“You bastard,” she breathes as wet strands of hair cling to her freckle-dusted face. She’s tied firm. No chance of going over, for now at least.
I grip her chin between thumb and finger, my eyes lingering on her pink, swollen lips. “Just stay out of the way. . . that’s an order.”
As I back away, she bares her teeth at me . . . feral, furious, every inch of her like the wrathful storm around us. She’s mad, and I don’t blame her. If I were in her place, I’d hate me too. But there’s no room for guilt, not now. I’ll ask forgiveness later, if later comes. Right now, I can’t fight with one eye on the enemy and the other searching for her.
She fears the sea. And that will drown her faster than this storm ever would.
FOOL ME TWICE
24
ODELIA
He grins as he half-shifts. His coat shimmers and then dissolves, allowing rain to track down the cut of his honed body. Scales grow over his forearms, and his wind-blown hair makes my stomach swoop like I’ve missed a step. The feeling twists, warping with the shock of frustration that rocks through my rain-soaked body.
If the kraken doesn’t kill him, I will.
I should have known. Should have seen it from a league away. He sprints down the stairs, leaving me trapped to the iron rings embedded in the mast, the ropes digging into me so tight that shifting isn’t an option. He wasn’t taking any chances. Did he think I’d try to escape? That I’d be stupid enough to get myself killed?
He’d kissed me and taken the key. And now he’s kissed me and roped me to the mast. And here I am, falling for it like something’s changed. Like he might forget what I am.
Like I won’t take the keys and run the moment they’re all secured.
I shake my head, blinking to rid my eyes of the rainwater that streams down my face.
Nothinghas changed.
I’m still running from my own ghost. Hiding in plain sight. Odelia might be afraid of the water, might be grateful for the rope that stops her from going over. But Nisse will bleed any threat dry, and that’s what they need, even if they’d toss her over if they knew.
Panicked shouts erupt as the birds attack.
One lands hard in the centre of the deck, tangling in the ropes that pinwheel out from the main mast. Men and women go down, yanked by the force, and others leap forwards with weapons drawn. The storm roc, tall as a man, flaps its massive wings, the sound drowned out by the scream of the wind. Elio brings his blade up just in time to block the swipe of its spur. His face twists in pain, and Rune steps up beside him to sink the tip of a halberd into the joint of its wing. The scene explodes in a burst of feathers, and the bird retreats, struggling to gain enough altitude to reach the bones of the sail.
It settles on its perch, shaking its head and working its beak as more birds rain down. Rune jabs at the air as they pass, but none of the creatures attack in earnest.
They don’t have to.
My warning is swallowed by the crash of the waves as a single, suckered tentacle crawls over the ship’s railing. Slow, like spilled tar.
“RUNE!” My throat rips as I scream, fighting the wet ropes that burn me for my struggle. The crew is focused on the birds, some even clambering up the masts and climbingthe stairs ahead, aiming for a better vantage point. Rune looks to the water beyond, but the tentacle is just another shadow betrayed by the lightning that booms as it reaches its long fingers down, called by the rocs.
The woman it grabs barely has time to scream. It wraps her ankle and lifts her higher and higher, like a rod reeling in, even as her eyes flash and her body curls up to sink her dagger into its flesh. The others shout, and it’s Tavi that flies to where the tendril bends over the ship’s railing, slicing at it in a flurry of impossible speed.
The woman, released, falls through the air, and her rope catches low on the wood of the mainsail and she swings, narrowly missing a roc that claws for her.
The tentacle writhes on the deck, severed. In flashes of blinding white, it’s a faint, murky pink edged with iridescent green, its inside riddled with haphazard suckers. The crew is on alert now, ready when the next slips over, and the next. I watch, trapped, as the kraken grips the deck of the ship with three massive tentacles.
Fire flashes, there and gone again, doused by the rain. The bolts can’t do their job in this. An attack from above me all but glues the nearest tendril to the wood and I look up to find Otto, sitting on the pole of the lower mizzen mast, his eyes squinted against the assault of the storm. If this ship goes down, the ocean won’t spare even the best of us.
“OTTO!” I shout, trying to catch his attention so he can cut me free and let me join the fight. He looses another slug, and the stuck tendril is peppered with exploding shot, bursts of flesh tossed over the deck. “OTTO LET ME GO!”
There’s no use. The wind screams over everything. Even the bursts of slugshot are silent compared to the storm. The ship rocks dangerously side to side, water crashing over the deck in deadly waves as we rise and drop with the anger of the sea. The half-drawn sails rip in the wind, tangling in the rigging.
The rocs sweep onto the deck, pecking gleefully at the mangled tendril and the bits scattered nearby. A man charges them with a battle axe, all primal rage, but the one closest just skirts back, then leaps forwards with a push of its wings and spurs his gut open. He goes down, and they begin to eat him before he stops moving.
I flinch away as a body crashes down near me, so close I can feel the graze of his clothes. The ship tilts again and the unconscious man slips a few feet away. His arms are mess of ribboned skin and muscles. He must have slipped away from one of the rocs.
Across the deck, Rune moves like a storm of his own, jabbing opportunistic birds from the air and batting back the kraken’s seeking grasp as the tentacles crack the ship’s railing and reach for masts. A cut on his arm already weeps blood, but Tavi and Elio flank him, the latter in his half shift, his wounds open and seeping down his chest.
