Iron Seas 03 - Riveted

finally found her?”
    “Yes.” She bit her lip. “And no.”
    His fingers paused. “No?”
    “When she left, it was because she’d taken the blame after I almost exposed Hannasvik to outsiders. She was protecting me.”
    “You didn’t know?”
    “I did. But I always thought that the names she called me were a joke. The sort of thing you say when you tease someone that you love. Annika the Woolgatherer, Annika the Rabbit. I didn’t know until today that she truly believed them. That she believes I’m too weak to survive the New World.”
    “And you’ve spent four years proving her wrong.”
    Perhaps. But she wasn’t wrong about all of it. “She said that I’m only brave when I’m in a troll. That’s true, I guess.” She sighed. “What do you think of Lorenzo?”
    He didn’t immediately answer. Annika turned to lie against his side, pushing up on her elbow to look down at him. He wore a troubled expression, his brows drawn.
    “That bad?” she wondered.
    David nodded. “He’s determined to help his father, no matter the cost. I knew that. But I don’t know whether he understands right from wrong and does the wrong anyway…or if he truly believes that there’s nothing wrong with what he’s doing, and that the greatness of his father’s quest justifies the steps he takes.”
    To knowingly commit evil, or to commit evil without recognizing that it was. “Which is worse?”
    “The second.”
    Annika didn’t completely agree. She supposed it depended on the circumstances. “Which do you think Lorenzo is?”
    “The second.” He lifted his hand, smoothed back the curls from her forehead. “Everyone makes choices that they know aren’t right. And we recognize that they aren’t right, so we feel regret or remorse, even if we’d make the same choice again. It’s a part of being human, part of what separates us from beasts. But I can’t see any regret in him. He killed everyone on Heimaey simply to test his father’s æther suit—not even as a necessary evil, but because he could. That giant balloon out there is filled with the gases released during their drilling. They deflated it over the town while he walked through the streets wearing that suit.”
    Horror settled deep, splinters of ice in her stomach and heart. “He walked through himself?”
    She would have guessed that he’d forced one of his men to do it.
    “Yes. So he’s not just willing to do anything to help his father—he has no remorse, and no fear.”
    “That’s terrifying,” she whispered.
    “Yes,” David said, and held her tighter against him.
    Lorenzo was the observationist, but Annika found it almost impossible not to watch him during dinner. She couldn’t make herself stop—and she simply couldn’t understand him. How could he laugh and play with Olaf, and be so gentle with his father? Howcould he ask after their comfort, and promise to see that a desk was brought to their chamber the next day? How could he look and act so human when only a few days ago he’d strolled through a town while the women died around him? When he’d been the one to cause their deaths?
    The father could not have been any more different from the son. She saw him looking at her several times, shy and hesitant, and offering her a sweet smile when she met his eyes. She didn’t know what to think of the posts stuck to his head, but when Källa gave her a warning glance, she understood that it was better not to ask—at least for now.
    Paolo seemed genuinely adoring of Källa—who liked him as well, even if not in the same way she’d been with Lisbet. Some of his shyness dropped away when he realized Annika was her sister.
    He pushed his stew away, eagerly leaning forward on his forearms. “You are Annika the Rabbit?”
    Oh, that had never bothered her before. It stung now. She frowned at Källa. “You told him?”
    “There was not much else that I could say about home.”
    And they couldn’t now, either. Aware of Lorenzo watching, she let her irritation go. She didn’t want to give him anything, didn’t want him to know her in any way.
    “She described you as more colorful,” Paolo said.
    “I usually am, but I lost all of my clothes.”
    “Oh? What are you wearing, then? It must be the most wonderful illusion ever created.”
    She had to smile. “I lost all of my colorful ones.”
    “A whale ate them,” David said dryly.
    Annika covered her laugh, didn’t dare look at Lorenzo. Said like that, it sounded almost as