He’d been by the barrels everyone used to refill their cups all night.
“Don’t worry,” he said, his voice fading in and out as my body went warm. “This drug is far more fun. And if you don’t have any feelings for Darcke, you don’t have to worry. But if you do… I guess Oenskan will have a new heir tomorrow.”
My body jerked as he spoke my second’s name. More heat flooded me, and to my horror, all wasn’t my own.
“You fucker,” I hissed.
He only grinned wider. “I’ll be here if you need me.”
I wanted to vomit when his eyes went over my body as he licked his lips. As an urge to turn around to the heated awarenessthat had tried to lure me over to Torden’s ship all night consumed me, I slammed down my cup and kicked the barrel Geord sat on.
Like I’d counted on, his weight was distributed too far back. When the barrel wobbled, Geord only had time to yelp before he fell backward, his outraged cry cut off as he hit the water with a splash.
As the music built, his shouts were drowned out.
I smiled to myself when the people he’d drugged were now too far gone to realize someone was overboard. Even his second, whom I glimpsed between two girls, didn’t pick up the increasing distress with which Geord cried out.
“I hope you drown,” I called over the side. “Or better yet, a sea monster eats you so the poor ocean doesn’t need to be tainted by your rotting husk.”
A dark, deep laughter draped over me. I coiled my fingers around the rim of the barrel, trying to find a footing that didn’t lead toward Torden’s ship, where Darcke now had all attention focused my way.
Closing my eyes, I took deep breaths, but I had to open them again when heat swelled within me. Waves of fever rolled through my blood, ones I wasn’t sure I could stop if I came too close to the man on the ship behind me.
“Remind me tomorrow not to get on your bad side,” Ilse said.
“Tomorrow?” I said, feeling as if my tongue were too big for my mouth.
“I need to—” She gestured toward an empty part of the ship. “Cool down.”
Her face turned the slightest inch toward Kilia, who still stood alone in the stern, but I couldn’t focus on whatever that meant when something like a low groan shook the bond, a thrill of excitement that should have been nowhere near it drilling through my core.
“Me too,” I rushed out, spinning with my eyes closed and clumsily making my way onto Envis.
I held my breath as I made my way up to the second deck,trying to block the sounds coming from the ship I’d left behind while also ignoring Envis’s rumbles, the question whirring beneath the planks that I had no desire to answer.
“We should leave.” I fanned myself as I tried to work up the courage to return to the bow, where I needed to pull up the anchor my lovely vessel had dropped so she could stay near Darcke’s ship.
“That sounds like a very bad idea.”
My whole body tingled with his presence. It was what I imagined being engulfed in flames might feel like, every inch of my skin burning as Darcke’s steps struck the deck, too purposeful and steady.
“You should leave,” I said. I wrapped my hands around the empty space in the bow where I’d one day add a figurehead if I survived the next weeks, holding on to it so hard I would have remained in place even if a storm tried to keel us over.
“An even worse idea,” Darcke drawled as he came closer.
“Not worse than staying here,” I said.
“Why?”
“Geord has drugged everyone so that he can report us to the king if we give in.”
“Give in?” he asked, and a prickle ran up my spine at his low voice. “Give in to what?”
I made the mistake of turning around.
Darcke jolted to a stop, his eyes wide and bottomless when they met mine. The muscles beneath his shirt didn’t only play, they coiled tight before relaxing, continuing to do so when I didn’t stop taking him in. There was a carelessness to his features I’d never seen before, a wild edge that had nothing to do with his skills in battle and everything to do with the rough hands twitching by his sides.
I nearly moaned at the thought of his palms dragging down my chest, moving into my hair before lifting me onto the railing I leaned against and pressing his hot, hard body against mine.
