Page 83 of The Shard and the Serpent (Shard Daughters #1)

For Always

Warrick

My boots hit Saltmaw’s deck with a splash, Rayze hunched over the opposite rail. I race to her, snatching an axe from the ground, and she rips an arrow from her coat, spinning toward me in the same second I meet her.

“It’s just me,” I say, bringing the axe up to block her attack. “Hey. Hey . Baby.”

Her eyes are red-rimmed, her lips trembling. She pulls back and lets her arrow clatter to the deck.

I lower the axe and snake an arm around her waist, hauling her against me, but she plants her palms against my chest and shoves, striding to the railing and looking past Saltmaw toward Fang’s Edge.

“He doesn’t need to be alive to kill us,” she spits. “All of this was just to keep us focused on him while he made a final move to take out Synlon.”

My gaze swipes to where a pool of blood stains the deck. I search the shadows for Torren, then I look to the rail where I found her in understanding.

Fucking Kraken scum. “He jumped?” I growl. “The motherfucker didn’t even give you the decency of landing a shot, did he?” I glare down at the axe.

Rayze swivels around. “Who cares?” she snarls and gestures out to the city. “We’re fucked, Warrick. Absolutely fucked. I’ve no way of stopping The Rigged from hurting what’s left of Synlon.”

I scowl. “You’re a lot of things, vicious, but you don’t give up.”

She grits her teeth. “If I had my sisters with me, I wouldn’t question success,” she says.

Red and Fangs . My breath catches. Fangs taken by The Storm. Red—“Is Red dead?” I ask, my voice hoarse.

Rayze looks at me, her hard glare softening.

“You remember?” When I nod she grasps the rail and bows her head over the side, her dark hair stringing around her like a veil.

“She’s not dead,” she says but her voice wavers.

“I think she wishes she was, though, and Sonya—we don’t know where she is. We’re searching, but we don’t know.”

My shoulder brushes hers as I follow her gaze out across Synlon. “We’ll find her,” I promise. “But there’s no doubt in my mind Fangs can handle herself, wherever she is.”

Her knuckles whiten against the rail, her shoulders shuddering with a heavy breath. Rain breaks against us, Saltmaw’s sails whipping in the wind.

I nudge her chin to lift with the tip of the axe, forcing her eyes back to mine. “Angel,” I mutter, the pain I find terrifying and endless. She’s lost so much. Too much. Not anymore. I won’t let her lose Synlon, too.

“Did you forget about our deal?” I ask. “Torren killed himself. Not you. Not me. Are you telling me you’re waving the white flag when there’s still so much blood to spill?”

She sniffs, her throat working and jaw flexing, but those green eyes flare with desire and I grin.

“You wanna know something about Saltmaw? Something Ruel told me?” I ask her. “Could’ve been bullshit, but he’s always been way too proud of the stories surrounding this fucking ship.”

Her brow knits. “What?”

My smile presses wide. “It’s sentient,” I say, “or so he claimed.”

Rayze frowns looking down at the deck. “I don’t understand—”

I snatch her hand, pulling free a finger and making a quick slice to its tip. She hisses and jerks back.

“What the fuck?” she growls.

I nod to the blood bubbling free. “Only Trask blood can wield the ship.”

Rayze stares down at the blood rinsing down her finger.

“Baby, it’s okay,” I say, and she squeezes her eyes shut, her lips parting with an uneasy exhale. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

She blinks up at me, her green eyes like dark glass. “Fuck, Warrick,” she whispers, ragged and torn, before she grabs the back of my neck and wrenches my mouth to hers.

The axe falls between us, clattering to the deck, my arms wrapping around her and clutching her close.

Gods, she tastes like dread—memories prickle through my skull—and lightning. Electric and so fucking heartbreaking. I don’t need my mind if she’s in my arms.

Her hands curl into my hair, thunder roaring through our city and rumbling across Saltmaw’s deck.

We hold onto each other like lifelines, and I swear the longer I kiss her, the more I remember.

Fleeting smiles and backhanded compliments.

Us on a beach, in a tavern, in stables, in a tunnel.

