Page 193 of Shadowblood Souls
Before I can tell him off again, he raises his arms in surrender. “You don’t want me right in here, I’ll stay out. I can sleep in the hall outside the door.”
My mouth twists with annoyance, but I don’t know how I can stop him from doing that if he’s going to insist. What does he even think he’s going to accomplish?
“Sounds like it’s settled,” Andreas says, his tone dry but mild. “Maybe we should all take a few minutes to sort out our own space, though?”
Jacob grunts but marches out. The other guys follow, but Andreas hangs back for a moment at the doorway.
When I meet his gaze, he tips his head toward me, his expression softening. “How are you doing?”
I shrug. “Other than feeling a little smothered and wondering how far in over our heads we’ve gotten, I’m okay.”
He wets his lips. “You know if you need anything—if there’s anything you’d want me to do, for whatever reason?—”
The pain I’ve worked so hard at suppressing springs up to clench around my gut.
“We’re not there yet,” I say quietly. “I don’t know if we’re ever going to be there. And I’m not going to forget that you’re aroundwithout you reminding me. Just—just leave it, okay. We’ve got bigger things to worry about.”
Andreas nods, but his face has tightened as if he’s as knotted up inside as I am. “We do. But just for the record, none of this matters half as much to me as making sure you’re happy.”
He leaves before I can say anything else. I swallow thickly, so tangled up inside that for a second I can’t breathe.
I don’t bother unpacking my bag, because even at sea, it’s always possible we’ll need to make a hasty exit. I flop down on the bed and allow myself to revel in the fluffiness of the duvet for several minutes, but anxious thoughts keep gnawing at the edges of my mind.
This ship is amazing, but it’s never going to be home. We can’t stay on the run forever.
Are Rollick and his friends really going to carve out a path to a normal life for us? Or are we going to end up almost as trapped as we were in the facility, just with different types of captors, different sorts of tests?
I wish I had a better sense of the way forward.
To try to clear my head, I run through an exercise routine and take a quick shower. But when a speaker mounted in the corner of the room activates, I can’t say I’m eager for the summons.
“All passengers please report to the dining room.”
I’m both ready and not. I duck out into the hall at the same time as the guys step out from their various doorways.
Dominic looks up and down the hallway. “I don’t remember which way the dining room is.”
Zian takes a sniff of the air and strides forward without a hint of doubt. “I’m ready to dig in.”
His nose leads us well. We emerge into the dining area I saw earlier and find a few of the tables pushed together to create one long one.
Serving dishes sit down the length of it, a couple heaped with spareribs that give off spicy and tangy-sweet scents. Others hold slices of baked ham, baby potatoes glistening with butter, and two different kinds of salad, one laced with mandarin slices and another with dried cranberries.
My mouth is already watering. There’s no one else around yet—at least, no one I can see—so I grab a plate at random and add a little of everything to it.
Zian goes straight to the ribs, creating a little mountain on his plate that he tops with ham. He drops into a chair and pops the first bite into his mouth with gusto.
Obviously he isn’t worried about trusting the food. But then, itwouldbe a pretty bizarre scheme for Rollick to arrange a massive cruise just to poison us on the first night.
As we all take seats in a semi-circle at one end of the table, Rollick saunters over seemingly out of nowhere. “Eat as much as you like,” he says. “Technically the rest of us don’tneedthe food. Although I wouldn’t associate with anyone who can’t enjoy a good spare rib.” He plucks one of the dry-rub morsels off its platter and carries it to his spot at the head of the table.
As if on cue, several more shadowkind waver into being by the other seats. Pearl plunks herself down next to me with a bounce of her golden curls and snatches a mandarin slice right out of the salad.
“Fruit is the best,” she says in her cheery voice, and pops it into her mouth. “Don’t you think so? They taste so good, and they carry the seeds to make more fruit! And I’ve heard mortals say they give you nutrions or something too.”
My mouth twitches, but I’m afraid she’ll be offended if I laugh. Offending a monster, even a not-very-monstrous-seeming one, feels like a bad idea.
“I think it’s probably nutrients,” I say. “Like vitamins and stuff.”
