Amael squinted up at him, blood and sweat coating his face and lashes. “Thanks, Cap.”
“Get below deck. Now.” Fynn adjusted the grip on his sword and plunged it through the chest of another bounty hunter. He felt the resistance as the blade ground against bone, severed through corded muscle. “Let Luca look at that leg. I’d better not see you topside unless he heals you.”
“I’m not leaving you here.”
Fynn drove his knife through the socket of a hunter’s eye, the jade hilt slick with blood and nearly slipping from his grasp. “I think I’ve got this covered.”
Amael grunted as he climbed to both feet. “I don’t know why I ever doubt you.”
“Go.”
He kept himself positioned in front of Amael, the door, the stairwell. His friend didn’t need to be told a third time, and Fynn found himself slouching with relief when Amael disappeared below deck. One less person to concern himself with.
Pain nearly brought him to his own knees as he twisted to look for Riel. Fynn cursed and gripped his side, blood oozing between his fingers from the cut there. Luca would call him a fool for still fighting, would give him nothing for the pain as punishment for being so stupid. But he had to fight, had kill, had to protect.
A guttural cry from across the deck had him sliding through a puddle of blood, his own wounds forgotten at that scream, one that he had heard once before.
Arden had fallen to the deck, her flames smothered, her trembling hands grasping at the knife that a hunter had thrust through her stomach. Blood soaked the planks beneath her, spilled from the corners of her mouth as she gaped and gasped for air.
Fynn had finally had enough.
He brought his thumb and index finger to his mouth. He whistled once, twice. His crew dropped to the deck.
A blast of wind more powerful than Fynn had ever summoned in one go burst from his position beneath the quarterdeck. Bounty hunters spun through the air, their spines cracking against the mizzenmast, necks breaking over the hull. They tumbled over the sides of his ship.
His deck was eerily silent.
Riel had just begun to lift her head from the planks when Fynn fell against the door of his cabin. He beat his bloodied fist against the wood. “Let me in,” he sighed. Sol yelped from inside. “It’s safe.”
CHAPTER NINE
SOL
She had heard the metallic zing of clashing steel before.
Back home, when the Princess of Sonamire would watch her brother train with his legion of Fire-Wielders, she and Draven would sit beneath the cool shade of the old weeping willows near the sparring pits. Silas was a force to be reckoned with, and he did not need his Magic to defeat the enemies of their empire. Neither did his legion. Sol would watch them train for hours, their swords and spears gleaming in the afternoon sunlight.
But the men Silas trained with were his friends. He trusted them, and they put their faith in him to lead them. Sol had never heard him scream because they’d run him through with their blades. She had never heard him plead for his life. But she had always heard the clash of their swords, the clang of iron reverberating off the castle’s stone walls.
It sounded no different on the sea.
Sol paced the Captain’s small quarters, shuddering as she fiddled with her braid. She could hear them screaming on the deck, could hear the scraping of steel and thuds of bodies hitting the planks beyond the door. She prayed they weren’t the bodies of the crew, the people she had begun to call her friends. Even Riel, who did not hide her disdain, was a name she whispered quietly to the Gods.
If she weren’t so afraid, Sol could have joined them on the deck. She could have helped them fight against the bounty hunters. Her Magic could wash them all away, could drag them down to the deepest depths of the Emerald. The water inside her veins was as wrathful as a storm-churned sea, and she could feel it tingling in her fingertips.
Sol curled her fingers into fists.
She could not summon that part of her. Sol swallowed it down and let her Magic drown beneath her own waves. She had promised her brother that she would not touch her Magic, that she would not give this crew a reason to see her as a threat.
She rubbed at her temples and continued to pace across the room.
The Captain’s cabin was modest. There was hardly enough room for his bed, and the large oak desk that lined the front wall didn’t appear to serve any purpose. But Fynn had made the space his own.
She had not thought him a reader, but bookcases lined the wall across from his bed. The shelves bowed beneath the weight of the ancient tomes he had placed there. A single chest of clothes sat beneath a closed porthole window, and a small round table had been squeezed into the space behind his bed.
Sol traced over the colorful stones that sat there, precariously arranged by the Captain. She picked up a smooth, iridescent stone that felt like a pearl between her fingers. It was beautiful, glinting in every color as she turned it over.
A loud, desperate thump against the cabin door had her dropping the stone onto the table. A terrified cry cracked out of her. She turned from Fynn’s collection of glittering crystals, her Magic surging as her heart sputtered to a stop. This was it—the hunters had come for her. Her new friends lay dead on the deck.
Draven snarled from his position near the door, his hackles raised and claws clicking viciously against the planks. He would protect his charge to the end, would not go down without a fight.
“Let me in.” Fynn’s voice was muffled through the wood. “It’s safe.”
She could not stop herself from rushing to the door and fumbling with the iron lock. The relief that washed over Sol was overwhelming, striking her with the force of some self-summoned tidal wave.
Fynn was still alive.
Beyond the playful spar with his Quartermaster, she had never seen him fight. She did not know what he was capable of, if he could defeat the hunters as easily as he had Riel.
The cabin door swung open.
Fynn stumbled through the threshold, his legs as wobbly as those of a newborn fawn. His tawny skin was pale as he closed the door again behind him, his dark eyes glazed and sweat beading along his brow. He staggered around the Princess, his hand pressed tightly to his side to conceal a wound from her view, but she saw the blood that leaked through his fingers nonetheless.
Her Magic nearly burst from her as she reached for him. “Fynn—”
“The deck is safe.” He collapsed onto the edge of his bed. “But if you’re squeamish, I would suggest waiting here until someone has scrubbed the planks. It’s a bloody mess out there.”
She did not care about the deck. “You’re hurt.”
Fynn settled amongst the furs and closed his eyes. “I’m fine.”
Sol swallowed thickly as she approached him, as she studied his labored breaths. “You’re not fine,” she decided. “I should get Luca.”
“No.” Fynn gently grasped her wrist, his fingers brushing over the burned skin beneath her bracelet. “There are others who need him more. I can wait until he’s finished. Healing is a powerful gift, but it takes a lot out of him. I’d rather he exhaust himself healing the others, then rest. I’ll still be breathing once he’s finished.”
She was careful as she asked, “Would the others still be breathing if Luca tended to you first?”