I can’t help but snort even as I struggle to pull the dress over my head, heart unsteady in my chest. “Fine, but if the fish yield such power, how is it they’re so unheard of?”
“Well…they’re shy little beasties. Quick as lightning. And they’ve got teeth.”
“Right.” I try and fail to lace the side of my dress together. My fingers are still numb with cold. “And how long will we be here?”
I’m on my third try when his hand pushes mine aside, drawing the fabric together with a few easy tugs. Neither of us says a word until he’s done, his fingers wrapped in the laces for just a moment more before he smiles and steps back, tossing me a fresh pair of socks from my bag.
“As long as it takes.”
I can do nothing more than watch as he adjusts the damp leather glove tied around his left hand and slips out the door.
Eighteen
“As long as it takes” turns into two full weeks of trial and error. Mostly error.
The crew attempts to track the fishes’ patterns, weave stronger nets, lay baited lines, but the fish slip or bite through their traps every time. And all the while, morning and night and every moment in between, Faolan tries his damnedest to coax my magic free.
I grind my teeth at the thought of his last attempt, locking me up in his study for half the day with the chest full of divination aids: more casting bones, prayer medallions, and ritual objects I’ve seen the druids use. When he tried to come in later with a bucket of entrails to interpret from whatever nonmagical fish they’d caught for supper, I flung it at his feet. He’s left me alone about it since.
“I can just feel it! Today’s the day—just you wait. It’ll happen.”
“How’s tha’ different from the last five?”
Faolan’s voice drifts across the water, and I fight the urge to roll my eyes. Instead, I watch my fingers cut tiny divots into the water as the currach glides between two of the Teeth. It’s a spot free of shipwrecks, the spirits blessedly absent for now.
“Your husband’s pretty sure of himself.”
I glance up and Nessa is grinning at me, her sunburned bottom lip split in the middle. “Is he ever not?”
Faolan’s currach turns a corner, followed by a second holding Tavin, the striker Oona, and her brother, Bowden. Their names come easily to mind now, though our conversation’s been middling at best. A fumbled handful of words when I handed their clothes back, neatly patched and free of stains. Tavin’s been pleasant at least, noting our progress for Kiara, though I still haven’t figured out how he communicates our path from this far across the waves using only her hair. I haven’t been brave enough to ask.
“No.” Nessa laughs and steers us around one of the formations, both our noses wrinkling when we get too close and the smell of rot becomes unbearable.
“Why are we taking this path again?”
“Faolan had a feeling. Weren’t you listening?”
I laugh once and shake my head. It’s easier to ignore my husband than absorb his charms—especially when I have to lie beside him each night, waking to every restless dip and jerk his body makes against the bed. It’s worse than the sea’s fitful nature, the way my husband battles his own sleep. No matter how many quilts I fold between us, or the precise lay of my limbs, I wake to a twisted storm of sheets and limbs threaded loosely with mine.
A shiver wracks my chest as I remember the strange, feverish flash of yearning that shot through me this morning—one that jolted me from sleep, sweaty and damp in places I try to ignore. It’s not the first time I’ve woken to a feeling or half-formed memory I could not claim.
In sleep, Faolan’s skin drags constantly over mine.
So I tolerate his ambushes and guessing games for the sake of the magic, if only so he won’t start asking why my eyes remain still, or why I avoid his gaze each morning. And for all the sheeramount of space Faolan takes up on this ship, I can survive it so long as he doesn’t touch me under daylight.
And he hasn’t, apart from that brush of his lips after the storm. Faolan’s kept his promise.
Even if some small, traitorous part of me wishes he wouldn’t.
Nessa sighs, guiding the small boat after the others. “He reckons there’s got to be a reef or something tucked away in a shallow nearby where the fish spend most of their time.”
I pull my hand from the water. “Even if they did, it’s unlikely they’d let us close enough to—”
A whistle flies around the bend in a low-high pattern I understand now to mean we’d better get there sharpish. Nessa grins, adjusting her feet against the lower boards to pull hard on the wooden oars. “Winds o’ fury, the lad had better be onto something. I’m getting pretty damn tired of the setbacks.”
The sight that greets us around the corner brings me to my knees, fingers gripping the sides of the currach tight as my jaw hangs free.
Shadows zip back and forth across a wide shallow leading to a particularly jagged formation, creatures cutting through clouds of gold beneath the water’s surface. Sharp trills echo back and forth in time with the shadows’ movements, and a second later, a sleek fin emerges between waves just before a flurry of the fish take to the air.
