Chapter 15 - Open Water

Salt had dried along my collarbone by midmorning, the residue of the breeze kicked up from the bow, and the sun had been pressing down across my shoulders since dawn. It was the kind of heat that got under the skin, making the linen of my dress feel too heavy and the air itself taste of brine and expensive oil. Nico was at the tiller, his back to the sun, looking as if he had been born to hold a boat against the horizon. He was shirtless, the skin of his back a map of muscle and old summer, and he moved with the easy, thoughtless grace of a man who had never had to wonder where his next meal or his next breath was coming from.

I watched him from the stern, my book open and ignored. The words on the page were flat, grey things compared to the blue of the Mediterranean and the steady, rhythmic pulse of the hull against the swell. We had been in open water for hours, Seravalle a smudge on the memory of the sky behind us, and the silence between us had shifted. It was no longer a cage; it was a room we both inhabited.

"Why did you do it?" I asked. My voice was clear over the rush of the water. I didn't look for a way to soften the question. I didn't need to.

Nico didn't turn immediately. He adjusted the tiller, his forearm tensing as he felt the wind change. He looked out at the water for a long moment, then finally cut his eyes toward me. He looked younger in this light, less like a duke's son and more like a man who just wanted to see what's over the next wave.

"Which part?" he asked. There was a ghost of a smile on his face, but it didn't reach the usual practiced depth.

"Taking me from Eclaire’s," I said. "Paying what you paid. It wasn't just to irritate your father. You could have done that with a cheaper bottle of wine and a loud enough argument."

He laughed, a short, dry sound. He let the boat find its own line for a second before he answered. "My father is a very difficult man to irritate properly. It requires a certain level of commitment. But you’re right. It wasn't just him."

He shifted his weight, his feet bare on the deck. "I was bored, Kahina. Everything in Seravalle had felt like a rehearsal for a play I hadn't wanted to be in. Then I saw you at the rail of that transport ship, and you looked like you were ready to burn the whole world down just to get a better view. I wanted to know what that felt like."

"And now?"

"Now I know," he said, his voice quieter. "And I think I’m still interested in the view."

He looked at me properly then, his dark eyes unshielded. There was no charm in the look; there was only a directness that made my heart kick against my ribs. I had spent years learning how to be seen without being known, but he was looking at me as if he were trying to memorize the way the light hit my throat.

"I want the captain's name," I said. The words were cold and sharp. "The man who took my family. I want him, and I want to know where they took my sisters."

I didn't offer it as a plea. I offered it as a fact, a condition of the air we were breathing. The fury was right there, just under the surface, a hot, bright thing that I had carried since the day the walls of my father's house fell.

Nico didn't flinch. He didn't tell me it was dangerous or impossible. He didn't try to manage the anger or offer me a comfortable lie. He just nodded, once, a slow acknowledgment of the weight of what I had said.

"Then we'll find him," he said.

The air between us felt thick, charged with the sudden proximity of everything we hadn't been saying. The sun was sinking lower, turning the water to hammered gold, and the heat on my skin was no longer just from the sky.

I stood up, my book sliding to the deck. I didn't pick it up. I walked toward him, my bare feet silent on the wood. He watched me come, his hand steady on the tiller, his breath hitching as I stopped an inch away from him. I could smell the salt on him, and the warmth of his skin, and the something-else that was just him.

"The cabin is cooler," I said.

He didn't answer with words. He called for the crew to take the watch, his voice clear and authoritative, and then he led me below.

The cabin was dim, the light filtered through the sea-green of the portholes. The air was still, heavy with the smell of cedar and old paper and the scent of us. The sound of the hull against the water was louder here, a constant, low thrum that vibrated through the soles of my feet.

I reached for the ties of my dress. I didn't look away from him. I pulled the linen over my head in one slow, fluid motion, letting it fall to the floor. The air hit my skin, cool and then flush-hot as Nico's gaze traveled over me. He pulled his own shirt off, his movements urgent now, his eyes dark with a hunger that had nothing to do with the sun.

I pushed him back onto the bunk, my hands flat against the warmth of his chest. He went down willingly, his breath coming in short, sharp bursts. I lay down beside him. The chemise followed the dress to the floor.

He had a scar low on his ribs, a thin white line I had not noticed the first time. I ran my thumb along it. He breathed out.

"Knife," he said.

"I know what a knife scar looks like," I said.

He rolled toward me. His mouth found my neck, my shoulder, his tongue hot and wet against my collarbones. His hands knew where to go now, sliding down my ribs to the inside of my thigh, parting my legs and rubbing his thumb against my swollen vulva. He had learned the first time and he had remembered, which was one of the more useful qualities a man could have. I reached down between our bodies, my fingers wrapping around his thick, fully engorged erection. He was dripping pre-cum, hot and ready, his shaft throbbing in my grip. He had not been thinking about the weather.

He took his time with his mouth before anything else. He spread my thighs wide, his nose pressing into my black curls as he lowered his head. When he pressed his hot tongue directly against my clitoris, licking upwards in long, firm strokes, the sound I made was a loud, raw cry that echoed in the small cabin. He slid two fingers deep inside my wet vagina, pumping them in a fast, slick rhythm while his tongue swirled around my sensitive bud. He worked with intense focus and patience, his hands flat on my hips to anchor me as my body arched and trembled, holding me in place under the wet heat of his mouth. This was an argument he intended to win. He won it, my orgasm breaking over his tongue in a hot, shuddering rush that left me dripping wet.

