“Ha!” Amael reached for the pile of coins they’d stacked up between them. “I win.”
Sol smiled fondly as Arden touched a card in Luca’s hand, then tapped the table as if to tell him to put it down. He did, grinning at Amael while adjusting his spectacles. “I don’t think so.”
Amael leapt to his feet and pointed an accusing finger at them. “That’s cheating!” He cried. “You can’t help him!”
Arden smirked and tapped the table again, motioning to Amael’s cards. Beat that, she seemed to say.
Glancing at his hand, Amael tossed his cards onto the table. “Fine,” he said. “You win this round. But no more helping him. Let the bastard play on his own.”
Luca was still grinning as he swept the pile of coins towards himself and Arden. “Lighten up,” he said. “You know I’ll give the money back in the morning.”
“Yeah, whatever you don’t spend tonight.” The boatswain slumped back down into his seat, his elbow jostling Sol’s arm. She nearly spilled wine down the front of her dress, a stain that would never come out. “Sorry.”
“It’s all right,” she said, but Amael had still not looked at her, not as he gathered the cards from the table and began to shuffle them.
She sighed. There was a part of her that wished she could join them, that wished she could ask Amael to teach her how to play so that perhaps they could both beat Luca. Or Arden, rather, because Sol had seen her pointing at Luca’s cards since they’d broken out the deck nearly an hour ago.
But she did not want to ruin their fun, did not want to bother them and hold up their game with lessons.
Dropping her chin into her palm, Sol glanced across the table to look at Fynn. He was oblivious to her prying eyes, his muscled arm draped over the shoulders of their waiter. The boy had perched himself on the very edge of their booth, his tray full of wine glasses abandoned on the table as he wallowed in the Captain’s attention. Fynn’s smile was charming as they spoke, one that Sol had seen before when there was something in particular he wanted.
She could only imagine what he wanted now.
A startled laugh erupted from the waiter, his golden curls bouncing against the nape of his neck. Sol realized that Fynn’s fingers were twined through his hair, toying with the curls like Sol often fiddled with her braid.
Her stomach churned, and she told herself it was because of the wine.
But when the Captain was suddenly nudging the boy from their booth and following him through the throng of dancing bodies, Sol could not blame the wine for her heart dropping low in her chest. Fynn’s expression had changed, and that was unmistakable lust now darkening his amber eyes. She watched him disappear, watched as they rounded a corner and as Fynn reached for the collar of the boy’s shirt. He fumbled skillfully with the buttons there.
Sol found herself standing, her wine abandoned on the table. Captain’s orders be damned, she should not have come here tonight. She should have told Riel no when the Quartermaster had arrived at her door, Gracia in tow to help ease the Princess into coming.
“Sol,” Luca called across from her. “Is everything all right?”
She whipped her head towards him. The healer had placed his cards face-down on the table, and both he and Arden raised an eyebrow at her. Amael, she realized, had gone silent.
Shaking her head, she said, “I need some air.
Luca stood, his hand braced on Arden’s shoulder as if he were afraid the beer he’d consumed would send him toppling over the table. “I’ll come with—”
“No,” Sol said sharply. She read perfectly clear the pity in Luca’s eyes. “I’ll only be gone a moment. Don’t let me interrupt your game.”
He sighed and dipped his chin. “Be careful.”
She did not stay long enough to see him sit, only knew he’d done so when she heard Luca’s cards scrape against the table. “It’s your turn,” he grumbled to Amael, but Sol was halfway across the dancefloor before the boatswain had made his move.
For a port so far south, Arrowbrook was frigid once the sun went down. Sol wrapped her arms around herself as she stumbled through the cobblestone streets, keeping herself tucked beneath the flickering flames of iron-posted streetlights. She wished she had thought to bring her cloak, the fur-lined garment still tossed carelessly across the bed in her suite.
The market was closed for the night, merchants having shut down their stalls and placed their goods beneath the counters. It was a testament to Arrowbrook’s nature that their merchandise had been left here at all, not carted home in fear of being stolen by drunken pirates from the tavern.
Not that Fynn was a pirate, of course. Not in the ways that mattered.
“Hey, wait up!”
Sol whirled on her heels. Her Magic stirred, yawning awake as if slumbering deep in her bones. She clenched her fists to hide the muddy water gathering in her palms, summoned from a nearby puddle.
Squinting through the dark, her eyes having yet to adjust to the midnight blackness that poured into the streets like ink, she recognized Amael jogging towards her.
Sol frowned. “What are you doing here?” she asked, tilting her head as he skidded to a stop in front of her. “I told Luca I’d be back in a moment.”
Amael snorted, his hands braced on his knees as he panted, “Fynn would have our heads if he found out that we let you wander off on your own. Arrowbrook may be a luxury port, but it’s not without its own dangers.”
“Oh.”
“Why did you leave?” Amael asked. He crossed his arms over the broad swell of his chest. “If it’s because Fynn took off with that guy—”
“It’s not.”
The boatswain rolled his eyes at her. “Jorel is a friend of his,” he said. “You’ll find that Fynn has one in every port. He visits them whenever we dock.”
Sol did her best to ignore the chasm that Amael’s words carved inside her chest, a hollowness ringing through her that she had not felt since her mother died. “I don’t care.”
“You do,” Amael mused. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have run away.”
“What do you care?” Sol sniped in return. She tasted saltwater on her tongue. “You’ve barely spoken to me in days, and when you do, it’s not without hostility.”
Guilt flashed in his eyes at that. “I haven’t meant to be hostile,” Amael told her. “But you lied to us, Sol. You lied to me. Why would we have cared if you were a Wielder?”
Perhaps it was the wine that helped slip her temper from its leash. Sol flung up her hands in frustration, water spraying from her fingertips. “That’s what your problem is? That I’m a Magic-Wielder and didn’t tell you?”
“Yes,” Amael said. He stepped from beneath the shower of mud-water, watching as it settled back into the puddle she’d conjured it from. “We never gave you a reason not to trust us. Fynn saved your life in Valestorm, and I’ve been nothing but kind to you since you joined us. I thought we were friends.”
“So did I!” Sol snapped. “You think I liked keeping it a secret? I felt awful. But my brother said—”
“Your brother isn’t here,” Amael pointed out. “Fynn is a Wielder. A strong one at that, and so are Riel, Arden, and Luca. Any one of them could have taken you had they thought you were a threat to our crew. There was no reason to keep your Magic from us, especially not that bullshit excuse you spouted to Fynn that made him forgive you so easily.”