by Adalyn Grace
“By the gods,” he mutters, and I look up to see that his face is turning green. Ferrick practically drops me on the deck and darts for the railing, barely making it in time.
Bastian takes one look at him and rolls his eyes, and despite everything, my stomach warms.
Even with everything that’s going on, I let myself sink into this feeling. Because for the first time since summer, I’m finally home.
CHAPTER TEN
It isn’t until Arida’s no longer in sight and the sea sinks into my skin that I realize this is real. We’re doing this.
The fierce wind rips through my curls as I settle into the damp air, pulling my cloak tight as I stare at the buoy. It sways behind us, and my chest swells with a feeling I nearly don’t recognize—freedom. No longer am I cooped up on Arida, but here on the open sea, ready for another adventure.
The crew lounges on the deck behind me, Casem and Bastian plotting our course while Shanty leans against the mast, using enchantment magic to repeatedly alter the color of her nails, having difficulty landing on any one shade.
Beside her, Vataea tips her head back against the dim sunlight, eating contentedly from a jar of pickled herring while Ferrick fidgets, working up the nerve to speak to her.
Vataea catches him from the corner of her eye, and her lip twitches with amusement before she hands him the jar in offering.
“Herring?” My stomach curls as a slimy fin disappears between her lips. She makes a satisfied groan before she starts on another one.
“Yes, thank you.” Ferrick clears his throat and takes the offering, not hesitating to bite into it. His entire body seizes the moment he does, forced to disguise his choking by coughing into his sleeve. “Delicious.” He nearly wheezes when he says it, forcing himself to politely finish the entire thing. “Just a little … salty.”
I grab a handful of dried meat and smother my laugh, heading to the bow to leave them to their conversation. Keel Haul’s a fighter, today. She tramples over the winter waves, jarring the ship enough for me to have to grip the railing to steady myself as I look out at the horizon.
One day we’ll go on a journey together, Father once told me as he carried me off the first ship I’d tried to stow away on. I’ll show you the entire kingdom. I’ll show you every jewel and every secret it has to offer.
I shut my eyes, trying to remember what it felt like against his chest. With each day that passes, I find myself chasing Father even more. Chasing the memory of his smile, or the sound of his laugh that always seems to evade me. The longer I try to keep hold of Father’s memory, the more my mind skews his image.
Crimson blood soaks through his vest and onto my hands, staining them. He drops me as the blood leaks from his mouth, shadows pooling like smoke from empty eye sockets, masking his face. Behind him, a sea of dead Visidians rise. Each of them stares at me, unblinking, and I recognize a few of their faces from the massacre that happened on Arida last summer. Where their eyes should be are holes filled with blood that runs like rivulets down their cheeks.
I reach out to Father as the blood pools around me, but every time I push forward, the dead pull him out of reach. Their rage clatters my bones, nearly piercing enough to split my head open.
They know what the Montaras have done to them, and the lies Father kept. They know this is our fault.
The last thing I see is Father clutching his stomach with one hand, while the other reaches for me through the dead that seize him tight. I push harder and harder to reach him, screaming when the dead devour him.
It’s my fault he’s dead.
It’s my fault they’re all dead.
It’s my fault—
“Amora?”
The voice snaps Father’s image away, and I open my eyes. My hands are gripping the railing so tightly that they tremble, nails digging into the splintering wood. There’s a strangled gasping sound, and I don’t realize I’m the one making it until someone has one hand on my back and another on my shoulder.
“Oh, gods. Hey, take a breath, all right? Try to breathe.” The voice is feminine, but not enough like a song to be Vataea’s. Though I can barely focus, I try my best to do as Shanty says. “Good. Listen to my voice.”
And though I expect her to keep telling me to breathe, it’s with a jolt of surprise that I realize she’s no longer talking, but singing so quietly I have to focus to hear it’s a popular sea shanty.
Her voice is nothing like Vataea’s. It’s like a ship grating across sand, completely off pitch. But the familiar rhythm of the words beats in my head, and I follow it.
By the time the song’s done, my vision has steadied, and Shanty eases her grip. She’s likely the only reason I’m still standing.
“Thank you,” I manage to say between leveled breaths, letting the ocean’s brine lull me back into its comfort. Slowly but surely, the pain of the memories ebbs away—still there, and still a constant weight, but no longer too much to contain.
Beside me, Shanty leans her arms against the railing. “There’s nothing to thank. I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but … Stuff like this? It gets better. Maybe not for a while, and maybe never entirely, but it gets better.”
I still, almost afraid to ask. “This has happened to you?”
She looks behind her, making sure no one’s paying attention before she whispers, “I imagine we have different reasons. But when my reasons feel like they’re too big to deal with, I know how suffocating that can feel. It doesn’t happen to me as often, anymore. But for me, music helps. Usually if it’s a song I know, I can focus on the words instead of the memories. My thoughts can get dark sometimes, so I try to trick them into something happier.”
I’m surprised by how comfortable she looks on a ship. I expected her to feel out of place, yet she’s perfectly at ease as she leans against the bow. Even now, it’s hard for me to get a grasp on who Shanty is. I know she didn’t come here out of good faith, but for the payment that comes with helping a queen. And yet, in this moment, it doesn’t feel like she has any ulterior motive. She seems like she would have stopped to help anyone who’d been going through what I was.
