His Quartermaster crossed her arms as she stalked from the corner of the room, a look in her eyes that the Captain knew well to be wary of. Riel was furious, the angles of her face sharp with unabashed rage, and not because she’d disrupted marine life.
Riel perched herself on the edge of Fynn’s desk, the heel of her boot scuffing the wood as she propped her foot back against it. “I’ll call you whatever I damn well please,” she sneered. “What is a Rosebone doing on this ship? And don’t you dare try and lie about who she is. I saw that mess of orange the moment she took off her hood.”
A heavy sigh escaped him. Of course she’d been watching them from the helm. “She’s here because had I left her in Valestorm, someone would have dragged her into the nearest brothel and sold her to the highest bidder.” Fynn leaned forward, his elbows digging into his knees. “This ship is a haven for people like her, Riel. We’re all runaways of a sort. You mean to tell me that you’d have turned her away?”
Riel’s lip curled over her teeth in a snarl. “Yes. She’s a Rosebone.”
“Then I guess it’s a good thing you deferred the title of ‘Captain’ to me.”
Fynn stretched himself out over the fur blankets halfway falling off his bed. His bones ached from the strain of his Magic, like Riel had taken her plateau and dropped its weight on his shoulders. The wind inside him was still roaring, still begging to be let loose as if he had anything left.
He took a breath, and a gentle breeze tousled Riel’s dark hair.
“She asked that I take her to Nedros,” Fynn informed her. “I agreed.”
Riel frowned at him. “Why? Nedros and Sonamire have had strained relations for years. There’s nothing there for her, and they certainly won’t be any more welcoming to a Rosebone than I am.”
“She seems to think they will be.” Fynn folded his arms beneath his head. “I didn’t ask her why, and she wasn’t inclined to tell me. It’s her business.”
“Did it ever occur to you that the King may be sending her there as a spy?”
Fynn snorted, his mouth quirked with a mocking grin. “Sure,” he said. “But Avedis is a pragmatist. If he wanted to see the Emperor’s head spiked to his castle wall, he’d have sent his son to do the job. Sol couldn’t hurt him if she tried.”
“Sol,” Riel spat, testing out the name on her tongue. “Why bother with his son when his pretty little daughter was enough to catch your eye and convince you to sail her across the sea?”
Fynn lolled his head towards her. “I hear that the Crown Prince of Sonamire prefers the company of men. Perhaps I could have been swayed if he were charming enough.”
Riel did not smile at him. “Need I remind you of what happened the last time a beautiful girl bat her lashes at you?”
The Captain winced. It was a wicked blow, even for her.
“Vasil—”
His breeze guttered to an icy draft that whisked the papers from his desk. “I know damn well what happened to Vasil. This is different.”
Riel placed her hands on her hips, her fingers hooking over the beautiful hilts of lethally sharpened knives. “Really?” she said. “Because Nedra was meant to seek asylum here, too. She caught your eye in a port just like Valestorm, and you snuck her aboard this ship without so much as even asking for Vasil’s permission.”
“That’s not fair—”
“The moment she learned there was a bounty on my father’s head, she forgot about how much she loved you. She turned him in like a prize bull on a butcher’s block.”
Fynn forced himself back up and leaned against the wall, his shoulders stiffening with tension. “Sol is royal,” he bit out. “She has no need to collect a bounty from anyone on this ship. With the amount of gold she offered me—”
“I don’t suppose you accepted her money.”
“Of course not.” Fynn swept a hand through his hair. “All she wants is a ride to Nedros, Riel. Four months at sea, and she’s gone. Not even half a year. You can live with that.”
Riel’s nostrils flared. “And what’s her story?” she demanded. “What was so awful that a Rosebone had to run away from home like a coward?”
The words were a lance through his chest, one that pierced his heart and left him there to bleed his sorrows. “All she said was that she lived in the port.”
She flicked her hair behind her shoulder. “You’re making a mistake, Fynn. This ship—”
“Was meant for people like her—people like us.” Fynn flipped his hand over. A thin, puckered pink scar sliced across his palm. “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for your father, Riel. When he left this ship to the both of us, he made me swear that I’d never turn anyone away who needed somewhere to go. There’s a reason he didn’t ask the same of you.”
He brushed his thumb over the scar.
He could still feel the warm, sticky blood that had pooled in his palm after Vasil had made him cut his own hand. He could still hear the promises that his former Captain had made him swear, his voice crackling with the youth of a fifteen-year-old boy. Fynn had screamed when the bounty hunters took him, when they’d dragged him by the hair of his head and hung him by the neck in the town square.
Fynn had never seen Nedra again, and Vasil’s neck had snapped the moment an old wine barrel was kicked from beneath his feet.
Riel tore him from his thoughts and said, “You swore to protect our crew, too.”
Fynn’s heart sank like the old, rusted iron anchor Riel always insisted they replace, his chest cleaving open as wide as the Emerald was deep. He would never stop falling, flailing, drowning to keep his crew safe. “You asked me to be the Captain, Riel, and I’ve done that. You didn’t want the responsibility. And apart from a few mishaps, I’ve never steered you wrong. Why don’t you trust me now?”
She pinched the bridge of her nose between her index finger and thumb. “I do, Fynn. I do trust you.” Her brow creased as she looked at him. “It’s the Rosebone I don’t trust.”
“She’s a Princess,” Fynn said, because he was certain that Silas was her brother. “And she’s harmless. If I thought she was a threat to this crew, I would have left her in that port to rot. You know that. I would never jeopardize my family.”
Because that’s what this ship and his crew were to him—his home and the family that he’d made for himself.
Riel studied him, a look in her earth-colored eyes that would have sent lesser men running.
But Fynn refused to balk from her. He did not dare look away. There was nothing about his stone-carved Quartermaster that frightened him. “Trust me.”
She angled herself towards the Captain and picked at her fingernails. “So where is she now, then? I don’t suppose she’s wandered overboard so soon.”
Fynn breathed deeply in relief, but he knew this fight was not over. Not yet. “I left her with Amael,” he said. “A dress is hardly practical attire for a ship, so he’s finding her something more suitable to wear. And besides that, she was covered in blood. I thought Gracia might faint if she saw her.”
“Speaking of blood.” Riel frowned. “That beast of hers. You let that on board? I understand your bleeding heart for all things pretty on two legs, but an animal?”