to stand beside me and I stilled, putting more space between us.
“This bastard has no idea what he’s doing,” he muttered, running his thumb over the picks at his hip and counting them silently. The ones he’d plucked from the crate were shining bright between the rusted ones he’d used on Jeval.
I didn’t answer, doing the same on my own belt. Koy and I weren’t friends. We weren’t even allies. If he was being nice, there was a reason, and one I wouldn’t like.
“What? You’re not going to talk to me?”
When I looked up into his face, I flinched at the sinister smile that stretched across his lips. “What are you doing here, Koy?”
He leaned into the rail with both hands and the muscles in his arms took shape under his skin. “I’m here to dive.”
“What else?”
“That’s it.” He shrugged.
My eyes narrowed as I studied him. Koy had a skiff and a ferrying trade on Jeval that put coin in his pocket every single day. He was likely the wealthiest dredger on the island, and in the time I’d known him, he’d never once left Jeval. He was after something.
“Come on, Fay. We Jevalis have to stick together.” He grinned.
I squared my shoulders to him, stepping so close I had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. “I’m not Jevali. Now, get in the water.”
“Urchins,” Wick muttered, moving around us.
Ryland followed on his heels, leaning over me as he hung his shirt on the mast. I had to step back to keep him from touching me. I knew exactly what he was doing. Even if I had the charge from Zola, he wanted me to know who held the power between us. I was no match for him. For any of them, really. And no one on this ship was going to have my back if it came to that.
I felt small beneath him, and that feeling made my stomach turn.
“Better watch yourself down there. Tides are fickle.” The look in Ryland’s eyes didn’t change as he said the words. He climbed up onto the side and jumped, holding his tools in place as he fell through the air. A moment later, Wick jumped in behind him, and they both disappeared beneath the sparkling blue.
Koy watched him surface, his face expressionless. “You’re not going to take your eyes off me, are you?” The dark humor bled into the words as he climbed up, and I followed.
I waited for him to step into the air before I sucked in a breath and jumped, crashing into the cold water beside him. The rush of bubbles raced over my skin toward the surface above and my eyes lit with the sting of salt as I turned in a circle, trying to get my bearings. The reef below snaked in a tangled labyrinth, deepening the farther it pulled from the islet in the distance.
Clusters of fish in every color swarmed the crests, catching the light with iridescent scales and rippling fins. The coral was heaped like the domes of an otherworldly palace, some of which I’d never seen before.
We were definitely out of the Narrows now. But the songs of the gemstones were something I knew. They bled together in the water around me and once I began to unravel them from one another, we could get to work.
I broke the surface, sucking in the air and rubbing the salt from my eyes. I could taste it in the back of my throat. “Start on the deeper end of each ridge. We’ll use our strength in the first half of the day and can work the shallower crests in the afternoon. The same tomorrow, so mark your tracks. And watch that south side. It looks like the current wraps around the tip of the reef there.”
Two of the Jevali dredgers answered with a nod and started their breathing, pulling in the air to fill their chests and squeezing it back out. Koy did the same, tying his hair back, and I kicked against the weight of my belt as I worked my lungs.
The familiar stretch behind my ribs, surrounded by the sound of the dredgers’ breath, made me shiver. It was too like my memories of diving the reefs on Jeval and the crippling fear that had followed me in those years.
It wasn’t until I stepped foot on the Marigold that I felt it lift from me.
I slipped my fingers into the neck of my shirt, pulling West’s ring from inside the