hers. “I’m your sister, Jonnen. I’m here for you if you need.”
He licked his lips. His voice so soft she almost couldn’t hear over the waves and the thunder and the driving rain. “It’s … it’s very loud.”
“I know,” she replied. “It’s all right, brother.”
“Are we going to sink?” he whispered.
The Maid crashed down into another abyss, shaking the ship to her bones. The timbers creaked and the oceans roared and the thunder boomed, and Mia considered telling Jonnen a lie to shush him. But though she had no practice in being one, that didn’t feel like something a big sister should do.
“We might,” she admitted. “I hope not.”
“I … I cannot swim very well.”
“I can.” She squeezed his hand again. “And I’ll not let you drown.”
He stared at her, black eyes reflected with tiny pinpricks of arkemical lantern light. She could see their mother in him. Their father, too. But more than both, she could see him—the squalling little babe she’d held in her arms that nevernight in Crow’s Nest. She could still hear her mother’s voice, weary and breathless from the birth, her eyes shining as she looked at her son and daughter with an ardent, impossible love.
“Sing to him, Mia. He will know his sister.”
And so, feeling every inch a fool, dipping her head so her sodden hair would hide the blood rising in her scarred and branded cheeks, Mia raised her voice and sang. The song her mother taught her. Just as she’d done back then.
“In bleakest times, in darkest climes,
When wind blows cold in skies above,
When suns won’t shine, and truedark chimes,
Still I’ll return to thee, my love.
Ever return to thee, true love.”
Mia ran her hand across her eyes, shook her head.
“You’re right,” she chuckled. “I do sound like a harpy screeching for supper…”
She felt a slight pressure. A brief squeeze on her hand in his. And looking up into his eyes, she saw the boy wasn’t crying anymore.
“I’ve a notion,” she murmured, sniffling. “You want to sleep in my room? That way, if anything should happen, I’ll be right there…”
Jonnen pressed his lips together. Clearly wanting to acquiesce and clearly too proud to do so. Mia tried another tack.
“I’m scared, too. I’d sleep easier if you were there.”
“… Well,” he finally said. “If you are frightened…”
“Come on,” she said, grabbing his blanket and pulling him up.
The ship rolled and shook as they made their way back to the corridor, over to Mia’s cabin. She knocked on the door, poked her head in. Ashlinn was swaying in the hammock, eyes on the ceiling, concern on her face. But when she saw Mia, she smiled, threw back the blanket, and held out her arms.
“Come here, beautiful.”
“Put some clothes on,” Mia hissed. “Jonnen’s going to sleep in here with us.”
“Really?” Ash frowned, looking about her. “Shit, all right, give me a breath.”
Mia shuffled her brother into the cabin as Ashlinn rolled out of the hammock, turned away from the door. The boy stood with his hands clasped before him, sneaking curious and furtive glances at the inkwerk on Ashlinn’s back as the girl bent down and retrieved her slip, pulled it over her bare skin. Mia dragged off her sodden britches and shirt, down to the relatively dry slip beneath. Crawling into the hammock with Ash, she piled the blankets atop them and beckoned Jonnen.
“Come on, it’s all right.”
The boy was uncertain, but with his lingering fear of the storm snapping on his heels, he made his way across the boards and swung himself up into Mia’s arms. She wrapped a second blanket about his shoulders, winced as he wriggled and writhed, all pointy elbows and knees. But finally, he found some kind of comfort, Eclipse curling down at Mia’s feet and sighing in the gloom.
“… TOGETHER…”
Mia wrapped one arm about her brother, her other about the girl beside her. Ashlinn settled in against her, their bodies fitting perfectly, breathing a sigh into Mia’s hair. Mia kissed her girl’s brow, and after a leaden pause, risked a kiss to the top of Jonnen’s head. The boy didn’t react, save perhaps to breathe a touch easier, a scrap of tension easing out of his little frame.
She supposed it was a start.
Mia sighed from the bottom of her lungs. The two people she cared about perhaps most in the world, here in her arms. Her center. Her familia. The thing she’d fought and bled all this time for. Risking anything and everything.