Page 27 of Fate of Echoes and Embers (Heirs of Elydor #3)

ISSA

As I dressed, my mind replayed all that had happened. Thankfully, I’d been spared a response when he mentioned his tongue—not that I could have come up with a proper one—when Tidechaser had lurched, telling Marek that the water channel he’d created had been disrupted.

With a wink, he’d raced from the cabin, leaving me to stare at the door and wonder what in Elydor had just happened. Sitting, even though my shirt and breeches were still wet from being pressed against him, I attempted to gather my thoughts.

As if such a thing were possible.

My world was crumbling around me. Betrayed by Hawthorne. Days away from potentially losing Marek. And what had just happened? I had difficulty forming a complete thought except, I wanted it again. And what he’d said before he left?

The cabin was suddenly getting much too cramped, and hot. I finished dressing and I was about to leave when I realized Marek had never changed his clothing and was still soaked. I made my way to the trunk, hardly even needing the moonstone, having learned the cabin well.

I reached for it to look inside, wondering which pieces Marek might need.

Thalassari clothing was resistant to water, especially their boots, but they were not completely impervious.

I took out a shirt when a deep-blue handkerchief caught my eye.

I knew that piece of fabric, its gold trim woven by my mother.

Pulling it out, I turned it over. Sure enough, the Hawthorne crest stared back at me as my mind was brought back to the day I’d given this to him.

We had been about to ride out of the manor house when Edric had stopped us.

He’d handed Marek a small, glass bottle, asking him to carry it to the village.

He’d received word the midwife needed its contents to concoct some sort of remedy and asked us to take it to her.

I gave him the handkerchief to wrap around the bottle to keep it safe on the journey.

And he’d kept it.

Why? Perhaps he had forgotten he had it? Or had there been another reason?

Knowing it was likely the first, I quickly grabbed it, along with clothing for Marek, and hurried above deck. The rain had long stopped, and darkness, fallen. Though the sea was fairly calm, I spied Marek behind the wheel.

When he noticed me, he smiled.

That smile would have me forgetting the duty I held to my parents. My people.

That smile would be my undoing.

Climbing up the ladder, I didn’t give him a chance to speak but thrust the handkerchief in front of him.

“I brought you dry clothing, and found this.”

He looked at it and then up at me.

“Why did you keep it?”

Marek reached out, and taking the slip of cloth from me, he brought it to his face, inhaling deeply. “It smelled like you. But no longer. I’m unsure when it lost your scent, but that was probably around the same time I lost hope to ever see you again.”

“You could have seen me any time, Marek.”

“I know. But what would I have said?”

“The truth?”

“That you deserved more than I was back then? More than I am now?”

“You don’t believe you’re… worthy of me?”

“I know I am not, Issa.” He glanced down at the clothing. “Are those for me?”

Not knowing what else to say, I handed them to him. Marek took them and immediately began to undress.

“What are you… You cannot undress here.”

He waved an arm around to the open sea. There were no vessels within sight.

I cleared my throat. “I believe you are ignoring one person who can see you very clearly,” I said as he removed his boots completely.

“The very same person who is still watching,” he said cheekily.

“Ugh.” I immediately spun around to his chuckle, trying not to imagine what was happening behind me. Instead, I made my way to the railing, the only light from a dim moon partially covered by clouds. The sea at night was both a peaceful, and terrifying, thing.

“Sure you don’t want a peek?”

I didn’t give him the pleasure of a response. A flash of Marek’s bare chest and arms in his cabin came back to me.

“All finished.”

Still, I didn’t turn.

“Don’t trust me?”

That was a question I wasn’t prepared to answer. Instead, I waited a few moments longer and spun around. He was, indeed, dressed once again.

“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.”

“Also never claimed to be a gentleman either.”

It was true, of course. And part of Marek’s appeal.

“No,” I said, “it does not feel that way at all. That was…”

Oh, that grin. He already knew it was divine. Incredible. I would not confirm it.

“Fine.”

His laugh startled a gull that had been about to land on the railing. It thought better of such a plan and flew away.

“It was more than fine, sereia. And will be if you allow me to do it again.”

My core clenched at the very thought of such a thing. Marek had a way of turning the conversation to his advantage, every time.

“That is, perhaps, something we should discuss,” I said, giving up the idea of attempting to describe the feeling of nearby magic as it was difficult to put into words.

“Ease the helm to starboard just a touch. Feel the current shift beneath us.” I did as he said, easily able to feel the current shift as he mentioned. “Good, just like that. Hold steady there.”

“A ship,” I said, spying a dot in the distance.

Marek looked up and headed to the railing, cursing under his breath. “Gyorian,” he said.

“How can you tell from so far away?”

“The sails,” he said, eyes narrowing. “Gyorians favor a square rig with black trim… efficient for speed, but distinct.”

“You can see all of that, from here?”

“Look carefully at the way she moves. What do you see?”

It still appeared like a dot in the horizon, but it seemed to be moving quickly. “Is it fast?”

His eye lit up. “Well done. Their hulls are sleeker, built for cutting through the waves like a blade.”

“Do you think there’s something on that ship that carries a special kind of magic?”

Before I even finished, Marek was shaking his head. “They are a band of Gyorian smugglers; the only special magic they can manage is moving goods under the nose of unsuspecting Aetherian watchmen.”

“Are they dangerous?”

“The only danger you’re in at the moment is falling under my spell, especially if you keep staring at my mouth like that.”

The gall. “I was not?—”

He jested with me.

“You are attempting to distract me from my earlier question.”

Marek reached for my arm, pulled me toward him, and kissed me so thoroughly, I did forget what I meant to ask him. But then it came to me.

Pulling away reluctantly, I remained in his arms, looking up at him.

“I agree,” he said. “We should discuss this.”

“So you didn’t forget.”

“I forget nothing where you are concerned, Issa.”

“I don’t want to fall under your spell,” I said. “Not again.”

He sighed, as if torn. “Do you want me to release you?”

“No,” I said, being honest.

“Do you want me not to kiss you again?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Then it seems we are at an impasse. One which the Depths may very likely solve for us.” Marek’s wink matched his smile, and yet, there was something to his tone that told me he wasn’t entirely jesting.

“I suppose we are,” I admitted. “And perhaps, that is not such a bad thing?”

It was a lie, and I knew it. I was setting myself up for devastation, again.

But when this was over, my days would be filled with wresting control of Hawthorne back from Draven and calming tensions with increasingly emboldened Gyorian reivers.

I would take, if nothing else, these brief memories of a budding passion I knew nothing of before this journey.

“Not a bad thing at all,” he said, just before Marek lowered his head.