To Kill a Kingdom(70)

As soon as I feel the knife hilt under his clothes, I pull my hand back and then lurch it violently forward. My wrist twists to the left and Tallis blinks. When I lurch my hand upward, he swallows, a choked and ragged sound.

His hands drop from my clothes and he stumbles backward.

I slink down the wall and let out a breath.

Misdirection, Elian said. Be too quick for them to notice.

I look at Tallis. His demon eyes and bone-gray skin. The look of fear and surprise that rolls over him like a sea storm. And the knife – his own knife – spearing his gut. It wasn’t hard to lift. Apparently, it’s difficult to notice someone stealing a weapon from your waistband when they also happen to be tearing their teeth through your skin.

The blade is so deep that the handle barely surfaces through his shirt. It takes a moment before he falls. Seconds of him frowning and gasping before his head finally hits the floor.

I stand over his body and swallow. There’s a hollowness in my chest, and the rush that usually comes with death is replaced by a deep pit that sits beside my erratically beating heart. This is the first kill I’ve made since becoming human, and somehow I thought it wouldn’t matter, but there’s blood all over me and Tallis’s face is slack and I don’t know why but I’m shaking.

I look down at him and all I can see is Crestell, dying over the sound of Kahlia’s cries. My hands so wet with her blood, a promise begged between us.

Become the queen we need you to be.

I close my eyes and wait for the moment to pass. Hope that it will, or else I might just go crazy in this cabin. It doesn’t make sense for me to think of her now; it’s not like Tallis is the first kill I’ve made since. I squeeze my fists and feel the blood cloy under my nails. But Crestell was the start of it, the one my mother used to pull me over to her edge. As a human I could pretend I had some kind of a clean slate if I wanted to. At least for a little while. But not now. Not anymore. I’m a killer in every life.

I open my eyes and when I look back down, Tallis is Tallis again, and my aunt’s face returns to a memory. I sigh in relief and then squint as something shines in the corner of my eye. In the growing sun, I catch the string of metal around Tallis’s neck. The light blinks from it, like a tiny star fighting to stay ablaze. Unsteadily, I crouch down beside the pirate’s body and pull back his collar.

The Págese necklace is still latched around him. The key to freeing the eye. I smile and twist the clasp free, careful, as though I might wake the sleeping pirate, and then pocket the stolen artifact.

When the door to the cabin crashes open, I jolt. My shoulders tense, fingernails ready to become weapons once more.

Elian doesn’t even glance at Tallis Rycroft.

He crosses the room toward me, eyes bright and so green and flickering with relief. His hair is swept in every direction, ruffling across his forehead, streaking his face. His shirt is torn, but I breathe a sigh when I see there are no new injuries. Just dirt and the splatters of gunpowder. I don’t think about whether I’m relieved because I still need him if I’m going to overthrow my mother or whether it’s something else entirely.

Elian’s knife is secured in his belt, the magic of it still so strong to me, and in his hand is a sword – his sword – gold and ash glimmering against the shattered glass. When he reaches me, he throws it to the floor and braces my shoulders. His smile is like nothing I have ever seen.

I say the first thing I can think of, mirroring his words to me from Eidyllio. “I’m pretty sure I got rid of you already.”

Elian’s cheeks dimple and he casts a look over his shoulder. Kye, Madrid, and Torik are gathered in a tightly grouped line behind him. They came. Not just for their captain, but for the stowaway. The strange girl they found floating in the middle of the ocean. They came for me.

When he turns back to me, his eyes flicker over my face. His lips tense to a thin line as he notices the scrapes burning into my cheek. The blood that covers me, so much of it my own and so much of it not mine at all.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

He shrugs. “What I do best.”

“Getting on my last nerve?”

“Saving you,” he replies, picking up his sword. “This is the second time. Not that I’m counting.”

It’s the third, actually, if we count how he pushed me from Rycroft’s path on the deck of the ship. Elian may not be counting, but I am.

“I can’t believe you came back for me,” I say.

I don’t bother to keep the gratitude from my voice.

Elian taps his belt, where his knife sits happily. “I actually came back for this,” he says. “Rescuing you was mostly an afterthought.”

I level a glare. “I don’t need rescuing.”

For the first time, Elian glances down to the body sprawled across the decaying floor. It’s like he only just realizes that the leader of the infamous Xaprár, kidnapper of pirates and princes alike, is bleeding out by his feet.

“Remind me not to get on your bad side,” Elian says.

“Too late.”

He grins. He’s still grinning when I see Rycroft’s head rise from the floorboards. The pirate’s hand is at his waist in barely any time at all, and when he lifts it into the air, I’m surprised to see that the pistol is as black as squid ink. Just as Elian turns his head – as his crew lurches forward in panic – a shot fires out.