Page 13 of The Sea Witch (Salt & Sorcery #1)

to the only practical means available to them: piracy.

Having tasted the luxury of freedom piracy had provided, she wouldn’t go back. Too long had she been denied the right to be

whomever she desired. He’d no notion of that, no concept that it wasn’t the plunder that brought her and her crew to these

waters, but a treasure far beyond monetary value.

Why should the sailing master know any of this? It wouldn’t change his opinion of her or her crew. His beliefs about them

didn’t matter.

“The difference between you and me,” she said, “is that you pretend your theft and murder is a patriotic act.”

“There’s nothing of me that you understand.”

She planted her hands on her hips as she turned to him. “I understand that men go to sea because they are forced to, or because

they’re searching for themselves. Impressed sailors of low birth don’t usually rise high enough to become warrant officers

and sailing masters, and they don’t speak as you do, with words taken from expensive books.”

His mouth tightened.

“Which all makes me believe you joined the navy to carve out your place in the world. In search of glory, maybe, when none

was available to you on land.”

There was a long silence, before he said quietly, “To follow the path of glory he wanted for me.”

“He.”

The sailing master spoke softly, almost to himself. “Yet I hadn’t the ability to captain my own ship, as he did, and I took

better to reading charts and stars and finding elusive longitude and guiding the ship safely to wherever it needed to go.

There’s... utility in that. Despite what he said. I found my purpose.”

Her regard skimmed over the clean lines of the sailing master’s face, how his jaw tightened as Priestley spoke of this he . Whoever that man was to him, the shadow he cast over his life was long, and darkened the sailing master’s path to this day.

There was something in his words, the finality that came from grief and loss. She’d known it herself when her parents had

been felled by scarlet fever, leaving her to the care of indifferent relatives, when she’d learned from her marriage that

the love of songs and dreams wasn’t the same as the love a husband used to fetter his wife and crush her spirit. She’d known

grief, too, when her own sister had been killed by a mob.

“I am sorry,” she said softly. “For burning your maps.”

He gave a slight frown. Still, he must’ve heard the sincerity in her voice, because he answered, “You don’t have my forgiveness,

but you do have my understanding.”

They were quiet together, each taking the measure of the other. All around them were the sounds of a ship at sea: creaking

timbers, waves slapping against the hull, voices of the company gossiping and telling tales as they took the late watch. She’d

grown used to these noises over the past year, comforted by them, far more than the wind rattling the bare tree branches in

the depths of a Massachusetts winter or the yells of men bringing their fishing boats into the dock. Those noises only heightened

her loneliness, and reminded her she was powerless.

The sea was her home now. It strengthened her resolve and gave her magic life. No one would take that from her. Including

this sailing master.

He held the key to finding the fail-safe, but she’d have to find some different means of learning it other than dreamwalking.

Best not to meddle in magic that she’d little understanding of, power that held consequences neither she nor Stasia grasped,

and so it had to be set aside.

“Sleep now.” Alys nodded toward the hammock, slightly swaying as the Sea Witch rose and fell upon the waves. “However they run ships in the navy, here we start early.”

“Four bells,” he said. On land that time would be six in the morning.

Sitting on her berth, she pulled off her boots and let them fall to the planks with a thud. She undid the large buckle of

her wide belt, but set her flintlock on her pillow, before pulling off her leather tunic. Her hands hesitated at the hem of

her linen shirt.

“Funny,” she said softly.

“This scenario is about as far from amusing as we are from Shanghai.” He’d clambered into the hammock, though it had taken a small amount of fumbling due to his bound hands and feet. Still, he’d managed to be as agile as anyone could be, given the circumstances.

“You won’t hear any laughter from me.” Her fingers plucked at the hem of her billowing shirt. “It’s only... most nights

I sleep nude.”

There was a long silence, and then his voice came low and deep on the other side of the cabin.

“As do I.”

His answer ran like a rough hot palm across her flesh. She ignored the shiver dancing over her skin, and the images his reply

had stoked in her mind. She could only guess at the body that was covered by his clothing, but she’d no doubt he wasn’t one

of those soft gentlemen who didn’t do a lick of work to keep a ship running. He had kept pace with her through the streets of St. Gertrude.

She pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes. As soon as the Sea Witch docked next, she’d find herself a warm and eager body to enjoy until she was thoroughly spent and ready to resume her solitary

life.

As much as she told Stasia that she’d stay alert and armed for the duration of the night, Alys wouldn’t be too foolish and

strip completely while sharing her quarters with a man she’d met a handful of hours ago. A man who was in every capacity her

enemy. Yet maidenly behavior wasn’t her way, not any longer. Those embarrassed and chaste years were behind her.

She worked off her snug buckskin breeches and threw them beside her boots.

“Jesus.”

His oath was low and barely audible.

She smirked to herself. Without pride she could claim that her legs were fine ones.

Not a lady’s legs—they were too muscled for that—but they were sleek, and she never felt unsteady on them.

Clad only in her long loose shirt, she climbed into her berth, though she was careful not to give him an eyeful of her bare arse as she did so.

A nice arse, to be sure, and he was entirely unworthy of

seeing it.

As for the muslin binding around her breasts, which she kept secure for ease of movement in combat, that she’d leave on. It

wasn’t especially comfortable. She always looked forward to that time at the end of the day when she could unwrap the length

of cloth from around her chest. Not tonight. He definitely didn’t deserve seeing her teats, even with her linen shirt covering

them.

She doused the horn lantern beside her berth by taking the fire back into herself, letting its spark become part of memories

of midwinter bonfires. Lying back, she touched her hand to her trusty flintlock on the pillow beside her head. The weapon

was already primed and loaded, and she held tightly to her dagger, which had been a gift from the crew after their first successful

raid against a British merchantman and was as much a treasured possession as it was a weapon.

Thanks to the irons binding him, she did indeed hear his every shift and movement.

“Keep that clinking and clanking down, damn you,” she growled into the darkness.

“Freeing me is the solution to that,” he answered.

“I’m no cribbage peg to be moved around the board, Sailing Master.”

“Stale mate, then.”

“The other option is you could settle the fuck down and go to sleep,” she retorted. “God—you had better not be one of those

types who leap up and down all night like a flying fish.”

“My duties aboard the Jupiter keep me busy from four bells to eight bells,” he replied, his voice deep in the shifting shadows of her quarters. “The moment

I lay down, I’m asleep.”

“Chasing me all around St. Gertrude, onto your ship, onto my ship, getting captured. That qualifies as a full day.”

“My current circumstances aren’t calming.”

“Manacled and shackled,” she agreed. “A prisoner aboard a witch’s pirate ship.”

“That, and...” He cleared his throat. “Sharing close quarters with a woman... It’s not something I have much familiarity

with.”

She lifted onto her elbow and regarded him as he lay in his hammock. The cabin was dim, save for the gleam of moonlight casting

diamond-paned shadows through the long window. In the darkness, her quarters became as small as a pair of cupped hands, warm

and close.

“Priestley by name as well as behavior. Or... you prefer men.”

“Neither are true.”

“A wife? A sweetheart?”

“Neither, again.” There was a moment’s silence before he spoke once more. “Most of the crew at sea go in search of company

once they get shore leave. The same for me, when given the opportunity.”

“Women aren’t models of chastity, either, despite what preachers insist.”

“Yourself included?” He turned enough so that the pale light shining into the cabin revealed the gleam of his eyes as he gazed

at her. His fingers were interlaced across his flat abdomen, but there was tension in them, the veins on the back of his hands

standing out.

“This furnace burns hot.” She could scarce believe she told him such things, but there was a strange intimacy about speaking

with him in the darkness, as if the words themselves drifted from her like so much weightless flotsam. Including telling him

about the fact that she could barely go a day without some release.

Damn, with him in her quarters, she’d have no means of giving herself a climax. That would prove a problem.

“Mine as well,” he answered, barely audible.

They stared at each other, the air thickening and heating more than the tropical climate surrounding them. He swallowed, and then returned his attention to the deckhead above.

“Then you’re a liar,” she said at last.

“The hell I am,” he fired back.

“You do share a room with a woman.”

“A bed for a few hours,” he allowed, “but I never stay the night.”

She continued to stare at the sharp line of his profile. “A few pumps and then you weigh anchor.”

“Well,” he said after a moment, “isn’t that what’s supposed to happen?”

“By the tides, you have been sorely led astray by many misguided voices.”