Chapter Twenty-Three: Damnable Conscience!
Wow, he thought as Reanna and he continued kissing each other passionately. Wait, should this be happening? a voice piped up in his mind, and he groaned inwardly. Damn conscience, why did it have to speak up now? He didn't want to stop! For the first time in his life, he didn't have to act like a courtier or have money to get a beautiful woman into bed with him, and his damned conscience decides to grow a backbone.
Where had his conscience been when he had decided to become a bounty hunter and turn in seemingly innocent people without asking questions? Where had it been then? Then you weren't letting a drunk girl do something that she might regret later, the voice said.
Since when do I care what she regrets?! he silently shouted back at his conscience. She burned my ship, damn it! My crew is scattered to only God knows where, and now I just might get something in return for it!
Remember what Y'lorani said? his conscience replied slyly. Devon cursed, pulling away from Reanna. He had no doubt that the elf could kill him with hardly a thought to it, and the fact that he had begun to care for and respect Reanna only threw a bigger kink into the thick of things.
"What's wrong, Devon?" Reanna asked sharply, hardly seeming as though she had even taken a sip of wine.
"Reanna, I don't think I can go through with what you seem to be wanting to do right now. I'm sorry," he said miserably, running a hand through his unkempt hair, cursing when he hit a snag.
"Why not?" she asked coldly. "You seemed to be just fine with doing something of the sort not more than two nights ago. What's the matter?"
"Then I didn't give a damn about what you might or might not regret, alright?" he said, almost shouting as he stood up. "Then you were just a little girl playing captain of a ship that you inherited from your highly esteemed father, you were as unimportant to me as a whore might have been!"
Her eyes widened, and he thought he detected moisture welling in them, which made him immediately regret what he had just said.
"Listen, Reanna, I--" he started to say, but stopped when she stood up, trembling.
"No, I'm not going to listen to you, you have said all that I needed to hear. I thought that maybe I was a person worth your attention, but apparently I'm no more important than a whore." Reanna's voice shook, though whether it was from anger or tears it was hard to say. "I understand how a mere child like me would rank so low in your esteemed eyes as a bounty hunter, and I humbly beg your pardon for thinking that I could possibly be otherwise!" As she had continued speaking, her voice had risen to a rather high volume.
"Reanna!" he said pleadingly, and she raised her hand and delivered a stinging blow across his face. "Bloody hell, woman!" he shouted as he grabbed her wrists before she could strike at him again. He felt blood trickling down his cheek and realized in some small corner of his mind that she must have scratched him when she had slapped him.
Instead of struggling, as he had expected, she collapsed to her knees, her shoulders shaking with what sounded suspiciously like sobs. If there was anything that could possibly make him feel worse, it would have to be this, he thought bleakly to himself. He let go her wrists, but instead of comforting her, he picked up the wine bottle and finished it off, noticing to his discomfort that in her fury her shirt had fallen open and now hung off of one shoulder. She continued to cry, the occasional sob escaping her to reach his ears.
He was just glad that her hair hid her face. If he had been able to see the tears running down her cheeks he would have gone mad with the desire to do something--anything!--if only to make her smile. He couldn't help but notice that her hair was messed up, and couldn't resist getting down on the floor with her and smoothing it out.
She looked up at him, her sobs suddenly coming to a halt for the moment, and he damned himself to the deepest pits of Hell. Tears were still running down her cheeks, which had turned red from the crying, and her eyes were swollen and slightly reddened from the storm.
"I'm sorry, Reanna," he said, the words falling from his lips before he could stop himself. He couldn't help it, it was his curse. "I didn't mean it. I was angry at myself for taking advantage of you while you were drunk, and those words just...they just slipped out, and I was being cruel and I'm sorry. I want to make it up to you."
She wiped her eyes with her shirt, no longer seeming to care that he could see her breasts. When even the residual sniffling had stopped, she sat on the floor staring at the slightly ragged carpet at picking at hit absently. He wished he could see her expression, but her hair was covering her face again, obscuring his view.
Daringly, he pulled her close to him and picked her up, cradling her in his arms. He stood and carried her the short distance to her bed and placed her under the covers, trying to avoid her sorrowful green eyes staring up at him.
"You should sleep, Captain," he said gruffly, then turned to walk out of the cabin.
"Devon, wait," she rasped. He stopped.
"Please...stay here," she said softly, almost pitifully. When he turned around, he saw that she had pulled the covers back and scooted to leave a large space for him to lay on. Sighing, he walked over to the bed and laid down next to her, holding her gently as she curled into him.
Though Reanna fell asleep, Devon remained awake for a long time, aching for her. He had said some very cruel things, none of them to be forgotten any time soon, though they appeared to have been forgiven for the moment.
**
Instead of shouting angrily, the seer just hanged his head in his hands. He had lost the vision. The veil had been drawn back over the whereabouts of the perfectly intact ship, and he was a failure yet again.
He was getting tired of this feeling of inadequacy, and he knew that his master would be very unhappy with him for not holding on to the vision long enough to learn anything of value. Even though he had been able to see, he couldn't hear anything, nor was he any good at lip-reading...not that anyone had really said anything during the violent storm that had seemed bent on destroying the ship and everyone on it.
Of course, the storm hadn't succeeded as it would have with almost any other person captaining the ship. This girl was exceedingly more skilled than he had had any reason to suspect, and he wondered whether his master knew what he did about her strength and resourcefulness. She was the only one that could possibly have been running the ship during the gale, after all. She had been the only one of the crew that wasn't tied to the rail. Even if he couldn't see her, he knew every crewmember she had, and each of them had been tied to the rail to ride out the storm.
Not that it mattered that she had taken care of the ship during this storm, once she was in his master's hands, there would be no way out. Not even for one as creatively resourceful as this Reanna seemed to be. He would have laughed if he hadn't known the truth of the fact that Reanna would be far harder to catch than he had been led to believe, and it would take every last ounce of cunning he had to do so.
But maybe Devon was still on their side...
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Rin: Thanks for your latest review, and I knew that you were the same Rin, lol. I looked at your profile just to make sure, lmao.
Nikee: Thanks muchly for your latest review as well!
I'm getting slightly burnt out, I'm sorry to say. This chapter took me an hour and a half to write (partially 'cause I had the TV on, I'll admit...), and it's been getting harder and harder to keep up since chapter 20. But I'll do my best to get another chapter out tomorrow, and then I'll take a day off on Saturday. After that, I'll try to finish out the month with a chapter a day and then maybe start slowing down a little bit!
Thank you for your reviews, I love you all!