Page 34 of Wicked Tides #1

Dahlia

There is one thing that can destroy as easily as it can create

And that is trust.

~Unknown

Vidar took me back down to the cell where Meridan was now awake and sitting against the wall.

Our eyes met for a moment as Vidar stepped in with the keys and unlocked the gate.

Meridan stood, watching as he opened it and stepped aside.

Her gaze flicked toward me with concern and I just gestured with my chin, coaxing her out.

“What is happening?” she asked.

“Merilyn,” Vidar greeted with a sigh. “Dahlia will explain.”

“Meridan,” I corrected.

“That’s what I said,” he spoke over his shoulder, making his way back up the steps and leaving us both alone.

Meridan’s lips were parted with shock. She stood just inside the open cell, waiting for an explanation.

“We can’t go back in the water,” I said simply. “I believe Vidar and I have agreed not to kill each other until we understand what is truly going on. ”

“You believe?”

“It was unclear,” I rolled my eyes. “But this, as ridiculous as it sounds, is the safest place we can be.”

“Is it because you were attacked on that beach?”

I nodded. “And because of what happened to our sisters.”

I stepped back into the cell. Vidar hadn’t told us we could sleep anywhere else, so I slumped down against the wall with a quiet groan. Meridan sat down beside me, waiting for me to keep talking.

“What really happened?”

“She tried to kill me,” I explained. “A Kroan.”

“They’ve tried to kill you before.”

“This time it felt different. Men try to kill us. The sons. Our sisters. I don’t know what side I’ve been fighting for all these years.”

“Our side.”

“Voel and Kea are dead, Meri. Linya died just last year to hunters. The tides are changing. I feel it. We’ve been killing each other for so long, but the sons coming from the depths twist everything up. And we cannot fight a war with just the two of us.”

“Then we run. We go far out to sea. To the other side of the world. I don’t care.”

“I can’t. I don’t deserve peace. I deserve to see the end of this wretched road. I deserve to stay on these wicked tides, being tossed this way and that.”

“But Vidar is on the same tide and you’ve been harboring your hatred for him all these years. Take your vengeance. You’ve done it.” She gestured toward the open gate. “You’ve made him trust you. This is the time you’ve been waiting for. Take their silentiums and bend them to your will.”

I thought about him and the things he said. I had nowhere to go. The safest place truly was on his gods forsaken ship.

I never thought it could come to such a thing.

“I can’t,” I whispered.

“Why?” Meridan hissed. She scooted closer to me, speaking in hushed tones. “You showed mercy to him once before. In that cage. He’s manipulating you again. You’re weak to him and he will use that to destroy you all over again.”

Her words stung. I’d considered that idea numerous times just walking from his cabin to the cell.

I was still considering it. It angered me to think it could be possible that he was using me all over again, but what he’d said was just as true.

We were stuck. We were enemies to our own kind.

Enemies to man. Enemies to ourselves if we could not be smart.

But Vidar had fought the sons once and survived.

He’d fought others like me. He was strong and if we stayed on his good side (or as close to it as possible) we might just survive long enough to be the victors in the end.

“I have no reason to love our sisters anymore,” I admitted.

“They’ve declared me as worthy of death as they consider humans to be.

And now the sons wreak havoc on our home.

The waves will see more blood very soon.

I stayed loyal to them for years, Meri.” I ran my fingers over the newly healed claw marks on my chest. “But I believe I’m realizing just how alone we’ve been.

There is nothing to cling to. It is you and me and that is it in the end. ”

I stood up off the floor, walking toward the stairs. I needed fresh air and to hear the waves and the wind.

“Kea and Voel died helping you get revenge on that man up there,” she said. “For you to side with him—”

I spun, grabbing hold of Meridan’s neck and driving her back against the wall.

I was bigger than she was. I was Kroan. Stronger.

I was a killer, born to wrestle men to their graves and tear out throats and hearts with my bare fingers.

She was small. Her kind were shy and she was out of place on the surface.

The moment I overpowered her, her eyes went wide and her body stiffened.

“Who was it that cut him loose in the first place?” I said.

“Let’s not forget that you trusted him first. And I am not siding with him.

The thought alone makes me sick, but the waters are not safe, Meridan.

