Page 34 of Wicked Tides
Are they beautiful because they are beautiful
Or because they make us believe it so?
~Captain William Foardragun
Present Day
Things were getting interesting. Very interesting.
Why I didn’t fight as hard as I was capable, I didn’t fully know. Maybe my mind was too scrambled from seeingherthat I couldn’t use my limbs right. Maybe I thought it was a dream a bit too long. Whatever the reason, I let her get the upper hand.
That scarred face had haunted me for eighteen years. Of course, my mind saw a child. A scrawny girl barely younger than I had been when I was stuffed in that tiny, barnacle-covered cage. The face I saw when I opened my eyes was entirely foreign in so many ways. The scar was there, but her eyes…
Her eyes were pure onyx and filled with malice. Pain. Rageand despair.
It was like looking in a fucking mirror for a split second.
But we were nothing alike…
The demon of my past had gotten the upper hand. Whether I’d given it to her or not, I wasn’t entirely sure, but she had it nonetheless. I remembered the cold water washing over me. The ocean was rough and she moved through it like a needle through cotton, swift and true. Not that I could see much. I could only feel. She could have drowned me. Could have plunged to the depths where my human bones would curl in and shatter. Where my lungs would flatten. She didn’t. Instead, she’d kept me alive and the weight of my limbs on stone beckoned me out of unconsciousness. That and the overly tight binds wrapped around my wrists.
Fuck.
I pried open salt-crusted eyes to see moon-washed land ahead of me. A smooth rock formation created a monstrous arch before me. Around me, the waves crushed the edges of shallow cliffs. Whatever island I was on, it was small. I could see the ocean in every direction. Against my back was a thick rod of some kind. Metal. Clearly not from the island originally. It chafed my forearms where I was tethered tightly against it, hands behind my back.
But none of that mattered when my gaze came uponher.She slowly revealed herself against the rocky background, camouflaged almost perfectly. Once she was in view, all of my doubts about her existence washed away. She was there, tall and slender and pale under the moonlight. Any traces of that girl I knew that night had been ripped away, violently it would seem. She wore a thin dress made of strange material laced loosely at the front. It didn’t cover much more than her breasts and upper thighs. Every bit of her that was visible to me was marked in some way. Scars. Black tattoos of some kind coiled around one forearm. Her cheek bore the scar I’d given her all those years ago. It was a perfectly straight line from her ear almost to the corner of her mouth.
And the look on her face made her seem like she hadn’t slept since the day we parted ways. She held a bone knife in her hand with anintricate handle and a slightly curved and very sharp edge to it that reminded me too much of the one I used on my father.
The corner of my mouth lifted and it made her head tilt a bit. The blackness faded from her eyes until they gleamed silver-gray under the light like two glass marbles.
“You planning on using that to skin me alive?” I rasped, my throat burning like I’d swallowed too much salt water.
She cocked her head again like she heard me but didn’t understand. I glimpsed the knife and tested my binds, but she’d given me no leeway to pull free. I didn’t expect her to.
She stalked forward, each of her steps silent on the slick stone and reminding me too much of her horrid mother. The material of her garments moved strangely, clinging to her form, until I doubted it was fabric at all.
Fuck me…
It was skin. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was human skin.
“Don’t try to struggle,” she finally said, her voice unnervingly melodic and calm despite the hate burning in her gaze. “There are three islands in these parts, any one of which I could have brought you to if your crew doesn’t think I just dragged you to the bottom of the sea.”
She was close now. So close that if I wanted to, I could have kicked a foot out and broken her knee. She didn’t seem to care, even when my eyes glimpsed her legs. She just adjusted the knife in her hand to remind me she had it.
“This place is only visible during low tide,” she continued, taking another step until she had one foot on either side of my legs. “It’s not on any human maps. I’ve checked.”
She dropped to her knees astride my lap. The weight of her on my groin further proved she was real. She lifted the edge of her knife to my chest and let the tip skim my scar where I’d buried my silentium under my skin years ago. She knew it was there. There was no doubt about it.
“By the time the tide rises, you’ll be buried beneath it,” she whispered, her face close enough to mine that I could feel the caress of her breath on my lips. “In pieces.”
I kept my eyes on hers, studying everything about her. It was no use thinking of her as the girl from that cursed island. She was a different creature entirely. So was I.
“So? How do you plan to get me into pieces?” I said.
She slowly cut the blade across my chest, leaving my silentium in place and instead slicing just above it in a diagonal line. Hot blood immediately wept down my skin. I clenched my teeth but gave her no other indication that it stung. She watched me for a sign, though. Oh, she watched me eagerly. She wanted my screams, but I didn’t have much else to give in that department. I’d spent my screams through eighteen years of nightmares, hate, and rage.
“Slowly,” she whispered, lifting her blade to her mouth. She licked across the bone until my blood seasoned her tongue and then wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Hemsbane. Your blood is bitter with it.”
