Corvus (Stars and Sails, Book 1)

Four

As night fell, Jade lit the lantern on her side table. Her cabin was the smallest in the vessel, but it didn't bother her because she had it all to herself. It was the size of her father's cabin—about as big as the closet of a modest society woman. Or so she had imagined it would be, if her mother hadn't given her away for being a bastard.

There was a knock on her cabin door.

"Oliver?" Jade asked. Force of habit; there was no one else on board the ship except for him. They were all dead. The door slid open. All of the cabin doors were built on tracks like they belonged in a barn. When Jade first began living on the ship, she hated the noise. Every time she closed her cabin door, she imagined she was stepping back into a jail cell. She hadn't wanted to come live on the Coronis, but now it was the only thing she had ever known.

Oliver stepped into the cabin. His eyes were focused on his hands, rather than on Jade. She got off her cot and picked up a chair from the corner of the room. There was a coffer secured to the wall, but with a little jiggling and pulling, she was able to drag the chest across the room near her cot. She patted it with her hand. "Take a seat."

Oliver nodded and plopped onto the coffer, sitting with his skinny legs crossed beneath him. He wasn't much younger than she was, but there had always been something about his heart—he had the heart of a young boy, not one of a young man. Sometimes he was told that he needed to grow up, but he simply didn't know, nor did he care to. Maybe that's what Jade admired the most about him. Somedays Ollie was seventeen and other days he was just a boy who felt a little scared and a little too small for the shoes he was meant to fill. Jade felt like she had been protecting him all her life, but in reality, he had only joined the crew seven years prior. Leon Harris took pity on him when he found the boy stealing food from them at port.

"I found some medical supplies in Dr. West—"

Oliver shook his head. "Don't say his name. I'm not ready to hear it yet."

Jade nodded. She took up his hand in hers and examined the rope burns. It looked worse than it did the hour previous. The ropes had done more than burn; they had cut deep gashes across his palm. Around the edges, his torn skin took on the lightest purple.

Jade picked up a bottle of hydrogen peroxide from his bag. At one point she thought Dr. Weston had used it as an antiseptic and in this situation, infection was the biggest problem. Jade had never really cared for any scrapes or cuts herself, but it couldn't be that hard. "This is going to burn a little bit," she said. Oliver nodded. Her hand shook as she tilted the bottle. A little poured  onto the wound. She watched it bubble and foam. Oliver tried to pull his hand away.   Jade ignored him. After tipping more on, just for good measure, she took a dry towel from the night table and patted his hands dry.

"Is it going to be okay? I've never hurt myself so bad."

"Of course, it'll be okay. Let's not worry," she said. "Anyway, you've gotten hurt worse. You still have a scar on your arm from when—"

"Oh, I don't want to talk about any of this." He shook his head. "Why are you—" He rubbed the back of his arm across his face. "Why aren't you upset?"

Jade closed her eyes as she reached for the bandage on the table. "For God's sake, Oliver." She wrapped the bandage carefully around his palm. "I think I might call you an insensitive brat if I didn't care about you so bloody much."

Oliver sniffled. "I'm sorry," he said. "I just forget that you hold it all in." When she looked up at him she could tell his eyes were watering, so she looked away quickly and took up the other bandage. Oliver sighed. "Yeah, you're right. He did hurt me worse. I still have a scar from his bullet." He tapped the low heel of his boot against the coffer. "But it was an acci—"