Page 80 of A Match Made in Error

We are surrounded.

In a flash of lightning, I see a ship on the horizon and a dozen dingeys slowly making their way to shore.

Pirates.

I’m up and moving us across the deck before I think twice. The only thought in my brain is: Protect Poppy.

“She’s pleasing to the eye.” A pirate with an eyepatch and tattered clothes steps into the lantern light, a smile with missing teeth consuming his face. “Captain, can I keep that one?” Hot, acrid bile climbs up my throat. Over my dead body.

“No,” the captain, a tall, curly-haired male in all black, barks. “Kill them and raid the rooms. We have a dozen more rooms to hit, and you can’t steal a maiden from them all.”

“Not from them all, just this one.” His voice is begging.

“Fine, make it quick.” The captain’s consent sends the man stepping up to us, a chilling chuckle slipping from between his lips.

The pirate lunges at us, blades raised, but before he can strike, one of my shadows slips along the planks like spilled ink. His shipmates move in behind him, ready to back him in his mission.

Two knives vanish from the first pirate’s belt, lifted by nothing the naked eye could see, and without hesitation, I whip one through the air. It strikes him square in the shoulder. He howls, stumbling forward, and in his fury, swings blindly, his fist connecting with empty air where my shadows had been. The other stolen knife clatters loose across the deck.

Skidding to a stop at Poppy’s feet.

For half a heartbeat, she freezes, the world narrowing to the glint of steel and the sound of her own breath. Then something older than fear kicks in. She snatches the knife, spins, and throws just like I taught her at the Foxhole a few months ago.

The blade buries itself in the chest of the next pirate charging at us.

He drops.

I watch as the silence in her head detonates all at once. Poppy stares at the body crumpled on the deck, her hands shaking as the realization hits her like a wave.

“Oh coven—” Her voice cracks into a startled scream. “I—I killed him.”

In the pause of chaos—it seems everyone is shocked that she got one of them. I wipe a smear of blood from my lip where another pirate had clipped me. My gaze flicks from the fallen man to Poppy, something almost proud sparking behind the chaos in my chest. A crooked smirk tugs at my mouth.

“Told you,” I say, breathless but amused. “You’re stubborn enough to be dangerous.”

Poppy tries to smile back, but the expression trembles and collapses under the weight of it all. Her chest still heaves, heart pounding wildly.

“High praise,” she manages, the words thin and shaky as the rest of the angry pirates push in around us.

I hear Poppy whimper in fear behind me. In a split second, I see a nightmarish vision playing out in my mind. The Foxhole without her laugh. My bed without her warmth. My life without her. And my mind goes blank save for one lingering truth. There is no version in this world where I survive losing her.

This truth slices clean through my soul and makes all the years I’ve spent denying it feel wasted. She was right there all along, and I’m seeing a world where that may no longer be true.

Here, amid the chaos of the attack, I become the version of me I’ve always tried to hide from her. Because that’s what she needs, and I’d rather her fear me, hate me, than befall any harm. All humor and jokes leave me as I lock into the monster war made me.

A dark smile contorts my face, my head tilting to the side as shadows wrap around my arms. “Try and take her. I promise, if you do, you’ll leave here without an appendage I assume is very dear to you.” The pirates laugh, but the sound dies in their throats when my eyes blacken, and the shadows take on the form of two males, flanking each of my sides.

Despite their fear, one of them reaches for her, and I slam into them with a snarl that doesn’t even sound human. Another soon moves in, and my shadows pin him to the wall by his throat with a spectral forearm.

“Someone else try to touch her.” The violence is consuming me. At this point, I’d honestly like them to keep trying. It’s been too long since I let the beast within me run free. “See what happens.”

Another charges. I twist, grabbing a wooden spear from the belt of a fallen pirate, snapping the shaft over my knee, and wielding the jagged end like a blade.

“Riven,” Poppy whispers, her shaking voice and ethereal warmth the only things grounding me. The only thing stopping me from going full beast.

“Don’t look away.” My voice is dark and raspy, nearly unrecognizable. “I want you to know what I’d do for you.”

I fight the remaining men brutally. Efficiently using my long dormant training to morph into a terrifying soldier. Blood litters the deck, and the groans of fallen men fall deaf to the thundering sky.