Page 56 of A Flash of Golden Fire

“Oh, Rooster. Don’t you see? We’d all be dead if you hadn’t gotten up and looked over the rail. We’re all alive because of you.”

And now he did touch me. I felt the warmth of his palm on my shoulder, soothing me, and I didn’t pull away. Soft kisses feathered along my shoulder blades, even as I sobbed and sniffled. I didn’t deserve him, but I clutched onto those words and this kind treatment like a man adrift in a bottomless sea. I had been the one to alert the crew to the attacking ship. And the captain was right. We’d all have been lost if I hadn’t.

That truth eased some of the pain in my heart.

“Come now. Turn and look at me,” he said.

I forced myself to face him. I’m sure my eyes were swollen and red, my lips slack and ugly. But the captain’s smile and the look of adoration in his eyes was better than any healing balm the doc could prescribe.

“There he is. There’s my sweet rooster.”

I didn’t think anyone except my late mam, bless her heart, had ever called me ‘sweet’ because, normally, I wasn’t. I was argumentative and a bit of an ass. But I’d take such coddling today. I’d take indulgence any day from Captain Martin.

He sobered and tucked a piece of wayward hair off my forehead.

“Listen to me and listen well,” he said, speaking as a captain now. “Whatever happened out there at the rail is the reason I’m here right now. I don’t know how, or why, but that storm never touched me. And if that—” He seemed to cast about for the appropriate word for the violence of the phenomenon. “—tempest…did somehow come from you, Rooster, you saved us all asecondtime.”

The magic I’d summoned hadn’t touched him? Those words gave me profound relief.

“Truly? You were safe the entire time I was—” I stammered, not wanting to say ‘while I was killing them all’. “During the storm?”

“I was,” he said.

Tears threatened again. “I thought… I thought I’d—”

“You thought you’d harmed me. But you didn’t. You saved me, Simon White, and I shall forever be in your debt,” he said, stroking my chin. “You saved theArrowand her crew too. Those nasty vermin were out for blood, and whatever booty we had aboard.”

The relief those words brought was a soothing balm to my rattled and fearful soul. For the first time since the incident had unfolded, I thought that perhaps I’d done the right thing, even if I wasn’t sure exactly how.

The captain smiled, then appeared puzzled. He continued to speak in low tones.

“I felt wrapped in an invisible shield of some kind, seeing the lightning and the flames around me, watching the crew of that ship perish before my eyes. And then I was in the water.” He narrowed his eyes. “And then I saw you, Rooster, standing at the rail, with a fierce and determined look on your dear face, surrounded by blue flames with orange ones shooting from under your hands.” He frowned. “Your hands. Let me see.”

I lifted them, palms up. The linen bandages looked clean and white, even against my pale skin.

“May I?” he asked, his fingers going to the knot on one of them.

I nodded.

As the captain carefully untied the knot, I realized there was no longer any pain from the wounds. And as he drew the cloth away, we both blinked in surprise.

The skin was reddened somewhat, but smooth. The blisters had disappeared. There was no sign they’d ever been there. The recently scalded skin looked better than the healed scar on my side and back that was ten years old.

I met his confused gaze with my own. Then he quickly untied the bandage on my other hand. He held them together in front of him, gaping at the healed skin.

“Faraday told me your hands looked like raw meat last night,” he whispered, meeting my gaze again. “Is that true?”

“Yes,” I said. “I don’t know why they don’t still.”

“Is there any pain?”

“No.”

He moved the pads of his thumbs over my palms, very lightly. “Now?”

“No. The skin is sensitive, that’s all.”

“Well. There issomekind of magic at work here.” He was silent, still holding my hands. “Would you like to tell me what kind of supernatural forces I’m dealing with, Rooster? If you even know?”