Before I could even catch my breath, I pulled him up by his shoulders. He came without hesitation, settling between my slick thighs and driving his thick shaft into my soaking wetness in one deep, heavy thrust that made my eyes close. He knew the angle now. He found it immediately, his hands sliding under my buttocks, lifting and tilting my pelvis until his hard wood rubbed perfectly against my clitoris with every deep plunge. I wrapped my legs around his waist, locking him close as he began a heavy, rhythmic pounding.

This was different from the first time. The relief was gone. What was here instead was fluency: two people who knew each other's bodies past the point of having to translate, thrusting and grinding in a raw, primal rhythm. He stayed on it, the wet, slapping sound of our hips colliding filling the dim room. He rode me hard, his shaft frictioning against my deepest walls, driving me to another high, toe-curling climax that had me screaming his name. Only then did he let himself go, thrusting deeply one last time and locking his hips against mine as he came, his shaft throbbing inside me as his hot semen filled my vagina. He buried his face in my neck, groaning my name into my skin as his body trembled.

The cabin was still afterward. The hull moved under us, slow and rhythmic. Neither of us spoke. The porthole was green-gold with the afternoon light.

Later, when the light had turned to purple and the first stars were starting to prick through the dusk, we went back up to the deck. We stood together at the rail, the wind cooler now, the Sans Souci cutting a clean white line through the dark water.

On the horizon, the lights of Valderre were a faint, shimmering promise.

I looked at Nico. He was looking at the shore, his expression unreadable, but his hand was on mine at the rail. The secret I had told him wasn't a weight anymore. It was a door we had both walked through, and I was surprised to find that I didn't want to walk back.

I was happy. I didn't say it. I didn't need to. The sun had set, but the warmth was still there, deep under my skin.

---

The tiller was warm under my hand, the wood polished by salt and the palms of men who had better things to do than steer a boat toward a world they didn't like. I was shirtless, the sun beating a steady, rhythmic heat into my skin, and the wind was just enough to keep the sweat from stinging my eyes. We were making good time, the Sans Souci cutting through the swell with a clean, surgical precision that I usually appreciated more than I did right now.

Kahina was at the stern, her back to me. She had a book in her lap, something thick and serious-looking that she hadn't turned a page of in twenty minutes. She was watching the wake, the white water boiling out from under the hull and stretching back toward the horizon, back toward Seravalle and the world we had just left behind like a bad habit.

I should probably say something charming. I had a whole arsenal of lines for moments like this, most of them involving how well the light hit her hair or how the sea air was an improvement on the perfume of Eclaire’s salon. But the jokes were sitting heavy in my throat today, buried under the weight of the letter from my father that was still sitting on my desk below, which I hadn't opened because I already knew what the ink smelled like: obligation, a name I hadn't asked for, and a woman in Valderre who probably spent her afternoons practicing how to look disappointed in me.

"The wind is holding," I said. It was not charming; it was barely a sentence.

Kahina didn't turn around. She didn't have to. We had reached a point where the space between us was fluent, a language we both spoke without needing to check the dictionary. She knew I was watching her. She knew I was thinking about the fact that in two days, the open water would end and the limestone walls of Valderre would start closing in.

"It is," she said. Her voice was level, carried back to me by the breeze.

I looked out over the bow. The horizon was a flat, perfect line of blue on blue, the kind of view that usually made me feel like I had won a game no one else knew we had been playing, but today it felt like a countdown.

I was steering us right into it. I could turn the boat. I could find a different wind, a different coast, a world where my father’s name was just a collection of syllables that didn't mean anything. I had the boat, I had the crew, and I had the woman who was currently the only thing in my life that wasn't a rehearsal anymore.

But I didn't turn. I kept the bow pointed at the wrong world, holding the line with a focus that surprised me.

This was what choosing looked like, I thought. It wasn't a grand gesture or a dramatic speech on a balcony. It was just holding the tiller steady when every instinct I had was telling me to jib and run for the horizon. I was choosing the world I hated because it was the only way to get her the things she needed: the names, the sisters, and the piece of herself that was still buried in the archives of men like Armand Vellier.

My wrist ached where the anchor mark was. It was a small thing, just a sting under the skin, but I could feel it every time the boat kicked against the swell. It was her mark, not my father’s, not the Duke’s, and certainly not Armand’s.

I shifted my grip, the muscle in my forearm tensing as the wind gust picked up. I was good at this. I was good at steering, I was good at sailing, and I excelled at making it look like I was not trying.

"You're quiet, Nico," Kahina said. She finally turned, her eyes dark and unreadable against the glare of the sun. "It’s an unusual look for you. I’m not sure I like it."

I managed a grin then, one of the old ones, the ones that don't cost anything. "I’m just practicing for my new life as a serious man of business. I hear the first step is to stop making sense. How am I doing?"

She didn't laugh, but her expression softened, just at the edges. She walked toward me, her bare feet silent on the deck. She stopped beside the tiller, her shoulder brushing mine, and the heat of her was more immediate than the sun.

"You're doing terribly," she said.

"Good," I said. "I’d hate to be naturally gifted at it."

I looked at her properly. She was beautiful in this light, the salt air making her skin glow, her hair a wild, dark tangle that the wind was trying to pull apart. She was a princess of a kingdom that didn't exist anymore, and I was the son of a man who would see her as a transaction to be completed.

I reached out with my free hand and touched the side of her face. Her skin was warm, slightly rough with salt, and she leaned into the touch for a heartbeat before she pulled back, just enough to let me know she was still her own.

"Two days," she said.

"Two days," I agreed.

I turned my eyes back to the horizon. Valderre was out there, waiting for us with its ceremonies and its contracts and its long, cold memories. I was steering us right into the heart of it, and for the first time in my life, I didn't want to be anywhere else.

The water was the right world. I was steering toward the wrong one. And I was doing it on purpose, which was, I think, exactly what choosing looked like.