So bluuue, so truuue,
You think you stole my heart, but I gave it to thee!”
Dax repeated the lyrics but varied the melody. After the last word, he said, “Again.”
Ree sang the words again, and this time Dax sang with him, dipping notes below. The server joined in, hitting notes above them.
On the fifth round through the lyrics, everyone had joined in. Some sang well, some didn’t, but all sang joyfully while the lute danced with all the notes. Marin sang too, and she thought if they were loud enough, maybe Perri could hear them and sing along too. Maybe he wouldn’t miss other sea serpents, if he had his crew to sing with.
Liking that idea, she sang louder.
She imagined that the whole sea could hear them. She pictured her sea serpent out in the harbor, dancing between the boats and tossing fish in the air to delighted flying friends.
There was only one bed.
Marin considered it for a moment and then wished she hadn’t, as her mind helpfully served up a memory of Dax shirtless in the waters by Turtle Island, drops of the sea dripping down his bare chest.This is a truly terrible idea.
“You know, there’s a ballad type about this,” Dax said behind her. He set down Ree in his pot. Ree hadn’t wanted to leave the lovely, soft, damp soil, and the innkeeper said he could use the pot for the night, no charge.
She crossed her arms and tried not to notice he still smelled like sandalwood and cinnamon, even after an evening soaked in the scents of a tavern. She was acutely aware of how close he was and how close he could be, in the pillow-laden bed with the deliciously fluffed mattress. “Did you arrange this?”
“Actually tried to bargain for two rooms, but she said my playing wasn’t worth all that.” He sounded miffed. “I’ve played for the emperor and his court, but not worth two rooms. Just one room, two dinners, and a pot of soil.”
“It’s a very nice pot of soil,” Ree volunteered.
Humphing, Dax lowered his tri-lute onto a chair as Ree climbed out of his pot and hopped around the room, examining everything.
It didn’t take long to examine. It wasn’t a very big room. Cute, like everything else in Dew. Murals of various sea creatures had been painted on the walls, and the bedspread was blue and embroidered with wave patterns. Fresh daisies sat in a pink vase on the mantel of the fireplace. It was very good that Dax wasn’t interested in her because…Sea save me, I want him.
Luckily, she was sensible enough not to let him know that. She was going to take thatwant, box it up, and pretend it didn’t exist. That was, of course, the only way forward. She just had to get through the night, and then they’d be back onSilver, where it was easier to remember that she was captain and he was crew. Yes, she could do that.
“Fine,” Marin said. She began to strip off her clothes. “You sleep on the right. I’ll sleep on the left. No cuddling. I don’t cuddle.”
“Like ever, or just not with me?” Dax asked. He sounded a bit forlorn, but that could have been her imagination. He removed his shoes and socks and slid off his pants, folding them and placing them on a chair beside the fireplace.
“Ever,” Marin said firmly, both to him and herself. She’d learned her lesson. “Romantic entanglements are, for me, off-limits. All they do is make you smaller. Make you compromise and slice off parts of yourself until eventually you risk losing everything that matters.” She yanked her nightshirt on and then realized that Dax was staring at her. “What?”
He shook his head and then asked gently, “Who hurt you?”
“Um.” It could have been a rhetorical question, but there was a specific answer. She froze as the memories burst out of their box and flooded through her. It took her an extra minute to form the words, and Dax waited. “His name is Iovar Revinok. He was my fiancé until I discovered he was trying to sabotage my family’s business because he didn’t want his future wife and whatever future children to risk themselves on the sea.” She said it as flatly as she could, as if it didn’tstill cause her insides to twist in a knot of shame, regret, and anger whenever she thought about him.
From his pot, Ree gasped, “No sea?”
She supposed that was an oversimplification. Or maybe it wasn’t. “No sea. He owns a shipyard, and I trusted him to help with the family’s finances… He used that access to our accounts to try to destroy us—my parents, as well as me. Their ships were seized, their savings drained… It all would have been gone and we would have been sunken into debt, beholden to him for food and shelter and all of it, if I hadn’t, by chance, noticed. My parents lost a lot, but not everything, and they used what they had left to help me escape, even going into debt with the local sorcerer, Yvex.” Still matter-of-fact. Still hurt to say, to admit. She’d been so naïve. So trusting. So in love. It was better for Dax to know the full truth before he showed up at the End-of-Harvest Festival. He’d hear about it from someone, and she’d rather it was her. “I was an idiot, and it will never happen again.”
“You weren’t an idiot,” Dax said. “You were deceived.”
“I let myself be deceived.”
He snorted. “That’s like saying you let yourself break your leg when a cart hit you. Something happened to you—was done to you—and the blame isn’t with you.”
“I should have…” Marin cut herself off and took a deep breath. She wasn’t going to rehash this. She’d already been through it a thousand times in her head. “It doesn’t matter. It’s over. You get the right side of the bed. Unless you want the left.”
“Right is fine,” Dax said.
“Good. I like the left better.”
“Then it’s yours.”
