The Abyss Surrounds Us (The Abyss Surrounds Us #1)(35)

Swift’s hands shake on the wheel, and Santa Elena leans in close. “Graze him,” she says, like it’s a joke.

“No,” I breathe, before I can think better of it, and the captain’s attention snaps around to me.

“Problem, Cassandra? Your beast not smart enough to get out of the way?”

“He hasn’t been trained to respond to threats—I don’t know how he’ll respond. I don’t know if he’ll respond.” It’s a fight to keep my voice even, a fight I’m desperately losing. I can’t give orders, can’t tell Swift to deviate or slow or anything that I want to scream into her ear. I can only stare down Santa Elena, doing my best to hold her fiery gaze, and pray that she doesn’t extrapolate from what I just blurted.

“Swift?” the captain calls.

“Yes, boss?”

“Hold course.”

I push myself off the wall and dive between Code and Lemon, stumbling up to Swift’s side. I’m waiting for someone to step forward and yank me back, but no hand lands on my shoulder and no shove comes to push me away from her. “Slow down a little, at least. Could you do that?” I hiss.

She glances at Santa Elena, who nods back.

Swift strains against the wheel, her grip sliding just a bit as she reaches for the throttle and cranks the ship back into a drift. We’re still bearing down on Bao, but we have time on our side now. “I’d appreciate it,” she grunts, “if you didn’t breathe right in my ear.”

“You hit him hard, we’re dead. You glance off him, we might live, but it’s doubtful.” I watch Bao out the front windows, see him stop and wait, his head weaving back and forth as he tries to make sense of his imprint ship heading straight for him.

Reckoners aren’t born with fighting instinct. They’re trained into it. He won’t attack the ship. He wouldn’t—it’s not in his nature. But a spark of doubt ripples through me as I see him snap his beak and blast another spurt of air through his blowholes. Bao’s always fallen on the less predictable end of the spectrum. Maybe today’s the day he shows us what an unregulated Reckoner truly is.

Grazing him wouldn’t be enough to put a dent in the ship, but his claws are razor sharp, definitely strong enough to slash the hull. Nothing that will sink us, but Santa Elena’s put us on a collision course that could get the Minnow crippled.

We’re seconds away from impact as his head disappears below the boat’s stern, and we’re bearing just a little too far starboard for my taste. “Port,” I snap at Swift.

She doesn’t adjust. Her hands are frozen on the wheel.

I slam down my hands over hers and yank left. The floor lurches underneath us as the ship swings, and out of the corner of my eye I spot Santa Elena flailing for a handhold. An indignant squall echoes out from below us, but there’s no thud of impact and no shriek of claws on metal. We’ve steered clear.

But I haven’t.

Santa Elena grabs me by the throat before I have time to flinch. My feet lift off the ground as she twists and slams me back against the wall, and my world goes dark for a second. A wave of pain crashes over my head, but through it I can see the captain’s bared teeth leering in my face.

“Maybe I’ve let you get too comfortable,” she hisses, fingernails digging into my skin.

I struggle to breathe, my throat convulsing under her grip.

“You don’t touch her controls. You never touch my ship like that again. Next time it happens, I cut a finger off. Each time you go against me, you lose another finger. When you’re out of fingers, you’re out of luck. Am I clear?”

I nod, just a twitch of my head. “Perfectly,” I choke. “Ten chances it is.”

She blinks, and then the sharp-toothed smile is out. She’s impressed. Her hold loosens, and I slump against the wall, my lungs working like bellows to heave in the air that I’ve lost. For a moment, my vision spins.

I find Swift’s eyes when I’ve recovered, and she looks like something’s shredded inside her. But when my gaze meets hers, she blinks and stows the expression, her face settling back into that hardened mask that she always wears for the captain. Her hands are still locked tight around the wheel, keeping the ship on the course Santa Elena ordered her to take.

“Yatori, take over,” the captain instructs the helmsman. “Put us back on our old heading. I want us at the Flotilla in two days. The rest of you, clear out. Lesson’s been learned.”

She hops back down the ladder, and her lackeys follow her one by one until it’s just me, Swift, and the helmsman left in the navigation tower.

Swift moves for the ladder, then pauses. “Are you getting up?” she asks me, but she’s masking something with that question.

“I have to … go make sure Bao’s uninjured,” I rasp.

Then she does something unexpected, something she definitely wouldn’t do in sight of the captain. With a furtive glance over her shoulder to check that Yatori’s distracted by the controls, she reaches down and offers me a hand. “C’mon, quick,” she hisses.

Though the pain in my back is screaming for me not to, I take her hand and let her drag me to my feet.

Everything’s happening too fast for me to take it in. Maybe the captain’s right. Maybe I’ve gotten too comfortable in my position aboard this boat. Maybe I deserved to get slammed into the wall like that, and the pain that rattles me now is a reminder of my place. I catch myself. It’s disgusting, letting her make me think like that. I don’t deserve any of this. I deserve freedom and safety and a thousand other things that aren’t available on this ship.