Corvus (Stars and Sails, Book 1)

Two

Jade Harris' palms and fingers were covered in blood. She tugged up, but the small hands in hers kept slipping, her fingers getting caught on the gashes in his hands. The boy stared up at her, his eyes were red and filling over, only for his tears to get lost in the raindrops on his freckled cheeks.

"Jade," he huffed, out of breath. The angry green waves clapped beneath his feet, grasping and reaching out once more.

A sacrifice—that was all the ocean asked for sometimes. Just a bite--a taste, of the living, the unnatural, the broken. Jade tugged back on his arms as he kicked the side of the vessel. The heavy rains washed the blood off the ratlines. Only moments ago, he slipped off the lines, cutting his hands on the rough ropes. He caught himself moments before he fell in the water.

"Goddamnit!" she cried out. "You have to work with me, Oliver!" The wind blew viciously, blowing her hair around and into her face. She flinched. The ship rocked back and forth like a bucking horse, bringing Oliver closer to the water. He clenched his eyes, tears lining the rims. Jade had to get back to the wheel and steady the vessel before it capsized.

"One, two, three!" Jade grunted, pushing against the gunwales with her feet for leverage. She could hear Oliver beating his feet against the other side. The ship yawed to the larboard side giving Oliver the push he needed. He scurried over the gunwales and back onto the ship. He fell on top of Jade.

She closed her eyes tight, trying to keep the tears away. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him closer. He curled up and rested his head on her chest for a moment, while they both caught their breath. Rain battered sideways against the naked masts. The storm sails lay wrapped in messy bundles at the yards.

The vessel yawed again. Jade set Oliver to the side, his body shivering in the cold spring rains. Hurricane season had come on too early and too eagerly this year. Jade had seen storms like this--they always took. That was what her father told her. He was right.

Jade pulled herself off the ground, running in a slump because her entire body was sore. She pushed away the lump in her throat and focused on the wheel. It spun on its own, like some kind of phantom was commanding the ship. And of a sudden, Jade felt the supernatural. If anyone would come back from the dead to save the Coronis, it would be its Captain.

But Leon Harris was dead. Jade had watched his spine snap under the pressure and speed of a cannonball. It had been only days ago, the memory as fresh as the stains he'd left on the deck. And Jade didn't like that one bit, that her father could just be a stain and nothing else.

When she wrapped her sore and bloody fingers around the wheel, she realized her father had nothing to do with its turning. It was merely the rudder, so utterly choked up by seawater that it was spinning all on its own accord. Jade tugged the wheel back into place and the vessel rocked and steadied out.

She looked up and pushed waterlogged strands of red hair out of her eyes. Longport was just up ahead--roughly one nautical mile until they reached the docks of the naval port. Jade had never had any interest in docking in Longport because Longport was the louse-ridden, bug-infested bed of Duranta. Those men were a bunch of parasites. For as many dreadful jobs the Coronis had done for the Durantan Navy, it was fair to say nearly anything about the lot, no matter how harsh. Jade didn't like Navy men. She had her reasons.

Oliver hurried up to meet her on the poop deck. To dull the pain, he pressed his hands against his gray button-up shirt. Beneath them, handprints of blood pooled into the fabric on the other side. He was a little red everywhere--his hands, under the rims of his eyes, and on his lips that he bit too much. When Jade met his look, he turned back, pulling her gaze with him.