A god.No memories surfaced of gods walking amongst mortals, but I was damned sure the one before us had only selfish gains from our company. Confusion surged beneath my skin, but it felt odd as if misplaced… or an emotion not my own.
He sidestepped Zahara, pushing the blade from his face with a bare hand and strolled to the round table holding the map. His eyes flitted across me and stuck again like a wild animal caught in a trap, brows scrunched as if inspecting. My feet betrayed my uncertainty—my fear—stumbling into retreat until myback hit the helm’s siding.
He looked away and leaned over the parchment, studying it with a cock of his head. His fingers trailed the continents in silence, invasive and calculating.
“You’re Noctis. The God of the Forsaken,” Calvin whispered with certainty.
The name curled itself around my ribs like a serpent, strangely warm, strangely sad.
“Was. Iwasthe God of the Forsaken. Then,Iwas forsaken. It’s a bit ironic, isn’t it?” Noctis elaborated, his focus glued to the map. “Now, which route are we taking to Shadeborne?”
Mute stillness settled like a held breath. My heartbeat rang through my ears, though like a broken metronome, increasing by each second of silence.
Noctis sighed as he rose to his feet, his flame-colored wings unfurling behind him in a slow, shadowy sweep. His icy cyan eyes rolled with all the weight of someone far too tired of the world. Or the luck he’d been granted in it. “The trident can only be forged by a god, descended or not.”
“What about a banished one?” Calvin offered a quip edged in tension, his voice still low. Noctis glared at him with such murderous intensity, he shuffled slightly at the discomfort.
Banished? What was in it for him?
“Yes, even a banished one. I’m still divine. Just banned from the fruitless, annual god-summits, which as you should know are hollow endeavors."
Banished and banned didn’t seem like a deal worth making.
Zahara slowly inched her sword into its sheath along her back, nodding for the others at her side to follow suit. I hesitated, something whispering in my mind to grip the blade tighter instead.
“What’s behind your interest in joining us? It isn’t heard of for gods to mingle around us mortals,” she questioned, herwords veering on rashness. Uncertainty and trust could get us killed, but even I knew the mission’s impossibility without him. If Noctis spoke the truth, the chances of finding a god to forge the trident would be a feat greater than retrieving the pieces themselves; however, the coincidence of his joining at that precise time wasn’t lost on me either.
Noctis’s cerulean gaze passed me, lingered for a second, then met the pirate’s. “After you defeat the operations between the land and sea, I want the titan for myself.”
Holy shit.The power the god would have with his own powers as well as the titan’s would surely be enough to end the realms all together.
“That can’t happen,” Zahara snapped back nearly before the words escaped his mouth.
“Listen here, pirate. I’m the only god you’ll find willing to come to land, forge the trident, awaken a titan, and go nose-to-nose with a goddess, much less one as strong and hot-headed as the Ocean Mother. So, unless you have any other plans, I’d suggest you get quaint in my company.”
Okay, definitely more cocky than Calvin.
“No,” Zahara growled. “You’ll get your turn after the Ocean Mother falls, after the Royal Vanguard is dealt with, and after I’ve had mine. You wait.”
“Bringing in a dark god and the sacrificed, hunted merfolk sounds more like a risk than a plan,” Jun murmured behind his hood, his dusky charcoal eyes scrutinizing.
I agree with Jun.
“Deal,” the god pronounced, ignoring him all together. “Since we are sharing everything now, where will I sleep?”
Calvin walked the god and I around the ship, giving a tour of the main deck, the door that hid the pirate’s quarters, the food galley, cargo hold, and lastly, the tight crew quarters. His hesitant eyes shot back and forth toward Noctis at his back.Warmth found me at the crew’s acceptance, a quiet recognition of belonging I hadn’t known I missed; however, an inkling of mistrust paved its way through me of the god as if there were something misplaced or wrong.
Calvin opened the door of the crew quarters, revealing a net stretched across the barren room, lantern light filtering in through the cracks between the wooden beams above us. It was a shadow-choked nook, barely wide enough to lay in—four arms-length walls tethered together by iron nails.
I shot a harrowing look at Calvin.
“There’s only one place to sleep? Where do you and Jun sleep?” My eyes frantically scoured the room for another hammock.
One bed. Would it be so bad to jump back into the sea?
Calvin winced. “Sorry, Cae. Jun and I cleared the map room when we joined the crew.”
“No need to ripple your scales over it. I’ll take the floor,” Noctis crooned, making his way to an empty spot and stretched out a blanket he found in a heap. His wings swept the chamber wall-to-wall before he drew them in, flattening himself to the grimy floor.
