She doesn’t invite me to sit with the other lackeys when I get my tray, but I do it anyway. When I’m not on the trainer deck, the safest place on this boat is glued to Swift’s hip. I haven’t said a word since this afternoon; at this point, I think pretty much anything out of my mouth will offend her.

The lackeys all seem too happy to see me. Even Lemon lights up a bit when she spots me tailing Swift over to their table.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Varma says, grinning extra wide as I slide onto the bench next to Swift. The guy probably gets kicked out of funerals for looking too pleased with himself.

I eat in silence and leave with Swift. We go back to her room, she throws a change of clothes at me, and it’s just like the first night, minus the punching. She just collapses in bed, rolls over, and I follow.

But this time I don’t let her drift off. I have questions, and the first is, “Why do you guys like each other so much?”

Swift startles. She lifts her head, her half-there hair flopping over as she twists to look at me.

“You and the other lack—trainees,” I continue. “Only one of you is going to be captain in the end, right? Shouldn’t you all be at each others’ throats?”

For a moment I think she’s not going to respond, but then she rolls over to face me, and something seems to soften in her.

“We’ve been through a lot of shit together,” she says. “When you work like we do, when you hunt side by side—it’s something that bonds you. Sometimes the captain does stuff like this. She sets up situations where someone’s clearly getting special treatment, and yeah, it gets messy sometimes. But when you suffer with someone, you learn them. And it’s hard to kill a person you’ve learned.”

I nod. I’ve seen that kind of suffering-bond firsthand every time we have a pup in the stables—the caretakers of the newborn Reckoner become caretakers of each other. “But it can’t last, right?”

“It might have,” Swift sighs. “But then you came along.”

I don’t know what to say. Does she expect me to apologize for being dragged bodily aboard this ship to raise a beast I want to destroy more than anything?

“You still on those pain meds?” she asks. “You’re awfully talky today.”

I wrinkle my nose. “Reinhardt weaned me off them a week ago.” My ribs still twinge on occasion, but I don’t want Swift to know that—she’d probably jab them if she knew.

“Ah, so you’re just getting more comfortable.”

“Well I am sleeping in your bed,” I grumble.