The Pirate's Wish

Every now and then laughter exploded into the nighttime, drowning out the music. Men’s laughter, women’s laughter. The ahiial left me so happy I didn’t even feel left out.

Somebody knocked on my door.

“Who is it?” But I felt a wriggle in the back of my brain, and I knew–

“Naji.”

I sat up. “Ain’t locked or nothing.”

Naji pushed the door open. He had his mask on but his hair was all tousled from the wind. He hadn’t been dancing after the feast, I remembered. Just sat on the sides and watched.

“You need to change the… the spell that was making me better?”

He shook his head and stepped inside. Came up right close to me, close enough that I could smell him: honey and medicine. He kept his eyes on me.

It was weird, and it confused me, but my heart pounded loud and fast from the way he looked at me.

Like I was Leila. The river witch. His old lover.

“Can I ask you a question?” he said.

I was too nervous to speak. I shrugged.

He took off his mask, yanking it hard away from his face. He let it drop to the floor.

“Do you remember when you told me I wasn’t ugly?”

I stared at him. I couldn’t get past the light in his eyes.

“You don’t, do you?”

“Of course I do,” I said, and my voice came out real small.

“Did you mean it?”

“That I don’t think you’re ugly?”

He nodded.

I couldn’t think straight. All I knew was my heart slamming against my chest and his eyes drinking me up like ahiial. How many times had I thought about the answer to this question? How many nights had I spent trying to figure out the exact way to tell him what I thought of him, what I thought of his face and his hair and his body?

Too many to count.

“Of course,” I said, voice hardly a whisper again. I swallowed. “I think… I think you’re beautiful.”

His face didn’t move. “I thought you don’t trust beautiful people.”

“Not beautiful like that. I mean… I don’t ever want to stop looking at you.”

The fu

For a minute I wondered why the hell he was asking me this anyway.

And then he was kissing me.

I ain’t kissed many boys before, but Naji knew what he was doing better than any of ’em. He put his hands on the side of my face and pressed himself close to me and the whole time it was like he and I were the only people in the world. My hands kept crawling over his chest and shoulders, trying to memorize the lines of his body, and I was dizzy, but in a good way, the way you get when you swing through the ropes on a clear su

Kissing Naji was happiness.

When he pulled away from me he smoothed my hair off of my forehead. I was too stu

“Is this alright?” he asked.

“Uh. Yeah.” I frowned. He kissed me again, and I worked up the nerve to press my hands against his hips. He wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me close, and the smell of him was everywhere, and I swear I could feel his blood pulsing through his veins. The closeness of his body was so distracting, so wonderful, that I forgot to be nervous.

He lay me down on the bed, still kissing me, and my thoughts were a jumble of confusion and excitement and desire – his desire and my desire both, like two pieces of silk braiding together. I couldn’t believe this was happening, couldn’t believe he was gazing at me like he wanted me.

“Why are you doing this?” It came out wrong, kinda accusatory. He stopped.

“You said it was alright,” he said.

Oh, now you’ve gone and messed everything up, I thought.

“It is.” I reached out, tentative, and cupped the scarred side of his face in my hand. He jerked at my touch, but didn’t pull away, and for a moment he looked as vulnerable as I felt. “I mean, I just don’t understand… why now…”

He traced the line of my profile, one finger ru

“I should have done it sooner,” he said. “I should have done it on the Isles of the Sky.” And he kissed me before I could say anything more. I got lost in it, the kissing. It went on for a long time. My lips thrummed, and my body was hot and distracted.

After a while, he pulled away, just a little, and we lay in silence, looking at each other.

I touched his scar, the skin rough and slick at the same time. He flinched away. I dropped my hand.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“No,” he said. “No, I just… no one’s ever… before.”

“Oh.”

Another long silence, and then I lifted my hand and touched him again. This time he only blinked.

“I like it,” I said.

He didn’t answer. His face was so serious, like always. Except for his eyes, which were gentle right now. Almost kind.

“Why don’t you ever smile?”

“What?”

I traced a line from the unscarred skin of his brow down across the folds in his flesh to his chin. “I’ve never seen you smile.”

“You don’t want to.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.”

He pushed away from me. A coldness settled over me: he was going to leave.

“Wait,” I said. “I’m sorry. I just… Ain’t you happy right now?”

“You don’t want to see me smile.”

“But I do. Ever since…” There was no point. His eyes had gone cold and stony again. I’d ruined everything.

And then something dislodged itself in my brain.

I thought about him showing up at my room for no reason.

I thought about the kissing.

And a realization lit up bright and blazing as the sun.

“Oh,” I said. “Oh, Kaol. You ain’t happy at all.”

He looked at me, pained, like he wanted to protest. But he didn’t.

“This isn’t you,” I said, and the words turned to panic in my throat. “This isn’t… you wouldn’t on your… the boon.”

Naji looked stricken. Confused. He didn’t deny anything.

I felt like I was spitting out poison. I shoved myself off the bed. Heat rose up hot and angry in my chest. “It’s the boon!” I shouted. “From the manticores!”

Kaol, why hadn’t I stopped him when he first came in? Why hadn’t I known?

“Ana

“Shut up!” I drew my robe tight over my body – it had slipped off my shoulders before. “I can’t believe… I’m so sorry… I actually thought you wanted me–”

“I do.” Naji rubbed his head. He still looked confused. “I do want you–”

“Get out!” Part of me didn’t mean it. Part of me looked at Naji and thought about how he’d cared for me after I was shot, how he walked me around the gardens and stayed close to me even though I wasn’t in any danger. But I couldn’t run the risk of letting him hurt me. Not again.

“Get out of my room!” I shouted.

Naji stumbled out of the bed. He seemed drunk. The ahiial, I thought. They stuck something in his wine.

What you want most in the world. The manticore must’ve thought it was Naji.

“This isn’t how I wanted things to happen,” Naji said, still watching me with that pained, befuddled expression.

“It ain’t how I wanted ’em to happen neither!” I yanked my sword out from its hiding place under the bed and brandished it at him. I couldn’t decide if I was angry at him or at the manticores or at myself. “So get out now.”

He stared at the sword and looked sad. “I do want you,” he said.

Blood rushed in my ears. I remembered us standing in the sunlight of the garden, his hand on my arm, the scent of flowers heavy on the wind. I remember him looking at me, flush with happiness.

Naji turned and walked out the door.

I couldn’t sleep. The bed smelled like Naji.

I left my room and followed the hallway through the servants’ quarters, one hand trailing along the powdery walls, dust kicking up behind my feet. The quarters were silent and still, but the air was stuffy out in the hallways. No windows. So I went outside and sat down underneath a palm tree, leaning up against the trunk.