The captain turns to us, and a huge smile lights his face. I gasp in recognition. I know that smile. I’ve seen another version of it many times.
“Hector!” he says, opening his arms wide, and the commander of my Royal Guard rushes into the embrace and endures a fierce back thumping.
The captain grabs Hector’s upper arms and pushes him back to study him while Hector grins like a little boy. “Look at you,” the captain mutters. “A Quorum lord.”
I say, “You’re Hector’s brother.”
His gaze whips to me, and his eyes narrow. He studies every part of me: my dirty face, my unraveling braid, my breasts, legs, and feet. Something sparks in his black eyes, as if he has learned something. My face grows hot, but I refuse to flinch.
Softly he says, “And you are his young queen.” And he drops to one knee with more grace than a man his size ought to have. “Welcome aboard the Aracely, Your Majesty.”
“Thank you. Please rise.”
He stands and turns an accusing look toward Hector. “This is a very dangerous thing you ask me to do, little brother. Our hold is full and we sit low in the water. We should not be so near the coast. I trust you have a good reason?”
Hector nods. “You may have heard that Her Majesty is on her way south to negotiate a betrothal with Selvarica?”
“Yes, the whole country speaks of nothing else.”
“It’s a fabrication.”
Captain Felix raises his eyebrows.
“We were heading south, it’s true,” Hector continues. “But we were followed by an Invierne spy, a trained assassin. Given the recent attempts on Her Majesty’s life, we thought it prudent to slip away.”
I gape at Hector. He must trust his brother indeed to share all these details with him. Mara shifts uncomfortably in the space beside me.
The captain steps out of Hector’s reach and crosses his arms. “You want me to take you south,” he says.
“Yes.”
“I can’t.” He turns to me. “I’m so sorry, Your Majesty, but I have a hold full of early harvest wine, the first decent harvest since the hurricane three years ago. I must get it to port so I can pay my men and bring home much-needed supplies.”
At first, Hector’s face is cast in stone and unreadable. But I see the exact moment he resigns himself to his next course of action. He’s going to commandeer his own brother’s ship. He has the right, as a Quorum lord. But not even brotherly affection could survive something like that. And I can’t bear to see it happen. Not because of me.
He opens his mouth to give the order, but I jump in. “Can you sell your cargo at Puerto Verde?”
Hector slams his mouth closed and stares at me. I give my head what I hope is a near-imperceptible shake. Please don’t do it.
“Yes,” the captain says. “But we’d only get half price. It’s the Orovalleños who pay top coin.”
I smile with remembrance. “I don’t doubt it. Ventierra wine was a favorite in my father’s court. Do you mind if we sit down?”
“Please,” he gestures with a flip of his hand. “Anywhere.”
I plunk down on the nearest cushion and say, “It’s a long journey to Orovalle and back. You’ll overlap with hurricane season.”
He grins with the understanding that we are about to haggle. “It’s one of the many reasons I love the life of a sailor,” he says. “Don’t you find, Your Majesty, that when you and death are bedmates, that is when you feel most alive?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
His eyes widen. He expected to put me off balance by referring to the attempts on my life.
“I’m always in bed with death. Since the moment I left my father’s palace. I’ve nearly died more times than I can count. And I’m a bearer, which means I’m likely to die very young. So, you see”—I shrug with purposed nonchalance—“I wouldn’t know the difference.”
His beard hides any turning of his lips, but his eyes crinkle with amusement. “What do you propose?”
I have a hunch about him, about the person he is. What kind of man leaves the soft life of a conde’s son to embrace the open water? Sacrifices his youth to endless sun and wind, his fingers to the sea? Someone who loves open space and danger, I’d bet my Godstone crown. Someone who can’t wait to see what lies just over the horizon.
“My honor compels me to warn you,” I say, “that our journey is dangerous and our destination uncertain.”
Sure enough, one eyebrow raises high, and the expression is so familiar, so endearing, that it’s hard not to smile. “Oh?” he says.