Us fighting . Each other, cronies, the Bond.

The way it felt when we cut the threads binding our souls, terrifying but liberating.

I kiss her, and I know her, and if it’s the only thing I ever know for certain, then that’s still a damn good life.

My brow furrows as more memories flood. Harsher to grasp but beautiful. I kiss harder, needing to remember these the most—the places so long warped and hidden in my mind that I’d almost given up on knowing them again.

Garden hedges and summer nights spent sprawled beneath Rathem’s stars. Dodging wooden arrows before Ruel and I cheered a young Hallie on as she hit a target with real steel.

Then our scrawny legs dangling over Squallspire’s cliff edge, overlooking the ocean and all of it’s ships.

“Warrick?” Hallie asked turning to me, her face lit by the moon.

All day, it hadn’t rained, but—just as she turned to me—it started to, and I didn’t mind, because that was us. Where there was Hallie, there was a storm.

“Yeah, Hal?” I returned, laying back as I kicked my boots over the lip of the cliff, my back indenting into the grass. I laced my fingers behind my head and stared at the sky, dark clouds swallowing stars and rain drops drizzling down in a light mist.

Ruel sat on our left, plucking at his lute, humming softly.

“You ever hear of the Angel of Sin?” she continued.

“Oh, not this again,” Ruel grumbled, but his scarred mouth hooked with a grin. “She’s obsessed.”

“So are you,” she cried in indignation, propping on an arm to look over me at her brother. “You love making her up with us.”

I cocked a brow at Ruel, and the bastard shook his head.

“She’s lyin’,” he muttered and resumed playing chords.

Hallie yanked at the grass, tugging it out of the ground while her glare never left Ruel.

“You’re the liar,” she grumbled. Then she looked at me.

“We like to play a game where we take the old stories our mom tells us and make them fit our present. He’s the one who dressed Rayze.

Boots and a trench coat. She’s awesome. She can do anything she wants. ”

Ruel stopped playing, drawing our gazes. He took in a breath and flicked his one eye between us before he shrugged and picked at a single string in embarrassment. “Don’t forget her tricorne hat, Hal.”

I laughed, and Hallie smirked.

“She can’t do anything ,” Ruel said and gave his sister a pointed look, “unless she’s got a little pirate in her, and that’s the truth. Isn’t it, Ivor?”

“Stupid would fall under anything, so yeah. You’d be right,” I said, the words barely out of my mouth before Ruel crushed his lute into my gut. “ Fuck .”

“Warrick?” Hallie asked. Hallie? “Warrick, can you hear me?”

I frown.

“Warrick, hey.” Rayze . Green eyes trace my face frantically.

I reach a hand to my mouth, skimming my fingers over my lips. The memory seeps away, Rathem trading for Synlon.

“Your kiss, it—” A strangled noise leaves me before I shake my head. “I’m fine, angel. I just remembered something.”

Her. I remembered her.

I hadn’t been sure if the Hallie memories coming back to me were a figment of my imagination. Memories my brain was creating just so I could have something to hold onto, even if they weren’t real— but that was real . It had to be.

Gently, I take the flaps of her trench coat into my grasp and grin in disbelief.

“Rayze Angeline. Angel of Sin,” I murmur. “I thought that was a name Fate gave you, but it was that character you and your brother used to argue about.”

Rayze wavers. She stares at me for a long moment. “You remember me telling you about her?” she asks. “Warrick, that memory was before the initial wipe. I thought those were—”

“Gone?” I finish, a smile breaking across my face.

One flourishes across hers, too, her eyes crinkling.

“No hat,” I say, nodding to her head. “The official uniform had a tricorne.”

Her smile wobbles. Then it falls.

I brush her cheek. “Maybe one day?”

Her eyes flick to where her father’s blood washes away from the deck.

“You’ve still got a brother, angel,” I mutter.

“A brother who knew his sister would be sold,” she returns, her jaw clenching.

I hesitate. “Baby, so did I, and maybe you don’t forgive me. Maybe you never will. But you made room for me, and fuck, I hate to think I stole the space in your life that should’ve been family.”