For either of us. Killing his crew and him leaves us with another empty ship and all those girls we both swore not to kill.

It leaves us stranded with an ocean full of killers and monsters around us.

Do you understand? I cannot lose you. If I lose you, I truly will have nothing to fight for.

So silence yourself and accept our fate for what it is today.

Tomorrow may be different, but today, we are here. ”

She nodded timidly and took a deep breath as soon as I released her.

I had not touched her in that way in a while, but fits of anger were something I’d been unable to control for some time.

Frustration ate at me. Madness caressed my thoughts at all hours of the day.

Perhaps I’d never made a right decision in my life, but I was too tangled in the web to be anyone else.

I was too far across the line to take anything back.

“Forgive me,” I whispered, stepping back. “You know I would never blame you if you left.”

She slowly shook her head, her shoulders slumping with defeat.

“Like you, I have nowhere else to go. No one else to cling to.”

“Then we remain lost together.” I stepped away from her again, putting more distance between us. “Stay here. I will find food for us both.”

I ventured up the steps, feeling strange being unhindered, and found a group of Vidar’s men on the deck, gathered around in conversation.

The conversation seemed a bit heated. When I saw Vidar leaning up against the mast, arms crossed, I could sense the exasperation on his face by the way he was pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Never have I questioned you, cap’n,” one man said. “But to let those bitches walk freely on this ship? It’s madness. I have half a mind to say you’re under their spell.”

“We are near Port Devlin,” Vidar said. “Like always, you’re free to leave. Find work on another ship.”

A couple of the men shook their heads at that.

“This is the damn Burning Rose,” Gus spoke up, puffing on his pipe. “And this is Captain Bone Heart. The lot of you won’t find a better ship and any other captain would have taken a finger just for questioning him.”

“Maybe hunting isn’t as lucrative as it used to be,” someone said .

“This isn’t hunting. If we were hunting, those women would be dead,” another man chimed in.

“Governor wants ‘em alive. That don’t mean we should let them walk around like part of the crew.”

“Maybe voting in a new cap’n is in order,” another spoke up.

Vidar looked the culprit in the eyes and straightened off the mast, stepping into the man’s space. The man immediately dropped his shoulders like a dog coming face to face with a wolf.

“Go ahead and vote, then,” Vidar said, staring unblinkingly at his crewman. “But I’m willing to bet I’m the only one on this ship ready to die for it.”

I believed him wholeheartedly and so did his men. Their talk of dethroning Vidar seemed to end as quickly as it began and slowly, men began to disperse. Gus leaned up against the mast beside Vidar, speaking softly so other ears could not hear. I walked onto the deck and caught both of their eyes.

Vidar had been the one to free us from the hold, but he still seemed almost offended that I’d ventured out of it. I raised my chin at him and slid my hands into the pockets of my coat.

“Need something already?” he asked.

“We’re hungry,” I said.

Gus and Vidar exchanged a look before Gus strolled off, blowing smoke into the air with a long exhale. Vidar groaned, rubbing the back of his neck as if to relieve tension, and pushed off the mast.

“Come, then,” he sighed.

I followed him below deck into a small kitchen area. The man with a terribly scarred face was playing a card game on a table with a teenage boy I’d never seen. Both of them stopped what they were doing and stood when we entered, whatever joy there was in their faces extinguished with my presence.

“Boil,” Vidar said. “Our guest is hungry.”

I didn’t expect him to leave me with his beloved cook and the boy and he didn’t.

He grabbed an apple from a wooden bin and sat on a stack of crates with one foot on a rickety stool as he carved into it with his dagger.

The apple was overripe and before he even took a bite he was cutting away bruising and brown spots.

Boil groaned as he stood, telling the boy to grab something from a drying rack.

When the boy returned, he had half a slab of dried meat, which he placed on a thick cutting board for Boil to begin slicing into.

I stood at a distance, watching the precise cuts the cook made in the salted chunk.

He put a few on a plate before the boy returned again with a round loaf of bread that had a heavily browned exterior.

When the cook cut into it, the inside was still soft and preserved.

None of it was fresh and none of it looked particularly appetizing, but I hadn’t eaten food with taste in a long time.