Alexandra Duncan - Salvage

“Sorry.” Luck shakes his head, spattering water everywhere, and laughs. “Maybe we should go where it’s less deep?”

I push the hair out of my eyes. “Right so.”

I splash after him to shallower water, where my toes just brush the bottom of the pool.

“Put your arms around me,” he murmurs.

I oblige, looping my arms around his shoulders. He brings his lips to mine, and this time, we don’t nearly drown. He is salt and warmth and sweat, and I don’t ever want this kiss to end. His fingers sink into my hair and fumble to unbind it. My braids fall. He sweeps them aside to kiss my neck and I shiver. Just like I imagined.

“I’m going to take care of you,” he murmurs, his lips soft on my skin, my ear. “I’ll be a good husband. I’ll make you happy. I swear it.”

“I . . .” I start. But then his hand brushes my breast and all my thoughts fly away, as if swept off by a solar wind, invisible and unknowable.

“I want you, Ava.” Luck pulls back to look in my eyes. He swallows. “Do you . . .”

I teeter in his arms, caught between the swell of heat and an awful nagging at the back of my mind. But Luck’s shoulders and arms are so strong, holding me up, and he’ll care for me. He’ll make me happy. He swore it. I want so much for him to love me, to be worthy of that love, and my heart is everywhere—thrumming in my neck, down my legs, in my wrists, and all in between.

“They’re going to bind us tomorrow.” Luck’s voice is husky. He lifts my hand and interlaces our fingers, our wrists touching as they would beneath the marriage bonds.

“Thread over thread, life over life,” he recites.

I let out a shaky breath. “To make one life,” I finish.

Luck lays me down in the reeds with my head on the metal shore. I can barely breathe. I have that feeling again, that I’m only a passenger in my own body. Luck kneels over me. His breath is hot on my neck and face.

“Have you done this before?” My arms feel weak and my heart beats too fast.

Luck shakes his head. He gropes my back, fumbles. “I don’t want to hurt you. Soli said . . .”

“. . . she would break your toes,” I say, and break into a nervous laugh.

Something about my laugh knocks the awkwardness from us. Luck hugs me close and laughs with me. I can feel him shaking.

He turns serious again. “Are you ready?”

I take a deep breath. “I think so.” I look at him and remember the meeting at the dock, how my gaze flew to him for refuge when the rest of me was trapped still as death.

“So,” I say.

Soli is right. It does hurt some, but then it doesn’t so much anymore, or at least, it’s a sweet kind of hurt. Luck and I move together. The fish brush our bare ankles, the water laps softly against the sides of the pool, and my sense of time, my feeling for night and day, evaporates. I lean my forehead against Luck’s and breathe with him. I can already feel the fibers of my heart growing out, threading together with his where our chests meet.

When it’s over, we lie tangled together in the shallows, the water covering us like a blanket.

Luck kisses my knuckles. “Ava?”

“Hmm?”

“How come your crewe never taught you reading, but they showed you figuring?”

My face goes hot. I prop myself up on one elbow. “I can write my name. And figuring, I taught myself that.”

“You taught yourself?” Luck echoes.

“Mostly.” I shrug.

“But reading . . . what about safety signs and directions on how to make things? Don’t you need it for that?”

“Women don’t read.” I hear Modrie Reller’s words in my mouth. “We’re too busy. We have men to do it for us.”

Luck rolls his eyes to the ceiling. “That’s stupid. What if something happens? What if you have to try to set the distress beacon or tell if something’s poisonous?”

“I’ll have you tell me how to do it.” I gulp a mouthful of saltwater and spit it at him.

He splashes me back. “I’m serious, Ava. After we’re bound, you have to learn how to read. It’s dangerous, not knowing.”

I bite the inside of my cheek. “I might be some old for it. Modrie Reller’s always talking on how my father says our brains stop learning well once we’re done growing, and girls are never so good to start with.”

“I don’t know.” Luck draws me close again. “You taught yourself figuring, right so?”

I nod slowly.

“It can’t be harder than that, especially with someone to show you the trick of it.” He traces my collarbone with his forefinger. “You’re sharp, Ava, sharper than any other woman I know. And when we’re bound, you won’t need to hide your hair anymore.”

A lump rises in my throat. I kiss him again, harder this time.

“What in nine hells is this?” A rough, ringing voice cuts the silence.

Luck breaks away from me and staggers back to his knees. I clasp my hands over my chest and sit up.

Two men stand in the doorway, staring down at us. Night Fixes.

I reach for Luck, but he’s too far away.

“Æther Luck?” One of the men cranes his neck, trying to make out what he’s seen. “That the Parastrata bride?”

Luck swallows. “I . . .”

“Get her out of there.” The other Fix, tall and knob boned, shoves past his crewemate. He scoops up Luck’s shirt and hurls it at his face. “And get yourself out.”

Luck catches his shirt. He reaches down to help me up, and the Fixes glare at our joined hands as Luck leads me out of the water, shielding my body with his own. Shame swirls over me and gravity retakes my body as we slosh out of the pool. It fills my veins like lead. At the lip of the pond, the tall Fix yanks my arm up out of Luck’s hand and shoves Luck at his crewemate.

Luck catches himself midstumble. “Where’s your decency?” He looks back at me. “Let her put on some clothes.”

“You’re a fine one to talk on decency.” The stoop-backed Fix glares at him, but he doesn’t move to stop me.

I tie on my skirts and work the clasps of my shirt with shaking fingers. The fabric sticks to my damp skin. They saw us. They know what happened. They must. I want to run to Luck, cling to him, but they stand in my way. What’s happening? I want to ask. They should be angry to find us together, yes, but this fury seems too much when we’re near enough bound. Something’s gone wrong. I try to catch Luck’s eye as the Fixes march us up the spiraling gangway, past the service locker, to the laddered hatch, boots clanging double time.

“Where’re we going?” Luck asks, finally looking up.

“Your father.” The stoop-backed Fix glances at me with a look that says I’m nothing but muck and burnoff. “And hers.”

My breath stops. My father. My legs waver underneath me. The Fixes jerk me forward, push me to the ladder. My arms and legs climb without me, automatonlike. The thought of my father’s eyes on me, forming what I’ve done into words, makes me queasy with shame and regret. What seemed so right in the otherworldly glow of the pool seems unfailingly stupid now. We should have waited. It was only a few days. I wish I could go back, tip the balance so the me in Luck’s arms some minutes past would want to lose her girlhood the proper way. But there’s nothing I can do now, no going back. It’s done.