Page 49 of Wicked Tides #1

Dahlia

A sorrow never felt

is a disease never cured

~The Wanderer

I stood at the edge of a rickety dock where it was clear boats no longer came.

While Vidar and his men loaded up fresh supplies onto the Rose, I stood looking out into the gently rolling waves.

Thelasa had given me an old dress of hers and being so tightly cinched into the heavy fabric was making me a little irritable, but she insisted.

She gave me a strange speech about not proving her wrong and not breaking her trust, but I didn’t hear all of it.

I was mostly focused on the way she touched me without fear.

People didn’t do that.

If they lived long enough to know what I was, they usually looked at me with hate, disgust, or dread. Perhaps Thelasa had been a little shaky when she handed the dress to me, but she covered her fear well. I half expected the dress to have been soaked in hemsbane, but the fibers were clean.

When I finally spotted Meridan’s ghostly silhouette beneath the water, I straightened.

Her head breached the surface and her white eyes fixed on me.

There was a sense of bitterness in the way she ogled my dress like I was wearing the skin of our own people.

As she drifted toward the dock, she lifted her head fully from the water and pursed her full lips with disappointment.

“Are you one of them now?” she muttered.

I knelt on the dock’s edge and hung my feet over. I had removed my shoes as soon as Thelasa walked away and hid them in a corner. I hated the feel of shoes. And it made shifting that much more tedious. Feeling the cold water around my ankles soothed my dry skin.

“The tavern woman simply gave me the dress to make her feel less uneasy in my presence,” I sighed. “I suppose it does make me look eerily human.”

“Human. And ugly.”

I snorted at her comment as she rested her elbows on the dock beside me.

“What’s going on?”

“We’re leaving. Vidar swears we’re not long for the shores where the girls were taken.”

“Well, the waters are quiet at the very least. I’ve been keeping to the grottos, but even so, I’ve not heard the xhoth since we arrived.”

“They’re busy gorging on that other crew, I’m sure.”

The horrifying thought that I was nearly devoured alongside the men came to me and I shivered. It must have been more visible than I thought because Meridan raised her head, alert.

“What is it?” she asked.

There were many things I wanted to say. She didn’t know what happened between Vidar and me and I feared what she would think if I told her.

What we did the previous night was beyond the game of manipulation I was playing.

I went to him selfishly, in need of relief.

Of pain. Of feeling. I hadn’t tried to manipulate him.

I simply offered myself in hopes that he’d accept, and he did.

No, I was not going to tell her about that yet.

But I had much more to say and it was eating at me.

“I hear them,” I said .

Her brows furrowed. “Now?”

“No. I mean, I hear their words. Their voice.” I looked at her, catching her gaze. “In my dreams. They’re calling to me, Meridan, and I don’t know why.”

“Our people… they go to the depths and they come back with child or—”

“I know. I know what going to them will do to me. If they choose not to tear me apart, I’ll return with no shred of myself left.

So my choices are death or madness. I can only…

” I choked on my words, trying not to sound as broken as I was.

“I will never see the light again, whether I return or not. I will never know freedom and they will never grant me the relief of death. It is the only hell I will not stand for. I will die before then.”

She reached out and grabbed my hand, squeezing it in her long, bony fingers.

“I will not let them have you.”

“You cannot stop them. And I don’t expect you to.”

“Then what will you do? Being in the water is more dangerous than ever if the father has set his eyes on you.”

“Then I must not go in the water.”

She tore her hand away as if she’d burned herself. “You cannot stay forever on land.”

“Then I have nowhere.”

When I arrived at the dock where the men were loading themselves into a boat, I saw Meridan’s pale silhouette heading for the Rose.

I picked up my thick skirts and stepped toward the edge of the dock when a hand appeared in front of me.

I looked up to see Gus offering to help me step down.

I swallowed, wondering if he might just pull me onto a blade the moment I accepted his help.

But then… would that be the worst thing?

I slowly placed my hand in his, feeling all of his rough callouses rub against my fingers, and stepped down into the boat. I was getting strange looks from all the men, but not hateful ones. Not anymore. I wasn’t sure how to take it.