I’d always thought of Shanty as someone fearsome. Someone who next to nothing could shake. But here she is, the same as me.
“I didn’t expect you to come.” My words are as loud as my shaking voice can manage—hardly any louder than the wind. “Will the barracudas be fine without you?”
“The barracudas can take care of themselves,” she says. “This is a job, just like any other. They know I’ll come back to them, and my pockets will be nice and fat when I do.”
I set my arms over the railing and lean my head into them. “Please, don’t tell anyone about what happened. They wouldn’t understand.”
For a moment she says nothing, and if I didn’t feel the presence of her body beside me, I would think she’d left. Eventually though, her response comes. “It’s not mine to tell. But some of them might understand more than you think, you know.”
“You said it got better for you.” Behind her, I catch sight of the others sneaking glances at us, but between the distance and the roaring winds, I can’t imagine they’ve heard any of what’s happened. “When?”
“When I stopped running from it.” There’s something fond about the way she says it. “I had the help of my barracudas. They helped me embrace my past, when running from it became too exhausting.”
Again, my bones stiffen. Chills run up my spine and I shudder, though I play it off as only the wind.
“What do you say we get some breakfast?” Shanty insists. “Casem’s relaying notes from your mother about how to impress the bachelors, and her tips are making for some of the best entertainment in all of Visidia. You really ought to come and hear them.”
“I’ll be right there,” I say. “Give me a minute.”
“Of course.” She squeezes my shoulder in a way that seizes my heart and reminds me sharply of Father before she excuses herself. In her absence, I let the weight of he
r words sink in.
I had the help of my barracudas.
And I have my crew, but Shanty’s wrong. They’re frustrated enough with me and how I’ve had to handle my curse as it is. They’d never understand.
I stopped running from it.
But that’s not an option for me. My hands are stained with the blood of those who were killed on Arida the night of Kaven’s attack. They’re stained with the blood of my father.
If I stop running, it would mean accepting their deaths, as well as my curse. It would mean accepting that I only have half of my soul, and that soul magic will never belong to me or the rest of Visidia ever again.
Until I find the artifact—until I do everything in my power to repay Visidia for the damage I’ve caused—there’s no stopping. There’s no forgiving, no forgetting.
For now, I must keep running.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
With our course set, I head to the cabin Vataea and I are to share and set to work unpacking my chest. It’s with a heavy heart that I run my fingers over the fraying ropes of my hammock, remembering my first night lying here upon the sea. The start of a journey that would give me everything I’ve ever wanted, while taking away everything I loved most.
A quiet stomping of boots down the steps stills me, and I know they belong to Bastian even before he approaches with a second hammock in hand. Ours eyes catch, but he passes by wordlessly. I flinch at the sound of the first strike as he hammers the hammock into Keel Haul.
Staring at the tension in his body and the anger in his strikes, I know now’s the time to tell him the truth: that I’m here to find an artifact that can break our curse, not to take a husband. But as the words are nearly out of my mouth, Bastian breaks the silence.
“This would have been incredibly painful to do last summer.” Wiping sweat from his brow, he strikes another nail into the wood.
It takes me a second to understand he’s referencing his previous curse—the one that had his soul connected to Keel Haul—and I fold my hands as I take a seat across from him. “You must be glad not to be connected to a ship anymore.”
Gods. Small talk is bad enough on its own, but small talk with Bastian makes me want to chew off my own arm.
The breath he lets out sounds almost like laughter, but far too bitter. “I’d take my last curse to this one any day, Amora.”
Tell him, a voice inside me urges. Tell him the truth. But hesitation wins out, and I ignore the voice. “Is that why you never unpacked?” Inwardly, I curse myself for asking. I want to go on ignoring Bastian, just as I’ve tried to do since fall. But wanting and doing are something my mind and body wage a constant war between, especially now that we’ve been forced into such tight quarters. “You hardly had anything for the soldiers to load onto the ship.”
He continues his hammering, gaze never straying from his work. “It was in case I had to leave.”
I stiffen, biting down my surprise. “You can’t leave. What about our curse?”
“We’re not going to be cursed forever.” Another hammer strike. “I was getting ready for when we found a way to break it, and you decided you no longer want me on Arida. It’s impossible to get comfortable in a place I might not be welcomed to stay.”
My fingers still their anxious tapping. “Why would you think I wouldn’t want you there? I thought you wanted Arida to be your home.”
Finally he drops the hammer to his side, but the look Bastian cuts me is one of exhaustion, so unlike the assured arrogance he displayed on the shore this morning. “How can I feel welcome when you go out of your way to avoid me? When you flinch if I try to touch you?” He finishes Vataea’s hammock and takes a seat to test it, dragging his hands down his face. “Zudoh is my home. If you’d take the time to listen to me for five minutes, maybe you’d realize that.”
I tense before I realize there’s no harshness to his words. They’re flat and factual, and that alone halts my building tension.
