What I was not in awe of was the fact that he’d told me to go take first shift with Kol, then tipped me the nod to say he would keep the crew away, and it was safe to open the crates for now. So like a male on his way to his death, I trudged below.
“Nyx said you can go up,” I told Zaria. “We are taking first shift.”
“Are you going to open them?” she asked low.
I nodded, and satisfied, she left. I stared after her even after I’d closed the door and slid the wooden brace across it to prevent it from being opened from the outside. I just stared at thegrain of the wood, unseeing, wishing I could be in her place…or anyone else’s place, really.
“You good?” Kol asked, his brow creasing.
I pulled my eyes from the door. I nodded to the crates. “Yeah, fine. Shall we give them some air?”
“Definitely,” he said, bending to rummage through one of our bags for the tools we brought. He handed me a clawed bar, and we moved around the crates to the backs which faced the ship’s hull. Opening these sides would ensure that even if one of the crew somehow got a look into the room, they would not see them open.
We went to the prince’s crate first. I knew Kol wanted to get Nova out as soon as possible because she had been so afraid, and that had definitely tugged at the trauma in him, but royal protocol was burned into his soul, and the prince came first. Together, we pried the side of the crate easily away from the frame of Alaric’s crate, and his face greeted us with a grin.
“That was faster than I thought,” he said, sounding shockingly chipper for a prince who’d suffered the indignity of being stuffed in a box, hauled out of a palace’s merchant entrance, and dumped on a boat that had seen better days.
“Didn’t want to keep you waiting, Your Highness.” I smirked.
Alaric opened his mouth to correct me again and then seemed to realize I was kidding.
Kol moved on to the sister’s crate, and I started moving wine crates to make a gap for the prince. But could feel the tension radiating off Kol when the nails seemed to have a firmer grip on the panel, and they weren’t budging.
“I’ve got that,” Alaric said, beginning to pull cases of wine inside with him to create the gap. “You help him. Nova was very upset, so let’s not keep her waiting.”
I turned to Kol, impressed at the prince’s willingness to roll up his sleeves and move the wine himself. “Here,” I said,jamming my bar in alongside Kol’s to apply more pressure behind the nails on his side. When it finally started to give, I moved along to the next corner, and we made fast work of removing the panel.
The sisters were not as cheerful-looking as the prince. Calytrix had Nova huddled in her arms on one of the cots, and she was humming the same tune Kol had been. Nova’s head shot up, and she sat, wiping her eyes as soon as the side of the crate was removed.
“Thank the Gods,” Calytrix muttered, and I immediately averted my eyes from the crate’s interior to avoid her gaze.
“We can leave this open for now,” Kol said, moving cases of wine aside to create a doorway for them to come in and out. Not that they had anywhere to go. He held out his hand for Nova, and she took it. Hers was shaking as she placed it in his. “Are you doing okay?”
She nodded, sniffing as she stepped out of her tiny prison. “It wasn’t so bad. Thank you for checking in with me. It really calmed me down to know you were out there.” She looked down at the stone she still had clutched tightly in her other hand and then made to hand it back to him.
“You keep that,” he said, folding her hand back around it. “I’ll always be here.”
She held his gaze for a long moment.
Okay then!
I turned away, not wanting any part of this whole fiasco. First, I had a bond I didn’t even want with one sister that would almost certainly get me killed by her prince. Now the other sister was making moon eyes at Kol when her prince was right fucking there.
These sisters were trouble.
NINETEEN
FAOLAN
“What are they keeping down here? Dead fish?” Kol’s mood had been becoming increasingly more foul since we left the Light Kingdom. Maybe it was just the tight confines of the hold putting him back in a dark place, or maybe it was the fact that Nyx was slipping back into protective overseer habits and treating him like he was broken. It was difficult to tell. But it was getting to a point where I feared one of them might blow.
“It’s probably worse.” I don’t know if I’d blocked out the smells, having spent so many months at sea, or gotten used to them. “I think I burned the inside of my nostrils. I may never be able to smell anything again.”
“I wish I was there.” Kol adjusted the bandana he had tied over his face.
“Pack some of the herbs in it and be done with it,” Nyx grunted from the far corner.
“And have cloves in my sinuses for the rest of my life after one wrong sneeze?” Kol hissed, shoving to his feet.
