The Abyss Surrounds Us (The Abyss Surrounds Us #1)(33)

She groans, still flat on her back.

“How about you try something a little more your speed.”

And before I can pull back, Code lunges forward, grabs me by the wrist, and yanks me onto the mats. A murmur of surprise rises from the crowd. He steps around behind me and shoves me in the back, sending me stumbling toward Swift.

The brightness of the lights is paralyzing. Up above, the shadowy figure of Santa Elena has risen to her feet. When she speaks, it feels like her words surround me. “Do you have any combat training, Cassandra?”

The mutters in the crowd complete her sentence. Or do you let your monsters do all your fighting for you?

I tell her exactly what she wants to hear. “None whatsoever.”

Swift crawls to her feet. She swipes at her busted lip, drawing a thick red line across the back of her forearm. Her hair is a ruffled mess, half of it flipped the wrong way over, the other half hanging in her eyes. “Boss—” she starts, still a little winded.

Santa Elena cuts her off with a wave and says to me, “Land a hit on her and I’ll call the fight.”

It might be the most generous thing the captain has ever offered me. There’s still a part of me that balks, that wants to jump off the mats and retreat to the safety of the trainer deck. But after almost three months of making myself as small as possible on this ship, I can’t pass up a chance to be a little big again.

And I’ve landed a hit on Swift before.

I bring my fists up and square off, and immediately the Slew echoes with shouts of glee. I meet Swift’s eyes.

But she’s laughing at me as she sweeps back her hair. “You hit me like that and you’ll break a thumb for sure,” she snorts. “Fists with thumbs on the outside.”

I frown, adjusting my hands.

“And keep your weight back. That’s where your power comes from.”

“You sound like you want me to hit you.”

“You look like you need all the help you can get.” She brings her own hands up, palms open, and takes a step forward.

My first swing is downright embarrassing. I aim for her shoulder, but she sidesteps me easily and swats my hand to the side. I expect her to counter, but the hit doesn’t come. Instead, she circles around and squares off again, waiting for my next move.

When I catch her gaze again, her smile is utterly teasing. There’s heat rushing through me now, and it’s not just the industrial lights above. My whole body is coming alive, and as I raise my fists again, I let my own grin curl across my lips.

I can play at being part of this.

I can have fun with this.

At my back, the noise of the crew has grown louder. And it’s not just cheers for Swift. Cries of “Get ’er, shoregirl” rise from the shadows, and when my eyes once again turn upward, Santa Elena passes me an encouraging nod.

I take another swing. And another. Swift slaps them away, but I keep a rhythm going. She favors her right hand, and so I try coming from the left. Her reaction is slower—I almost make it through. Our eyes meet.

She winks.

Swift steps around me, and I nearly trip over my own feet trying to reorient myself. Chuck cackles from somewhere in the crowd, but I let it blend with the rest of the noise. Everything else falls away until it’s just me and Swift and the steady, predictable rhythm of trying to break her defenses. Every time I swing, she’s there to meet me, catching or deflecting each punch I throw.

I catch the shift in her smile before the shift in her strategy, but it’s too late. She aims a kick at my knee that takes my feet out from under me, and I crumple onto the mat. A flush of humiliation rushes through me. I shouldn’t have fooled myself into thinking she’d stick to pure defense, not with the captain and most of the crew watching.

Swift grins out at the crowd as if sharing a joke with them. Grins for a moment too long.

I push off the mat with every ounce of energy left in me and lash out at the leg she’s leaning on. My heel strikes true, and Swift collapses on all fours.

The Slew goes wild. But over the noise of the jeering pirates, I hear the soft words that mean the most. “That’ll do,” Santa Elena says.

I roll my head and once again find Swift’s eyes. I expect her to be furious, embarrassed, or somewhere in between, but as she pushes herself to her knees, there’s nothing but pride in her smile. “You might just fit in here after all,” she says.

Three months ago, I would have hated those words. But today, under the bright lights with a crowd cheering at my back, I’m starting to like them.





18


With Bao’s training stagnated, I start to follow Swift around during her training exercises. As long as I don’t directly interfere with anything, I lock up the trainer deck, and the captain doesn’t notice my negligence, I figure it’s only fair that I get a better sense of how things work on this ship. Plus Swift seems glad for company that isn’t in direct competition with her.

One overcast afternoon in the second week of November, I watch from the back wall as she and the other lackeys gather around the helmsman for lessons on piloting the Minnow. My attention constantly flicks backward to check on Bao. He’s big enough that he hunts during the day and homes back to the ship at night, so he doesn’t always roam within sight of us. Still, I rest easier knowing that he’s there. I don’t know what might happen if his imprinting behavior mucks up, if he suddenly wanders off and never returns. Reckoners don’t usually do that, but there’s a first time for everything, and Bao is full of surprises. Briefly I wonder how long it would take Santa Elena to notice if he vanished.