Page 35 of Voice of the Ocean

Celeste bristled. He hadn’t correctly guessed everything she was thinking—but he knew what she was feeling. Straightening, Celeste ignored him. If he had hoped to ease her mind, he hadn’t. In fact, he had only made her more nervous. This human was entirely too aware of her. How long before he found out something she didn’t want him to know?

“Why didn’t you want Torben on your crew?” Kiyami asked.

Raiden laughed. “Wherever did you get that idea?”

“He’s got a bit of a reputation,” Bastian said.

Kiyami arched a brow. “What sort of reputation?”

Bastian winced and looked to Raiden.

“You may have heard of him by a different name.” The prince slid his dagger back onto his hip. “Most call him Ol’ Trigger Finger.”

Kiyami tensed. “You can’t be serious.” She looked between Bastian and Raiden, incredulous. “That’s Trigger Finger Torben? You’re hiring him to be on this crew? Do you have a death wish?”

Celeste seemed to be the only one who didn’t already know about this “Trigger Finger,” so she elbowed Raiden in the side.

“Haven’t heard of him, have you?” he asked with a smirk.

Celeste shrugged.

“Torben ‘Trigger Finger’ Helvig is known for being a bit of a liability. He’s worked as a master gunner all his life and is said to be brilliant when it comes to managing and building weapons—explosives in particular. But he’s difficult to work with and volatile,” Bastian said.

“He’s a psychopath,” Raiden corrected. “The last ship he was on, Torben went against direct orders from his captain and started firing on a passing ship without cause. It was Valencia’s ship. Torben got most of his crew killed. And she nearly sank them.”

“Wasn’t he on your father’s crew?” Kiyami asked.

Raiden paused, jaw tightening. It looked as though he was going to ignore her question, before he let out a breath and nodded. “Yes.”

“The king pushed him overboard in the middle of the ocean,” Bastian said. “Rumor was, he’d drowned, but it seems he managed to make his way here.”

“It’s not as though I’m much better,” Raiden said, so quietly Celeste almost didn’t hear him over the noise of the pub.

Bastian stiffened. “What happened to our crew wasn’t your fault.”

Raiden nodded and looked away.

A wave of nausea rose within Celeste at the memory of that night. The hundreds of writhing bodies. Her mother crying in a cell. She was tired—emotionally and physically. The more she learned about these humans, the more confused she became. It didn’t help matters that she hadn’t slept properly in days. She must have looked as horrible as she felt, because Kiyami glanced at her and laughed.

“You awake there, Celeste?” she teased.

The siren blinked, realizing her eyes had been drooping. A blush warmed her face, and she lifted her hands to hide it.

“It’s getting late,” Bastian said. “Why don’t we all head off to bed? We’ll want to set sail as soon as the ship is readied tomorrow.”

And so their small crew dispersed. Kiyami and Celeste were given a room to share in the inn. The two of them walked up the winding staircase in the back of the pub to the second floor. Their room was number five, the farthest door to the right. Kiyami inserted the key the barmaid had given her into the lock and heard a satisfying click as she twisted. It took a couple of tries to open the door, as if it didn’t want to admit them, but eventually it relented. The room was simple. There was no decoration upon the wooden walls, save for one portrait above the dresser that looked like a painting of the ocean from the docks. Two small beds with simple blue blankets faced the door, and between them was a window that faced another building.

It was the most perfect room Celeste had ever seen.

As soon as Kiyami had closed the door behind them, the exhaustion hit Celeste like a wave. The muscles at the back of her neck ached, as if she had been on high alert ever since she had become a human. She hadn’t felt this fatigued since her early days of training for the Chorus.

Kiyami collapsed onto her small bed, removing her shoes, and Celeste did the same. The window showed the building next door was darkening, but as she looked up, she could see a small sliver of sky. A silver moon shined down upon the port town, the same crescent shape that darkened her wrist. Too tired to think anymore about the mess she found herself in, Celeste lay down on the bed, fully clothed and still clutching her Wayfinder coat. Sirens were perfectly comfortable floating as they slept. But many enjoyed having the option of lying upon something, so the concept of a bed wasn’t entirely foreign. This bed, however, was far more comfortable than any surface she’d laid upon before. Springy and full of some sort of stuffing, it creaked as she moved. But she found her eyelids closing before she could inspect it further.

Despite her fatigue, every noise sent her bolt upright, heart racing. She noticed when Kiyami slipped out of the room sometime in the night, likely meeting with Viktoria, the barmaid. And when sleep at last found the little siren, it was wrapped in nightmares.

* * *

Celeste awoke to a loud banging. She gasped, feeling as though she couldn’t breathe. There was no water around her. But as she sat upright, everything came flooding back. Her confusion was over in a moment, but it was a rather unpleasant way to wake up.

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