sounds like torture.” He whispered, “You’re really all right with this?”
But I was. The thought of any more change was too much to bear. Just for once I wanted to do what I wanted and let fate go stuff itself.
“Why are you smiling?” I asked.
“Because,” he said, “finally we’re doing something I know how to do.” He touched my linen undershirt. “Yes?”
“Yes,” I said impatiently against his hair, trying to untangle his jacket from his left wrist. The buttons were caught.
He fumbled with the ties at my waist. “Yes?” His hot breath tickled my ear.
I pushed up against him, and he grunted. “Yes.” I kicked my underthings down the bed.
He wrestled off his own clothes, and I remembered I’d seen him almost naked that one time on Heron Water. I hadn’t bothered to look very closely, because to be honest, I had not expected anything impressive.
Well. That had been a mistake. But it wasn’t only his bare body that made me gasp. He was covered in purple bruises and wore a tight bandage around his ribs.
“Hush.” He dipped to kiss my lips. “The physicians say I’m fine. It’s only sore.” We were pressed skin to skin. I felt him shaking, his breath an unsteady flutter in his chest. “Caro? Yes?” Catching his lower lip between his teeth, he waited for an answer.
“Why do you keep asking me?”
“Because.” A line appeared between his eyes. The muscles in his arms were tense. “I made a mistake that other time. I don’t want to do it again.”
“Oh.” I kissed him, but again he drew back. His lips slipped from mine, still stubbornly waiting. “Yes to everything,” I said.
The serious look on his face nearly killed me. I couldn’t figure out when he’d become so important in my life. It was like trying to name the moment you learned to breathe air. I tried to will myself to stop being nervous, but after all I liked him so much more than I had liked Akemé. So it wasn’t the same.
I felt him all over my skin, even the places he wasn’t touching. Curving my hands over the peeling sunburn on his shoulders, I thought my heart would burst out of my chest. Warm, his skin was so warm. And solid. And real.
A strange, hot hitch in my heart made me pull him close.
“I didn’t think I would see you again,” I whispered.
“I didn’t think I’d see you.” He buried his face in my neck, inhaling. “You shouldn’t have come back for me. It was dangerous and stupid.”
“That’s me. Dangerous and stupid.” I grinned, and that banished the possibility of tears.
What he did next banished them even further.