“Well, my pasty siren,” she said, stifling her laughter, “what do you say we see what this stuff is all about, hmm?”
I picked up my rum, sloshing a tiny bit of it over the lip of the glass, before clinking it against hers like I had seen the other patrons doing.
“Here goes nothing, my little doe-eyed selkie.”
The two of us downed the contents of the glass in one sip, causing us both to gag and cough.
It burns.I panicked as the fire in my throat trickled down into my belly.
“For the love of all things salty! What is that?” I said, wiping the rum that dribbled off my chin with my thumb. Breena’s eyes were teary and red, and she looked as if she had just downed poison, which, I guess she had.
“I feel like I’m going to die,” she choked out. “People pay for this?”
“I’m not quite sure what all the fuss is about. Why do sailors live and die by this stuff?” I asked, annoyance dripping off my burning tongue.
Denivier walked over with a pitcher of what I assumed to be mead in her hand and asked, “Ready for another round?”
“Absolutely not. That was horrid,” Breena all but spat. “Do you have anything—better?”
“Want some of this? It’s wild berry mead. Might be more suited to yourfragiletastes,” Denivier said with yet another half smile. The way she took in Breena’s face with quiet amusement had me clenching my fist around the tiny glass in my hand. I took a deep breath as the odd feeling hit my heart like a dark wave.
I slid the empty glass to her and muttered, “Why not?”
Denivier nodded her head, not peeling her eyes from Breena. Her dark gaze swam with lust, and Breena stared back at her, her large eyes pouring into the elven woman. Eventually, her stoic face broke, and Breena’s lips lifted into a coquettish smile as she watched Denivier pour two goblets of mead.
My jaw clicked, and when my hand twitched, liquid sloshed out of the pitcher without control. Denivier let out a squeal as she was drenched in the alcohol, and she stumbled back fromthe counter. The mead continued to rush toward her as if it had a mind of its own, even after she spaced herself from it.
Breena’s head swung to me, her eyes wide and disapproving. There was no hiding from either one of them that the mess was my own. I glanced down at my hand, droplets resting on the back of it from the mead mishap. With a little focus, I urged the stationary liquid to roll off my hand, and so it did.
Well, that answers that,I thought to myself. It was undeniable now that I had the ability to control more than the water in the sea. Mead was also on my list. I wondered what else I could do on land that I never knew I was capable of. A flutter of excitement flickered in me for all but a moment before Breena’s disappointed glare squashed it.
“What was that?” Breena asked under her breath as Denivier excused herself to get cleaned up. The barmaid shot me a deadly glance as she ran a stained rag down her arms.
“An accident,” I said in a neutral, unyielding tone.
“You can control mead?” She didn’t look convinced by my claims of an accident as her forehead knitted.
“Apparently so. This is news to me too.” My sharpened vision followed the elf as she ambled off into the back room of the pub.
Breena glanced from me to Denivier before saying, “Are you… jealous?”
“Jealous?” I scoffed. “Of what?”
“Oh, stop.” Breena shoved my shoulder with a twinkle in her eye then rested the side of her cheek on her cupped palm. “You are so dense sometimes, you know that?”
“Dense? Excuse me?”
“Are you really so oblivious to your own feelings? You can’t tell me Denivier didn’t get under your skin, that if I went into that back room right now and made a move on her, you wouldn’t control the rum in this place and shatter every bottle on thatshelf?” she said, pointing to the long wooden slabs across from us.
“Shatter the bottles? For what, you going off with some random elf?”
“Yes. Touching her in the way you wish I would touch you,” she said with one raised brow. My fist clenched, and the spill of mead on the counter began to shimmer and shake.
“Can you tell me that when I do this,” she said in a low voice, reaching toward me with focused eyes locked on mine. Those rambunctious minnows in my stomach came back as she began trailing a finger down the length of my arm, stopping right at my wrist. The touch triggered memories of our chests pressed up against each other on the Indigo Tide, our breaths one, our warmed faces inches from one another. “That you feel nothing?”
“No, I feel something, alright. Annoyance.” I ignored what she really meant, just as I ignored the reaction she pulled from my body with a mere touch of her finger. The pleased expression on her face wobbled before dropping all together.
“Great waves, Sid. You are relentless, insistent on maintaining this icy shell. You’re not in the deep anymore; thaw out already.” Her curls bounced as she shook her head, and her words pinged against my sensitive skin. I tried my hardest not to let them sink in, but that was exactly what she was talking about, wasn’t it? My hard, unrelenting shell.
