Page 37 of The Ever King

The corner of the door jabbed my hip again. I hurried out of the way, facing the entrance, ready to kick or claw until I could get my hands on a weapon.

The woman who’d sneered at me near the helm tripped over the lip after the door opened too quickly.

“Damn you,” she grumbled.

Once her stance was righted, she adjusted a black leather hat over a single braid in her stormy hair. A strange color, like the silver of mist with dark wisps of thunderclouds woven throughout. Her skin was smooth brown with a splatter of darker freckles over her nose and a pink scar across the center of her throat. One silver hoop pierced an ear. More than one sea fae only had one hoop or spike through one ear. In the case of this woman, she didn’t have a choice.

Her second ear was rolled inward, as though it had never formed.

She narrowed her earthy eyes, dark, but flecked with gold and green, like a forest after rain. “Did you not see the bed? Or are earth fae just that stupid?”

“Think your words will wound me?”

“No, I was asking.” She pointed to the cot. “Did you not see the damn bed?”

I paused. Strange, but she seemed to speak in earnest. Like I was nothing but an empty-headed fae for not accepting the generosity of a stiff cot in my captor’s bedchamber. For a fleeting moment her logic and straightforward tongue reminded me of Mira.

I pressed a hand to my heart, missing her. Missing them all.

“By the seas,” the woman said, gawking with a bit of horror when my chin trembled. “Don’t tell me you’re going to cry over not taking the cot. There’s always tonight.”

I clenched my fists, using the bite of my fingernails in the meat of my palm to dull the anguish of not knowing. “I was thinking you . . . you remind me of my friend. She was taken away during the fighting, but I still don’t know if she’s alive.”

The woman arched a brow, perhaps stunned at the honesty instead of a snide remark.

What was the point in tossing insults back and forth? She was the one armed. I didn’t want to risk one of the knives on her belt flying at me before I got my hands on one.

When the stun subsided, the woman shrugged, and kicked the door closed at her back. She strode across the space, humming, and wrenched open two doors in the wall, revealing a built-in wardrobe. The space was stuffed with mostly black with a few crimson scarves and one green coat trimmed in silver.

The woman ignored the clothes and returned with a clay basin and wooden ewer.

“You’re going to wash.” She set the basin down with a nod. As if her word was final and there’d be no arguing.

“Hard to do so without a drop of water.”

“Ah, you do have brains.” She smiled. A true smile of amusement. It was more unnerving than a sneer.

I did not want to witness humanity, not a shred of decency, among the sea folk. I wanted to see them for what I’d made them in my mind—cold, cruel, and monstrous.

The woman turned back to the wardrobe and removed a plain, dark top with sleeves that billowed more than I was accustomed, and reached inside a satchel over her shoulder, tossing a bundle of deep purple fabric onto the tabletop.

“That’s mine, and I’ll expect you to care for it.” The woman’s mouth pinched. “Don’t like trading my things. I knew the second I saw you I’d be the one tending to your every bleeding whim, seeing how no one else here has breasts.”

I arched a brow. “We’re the only women?”

“Not many women in the Ever set sail. Certainly not with the king.” She paused, a slow grin on her mouth. “Except me.”

I considered asking more, then stomped any curiosity down, buried under heavy layers of disdain and mistrust.

“Get washed,” she went on. “Get dressed. You’ll start to stink locked up in here.”

“Then don’t keep me locked in here.”

“Oh, you’ll see the ship.” She scoffed. “I’ve been assigned to show you about as we go.”

I swallowed through a scratch. “And where exactly are we going?”

“We’ll be making our way back to the royal city,” she said. “Wallow in here the entire time and you’ll start talking to the walls. Small quarters, with nothing but sea around you, starts to play tricks on the mind if you don’t keep busy.”