Page 26 of Kept to Kill
‘Gods, woman, why didn’t you just put your hand out and touch them?’ he exploded and she flinched.
‘I— I tried, but I missed and then when I was on m-my knees,’ she stuttered, ‘I wanted to, but I just couldn’t. I was … afraid.’ She said the last word in a whisper.
He let out a long sigh. ‘Next time, grasp the fucker’s cock and kill him.’
She gave a small jerk of her head. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t die before I can kill for you,’ she muttered, and he almost told her the truth, that he’d been concerned for her safety.
But he didn’t. Instead he forced out a biting laugh and watched her turn away. She drew her knees up into a ball again while he sat at the table and poured himself a large goblet of wine, keeping up with Bastian for once and feeling like a bastard.
* * *
Something was goingon between Quin and Lily, Bastian was sure of it, but gods only knew what. He didn’t really understand a lot of the social nuances these days, or perhaps he’d just forgotten. He interacted with the other gods on the Mount quite differently, after all. He’d hadn’t knownnewpeople for a very long time.
He was angered by the girl’s tale of what the men had done to her. She was clearly terrified, though, like Quin, he didn’t understand why she hadn’t simply killed them. She had tremendous power. Why not use it?
‘Why do you think she didn’t kill them?’ he whispered to Quin.
Quin took a very long drink before he answered just as quietly. ‘She froze.’
‘But why?’
‘You heard what she said. They made her get on her knees and one of them got his cock out. Surely you can guess what they told her to do.’
‘Yes, but why didn’t she just …?’
‘She was scared, Brother. She’s not used to being outside that room Vineri had her locked in. She’s not used to men.’ Quin made a derisive sound in the back of his throat. ‘Probably never even seen a cock before.’
Bastian nodded. He’d noticed the look she got on her face when she was outside, the panic she tried to hide. In some ways they were similar, he suspected. Both of them were learning about this world and about the people in it. But she hadn’t seemed to mind when she’d seen him undressed last night at the inn. Granted, she’d tried not to look, but he didn’t think she’d been afraid.
Then he realized what Quin had called him. It was the first time he’d called Bastian ‘Brother’. He almost smiled at the absurd sense of belonging. It had certainly been a while since he’d felt that.
He opened his mouth, wanting to speak with Quin for once, have a conversation that wasn’t simply talking about plans and receiving orders. They didn’t really know each other. He’d thought him a strait-laced cunt at first, but he was thinking now that though he was undeniably strait-laced, perhaps the Commander of the Dark Brothers wasn’t so much of a cunt as he’d first suspected.
As he looked over at Quin’s demeanor, however, he saw that of a man who only wanted to drink himself into numbness. That he understood, so instead of talking, he stood, poured himself another goblet of wine for the road, and left the cabin. He decided to wander and found himself in the brig before he’d realized where he was going. It smelled musty and dank, and he eyed the cell behind the iron bars with distaste. This was where Quin had ordered she stay for their entire six-day voyage.
Bastian had been alive for a very long time. He’d seen things, dark things that would make a grown man scream himself hoarse. Perhaps it was because all of those things had happened so long ago, but none of those memories left as nasty a taste in his mouth as the idea of Lily in that cell alone when those two crewmen had come for her. She was powerful, but she was still a mortal girl with more feelings than she’d let on to him, he suspected.
He left the brig and traveled through the hold until he found the spot where the men had threatened her and Mal had killed them. Mal. He reallywasa cunt. But at least he’d saved Lily.
Feeling oddly ill at ease standing in the dark confines of the ship, he climbed quickly up the ladders to the main deck, one hand still clutching his goblet, of course. When he reached the outside air, he allowed himself a small sigh of relief.
The sun was setting, casting pink and purple hues over the clear skies. He gazed out over the coast. They were already past the highest of the mountains, all covered in deep snow that made them impassable for at least another sennight. This was the quick part of the journey. Once they reached the curve of the coast, the ship would be battered by the edges of the winter storms that raged perpetually in the far north. That was the longest and most dangerous part of the journey, taking about four days before they rounded the northern cliffs and came into the more sheltered channel that led to the north coast and, subsequently, the capital, Kitore.
He wondered what Kitore would be like now. Last time he’d been there, it hadn’t been much more than a village, and the ‘king’ had been merely a warring chieftain who’d won a few battles. A hard fellow, if Bastian remembered correctly. The current king did not take after his family line in that respect, according to the stories he’d heard.
Leaning on the rail, he finished the last of his wine and was just contemplating finding the galley for a refill when a disturbance off the port bow caught his eye. The water whirled and frothed into a maelstrom. Dark waves churned, slapping against the hull of the ship, and Bastian’s eyes widened. Gods, they couldn’t be that unlucky, surely!
He turned, yelling up to the crow’s nest and pointing to what he saw, as the sailor on watch hadn’t rung the bell. He needed to ring the fucking bell because if this was what it looked like, the sea was going to get much rougher before it got better. The man yelled something and the chiming began in earnest as the waves began to climb higher, tilting the boat so quickly that Bastian was knocked off balance and slid head-first across the deck and into the starboard side railing. He grabbed it before he could be thrown over, but he heard yells quickly followed by splashes and knew that some of the crew hadn’t been so lucky. The boat pitched back the other way and Bastian used the momentum to run for the door in the middle, practically hurling himself down the steep steps.
He was stuck at the bottom as he waited for the ship to roll back, the corridor in front of him one moment a mountain and the next, a slippery slope down. He slid, catching hold of whatever he could until he reached their cabin, pushing the door open with one arm as he braced his legs on either side of the threshold to keep his body from falling back the way he’d come as the boat bobbed back like a child’s toy.
Inside, Quin was holding onto one of the beds, which were, thankfully, bolted down, and Lily was struggling to keep herself wrapped around another on the other side.
‘What the fuck is happening?’ Quin yelled as the ship creaked and moaned. ‘A storm couldn’t have come upon us this quickly!’
‘It’s not a storm!’ Bastian let out anoomphand almost lost his precarious foothold as the door flew back and slammed into him. ‘It’s a breach on the seabed!’
‘Fuck!’ Quin said as the boat tipped again like a pendulum, throwing Lily into the wall next to the bed she was gripping on to, her head hitting with a thump that made him wince.
