Page 41 of Witchsea

“I should put the three keys on your back, over the markings where they are, and see if it changes anything,” Ren explains.

That sounds intimate, and after he kissed me? I’m not sure taking my top off is a very good idea, but he’s got a point. Maybe it’d work. I take the three keys out of my pocket and look at them. I need to hurry this up and find the end of this before my time is up with Rowe. “Alright, let’s try it.”

“Our room.” Ren nods down the stairs.

I chase after him. “You can call it ours, but it is not. It’s not like I’ve got any claim on it, nothing in there that really belongs to me.”

“You have a drawer for your clothes now.” He points out. “Do you want more drawers?”

“I want my own room and bed,” I mutter, and he ignores me, which I knew he would do. We walk into the room together, and he shuts the door before clicking his fingers, and all the lights come on, casting pink and blue shades around us. “Don’t look.” I turn around, trusting that he won’t, and pull my top off, covering my chest and lying face down on the bed. “You can look now.”

I watch him turn, watch how his eyes slightly darken as they drift up my bare back, and goose bumps dance across my skin. He comes over, sitting next to me on the bed and making it dip with his weight. My breath hitches as he picks up my hair and brushes it off my back, his fingertips drifting across my spine. This feels like torture. I close my eyes and focus on calming my breathing down.

He takes the keys from my hand and presses them onto my back. The cold weight of them is surprisingly heavy. I gasp as I feel it, a soft warmth spreading down my back as the map changes. “It’s not far again from here, the end. It seems like they want us to stay north.” His finger lingers over my back, but he doesn’t touch me. “Which is good. I prefer not to go any further north than we are now.”

“Why?” I whisper.

“I don’t want you to see the slave islands and the worst of the world when you’ve been drenched in such a similar life for far too long. You might not have been called a slave, Map, but you were not free. The king does not want free people in his world, and you might have been more favored than other islands, but it was not a real life of your choosing. I don’t like going to the slave islands either. I can’t save anybody there right now,” he admits to me. “I’m going to take you to your brother when this is over and help you both.”

I lift my head and look at him, holding the top to me. “You can help by fighting back against the king, Ren. I don’t understand why you won’t when you clearly despise the world he has made.” I touch his hand on the bed. “You have power.”

He stands up and walks away.

The keys fall off me as I sit up, holding my top to my front to cover my breasts. “Don’t run from me, Ren.”

“I can’t touch the king.” His answer is quiet.

“What?” I whisper, any hope I had dying in my chest.

“The king is immune to witch magic. I cannot touch the king, harm him, or overthrow him.” He lifts his head to look at me. “He has an army of a hundred thousand, magic that is unimaginable, and right now I would be killed if I went against him powerless. I’d be mortal in every sense.”

“How do you know that?” I demand. “Why do you want the gold?”

“Because it’s something to do with witches and our culture. Because he was once a witch, he is still a witch, but no one likes to call him that anymore because he is a betrayer. He is a monster, and all monsters die in the end. I want the treasure at the end of this map to save the witches and mortals.”

He is trying to help us? “Why didn’t you just say that? I want that too.” I smile softly, but he doesn’t smile back. There is something unreadable about his expression. “This is near the end of the test, and then this will be over soon and we won’t have to see each other again. I don’t expect you to come back home with me and meet Rowe.”

He’s shaking his head when he says, “Fuck this.” He goes to his knees in front of me, brushing my hair behind my ears and placing his hands on my shoulders. “I want you. I want you more than I can breathe. You’re what I crave. You’re the one person in this entire world that I want for me when I shouldn’t want this.” My breath hitches as he closes the gap between us. “I’ve spent every second since we met convincing myself that it was enough to just be near you and I couldn’t let myself have more…” He curls his hand into my hair. “Tell me you feel the same. No more bullshit between us. Tell me what you feel.”

“If we cross this line, it will be disastrous for us both,” I whisper. I can’t admit how I feel about him. Not yet, I haven’t admitted it to myself, and that word? Those three words lead people to do the most dangerous things in the world.

“Madness.” He breathes into me.

“Insanity.” I agree. “I want you. I think I’ve wanted you since you saved me. But it’s a bad idea.”

“I always knew it was a bad idea, but I came for you anyway.” He looks at my lips. “We can be a really bad fucking idea for each other and deal with the rest later.” He slams his lips onto mine, and anything, anything else, fails to exist except for him. I tug at his shirt, pulling on the buttons right before there’s three long bangs on the door. Ren ignores the knocking, but it continues as he kisses my jawline. He lifts his head. “Fuck off.”

“It’s Chaos!” Chaos shouts through the door.

I sigh as Ren stands. “He really hates me. This is just mean.”

“And me.” Ren storms to the door as I pull my top back on. Ren steps out, shutting the door behind him, but not all the way. “What do you want?”

“We are about to crash straight into a new island. Tracker is slowing the ship the best he can, but the wheel will not turn.” I hear the worry in Chaos’s voice. “It’s just appeared outside the front. It’s not like last time.”

“Okay, okay.” Ren whispers something else to Chaos, but I can’t hear him. He comes back into the room. “The gods are interrupting us, and they want this over with. We will continue this conversation later. Come up on deck and bring the keys. We might need them.” Ren grabs his sword and clips it to his back before heading out. I find my cloak and dagger belt with my dagger from Ren on it and tie it up, stowing the keys in one of my hidden pockets of my black cloak from Freckles.

I’m going to miss them all. The feeling hits me hard. It’s not just going to be Ren that I miss, it’s going to be Freckles and Clark, who became my best friends, it’s Mellyn and Tracker, and I might even miss Chaos. I glance at Limi as I walk into the center room, where she is sleeping on a crate. If I take her back home, she is going to freak everyone out, but Rowe will love her. I guess once he is healed, we won’t be home for long. I’m going to take Rowe to see the world as he finishes growing up, and we will leave the horrors of home behind.