What else can I do but pray to the Ancient Ones that he’s right?
A thought occurs to me, though. “This isn’t water magick.” I reach over the railing and run my hand through the thick, white haze. It has the feel of magick, enough to mislead, but I sense something altered within it.
Joran lifts a silver brow. “It isn’t? Fog is water, no?”
I turn so that my back is against the rail. “I suppose. If that’s even fog. Sailors can navigate through fog. Whatever this is makes the world utterly inscrutable.” I narrow my eyes. “If you can do all of this, where was this sort of aid in Frostwater Wood when we were being drowned by rain?”
His grin is a force to be reckoned with, broad and white and taunting. “Maybe I just like seeing Nephele Bloodgood dripping wet.”
I roll my eyes, but I’d be a liar if I said that his words didn’t affect me.
“Well, now I know what you’re capable of.” I take a long swig of his liquor and hand the glass back to him. “If you withhold help from us again, I will carve your balls from between your legs and wear them as a necklace.”
That grin grows even brighter, though his gaze sharpens. “I like your fierceness. Very, very much.”
I give him a dirty look. “Enough to lose your balls?”
He laughs. Actually laughs. “Enough to let you try and take them. That would be a fun fight, I think.”
Again, I study him, so confused. “You act as if you don’t remember the kind of woman I am. I don’t play games, Joran.”
Wearing a devilish expression, he leans in so close, his whiskey-warmed breath on my lips. “And yet you’re playing one right now, witch. And loving it.” He inhales the night air and draws his bottom lip between his teeth. “I can smell your arousal. It makes my mouth water.”
Pressing a hand to his firm chest, I shove him away, though gods’ death if it isn’t the last thing I want to do.
“Go rot in the Nether Reaches, Joran.”
Perhaps I’m more desperately lonely than I realized because there’s a part of me that wants him to challenge me. To haul me into his arms. To drag me below deck to an empty cabin, tear away my clothes, and fuck me until I can’t think of anything else but him.
But he doesn’t do any of that. He just turns and, still grinning, struts away. “Only if you come with me, witch,” he says over his shoulder. “Only if you come with me.”
43
RAINA
I’m struggling to drift to sleep when footsteps sound on the stairs leading to the cargo hold.
Opening my eyes, I rise on my elbow, only to find the Witch Collector’s tall figure sauntering down the darkened stairwell. It bothers me that I can identify him even in the shadows, that I know the way his long legs move, that I’ve memorized the shape of him, his narrow waist, his broad, strong shoulders, the curve of his hands.
He steps into the dim lantern light, head ducked to manage the low ceiling, carrying something under his arm. It isn’t until he passes everyone else and crosses through the path Rhonin, Callan, and I made amid the undelivered barrels and crates that I realize what that something is.
He squats down and unrolls one of the thin cots Dedrick Terrowin gave us to make the next few nights bearable. Right beside me.
Fulmanesh, iyuma.
A small flame flares in the lantern hanging from a peg above my head. The light shadows the Witch Collector’s face as he crawls onto his cot and plops down on his back. Across the hold, Hel lifts her head from her place beside Rhonin and Nephele, peeking over the crates, and I swear I hear them snickering.
I glare at the Collector. Dedrick Terrowin offered him a cabin in the crew’s quarters. There’s only one reason for him to be here right now, and that’s to annoy me.
The Collector strips off his tunic, bundles it, and stuffs it beneath his head. I can smell the soft musk of sweat on his naked skin, mingled with all the other scents I now associate with him.
A golden gleam from the lantern light shines in his green eyes as he looks over at me, a crooked grin sitting on his lips, the embodiment of cool arrogance. “Something wrong?” he whispers.
It’s been a difficult night. A difficult day. I’ve been tossing and turning for the last hour on this godsforsaken floor, worried and sad, all while trying to acclimate to the ship’s swaying and constant creaking and groaning. The Collector’s cocky ass is the last thing I need to deal with.
Just ignore him. And do not look at him.
And yet…
