Page 29 of Freeing Hook

“Get up.”

“Why?” I ask. “What’s the point if you’re just going to shove me back down? Just do it.”

“Do what?”

“Whatever it is you think I deserve for existing. Whatever you think will spend all that hate.”

Rage flashes in his eyes. I brace myself for his boot to meet my head, but it doesn’t. He just stares at me and whispers, “Get up. Fight back.”

I steady myself and rise, but go limp before the captain comes at me again.

This time, my arms don’t even catch my fall, and the impact has me biting through my lip. Coppery blood paints the inside of my mouth. When I laugh through bloodied teeth, the captainlooks down at me. Something like regret flashes across his face, but it’s quickly replaced by disgust.

He’s staring at me like a child might a broken toy when he asks, “Why don’t you fight back, Darling?”

CHAPTER 11

WENDY

The next morning, it’s Charlie who gets stuck babysitting me.

She’d made it known that she was less than thrilled about the situation, reminding Astor she was hired on to be a gunner, not to be the caretaker of a dust addict—“No offense,” she’d added. Then she’d taken me above deck to the healer’s quarters and taken to working on my swollen and bruised wrist.

From the window I can see the coastal city of Morella, where we’ve docked to replenish supplies and have repairs made. According to Charlie, Astor is rather sour about the estimate the craftsmen provided. Apparently, the repairs could take a few weeks. As I watch the dock workers bustle about, my legs ache for solid ground. Not that I’ll be getting that anytime soon.

“I see your first training session didn’t turn out too badly,” Charlie says as she dips a cloth into the tip of a bottle of clear liquid and flips it over. “On my first day, I had a pair of bruised ribs and black eyes to match.”

I blink, confused. “Training?”

She furrows her brow, revealing a tiny dimple there. “Maddox said it was your idea to join the Carlisle job. It was your idea, wasn’t it?”

I blink. “Well, yes. But no one said anything about fighting.”

She cocks an angled brow at me. “You didn’t think you could just join a band of privateers without learning to throw a punch, did you?”

I’m about to admit that’s exactly what I thought, but the more times I rehearse it in my mind, the more stupid it sounds. It dawns on me that I had technically told the captain that I was happy to train for the mission. What I’d meant as an invitation to train me in the art of stealth, he’d taken as a request for a lesson in combat. I glance down at the galley, where the sailors are bustling about the deck. “I didn’t realize that’s what he was doing.”

Charlie’s soft smile is the type that saves face, though I’m not sure if it’s for me or Astor. “Not the best communicator, is he?”

“You’d think with how he always manages to find the perfect chink to lodge his insults, he could learn,” I say, dryly.

“So what?” She presses the damp cloth to my bruised wrist. It hisses when it hits the wound, burning worse than the salt air around us, but already the purple blotches are fading to a sickly yellow. “Did he just attack you out of nowhere?”

I shake my head, but Charlie levels me a scolding glare—the type that’s difficult to take seriously on her sweet face—since the movement messes with her ability to tend to my wound. “No, he pushed me. Well, he grabbed my wrist, and I told him it hurt, so he told me to fight back.”

“And did you fight back?”

“Well, no, but…”

Charlie’s staring at me like I just informed her I’d never made the connection between the rumbling in my stomach and hunger.

I sigh. Her unspoken assessment is probably accurate. “Where I come from, men don’t shove women to the ground. Well, they’re not supposed to, at least.”

Charlie chuckles in a tone that I would classify as moderate condescension. “Yeah, well, where I’m from, women aren’t supposed to be gunners, but I had to get over that one when I decided I wanted to be a privateer.”

“I wouldn’t say I want to be a privateer,” I say, holding the rag to my wrist at Charlie’s gesture. It’s frigid, like it’s been dipped in ice.

“Just…just hit him real good next time. In the eye. Or knee him in the groin,” she says, the cognitive dissonance of hearing such a feminine voice talk about a man’s groin banging against my skull as she speaks. “The men’ll say that’s cheating, but they don’t seem to consider being naturally stronger cheating, so I wouldn’t let it dissuade you.”

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