I put a stop to that too and drape my soggy arm around him, anchoring him to me. “He’ll be all right.They’llbe all right.”
Sev nods, blowing out a breath that’s all nicotine and stress. “This is so much fucking worse than last time.”
Thunder booms, no longer overhead but rolling back out to sea. “Last time?”
“When he was on Old Pete’s boat for the winter. Got hit beam-on, smashed the wheelhouse and everything in it, and ran adrift all night. Longest twelve hours of my life.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“You never knew. It happened when you were deployed.”
“When?”
Sev shrugs. “Ten years ago, maybe? I don’t fucking know.”
Valid. And I guess the specifics don’t matter. The point is Sol’s been missing before and I never knew about it, and that shit burns.
I eye the bin, contemplating who’d stop me if I fished out Sev’s smokes and lit one up. Skylar, maybe. Mal, who seems to read my mind and shifts to block my view of the bin in the same moment Folk calls his name instead of mine.
Mal steps off. Putting enough space between us that I know he’s made the same assessment I have that whatever Folk has to say is something I don’t want to hear.
But there’s no space wide enough that I can’t read him as he listens to Folk without a single overt reaction. That I can’tseehow much effort he puts into holding his face so still and know it’s the same reason Folk doesn’t look at me at all.
They part ways. Folk melts away, and the split second it takes my brother to force himself into motion tells me everything without him uttering a fucking word.
Mal reaches me.
I’m already backing up, but he grips my wrist with an unbreakable hold.
“They’ve found her.”
Her. Not him. Not them. The distinction matters and my blood goes cold in a way the wind and rain haven’t managed yet. “Is she whole?”
Mal’s nose flares. “Upturned. Hull’s visible between sets, but they can’t get to her.”
Upturned. The harbour noise flattens, like someone’s thrown a soundproofed shield over me and sucked the air from my lungs. “Any sign of them?”
“Not yet,” Mal says, but the optimism sounds forced and I want to punch him. “And they’re thinking of pulling the lifeboat back. They’re going to come back to us when they’ve made a decision.”
Pull back.
Call off the search.
Start again at first light.
The words don’t need saying. So Mal doesn’t bother. But they hang there anyway, filling the space between Sev’s anguished howl and the utter silence of the rest of us.
Skylar leads Sev away.
Mal stays with me, and the Rebel Kings who venture closer, forming a loose arch behind me, as if they can shield me with dark leather. Protect me from dry land while the ocean threatens to obliterate my entire existence.
Upturned.With no sign of Sol and Oscar. That means they’re either trapped inside or in the water and my heart knows it’s the latter.
Winter water.
Open seas.
They’ve got an hour at best before the cold takes them, and it’s already been too long.