Beyond the docks, a boat passed by, its wake creating a wave large enough to curl in on itself and spit foam. He couldn’t imagine how big the waves that took down Loriana’s ship could have been in comparison.
His hands shook. He shoved them in his pockets, but the small space only made them shake harder. They needed movement. He needed a distraction.
Another strong gust, cool and fresh, hit them. Beside him, Nesgrowled. She damn near smacked herself in the face in her haste to push her hair away. He chuckled.
“Shut it right now,” she hissed, “or I swear to the Goddess you’ll find every single one of your uniforms coated in seagull poo tomorrow.”
He bit his lip to keep from laughing again. Her threat sounded a lot like something Kohen would do. Goddess help him if Kohen and Nes ever met.
“Here,” he said.
He withdrew his quaking hands from his pockets and ran them over her head, smoothing her hair back into his grip. She stilled. As his fingers raked through her strands, his shaking eased until it faded entirely. He was steady again when he separated her hair into three parts and began folding one over the other. With his free hand, he pulled a red handkerchief from his uniform and rolled it against his thigh until it was coiled tight. Then he wrapped the silk around her gathered hair, tying a knot to hold it in place. With the knot doubled and secure, he knew he should step away.
He didn’t. He wanted…he wanted to keep close.
Her presence warmed him, the smell of her drifted through him—earthy, like the ground beneath fresh grass or the surge of rock up a mountainside. He slid the pad of his thumb over the soft skin on the back of her neck, watched as the gentle touch raised goose bumps in its wake. He felt Nes suck in a breath.
“Ready?” Genna called from the end of a dock, waving them over.
They both jumped. Toran shoved his hands as far down into his pockets as they could possibly go. As if the fabric could hide his actions or the way his heart raced in his chest.
He nodded to Genna. “Coming!”
He sensed Nes following as he headed for Genna, but he didn’t look back at her. He looked at the boats and ships lining the dock, at the wooden planks below his feet, at the ocean slapping the posts. He looked anywhere but at the woman trailing him so closely he could still smell the earth clinging to her.
They approached Genna, Nes angling away from him, as if she, too, couldn’t stand to look at him. “What are we doing?” Nes asked. “I don’t see any symbols.”
Genna pushed up off the post she’d been leaning against. “That’s because they’re not here.”
“Then—”
Genna waved a hand at a small rowboat tied to the dock. “Hop in.”
Small was being generous. The thing was barely long enough to fit the three benches at the bow, center, and stern. He hoped Genna didn’t plan on taking them far. He crouched down, readying to climb into the back. He’d have to sit there if they had any hope of staying level. He was, by far, the largest of the three of them.
“No.”
He turned.
The word had come from Nes, and yet he couldn’t believe she’d said it. Because there was no tight knot of conviction in her syllable, only a loose tremble of fear. Maybe the night in the brawlhouse had clouded his judgment, but he hadn’t thought her capable of such an emotion. Not after he’d cornered her in the prison and she’d come at him with claws out. Even that day in the Drowning Square, it hadn’t been fear he’d seen in her eyes before the platform exploded but desperation.
He watched Nes’s gaze flit from Genna, to the boat, to him. “You don’t need me. I’ll wait for you here. Or”—she turned her back on him and the tiny boat—“over there.”
She was several steps away before he could blink. “Wait.”
He needed her. She could not help him by staying on these docks.
“Wait,” he said again. “You’re not backing out of our deal, are you?”
She whirled on him. “No.”
There was that unbreakable conviction he’d come to expect from her.
“Then get in the boat, Nes.”
“No.”
He leaned down so they were nearly nose to nose. Her breath wasfilled with the harshness of black coffee. He had the strange desire to suck it out of her.
