Page 44 of High Seas

* * *

Enoch

Eve and I sat in silence. I ruminated on the things she suggested, the feelings we both admitted, and how utterly impossible all of this seemed. The ocean rose and fell as if she were asleep, breathing deeply. When she inhaled, the ship rose. When she exhaled, it fell.

Before dawn, Terah emerged from below deck, lingering until she caught my eye. She wanted to talk. I’d seen that apologetic look a thousand times. No doubt I’d see it a thousand more.

Eve looked between us. “I’ll go check on Titus.” She strolled across the deck, her eyes meeting my sister’s as she passed her.

When Eve disappeared, Terah walked toward me. “I’m sorry I took William’s life.” She burst into tears again, sobbing into the hand pressed over her mouth.

“These men trust me to keep them safe, Terah. To give them what they need to survive. None have had easy lives. None of them are saints, but not a single one of them deserves to die by your teeth, either.”

“I know that.”

“Why didn’t you turn him?”

She stared at me for a long moment. “I haven’t sired a vampire yet.”

“Are you afraid?”

“Yes, but beyond that, I… I can’t even think when I’m hungry. It’s like I step out of myself until I’m full. I hate it.”

“So, you don’t think about your venom, only the thirst…”

“She may be below deck, but she can still hear you,” Terah whispered.

“I know.” Eve and I would have no secrets. Secrets were like cobwebs. They began with a single, seemingly innocuous strand, and built into a filth that marred what once was beautiful. Eve and I needed to have a serious discussion about our futures and fates. Titus was adamant that she needed help no one in this time could provide, which meant she must return to her own time, despite her protests. And I would have to let her go… and find her again then.

She seemed well enough now, but was she – was I – willing to risk her life? If something went wrong after Titus and Abram left…

No. I couldn’t allow it.

I’d have to learn all I could about where she would be and how to reach her before tragedy befell her. Maybe I could protect her mother and keep Eve from being made into an Asset. I could keep her out of Victor Dantone’s clutches and shield her from Kael Frost’s cruelty.

Terah’s tears dried. “How can you do it?”

“Do what?”

“How can you love her, knowing what she is? What she’s capable of?”

I thought of giving her the most obvious answer: that Eve was doing the same thing with me. She’d once described me as an arrogant monster, a man determined to rend her world and in so doing, take away everything and everyone she held dear. In the end, it was simpler; far more basic than an equivocal emotion like trust.

“Isn’t that what love is? Giving your heart to someone, knowing only they have the power to make it bleed? Because no one else on the earth matters as much as them. Even with the knowledge that heartache is assured, our hearts are willing sacrifices.”

Terah was quiet for a long moment. She loved Edward Thatch. She’d never admit it aloud now that he’d carved out a piece of her heart and thrown it into the depths, but she loved him. I could see it in the way she sought him out first when she knew he was in the room. The way she raged against him. And then there was the fact that he still drew breath. If it had been anyone else, any other man or woman, Terah would have drank them dry and crushed every bone in their bodies before sending their limp carcasses to the briny depths. But Edward was below deck, still breathing. Still shackled, but that didn’t bind the sharpest weapon he had: his tongue.

He’d been trying to spew sweet lies in her ear for the past hour, all of which my sister wanted desperately to believe. But the thing about a wounded heart was that it never mended completely. The scars it bore were like chains that kept it from making foolish mistakes again, and Terah’s heart was encased in metal links. Not even a sliver of pink could be seen.

“You think Eve is so much better than him? She isn’t,” Terah spat. “You think she’s innocent? She’s not. If she doesn’t kill you herself, she will get you killed, brother. You’ll stare up at the heavens while pain arcs through your body, asking yourself and God what you’ve done to deserve such a crushing end blow, and remember these words. Eve, and people like her, only love themselves. You’re a fool if you think otherwise.”

My sister’s betrayal still stung. She sided with Asa against the trio who hunted us, even after they’d proved they were no longer a threat. “You’re a fool for insulting me on my own ship, Terah. Don’t forget that it was I you ran to when you had nowhere else to go. It was I who took you back in upon your pledge of loyalty. Second chances are rare, but third chances are something I neither believe in, nor mete out.”

She growled, then kicked off her boots before gracefully walking out onto the farthest point of the bowsprit. She sat with her back to me, her face to the wind and the ocean beyond us. Sea spray coated her every time the ship rose and fell with the surface of the water, but that was good for her. She needed to cool off.

Chapter Thirteen

Maru

---