“This curse affects me, too,” he says, “and it’d be nice if you remembered that. Wherever you go, I’ve no choice but to follow. So when you’re stuck on Arida, or parading around the islands with suitors, remember that I have to be there too, when all I want is to return to Zudoh and help repair the damage done to my home.”
“That’s all you want?” And gods, I don’t know why I ask. Part of me wants to swallow the words the moment they’re out, but the other part wants to hear him say it, because I can’t stop the feelings. The rage. The want.
The most vicious part of me wants to know he’s feeling the same way.
Tell him, Amora. Tell him the truth.
“You know it’s not.” Bastian stands, and I can barely breathe when he crosses the floor. Every step he takes toward me is one I draw back, until I’m flush against the wall and we stand chest to chest. He pins an arm on one side of my head and leans his face down so that his breath warms my lips. Never once do his hazel eyes stray from mine until his hand fists into my curls and I shut my eyes, dropping my head against the wall as my body practically breaks beneath his touch, wanting nothing more than for him to kiss me. To touch me.
I stiffen, expectant, but nothing comes. I force my eyes open only to watch him frown.
“I want you.” Something in his voice fractures with those words. “I just can’t tell if you want me, too. With you, I’d be happy on Arida. But every time you see me, it’s like you’d prefer me not to exist. And yet here we are, like this, and you’re not exactly running away. So tell me what I’m supposed to think.” He pushes away, and my chest aches when he’s no longer against it. But the moment there’s distance between us, it’s like the fog retreats from my mind, clearing a path for my thoughts.
“Tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it,” he urges. “I would move mountains for you. I would chase down the stars just so you could hold one. But if you don’t want that, then tell me now, because I won’t pine. I’m doing everything I can, Amora, but you have to tell me what you need.”
They’re words I’ve never heard before. Words that stir a fluttering in my chest. A rising pressure in my blood. An overwhelming sensation that this moment is fragile, and that with one wrong move, I’ll fracture everything.
“I wish it were that easy.” It’s not what I want to say; it’s what I have to. “I feel things for you that I’ve never felt for anyone, but part of my soul is inside your body, Bastian. How can I trust that any of this is real?”
“Because it was real from the moment we first met.” His voice is firm with determination. “I know you felt that same spark I did. It wasn’t an issue the first time we kissed, or the second, or when we were in Zudoh and nearly slept together. You and I had feelings for each other long before this curse.”
He’s right, and while I want to agree, I know in my gut it’s not the same. I will not be with someone who will chase down the stars for me if I cannot give them the moon in return. If I cannot be whole, then I cannot be with anyone.
This is my last chance to tell him the truth. But Bastian’s a tide that won’t stop reeling me in, and I need to be as unyielding as an anchor. I need him to feel a growing distance between us. Because I will not let this boy claim me, and if this is what it takes for him to realize that, so be it.
“I wish I could trust that.” I have to pull the words out of me. Each one is serrated, ripping me apart. “But whenever I’m near you, it feels like you own me. I’m not okay living like that.”
He draws back, and as he rubs a hand down his mouth and the dark stubble peppering it, I’m struck by how much older he seems. The shadows in his eyes have hardened since losing his brother, and his square jaw has turned to steel. I’ve always considered Bastian strong, but he’s more filled out now, with added muscle upon his bones and strength in his shoulders.
No one who meets Bastian now could call him a boy. While I wasn’t looking, he turned into a man. And now, there’s a spark in that man’s eyes.
“I’m no fool, Amora.” His voice comes coo
l as frost, and his nose crinkles as though he’s sampled a new wine only to discover he doesn’t have the taste for it. “If you thought settling down was what’s best for Visidia, you wouldn’t have broken off your engagement with Ferrick. He’s everything your kingdom could have wanted in a king.”
My chest seizes. I know this is my chance to tell Bastian the truth, and yet … I can’t seem to get the words out. I don’t want him to know that there’s a chance to break our curse. I don’t want him to know what I’m after, because I don’t need his opinions. Bastian has too much of a hold on me as it is. If I told him everything, it would mean letting him in. It would mean sharing this journey together.
And I’m not sure I’m ready for that.
“I know you well enough to know that you’re hiding something,” he says. “There’s more to this than you’re telling me. But I’ll play your game, and I hope you give it your best shot with those boys. Because you’re going to be sorely disappointed when you discover that not one of them is me.” With every word, his confidence blossoms. “They’ll never be able to make you feel even half the things I make you feel.”
His pirate swagger snaps back as he steps forward again. One foot. Another. And then his hand is on my waist. At first it’s hesitant, giving me the chance to pull back. But my knees tremble, and I can barely keep standing. The last thing I want is for him to let go.
“And if you find someone who does,” he continues, voice a low growl, “then I’ll stop trying. We’ll chalk half of what you feel for me up to the curse. But the other half? I’m going to call that real. And if there’s anyone out there who makes you feel more than that, I won’t try to stop you from being with them. I want you to be happy. But”—he leans down so that his forehead is pressed against mine, his words brushing hot breath across my lips—“since we’re playing, I’m making a new rule. I’m going to prove to you that what you feel for me is real. Whatever those other guys get to do to try to woo you, I’ll be right there playing along. I get to do everything they do.”