“Hey,” he rasped, his voice a fractured whisper, as though he’d screamed himself hoarse. “You should sit back. You look pale.”
“What happened to you?” I asked, though I knew. I knew what had happened after I’d fallen asleep. My belly lurched, nausea swarming.
His jaw hardened. “Either sit back or lean on me.”
I gulped; throat dry as nausea engulfed me. Huddling against his lap, the world tilted sideways. The room spun. My stomach rolled. I wrapped my arms around Kye’s waist, anchoring myself as everything turned and twisted. Wood splinters bit under my nails.
Kye’s knees cradled my sides, steadying me. “Give it a moment,” he whispered.
I squeezed my eyes, willing the queasiness in my stomach to fade. The spinning slowed, but I remained curled into him, afraid it might return.
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
I frowned into my elbow. Images of the beach flashed. Fighting Kriska’s men, boarding the ship—but the memories were distant. As if they’d come from someone else's head.
I sifted through them slowly. The hook through the fishnet. Captain Kriska and his folded missive, the reward for my capture. The water he’d forced me to drink by strangling Kye.
Lifting my hand, I trailed a single finger under the line at his throat. “This.”
He swallowed, the movement brushing my fingertip.
“How long was I out?”
“A day and a half.”
“What?” I glanced at him in disbelief.
“I think. It’s hard to tell without daylight. The pirates all went to bed. They got up and sailed all day, and then they went to bed again.” He glowered as he stared at bruises along my legs, and I remembered them stepping on me to get to him.
Curling my feet under my body, I finally pulled back, looking down at myself. The thin white satin of my dress was stained with dirt, almost transparent over my body. I wished he’d look away, though I found my eyes holding his a moment later, wondering what had happened.
What they’d done to him after I’d gone unconscious.
And what he’d been forced to watch.
A rope tightened deep in my belly, leaving me sick with something other than the side-effects of drugged water. My hand roamed across my stomach as I began probing internally for an answer I didn’t want to find.
For the presence of any sensation other than familiar. For rawness or soreness. For pain.
But there was nothing.
Eyes wide, I snapped my gaze to his, and he seemed to read my thoughts.
“They didn’t,” was all he said, hands curling into tight fists.
“You’re sure?” I whispered, hugging my knees.
His hands flexed again; knuckles bloodied. “Theydidn’t.” He looked as if he might say something else. Guilt flashed behind his eyes, but he turned away, staring hard at the floor. “Their attention wasn’t on you. They laid you on the floor, and a few of them stepped on you—” But he stopped there, running his teeth over his lower lip.
My stomach hardened. Time for a change in subject. “How long did I take to fall asleep?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Ten minutes.”
“That’s all?” It had felt longer.
Kye’s gaze hardened onto a knot of wood in the plankboards.
I nestled my jaw onto the crests of my knees, listening to the bumps and scrapes of the pirates overhead, ignoring the shifting queasy tide within me at every lurch and bounce of the ship.
