I cried out as Demyan straddled Kye’s motionless chest, sending blow after blow to Kye’s head.
Until the pirate leaned to the side, balancing one hand against the ground, exhausted.
His ribs heaved with ragged and broken breath, watching. Waiting for Kye to move.
But Kye didn't.
32
Maren
The voice inside my head screamed.
Moisture in the air fizzled, a thousand wicks threatening to ignite. But my calls to water collapsed around me, sputtering into nothing.
Demyan glanced around, then whipped his head to look at me, as though he’d forgotten I was there. He stood, the jagged scars across his face warping his features as he advanced on me, reaching for the cutlass in between the roots.
The ropes Kye had slashed had become a puddle around my ankles, tripping me as I struggled to evade him, my legs cumbersome and slow. Hanging by my right arm, I listed, my body revolving in a slow orbit. My toes searched lethargically for purchase, but I’d fallen into a wide divot between roots, the ground just beyond reach. The knife embedded in my side flared through my thoughts. Raw pain lanced across muscle and sinew, but somehow, it felt very far away. Almost as if it didn’t belong to my body anymore.
Demyan’s lips curled. He grabbed my hair and yanked my head back, ignoring my left hand as it beat sluggishly against hischest. The wicked edge of the cutlass was cold as he pressed it to my throat. I spat, misting his eyes and nose.
The pirate didn’t react. He stared at me, panting and tired, poised to slice me open, but didn’t move. His eyes snaked over my face, fingers tightening on my hair, as though he stood weighing the decision to kill me. On the edge of consciousness, feeling myself teeter toward the unknown, I met his gaze and refused to shrink away.
“Zoznámime sa s rybím králom, malá ryba,” he finally muttered, his panting beginning to ebb. He pulled me back to solid ground, ignoring my soft yelp as my feet flattened over the roots, sending a sharp bite into my hip.
Through my numb thoughts, it occurred to me he wasn’t going to kill me. He was leaving, taking me with him. My hands found traction along his forearms, and I sunk my nails deep. I kicked at him again, the motion futile. Strung up by one hand and my hair, I’d become immobilized. It hardly mattered what I did.
Motion caught my eye. A flutter of light came from behind Demyan, there and gone in an instant.
Following my gaze, the pirate began to turn, and I felt the blade that entered his back through his body. Felt strength leave his fingers as he released my hair, letting me dangle beside him as his momentum continued the turn he’d begun. Felt breath that left his mouth as it hitched.
The scent of fresh blood stained the air.
Demyan staggered, then sat drunkenly over the roots of the tree, cutlass dropping from his softened fist. Standing in his place, Kye leaned a bloodied forearm against the tree trunk. One of his eyes loomed half-closed, his jaw and temple already swollen. Demyan must’ve been wearing a ring—four square shaped cuts peppered his face.
Kye pulled me across the roots, his knuckles painting my dress with blood, until my toes landed on a tall gnarl in front of his. Arm shaking, he severed the rope, and I fell against him.
Pain rained down my side and my knees gave out, but Kye caught me, his own body supported by the trunk of the tree. His skull-white forehead dipped into the curve of my neck as he gathered me in. I drooped against his chest, unsteady breath escaping my lungs. I sent my hands under the edge of his jacket, seeking the solidity of his body against mine, desperate to chase away the doubt swirling in my stomach that he was there.
Alive.
Demyan coughed. We glanced down at him, both of us folded into the other. The pirate rocked, his mouth slightly parted, the edges of his lips gleaming ruby-red. Kriska’s knife protruded from his mid-back, his breath leaving him in fragments. He eased down to the ground beside his captain. Claimed by death only minutes before, Kriska gazed ahead as if looking into the shadows of eternity, his skin pale, Kye’s knife still lodged in the back of his neck.
Demyan tucked his cheek against the roots. “Do éterický vzduch, môj brat,”he whispered into Kriska’s face.“Perpetska.”
Kye’s fingertips curled possessively into the small of my back. He turned away, scanning for a soft patch to set me down. But I couldn’t tear my gaze from Demyan.
The seconds ticked away, slowly stealing his life. I didn’t know why I needed to watch him die. Kriska’s knife in his back, I couldn’t help counting the seconds, wondering how long it had taken Naheso to succumb to the same fate.
Kye lifted me a few feet away, guiding me across the woody floor to the opposite side of the tree. I gasped at the stab in my hip, my hand reaching for it—though I didn’t let myself touch the knife. Kye drew a sharp breath. He walked heavily to where Kriska lay, bracing his boot against the captain’s skull as hewrenched the knife from his neck, then bent to wipe the blood off on Kriska’s shirt.
Demyan’s glazed eyes lifted to watch him. His lungs seized, loud enough that I heard it. His heart stalled a moment later. His jaw slackened; his body relaxed into the tangle of roots.
Kye swallowed hard, his own eyes fixed on my flayed patch of skin.
“He didn’t strip you down to the muscle. It’s not that bad,” he said in a voice that made me worry he was lying. Now that the fight had stopped, I realized I couldn’t feel my back, my nerve endings severed with my skin.
Kye called Kolibri to us, stealing a clean shirt from my saddlebag.
