Page 62 of Fate of Echoes and Embers
“You look more like a pirate than a Navarch again,” I said.
“Perhaps you like me this way? It was you, after all, who chose my clothing.”
“Ugh,” I uttered again. “You are impossible.”
In response, he held out a hand. I looked at it for a moment, and then threw caution overboard into the sea where all sorts of unknown creatures lurked. Stepping forward, I took it. Marek pulled me in front of him but didn’t move away. He stood at my back as my fingers circled the now-familiar wheel.
Placing his hands beside mine, for once, Marek didn’t tease me. Instead, he simply stood at my back, the heat of his body warming me in a way no cloak could ever do. Together, we navigated the dark waters ahead, each thinking our own thoughts both knowing the most difficult days were just ahead.
* * *
Making my way above deck, the morning sun bright, I attempted to reconcile the tumbling mess of thoughts in my head. Last eve, as I nearly fell asleep on my feet, the soft sway of the waves and comfort of Marek at my back, he finally urged me below deck. I touched my lips now, remembering. As I turned from the wheel, he’d reached for my face, cupped my cheeks, and kissed me.
It was soft, almost reverent. A very different kind of kiss than in the cabin, but no less heady. Then without a word, Marek released me as I stumbled below deck in a half-asleep state of euphoria.
Sanity returned this morning as I dressed, but the anger I’d felt for Marek for so long never followed. I’d seen too much of a side of Marek that contrasted deeply with the villain I’d made him out to be. Was I still angry at how effortlessly he’d broken my heart? Aye. But I could not hate a man who had devoted his life to finding out the truth about his mother’s death, at the expense of himself.
That did not mean Marek was good for me. And I was fairly certain what happened in his cabin was clouding my judgment, but a part of me no longer cared. I had sacrificed myself for Hawthorne, and what good had it done? I may be powerless to stop Draven myself, but I still had control of one thing.
Myself.
“You look refreshed,” Marek said as I climbed up to the quarterdeck.
“I slept well. Why don’t you let me take over so you can get some rest?”
“I rested well enough up here,” he said. “The waters were calm overnight.”
Hesitant, I was about to move to the rail when Marek reached for me. Pulling me into him, he kissed me, and I allowed it. Wanted it. Craved the way his lips moved over mine. He tasted minty, smelled like the sea and before long, I was deeply under his spell.
A lurch of the ship pulled us apart. Without warning, the same feeling as the day Lyra whispered to Mev washed over me.
“Issa?”
Marek held my arm as I closed my eyes, attempting to reconcile the magic that was nearby.
“It’s the same as that day,” I whispered, blocking out everything but the sensation of magic. “Precisely the same.”
When I opened my eyes, Marek was at the railing. He made a circle of the quarterdeck just as the wind picked up, as it had done that day.
“Nothing is amiss that I can see,” he said finally, coming back to me. “What do you feel now?”
It was gone. Just like the last time, it came and went with the same unusual abruptness. “Nothing. Which is unusual. It just feels… different. Like a foreboding or emptiness. Magic typically feels…” I tried to capture its essence. “Not quite like that.”
While he waited, Marek approached me and tucked an errant strand of hair behind my ear. The feather-light touch of his finger was somehow almost as intimate as his kisses, as if he had the right to reach out and do that. Which he did, I supposed, since I hadn’t stopped him.
Nor did I want to stop him.
He grinned. “Does it feel like my fingers bringing you to climax?”
“Marek!”
“Issa,” he countered, his chuckle a sound I could become accustomed to hearing.
“You are a rogue.”
“I’ve never claimed otherwise.”
“And ungentlemanly to say such a thing aloud.”
