He phrases the last part as an afterthought, but when he turns to me, his eyes are expectant.
“I’m not sure,” I tell him. “There was a lot of blood.”
He shrugs and grabs an instrument that does not look entirely legitimate from a nearby toolbox. “Haven’t met an engine I couldn’t fix yet,” he says. “The human body’s just another machine.” He looks at me with assuring eyes. “I saved a monkey with a knife wound to the ribs once. There was an accident with a balloon bursting. It’s not that different.”
I think this is supposed to be reassuring, so I nod just as Kye bursts back into the room with a handful of fresh towels. After, we’re both ushered back out the way we came, and I don’t argue. I’m glad to be sent away so the medic can work, free from staring at Lira’s limp body and thinking about how I’ve never seen her look so vulnerable. So capable of being finite.
I don’t give myself a moment to breathe before I walk back onto the deck and toward Rycroft’s body. My crew flares their nostrils, waiting to be let loose. Beside me, I sense the rigid way Kye stands. Barely able to restrain himself and hoping desperately I don’t ask him to restrain the others. That’s the thing about my crew. They don’t need to be friends. They don’t even need to like one another. Being on the Saad is the same as being family, and by saving me, Lira has proven something to Kye. I locked her in a cage and made her barter her way onto my ship, and she saved me all the same, believing that it was the right choice. A life for a life. Trust for trust.
Tallis Rycroft stares at me and he’s not alive enough to make it look menacing. His left eye is closed, a lump stretching out like a mountaintop, and the wounds on his face make his lips indistinguishable. The hole in his stomach bleeds on.
“What are you going to do with him?” Kye asks. His voice is not altogether calm, something unbalanced on those usually carefree tones. He wants revenge as much as I do. And not just for taking his captain, but for the broken girl lying in the dregs of our ship.
“I don’t know.”
Madrid walks a small pocketknife between her fingers. When it nicks her, she lets the blood drip onto Rycroft’s injured leg. “He doesn’t deserve to live,” she says. “You don’t have to lie to us.”
One of Rycroft’s eyes blinks, slowly, as he comprehends the storm he has created. The young prince in me wants to feel sorry for him, but I keep looking at the half-moons and long, serrated lines that crease into his biceps. Wounds made trying to fend him off. Nail marks so similar to the ones along my own chest.
I hesitate, caught off guard as a distorted image of the Princes’ Bane flashes across my mind. She could have snapped my neck or done any manner of things to disable me, but she let her claws tear slowly through my chest instead. That was the thing about sirens. They always went straight for the heart.
“Captain,” Madrid says, and I blink away the image.
“I’m going to find some shark-infested waters,” I tell her, regaining my composure. “And then drop his favorite appendage in.”
There is a phlegmatic silence, while everyone within earshot considers those words. Rycroft half-blinks again.
“Next time,” Kye says, clearing his throat, “lie to us.”
“What about Lira?” Madrid asks.
I shrug. “Depends on how pleasant she is when she wakes up.”
“I meant,” she says, “is she really going to be okay?”
I stare down at Rycroft, and it takes every scrap of strength I have to smile. “My crew is not so easily killed.”
It’s a bullshit line, but I need everyone to believe it. I need to believe it myself. I picture Lira, and it’s like I can feel her cold blood dripping through my hands like melted ice. If she dies, then my plan and this entire mission dies with her. More than anything, I’m counting the minutes until our rookie engineer emerges and tells me that everything is fine. That Lira didn’t die for me and that she can still offer the last piece of the puzzle to free the Crystal of Keto from its cage.
That maybe – just maybe – I don’t need to rip Rycroft into any more pieces.
30
Lira
I WAKE AND THEN immediately wish I hadn’t.
There’s a raw pain in my ribs, like there’s a creature gnawing at my skin, and I feel groggy in a way that tells me I’ve had too much sleep.
The room I’m in is as jumbled as my thoughts. I brush my open shirt out of the way and brace my heavily bandaged ribs. My teeth grind against one another as I let my legs swing over the side of the bench. It’s a mere second of being upright before the gnawing turns into a bite.