Yet here I am, thinking about the freckle near her jaw, the way sunlight catches the sand in her hair, the curve of her mouth when she tastes something new and corrects herself mid-word.
Dagan’s approach nudges me from my reverie.
“You stare like you plan to memorize her face with just your eyes, man,” he said.
His tone held both mockery and something like concern.
“What? He wasn’t staring,” Phoebe says, and I feel her embarrassment wash over me, and I’m confused.
“Don’t let the food here make you soft, Kael. There are claws in soft things.”
Dagan and all his fucking metaphors.
“Soft does not mean weak. And for the record, Telya, I was staring at you,” I respond before I can stop myself.
The retort came sharper than I intended—defensive, a revelation of how strongly I suddenly feel.
The crew snickers. Dagan lifts a brow, a small victory in his expression.
Heed him or not, the truth in his words hits me hard.
When true feelings are exposed, they can make even a Demon Lord vulnerable.
“Shall we?” Dagan asks, nearly white eyebrows raised as he motions us forward.
Phoebe smiles tightly and walks ahead, but I catch up to her quickly.
The pier smells of salt and fried shellfish and old rope—comforting in the way only places that have survived storms can be.
Two curved fin whales, all silver and gold, roll and breach as if on cue beneath the gangplank, sending up sprays that flash like confetti.
They cut glittering wakes, and Phoebe’s smile finally breaks open into something real.
It lands in my chest like sunlight.
“I’d love to see them up close,” she says, voice bright as a bell.
I nod, because I hear her.
Because I already have a plan forming in the parts of me that usually think only in defenses and lines on maps.
I’ll send for the handlers.
I’ll ask the elders to bring a tide-walker.
I will make it happen.
The sight of her—gleeful, a little breathless—softens something in me that’s been rock for centuries.
It makes me stupid in new and dangerous ways.
She moves through the crowd with Amber at her elbow, smiling and shaking hands with the women of First Shore, learning the half-gestures and the names the tide gives their children.
I let the men come to me, let the bows and salutations smooth the edge of court business.
Even so, my mind is a single thread.
To her.
