Blood Ties

Chapter 21: Nadia

Something simmered under her skin, but she didn't know what it was, as she walked away from him.

Fear and its cold claws raking down her spine pushed back against the heat. She clenched her fists, nails digging into her palms, and reviewed the conversation she had just with Declan. The look on his expression. The way he had touched her cheek, so gentle, like she was a delicate artifact he wanted to examine. She'd never thought of him as soft or tender. She didn't want to start.

No, to think of him as anything other than arrogant, crude, and in possession of far too many rough edges for her to even peek past one of them... that felt like the safer option. If she had to think of him as something, she would rather use descriptors that kept him at a distance.

She didn't know how to cope with the insinuations he had given her. The suggestion that Rowena had pushed her off of the ship was laughable, really. For one thing, the girl was a thin, short wisp of a thing, five-foot-one and scrawny, with delicate features that made her seem like a living doll. For another, Rowena bore her no ill will. None at all. So why would she ever do such a thing as push Nadia off of the ship?

Yet fear still coiled its frigid hands around her wrists, cuffed her, paralyzed her. She didn't want to believe Declan. She certainly hadn't wanted to admit to him that she thought about that afternoon on the slave ship almost every night. And not always with trepidation, not always with pain, not always with shadowed terror that trickled through her veins like ice water. No, sometimes, it was with a heady, longing thread of desire that sent her body pulsing.

Sometimes, it was with the memory of his fingers on her skin, tracing over her like she was the most precious thing in the world.

But there was no way she would ever admit that to him.

Not after he had accused her only living friend in the world of being her attacker.

"He's insane," she muttered under her breath. Now she sounded deranged, talking to herself.

"Nadia?" Rowena's soft voice reached her ears. "Where did you go? I thought we were going to meet on the deck."

Her head snapped up and she forced a smile. "Of course! I hadn't forgotten. I only became... Well, that's neither here nor there. Let's go."

They made their way to the deck. "I was only worried about you," Rowena confessed. "I didn't know if something had happened to you..."

"I'm quite alright, and Declan was with me," she said, though she was unsure if that would be a reassurance of her security. The man was protective, perhaps, but to the detriment of all else.

Rowena's face changed, something flickering in her eyes that Nadia couldn't read. "No, I suppose he wouldn't let anything happen to you. What did he want to talk to you about?"

She trusted Rowena, didn't she? Why else would she have been so defensive of her? Or was it only that she was defensive of her own discretion and judgment in choosing friends? Worry knotted her stomach as she chose her words. "He was concerned for my safety, as always. That's all there was. Some business about the ship's captain saying his men saw me getting pushed off the ship."

"Did they say by whom?" Rowena bit her lip.

"By you, actually," Nadia said, trying her best to sound nonchalant. She didn't think it was working. "Surprisingly enough. I didn't believe him. I mean, you would never hurt me, right?"

Rowena took a deep breath, clasped her hands over Nadia's, and said, "Nadia, there's something that I need to tell you. I did push you off of the ship that night."

Nadia dropped her hands. Her voice was a raspy whisper. "Who are you? Truly? And why did Declan send you, to be my maid or to spy on me?"

She sighed. Over the roar of the waves, they spoke in secrecy. Of Rowena's childhood, growing up not a noblewoman's cousin but a poor orphan. How she'd been taken in by kind parents with no children of their own. How she had never stopped her criminal ways because her parents had been poor, low on funds, and so while telling them that she had taken a seamstress position, she had really gone out to steal. How one time, when she had stolen from a lord's manor, she had befriended his wife.