His palm closes over her hip, one finger at a time.
“Get. Your hands. Off of me.”
“You first, sweetheart.”
Another pregnant beat passes before the Pirate King wrenches herself free and struts away, hips swishing in time with her hair.
I giggle into my hand. “Kai, you are so barking up the wrong tree.”
He stares after her, transfixed. “You forget how persistent I can be. She’ll come around.”
The loud slam of her cabin door punctuates his sentence.
“Don’t count on it,” Dover groans, turning back to the sea. “Mother of Zed, not again.”
I cringe as he hurls again. “I’m going to see if she has something to help with that.”
Thank you, Mar mouths to me.
I slip into the Pirate King’s cabin, finding her office empty.
I do a quick scan of the room—my gaze sweeping across the floor-to ceiling wooden shelves filled with leather-bound ledgers, and glass cases displaying strange oddities and exotic artifacts. Skulls of unfamiliar animals, a collection of golden vases painted with ebony whorls, a row of vials with labels too small to read.
Trophy cases, I realize.
“See anything you like, Blackblood?”
I turn to find her feline form behind me.
“You’ve got quite the collection.”
“Live as long as I have, and it’s easy.” She stares me down, waiting for an explanation.
“Dover can’t stop retching. Got anything to help with that?”
She inverts her lips. “Depends. What are you willing to give me for it?”
“Boy, nothing comes for free, does it?”
“You of all people should understand. You’re the one being hunted like someone’s lost possession.” She breezes past me.
“Touche. But there is such a thing as kindness. Ever heard of it?”
“Kindness, you will learn, is only a crutch for those too meek and cowardly to act according to their mind’s truest impulses.”
There’s a wariness to her voice as she wrenches open the glass cabinet, snatches up a thin vial of clear liquid, and tosses it to me. I scramble to catch it.
“Have him take it with rum. Kills the taste.”
“Not poisoned, is it?”
“No, I keep all my poisons here.” She twists her delicate wrist, gesturing to an array of vials resting inside the locked case to the left. My eyes go wide.
Oh, she wasn’t kidding.
“I consider myself an expert. Some of these I even crafted myself.”
I read the labels in wonder.
