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CHAPTER ELEVEN "feeling is part of the human condition"
MERCY FAHEY, ESTEEMED CAPTAIN OF THE IMMACULATA had made a few enemies in her time.
A lover in every port - that was the old wives' tale. But where her crew found men and women in all corners of the world, Mercy like to delve into a much purer emotion - rage. Because what was the kiss of love compared to the bitter venom of an enemy.
She'd done it all: extortion, arson, vandalism ( perhaps an identity theft or two ),just to spark that ember of hatred in the heart of the nations and revel in the notion that if she couldn't capture their hearts, she'd stop them instead.
But none of them ( not even the tenacious tailor in Fjerda ) could compare to the Saints. Those bitches had it out for her - Mercy was sure. She may have cursed them one too many times or stolen their blessed golden cutlery set and sold it on the Kerch black market, but surely the past was in the past? Revenge is so old-fashioned after all.
Mercy had spent her first few years on the waves thinking she was mad - plagued by some invisible ill fortune that made every hand she drew a dud, or every lucky guess anything but. The Pirate's reliance on something as trivial as luck was tenuous at the best of times but really, if she was being honest, the Saint's fervent onslaught had just made her more inclined towards a funny little thing called Aarav. And herself. Herself too.
Because anything the Saints could do, Mercy and Aarav could do better.
But when they made her crave the sound, sight and touch of a Lantsov Prince, she knew she was royally, spectacularly, colossally fucked.
The angry Ravkan air tore through her skin. This wasn't the sea, where every touch of the breeze felt like a lover's kiss. This was violent and feral and consuming. Mercy didn't belong here and the air knew it. That didn't stop her perching on the window's ledge with all the caution of someone with very little left to lose. It was cold and it was raining, tears from the clouds that sang above. Mercy caught a droplet on her tongue - it tasted like home.
A harsh chill passed through the feeble, sodden cloth of her undershirt with ease and despite the trembles that broke out along her flesh, leaving her shaking and chattering from the cold, Mercy did not relinquish her window-top throne.
That is, until three dull strikes echoed through the room.
Mercy refused to call it her room, it was not her's. Nothing in this palace was her's and nor would it ever be again. It was a room, one she would soon leave. She'd given Aarav until midnight to say his goodbyes, an hour that was still half the night away and seeming further and further with every heartbeat.
