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15

Hope

I t had taken Hope all of five hours to realize that her daggers and her panom magic were pretty useless in the navia.

These five hours, Ciaran, Stevian, and Nyxara had been moving their hands with complex movements, creating twirls of shadows of different sizes to guide the massive vehicle across the Radel Sea. Ayla, Hope, and Ciaran had Given an invisibility barrier earlier, and now it was all a matter of moving far away from Thyria so that, when the sun appeared on the horizon, no one could see them floating on the waters.

Nina, Raoul, Indianna, and Ayla had gone to their respective cabins hours ago, but Hope knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep. Not while knowing the three courtrades were working as hard as they could to beat time and sunlight. Not only would she not be able to, but she didn’t want to.

Even if standing on the deck meant she was going to end up with the lowest body temperature she had ever experienced. The unstoppable wind was angry; the strong waves seemed to speak in an ancient language that sounded threatening and final. How the courtrades were managing to stay in a straight line towards the North, that was a Cardinals-blessed miracle. She wouldn’t even blame them if, come day, they realized they had gone completely the wrong way.

She was glad that her two long, dark braids kept her hair—except a few strands here and there—somehow controlled amongst said wind. But Ciaran’s long, usually smooth hair . . . It was almost unrecognizable.

The chaotic look combined with the permanent, incessant focus of his blue stare on the dark sky above them, and the shadows dancing around his body at his order was mesmerizing. Hope couldn’t be able to say how long she had been staring at the movements of his arms, at the way he fixed his feet on the floor when the air currents were too wild, at how he seemed to pull the shadows from nowhere at times. At other times it looked like Llunal was sending them straight from the clouds above.

He briefly switched his attention from the sky to Hope, and she couldn’t take her almost black eyes from his as her heart jumped. His blue eyes peeked through a disarray of dark hair covering his face, the metal ring of his bottom lip and his metallic arm shining despite the darkness that seemed to have swallowed the navia whole. The same darkness that was pushing the navia across the sea.

Hope’s arm tickled as she felt ink incoming and, for a change, it didn’t come with the sting of pain the Organ Mandor always sent his inks with. No. She knew who had sent this ink before she looked at her forearm and saw Ciaran’s handwriting in dark green.

She hadn’t failed to notice it. During her five-hour-long, thorough observation of Ciaran and his interaction with the night, she hadn’t seen him sweat. Not one drop, despite the exhausting, muscle-draining effort he was enduring. Stevian and Nyraxa didn’t have a single drop of sweat, either. The white-haired old man had started to look slightly tired over the past hour, but he was relentless, and so were his shadows.

At one point, hours ago, Hope had tried to Give herself a blanket, thicker clothes, and a windproof coat. They had been useless despite having put all of them on. The navia either didn’t allow items that helped with body temperature, or didn’t care about them, since the courtrades didn’t require said items.

She hoped the cabins were not as cold, or she didn’t rule out the risk of finding the other passengers frozen by the time the sun shone above. Surely the sun would warm them up.

The sound of Ciaran’s steps was indistinguishable but they didn’t falter. If he was going to tell Hope off, she was ready to tell him to focus on his duties.

“You are not going inside, are you?” he asked, getting closer to her ear so that she could hear him. The thunderous sound of a wave crashing against the navia synchronized with the loud whistle of the wind.

“I’m not.” She almost had to shout to make herself heard.

His lips tensed and Hope couldn’t tell if it was from frustrated amusement or desperation. “Thought so,” he said. “You’re shaking. May I help?”

Hope frowned, unsure if she had heard him properly, or exactly what he meant.

“I can help you, if you let me,” he repeated.

“I’m okay.”

The slight bob of his throat was the only sign that he had chuckled. “Sure. You will not be okay in a few minutes. Let me help you.” Even through the now roaring sound of the waves and the wind, Hope felt the urgency in his voice.

He was not going to let this go. Hope sighed and nodded. “If it makes you go back to shadow business and not be distracted.”

Ciaran walked behind her and kneeled. She felt both his hands around her ankles, circling her legs in steady and rhythmic movements as his hands trailed upwards. And upwards.

Hope’s eyes widened. She could feel warmth where his hands had barely touched her, as if a thin coat of protection against the wind was being created. Maybe the source of warmth was not solely the layer of protection he was building for her, which Hope now saw was made of shadows.

His hands continued trailing upwards, and when he reached the height of her waist, there was an inch between his hands and her leather clothes as he kept circling her body. The sudden need for him to cover such a small distance was overwhelming, as it was the closeness of his pine and night scent and the warmth, the warmth, the warmth. The warmth definitely not caused by his protective layer alone.

She never thought her teeth could be clattering and her head and hands shaking, and yet the lower part of her body felt so . . . Not cold. So very not cold at all.

Bless the Cardinals for ensuring Ciaran was behind her and not in front of her, because the look on her face would have revealed more than she wanted. More than she should. Even if his circling touch on her lower abdomen made her inhale as deeply as if she could swallow all the air in the Radel Sea at once.

Now that he was finally standing, she felt the strands of his hair flying and slamming against the back of her neck, right where her red panom mark was. She felt his metallic hand across her thin, tight clothes around her breasts, and the tension between the distance of his touch and her body seemed to be electrical and as dangerous as the most fatal wave. A wave that could crash lands and worlds at once.

A rational part of Hope seemed to want to remember why she was not allowed to have his touch on her. Something about being forbidden, but every time she tried to grab the thought, it slipped from her mind again, replaced by his hands now touching her neck in steady circles. When his metallic hand touched her panom mark, her eyes rolled backwards, her head tilting slightly upwards and colliding against the curvature of his neck. She thanked the Fifth for the loud noise of their surroundings for the first time that night. The loud noise that covered her own, not-as-loud-but-still-very-loud noise. Her moan .

She inhaled deeply and took a step forwards, spinning around to face Ciaran. His eyes were glazed, and he breathed as if this had been as much effort as controlling the hefty shadows he had reined to cover and move the navia.

“Last bit, I promise,” he said, stepping towards her, lifting his hands. If she thought her heart couldn’t beat any faster, she was wrong.

He placed his palms on top of her head, moving them down to her chin with a slow caress that sent shivers down her spine when his biological and metallic indexes touched the sides of her lips at the same time.

“Th—” she started, unsuccessfully. She swallowed before trying again. “Thank you, I feel much . . . warmer.”

Warm to the point of boiling, in fact. Ciaran smiled, his eyes pinning her down as if he was absorbing her, and without further ado, he went back to where Stevian and Nyxara were still reigning the power of darkness.