“Relax,” Fynn chuckled. “I’d be a very rich man if I had a gold coin for every time Riel has snuck into my cabin and rearranged my stones. She thinks they’re silly.”
Sol frowned. “They’re not silly,” she said. “Not if you enjoy them.”
“I appreciate that.”
“I used to collect seashells,” Sol confided. A void as depthless as the Emerald opened inside her heart. “My brother would find them during his travels and bring them home to me. They were beautiful.” She twisted her hair around her finger. “When I began sneaking away to the forgotten beach in Sonamire, I’d practice my Magic near the shore. My water is one with the sea, and the tides would bring me the loveliest shells for my collection.”
“I wish the wind would bring me gifts.”
“I could never keep them,” Sol lamented. “Lest anyone discover where I’d been.”
“I’m sorry.”
She knew he meant it.
The Princess shrugged. “Why do you collect rocks?” she asked. “What makes them so special to you?”
“Crystals,” Fynn corrected. “They’re much more than rocks.”
“Crystals,” Sol amended. “Why do you have so many?”
“Come on this raid, and I’ll tell you.”
Sol fiddled with her hair, twirling the braid around her finger. She noted the challenge that gleamed in Fynn’s dark eyes, the way his mouth had quirked at the corners. He did not need her for this trip, likely only wanted to make a fool of her, but the way he smiled at her uncertainty…
She could not tell him no.
“All right,” she conceded. “But only because you might need a healer.”
Fynn touched his side. “I feel fine.”
“But if there are any hunters still on board that ship, someone might get hurt.”
The corners of his eyes crinkled with silent laughter. “Right.”
“I’m serious.”
“I have no doubt you are.”
Fynn climbed to his feet and stretched, his tunic raising high enough to reveal Sol’s handiwork. She studied the scar between his ribs, the faint pink line that marked his wound’s infliction, and frowned. Had she not been a healer, however untrained she might be, he may not be here, taunting her with the answers to her questions.
The Captain extended his hand to her. “We should see about finding you a weapon.”
Sol did not think twice about letting him pull her to her feet. “I wouldn’t know how to use one.”
“I’ll make sure you don’t have to,” Fynn promised. “But you should have one just in case. A knife, perhaps.”
“I didn’t see any extra knives in your cabin.”
“You clearly didn’t check beneath my pillow.”
“No,” she laughed. “I did not.”
Fynn squeezed her hand once and let go. “Come on,” he said, gesturing to the cabin door. “Let me show you what treasures strike my fancy.”
“Knives encrusted with fancy rocks?”
His sigh was one of the longsuffering. “Crystals,” he groaned. “My knives are encrusted with crystals. Be nice, and I’ll lend you a pretty one.”
Sol was still giggling as the Captain led her into his cabin, Draven on her heels and Riel watching them intently. The Princess pretended not to notice.
CHAPTER TWELVE
FYNN
He knew exactly which knife he would give to her.
The one he kept hidden beneath his pillow was a small, silver-bladed hunting knife with a curved hilt carved from ash wood. It was inlaid with sparkling blue sapphires, the rich, deep stones the color of the sky before a storm. And although he had never used it, Fynn was remarkably fond of it. This last gift from Vasil was easily his most prized possession, more precious than even his dragon scales and geodes, but it did him little good collecting dust beneath his pillow.
He turned the knife between his fingers, his thumb smoothing over the rippling steel blade. “This is my favorite knife,” Fynn told her, vaguely aware that Sol was peering over his shoulder. “You can’t lose it.”
“You don’t have to give it to me.”
Fynn flipped the blade as he turned to her. “You need a weapon,” he said. “And this is the smallest I have. It shouldn’t be hard for you to handle.”
He offered her the hilt, gripping the blade between his index finger and thumb.
It took her a moment to reach for it, to curl her fingers around the blade. He did not acknowledge how she trembled, how her breathing hitched as the hilt curved perfectly into her palm. Sol’s grip on the knife was wrong, her fingers too close to the blade and her thumb pressing into the steel, but he did not acknowledge that, either.
“I don’t know how to use this,” Sol said quietly. “I don’t know where I would…”
“Stab someone?”
Sol’s cheeks flushed scarlet. “Yes.”
“I’ll make sure you don’t have to.” Fynn pried away her fingers to adjust her grip on the hilt. “The blade is sharp, so watch yourself. Luca’s healing only goes so far, and I don’t think he can reattach severed appendages.”
She dipped her chin as she studied the knife, turning it precariously as if the blade would shatter.
Fynn withdrew a second knife from beneath his pillow—two were better than one, and Vasil had always taught him it was better to be safe than sorry—and gripped it loosely in his hand. He pointed the blade at Sol’s chest, the tip hovering above her heart.
She gasped, her eyes widening with alarm. Draven snarled from his position near the door, his tail thumping against the dull throw rug he was sprawled across, but he did not rise to defend Sol.
Her voice quivered as she asked, “What are you doing?”
“Showing you where to stab someone,” Fynn answered. He lifted the blade and tapped it against her throat, against the pulse that jumped beneath her skin. “Here, or in the heart. Messy, but they’re quick kills.”
Sol swallowed against the blade. “And if I miss?”
“I’ll make sure that you don’t.” He tossed his knife onto the bed. “Stay close to me on the bounty hunters’ ship, and you’ll be fine. There shouldn’t be any surprises, but my Magic has replenished enough that swords won’t be necessary should we come across any.”
“You really killed them all?”
It was not fear that lingered beneath Sol’s words, but a blind curiosity for what the Captain had done. Perhaps he had not given her enough credit—he was still expecting her to cower from him.
“I blew them dozens of feet into the air,” Fynn told her. “Hundreds, even. They’ll have died when they hit the water, and that’s not including those whose spines cracked against the masts.”
She did not so much as flinch. “Do you regret it?” Sol asked. “Killing them?”
“No.”
Sol blinked at him.
Her hazel eyes were swallowed by a depthless green, the color of the sea when the Emerald stretched calmly across the horizon. Fynn noted the soft flecks of gold, the dark ring of brown around her pupils. He had never seen anything quite like them, especially not now as they raged with such inquisitive marvel.