“This isn’t your home now,” Oke says practically, stepping between me and them. His grim smile does not comfort me. “I think I’d better take you to mine.”
Still, no one seems to notice when he leads me back to the pier and back to his battered fishing boat and settles himself painfully in the stern where he can work the tiller.
“Do you know how to manage the sail?” is all he says to me.
“Yes,” I say, for there is no child of the Crocus Isles who does not learn to sail.
“It’s your responsibility, then,” he says, and he leans back and sets his eyes on the course with a pained look on his face as we weave between boats and ships out into the surf and the relentless sun.
Chapter Five
Iam personally offended by the wind today. It is gentle and caressing as if it wants to seduce me into believing it is my friend after all it’s done to me. But I know the truth. I know that at the behest of the gods it gutted my nation and swept away my heart and my future.
My new husband steers the boat. His head bobs in a way that worries me. He looks as if he might lose consciousness at any moment. It’s only his white-knuckled grip on the tiller that tells me he’s still with me.
I search the boat for a waterskin or food or anything I might use to sustain him, but to my horror there are no supplies. I clench my jaw. Fool of a woman. I should have examined the craft myself before we set out. I should have ensured we were supplied. I allowed myself to grow distracted by emotion, and now look where I am. Alone with adying man in a barren boat. Alone with my sorrow for the loss of my best friend.
“You seem distressed.” Oke’s words are mild.
I meet his eye and once more a strange heat washes over me. I do not like this feeling of being seen to the bones. Lieve never looked at me like this. It makes me more naked than I was in that marriage pool. But I am Coralys of the Crocus Isles. I do not look away.
“We are not prepared for any length of voyage,” I say carefully. “We have not so much as a skin of water aboard.”
He nods gravely, but his eyes are glassy and I wonder how much he’s even paying attention.
“You are an observant woman.”
I make a sound that is half scoff and half snort. “Don’t try to distract me with flattery. We must turn around and get supplies before we go to wherever your home lies. We aren’t too far out yet. It will be an easy thing, if humiliating, to go back and beg some water and food from the dockmaster.”
I glance across the tufted waves to my emerald jewel islands. Already my mind is thinking of them as a foreign place, no longer my home.
“My home is very near,” Oke says, amused. There’s a smile dancing around the curve of his mouth and I realize with surprise that it has a nice shape. Were it not hidden by his dreadful beard I might even name it comely. “Do not fear, wife. I agreed to see to your care when I put my clothing on your back and I will do it.”
I draw in a long breath. “I want very much to trust you,” Isay, as a precursor to what Ireallywant to say, which is some version of “you’re an idiot” or “you’re going to get us both killed,” but I don’t get that far.
Instead, his eyes widen and the glassiness fades for a moment into a focus so intent it pins me in place as he says, “You want to trust me? After all that has befallen you?” Each word feels weighted, almost hopeful. I fear a wrong answer will set me down an irrevocable path.
“Yes?” I say.
He nods and swallows as if he’s making a huge decision.
“That might be best,” he says to himself. “That might be best, yes.” And then his gaze shoots to mine again and his timid smile is almost boyish when he says, “I’d like to trust you, too. I would like to tell you everything. But you need time to heal and mourn.”
“There are some things you don’t need to tell me,” I say a bit dryly. “First being that you need someone to see to your wound.”
He forestalls me by raising two fingers together between us. It half looks like a warning and half like a reverent ward against a devil.
“It is a godwound,” he says, gaze still fixed on me. It’s as if he’s tied a line to my soul and I cannot look away.
“What is a ‘godwound’?”
He ignores my question. “You’re not to try healing it. To do so will not work and it could make everything worse. Godwounds are never-healing.”
“I may not know what a godwound is, but I knownonsense when I hear it. I will heal it if I get the proper supplies and the opportunity.”
He opens his mouth, shuts it, frowns as if studying a difficult puzzle. “I have not indulged in marriage before. It seems such a fraught thing.”
I draw back a little, offended. “Fraught? Or practical?”