Rayze takes my hand.

“You are my family,” she says, stealing my fucking breath away.

“It’s different with us, Warrick. You didn’t remember that you made that mistake, and the minute you did, you bared it all.

Ruel—” She tucks her hair behind her ear, shifting her weight.

“He’s known for thirteen years . No memory loss.

Nothing standing in his way except The Accords to find me and apologize, but he never did. ”

“He never stopped looking for you,” I tell her, remembering Ruel that day, just after The Bid. “I took a few nails to the stomach thanks to you.”

She releases a breathy laugh. “Because of me, Warrick, or because you’ve got a terrible knack for enjoying punishment?”

I grin. “A bit of both.”

She nods and takes a step back from me. It’s a small step, but it feels like a thousand. “My brother is the least of my worries right now.” Then she lunges toward the steering wheel, rounding it and all its levers.

I grab the axe and haul it with me as I trail my girl, her forehead creased as she stares down at a smooth sphere, the clear indent of a hand ingrained into it. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking if what you said is true, and this ship only responds to Trask blood,” she breathes and rips a knife from its sheathe at her ankle. “Then I better give it some.”

She drags the blade across her palm with a tight breath, blood pooling dark in her hand. Then she presses it firmly into the waiting indent on the control pad.

The sphere beneath her palm flares to life.

Pale light snakes outward from the point of contact, branching like veins through the smooth metal. The pad glows from within, a slow, pulsing illumination that steadies into a constant, expectant light.

Levers and dials shift and settle with clean, mechanical clicks. Indicators blink on, one by one, bathing the controls in a cold, ready glow of neon. The low hum beneath our boots deepens into a steady, vibrating heartbeat, spreading through the deck, the rails, the rigging.

Steam hisses in measured bursts from vents along the console, misting the air and catching the new light in drifting swirls.

We stiffen, the ship settling into a living readiness that seems to center on the blood-stained sphere beneath her hand.

Rayze gasps, and I— beautiful . She is so fucking beautiful.

Her boots lift slightly from the deck, her head tilting back as her lashes flutter closed. “I can feel the ship,” she says. Then her eyes snap open and she rips from the control pad, moving to the wheel as if she’s steered Saltmaw all her life.

“Warrick,” she says, her voice tight as she studies the levers and knobs by the wheel. “If we don’t stop The Rigged, anyone who evacuated the Underground will be slaughtered.”

I eye her, watching that brain of hers work, her nose scrunching in concentration. “Tell me what you need, vicious.”

I hate myself for ever hating her. Honestly, it’s the only sign I really had lost my Godsdamn mind, because she is everything . Just watching her choose to fight again and again—it’s enough to make any man weak.

“I’m too far away,” she says, “but if I can position myself between Brass and the storm, maybe I can control their threads. The lightning from the storm and the smoke from Brass both fuel my power.” But her lips falter and she looks to me. “The first wave of Rigged—I won’t be able to stop them.”

My jaw hardens as I look out across our city.

“My snake,” she says softly. “I know I don’t deserve to ask anything more from you, but I can’t let them all die.”

I drag my gaze back to hers, to the worry pinching her brows. Then I offer her a half-smile and grab the back of her neck, pulling her into me. “One more,” I tell her, bringing my mouth down hard against hers.

I yank away before I can sink too deep, but not before another memory resurfaces. Her straddling me. Taking me deep and kissing me slow. Making me let go and love her.

“I still hate you,” I murmur, recalling the words she spoke with that sinful smirk and husky voice I’ll never get enough of. I draw away with a sad smile and back up to the rail, grasping the axe tight.

“Gods,” she says. Her throat works, her eyes shining as she realizes which memory I must’ve stolen back.

Slowly, her smile hooks to match mine. “I don’t hate you, Warrick Ivor.

” Her hair and trench whip in time with Saltmaw’s sails, starlight glimmering in the tear that escapes her hardened armor of strength. “Not at all.”

“For always?” I ask her, swinging a leg over the rail, and taking hold of one of the dangling ropes leading into the chaos below.

She dips her chin, grasping the wheel as if to steady herself. “ For always .”