I sat down and glimpsed Vidar at the head of the boat coiling a long length of rope as the men began to row.

It was strange not being in the water with Meridan, but the beckoning from the sons had planted seeds in me that I was not used to feeling.

I feared the water now. I’d been afraid of things before, but never like that.

Fearing men and monsters was one thing. Fearing my own madness was another.

When we arrived at the ship, I found that climbing the ladders in a dress was not an easy task.

I felt like I was wrapped in kelp. I finally reached the railing to find Vidar there with another helping hand.

I hesitated even longer that time, unsure what to do with that kindness.

Or whatever he intended it to be. I took his hand nonetheless, swinging a leg over only to get myself even more tangled up in the fabric.

I stumbled a bit to get on board and quickly righted myself, pulling my hand out of Vidar’s.

“The girls are below deck putting out their new bedding from Thelasa,” he said. His eyes skimmed over me and my troublesome dress. “No need to wear that here. You’re not trying to impress anyone.”

I stepped away from him with a single nod and waited by the railing as the last of the men boarded.

Once the jolly boat was secured, the men all began dispersing to their duties.

The sails were dropped. The anchor was raised.

Words were exchanged. It was almost another language the way Vidar barked orders, helping with things around the ship to get her prepared to sail.

I made myself scarce, walking to the far end of the deck as men moved about, but no matter where I went or what the men were doing, my eyes found Vidar again and again.

He removed his coat almost as soon as he came aboard and he’d rolled the sleeves of his loose, cotton shirt up to his elbows, showing off leather cuffs and jewelry and a forearm tattoo that looked like a tentacled sea beast. I glimpsed the leather bracer laced to his right forearm, securing false fingers where real ones used to be, and was reminded of our brutal past.

But it seemed less significant that day.

He was moving large sacks of beans down into the kitchen. The way he slung one sack over his shoulder and held another in his hand made my blood warm.

How he touched me the previous night still burned on my skin.

My lips still tingled and my tongue still tasted of him.

It should not have been that way. I had intended—I had hoped—to get what I needed from him and be done with it, but he’d left marks on me.

Marks I could still feel. Marks that were not just on the surface where they could be seen.

I’d been foolish. There was not one person in the world that I had ever been truly vulnerable with. Not Meridan or Voel or Kea. Not my mother or my other sisters. And yet some broken part of me sought out Vidar when I was at my weakest and I let him see me stripped to the core.

Pain and punishment had been my salvation before.

Guilt followed me like a parasite, choking the will to exist right out of my soul.

I craved pain. I needed to hurt for all that I’d done or failed to do.

I couldn’t do it myself. Every time I tried, I found I was a coward.

A part of me prayed someone else would end it so I did not have to.

And then I saw Vidar on the edge of that lake, the black cloud of sorrow and regret hovering just as thick over his head as it was above mine.

I was drawn to it. Admittedly, I sought it out, thinking perhaps if he was just as wounded as I was then he’d be more inclined to do something so outrageous as touching me.

If I could not punish myself, I trusted he could. And he did. I laid myself open to him, stripped of pride, of armor, begging for relief. He was a cruel man and I needed cruel hands to absolve me.

And when he put his hands on me, the sting of agony and the threat of obliteration was as sweet as I imagined it would be.

I felt all my hate and torment pouring out of me and relieving the pressure that had been crushing me for so long.

Every time his belt met my skin, my tears brought me closer to peace.

Every time he squeezed my throat, I found my mind empty of the torturous voices.

And when it ended in dizzying pleasure, it was as if something was finally right with me.

Just thinking of it all again sent a chill through me.

I shivered as Vidar reemerged from below deck, picking up another load of heavy materials to bring to its rightful place.

The chills tickling my skin became heat.

A prominent heat that coursed through me, touching all the places it shouldn’t have.

I was falling apart. Glimpsing Vidar’s bracer again reminded me who we were. We were not friends. We were not partners. We were two people who had hurt each other in ways no one could come back from.

Slowly, as Vidar disappeared below deck again, I lifted my fingers to my cheek and gently traced the long scar from the corner of my mouth to my ear.