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“Leave us.”
“But we wanna watch you gut her—” started Terrick with a whine.
“Now!”
Lovel and Terrick stomped up the stairs, muttering to each other.
The man snatched up her wrists and slammed them into the wall again. Despite knowing she could not kill him, she struggled against his grip. She had never been this close to a man, except briefly and during active combat. The way he seemed to pin her down with not only his hands but also his intense gaze was unnerving.
Grudgingly, she could see why he was the boss, with a quality like that.
“I’ve never put fear in a siren’s eyes before,” he said in a quiet voice. His lips curled into a wicked smile. “And not for lack of trying.”
He shook his head as if shooing a fly and his eyes cleared, returning to a normal color.
Riella exhaled through her nose and looked away, her cheeks flushing. “If you kill me, you’ll restart the war with the sirens.”
She didn’t know if this was true. No one was even aware she was on the ship, except the pirates. He could easily kill her and dispose of her body without anyone finding out.
“That’s a risk I’m willing to take.” He tapped his thumbs against her wrists, like a pulse. “Now, how do you want to go? Should I repay you in kind with glass to the heart?”
Riella shifted under his grip. Her hands were going numb.
“Coward,” she spat. “You would corner me in a cell and kill me in the dark, where no one can see? Where is your honor?”
“I don’t owe you honor.” He snarled at her and drilled her wrists harder into the wall. “Your kind slaughtered my closest friends.”
“And I hope their deaths were painful! You don’t belong in the ocean, you imbecile!”
He laughed in her face, catching her by surprise. “Nor do you, any longer, so it seems.”
A set of footsteps came down the stairs. The ginger-haired man, Berolt, returned with a garment in his hands. He tossed it to her from outside the cell, staying safely behind her tormentor.
“Here you go,” he said. “Courtesy of Drue, our cabin boy. He’s the only lad on board whose clothes I thought might fit ya. They’re clean enough, I think,” he added, although he sounded doubtful.
Overhead, boots crossed the deck. There seemed to be far more than before, causing a twinge of anxiety in Riella. Her eyes darted from the trousers to the pirate who’d pinned her.
“Are you going to kill me or not?” she asked him, raising her brows. If she was going to die, it wouldn’t be with fear in her eyes or heart. “Because I would welcome death over staring into your face for a moment longer. Get on with it.”
Berolt cleared his throat loudly. “Ah, Jarin?”
“What?” replied the man without turning around.
“A word?”
“Siren,” he murmured in her face. “I will filet you if you try anything.”
While maintaining stern eye contact, the man named Jarin slowly loosened his iron grip on her wrists. She fell to the floor, her strange new limbs crumbling under her. They had to be faulty. There couldn’t be the same legs every other human walked around on with such ease.
Keeping the siren in his peripheral vision, he pulled Berolt aside.
“How’d it go?” he asked in a low voice.
“Ah, I believe he got what he was looking for. Still dunno what it is. You might have more luck getting it out of him. He loves you like a son.”
Jarin grunted. “And hates me like a rival.”
“To be fair, you are. But I have an idea?—”
