He touched one of my curls, then brushed my bangs from my forehead.
I got it. We were moving at quite a clip. I could hear the engine and slap of the propellers in the water, but there was no sensation of forward momentum. My hair didn't whip around my head. I moved away from him a little, because maybe his wide shoulders and muscular body were protecting me from the worst of it.
“We're moving?” I glanced back at him, and he nodded.
“We appear to be.”
I sidestepped toward the rail of the ship, but he stopped me. “Please don't go too close.”
“I wanted to look at the water. To see if I could tell.”
Footsteps pounded against the metal stairs. Pollux leapt down them, taking them two and three at a time. “You're okay?” he called, dodging Orestes and Paris, who were still helping people but watching us. He cut a quick look to my hands and was at my side faster than he should have been.
Or, at least, faster than he should have been in public.
“Fine,” I replied, more freaked out about what Hector had told me than a couple of cuts on my hands that barely hurt anymore.
All around us, people were talking about what happened, making it easy for us to speak without being overheard.
“I didn't sense anything before the first wave,” Pollux said. “Did you?”
Hector shook his head.
It wasn't long before Paris and Orestes joined us, but I still didn't see Achilles. I craned my neck, searching while I listened to the four men try to make sense of everything.
“We would have felt something, but it wasn't natural. Just like this isn't. It's like we're floating in a bubble...” Pollux said.
“We're floating?” I made a move to see over the edge of the ship, but like Hector, Pollux stopped me.
“We're floating on the water,” he said, “and we're definitely moving, but nothing is touching us.”
“We're moving at about twenty-five knots.” Achilles's voice came from behind me and I screeched.
Pollux, who had the unfortunate luck of standing next to me, winced.
“Sorry.” The huge man chuckled. How Achilles could laugh after everything made no sense to me, but he wore a smile. Despite being soaked to the bone, he didn't seem a bit chilled. “Quite a ride, wasn't it?”
“It was,” Hector replied, but his jaw was working back and forth. “And some of us can be injured.” He glared at Achilles and then my hands.
“Leo.” The big man shouldered Pollux aside to grasp my wrists. Hector had wrapped them so many times, I looked like I was wearing boxing gloves. “Can I look?”
“It needs stitches,” I answered in warning but nodded. The wrapping was too bulky, anyway. Achilles began unraveling the bandage until he reached the cotton pressed against my skin. Blood had soaked into it.Gross.I wrinkled my nose. This was going to hurt when he pulled it away. Despite feeling much better, I wasn't sure if I wanted to see—
“There's nothing here.” Achilles pressed his thumb against my palms. Instinctively, I jerked my hands back, but he held them in place. “Look.”
I stared. “Maybe I wasn't...” I trailed off, but Hector picked it up.
“You were. I saw it. It was deep in the muscle. This doesn't make sense.”
My hands were bloodstained, but all the tiny cuts and the double gash from gripping the seal was gone. And not just healed. There wasn't a scab. Not a scar. Nothing.
It was like it never happened.
“What the fuck?” I whispered. My stomach knotted, and a chill raced from the base of my spine up to the crown of my head. Edging past Achilles, I went to the van to examine the interior. I needed proof that I had injured myself. Sure enough, the rim of the seal's container was smeared with my blood. Pulling it close, I looked inside.
Indisputable evidence.
My bloody fingerprints covered the shard of the seal and had dripped all over the plastic.