It was a good thing that Bastian did not have any wine in his mouth at the moment. He would have been spitting the stuff everywhere.
"You want me to kill a perfectly competent, sweet woman who has done nothing bad to you whatsoever," he said in a stern voice. He was not about to tolerate any tomfoolery, and much less of active malice like that. "You do understand that this is the very definition of an outrageous request?"
She was silent for a while, didn't look at him, didn't drink from her goblet. But the shame on her face was lifting, and she began to move her fingers across the table, reaching for his hand before even meeting his eye.
"Don't do this to me," Bastian said softly, pulling his hand back. "Don't make me choose."
She also withdrew her hand rapidly and finally looked at him.
Her eyes welled up with tears.
"You don't know what nastiness she has done to me," Amanda argued. "She is always looking at me like she hates me. She steals my stuff."
"Stealing is prohibited in the ship rules," Bastian said, regaining his sense of control. "If you have proof of such a serious accusation, you can present any such proof to me and we will sort things out accordingly. But you have to be willing to accept an apology instead of murdering her. A crew member is a rare thing nowadays. We can barely keep the ship running with such a small crew. Imagine if I start killing all who are a bit mean to you."
"It's been continuing all this time," Amanda claimed. "And under my pillow…I found this."
She slipped a note to him.
In the note, her name was written in all caps and cow blood was smeared all over it. The message was clear. However, the note could have been written by anyone and Bastian did not want to go through a graphology analysis in order to figure out the sender.
It looked like he would have to do that, though. They focused on the wine and sulking for a moment.
"I don't want to ruin your mood," Amanda said. "It does look an awful lot like a threat, though."
"It does," Captain Bastian admitted. "What do you want to do about it?"
"I already told you. I think Sammy is up to something."
"Is there anything I can do to make you provide more tangible proof?" Bastian asked. He was getting annoyed already. This was far from the way he had been planning to spend his night.
"You know she is too clever to get caught making threats. But I know. And I am clever, too."
She stared at him for a moment.
"I want to be your wife," she said suddenly, with the poignancy of a lone woman looking for understanding. "I want to be yours, but how can I be, when you do not trust me at all?"
He sighed.
He weighed his options. Sammy was good, but not irreplaceable. Amanda, however, had this devious streak in her personality that really pulled some strings inside him. He wanted her. Did anything else even matter?
No, that was the only correct answer.
He got up and started to look for something blue.
In this world, marriages were easy enough, at least when it came to weddings. The partners merely had to exchange blue items and swear an oath in the presence of a priest of the Holy Circle faith, or a captain, and it happened to be so that Bastian was a captain indeed.
The oath was not of a religious kind, it was a bit mystical, and Bastian had spent many lonely nights reading on his phone and learning the oath, word by word memorizing it so that he could woo a woman with it. Otherwise that would have been a giant waste of time, but he had found this place and its women who truly knew how to appreciate a literate man.
Amanda severed a blue ribbon from her hair and prepared a knot into it so that he could put it around his neck.
He picked up a ring that was resting on the shelf. It had a turquoise jewel, probably aquamarine, and it sufficed, even though the color was a bit greenish.
"This marriage concerns Captain Bastian Black and Amanda…"
He waited for her to say her maiden name.
"Heash," she replied, blushing with genuine excitement.
"Heash. What a beautiful name. They are joining their inner lights in darkness, stepping out into the opening before the eyes of the universe. Once this speck of eternity is on her person, Bastian and Amanda are joined through the fog."
He slipped the ring into her finger. They were both already tipsy from the Lavenderian red wine, breathing heavily, dying to touch each other.
"I consent to this marriage and vow to defend this man with my life," Amanda breathed. "And I shall take his last name."
"I consent to this marriage and vow to defend this woman with my life," Bastian replied. "And I shall give her my last name to use as she wishes. So be it."
They pulled their bodies closer to each other as they were now standing near the table. They couldn't wait any longer. He had to kiss her - on those wine-stained lips of a she-devil, on that beautiful, evil little mouth. The woman curled her hands into his hair and he grabbed her jaw, with a gentle forcefulness that caused her to gasp into his mouth and pull him closer to her head. As she was not a tall woman at all, he really had to work to get on her level physically, but that only added to the excitement of the kiss.
Finally, their lips met. Her mouth and body were soft and inviting against her. She raised her other leg onto the table for support as she started to climb him like she would have been climbing up a strong oak tree.
His first wife, and what a woman that wife was!