I swallow. “If he is alive, you’ve faced him once and won; we can defeat him again.” My words are shaky, and it’s not only from the vision.
“Of course.” Aris tries to muster a smile, but it’s clear my vision has rattled him as much as it has me. He gives my shoulder one last squeeze. “Try to get some rest.” He eases off the bed and turns to leave, but then turns back. “I wouldn’t tell anyone about this vision. It will scare the men and might cause Royce to reconsider taking us after the gold. The crew won’t look kindly on facing a pirate captain they all thought was long dead.”
I nod, trying to mask the fear creeping up inside me. I wrap my arms around myself for warmth.
Aris must sense my discomfort because he hesitates. He pulls a small book from his pocket and slowly approaches me. “I brought this. I don’t even know why I brought this.” He runs his fingers through his hair. “I just—I thought it would be easier this way.” He holds it out to me.
I run my hands over the cracked leather and flip through the pages. It’s clearly seen many days at sea. Some of the pages no longer lay flat, and some are missing. Blotches stain the edges where ink has bled across the paper after getting wet. “What is it?”
“It’s the journal I started the day after my father’s accident.”
My eyes fly up to his.
“I don’t want it to scare you,” he adds quickly. “I know it’s a lot to take in.” He pauses, sucking in a deep, uneven breath. “I tend to make light of situations, and I’m not always good at talking about everything that happened. But I want you to understand, to know who I am. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I hope you will.”
“Thank you.” I hold the journal against my chest. He’s given me such a large part of himself, something I’m sure he’s always kept hidden.
Aris won’t meet my gaze. “I hope you’ll keep it out of sight. Some of the crew wouldn’t understand if it fell into their hands. Most of them don’t even know how my father died.”
“Of course,” I say.
He offers me a strained smile. “Well, I should go invent some excuse for Royce as to why you screamed before he comes down here himself.”
I can’t help opening the journal as soon as the door shuts behind him.
I dreamt of my father last night. A cold dream that left me shivering when I woke.
At first, there is only darkness. The kind that presses so hard against you, you wonder if anything else exists anymore. Then, small lights appear. They fall from the sky like stars. But they aren’t lights. They’re coins. One by one, they clink into place. A thin layer at first.
That’s when my father arrives. He’s trying to tell me something, but I can’t hear him over the clinking of the coins. They bury him up to his knees. But he’s not concerned. He wanted this.
As the pile around him grows higher, he becomes worried.
Then, the screaming starts. The coins are up to his chest. He reaches out to me. I run toward him, but there are too many coins raining down. They pelt me.
Still, I struggle forward. Somewhere behind me, my mother is crying. She’s trusting me to save him.
I make it to the pile, but it’s up to his eyes. They plead with me.
I rip at the coins. I knock away handful after handful. I dig until my palms bleed and fingers blister.
The pile swallows his head.
I leap onto the pile. Coins bite into my knees. I swoop away armfuls.
His head comes free. I dig faster, spurred on by my success, unburying him to his neck. I heave him upward.
“I’ve got you,” I say.
His head rolls back. His eyes shoot open. They look straight through me.
“You failed me,” he says.
And I can’t move as the coins bury both of us, and my mother continues to cry.
I slam the journal shut. I pull my braid over my shoulder and tug the end of it.
Aris said he didn’t want the journal to scare me. If I’d read it without meeting him, I would’ve imagined that the owner of these dreams would be just as lost and alone as I feel.
But somehow he’s found a way past that, found a way to be the happy, confident man who stood in front of the court yesterday.
I run my hand down the front cover of the journal. He was right. I do need this. Because it doesn’t scare me. It gives me hope.
CHAPTER 8
Hettie staggers into the room, and I hastily shove Aris’s journal under the covers. I’d just been planning to go look for her.
Her face is green, and every time the ship dips, she grips her stomach in an attempt to hold everything in. She collapses onto the bed without a word. A moment later her head shoots up. “The air is so stuffy down here. It smells like a sweaty man.” She shoves her face into one of the pillows and then lifts it up right away. “Ugh. That smells too. How am I supposed to sleep in here?”
“You weren’t,” I say.
“Can’t the pillows be washed?”
I sigh. “You can wash the pillows if you want.”
“Me?” Hettie says, her voice rising several octaves. “I would never, and nor will I sleep in here with these.” Hettie throws the pillows on the floor and crosses her arms. She pouts. She always pouts when something’s not going her way.
Heat rises in my cheeks. I snatch a pillow from the floor and throw it at her. It hits her square in the jaw and knocks her off the bed.
“How dare you,” Hettie screeches, clawing her way back onto the mattress.
“No one asked you to come,” I shout back.
“No one asks me to do anything.”
The insult forming on my tongue fizzles out.
Of course I hadn’t invited her. This very argument is proof of why I didn’t want her around. It just never struck me that Hettie was as trapped in the palace as I was.
She hugs a pillow to her chest.
“Hettie”—I soften my tone—“I’m sorry.”
“You should be. It’s all your fault I’m here anyway.” She tries to hide the fact that she’s crying by brushing the end of her sleeve across her eyes. “You’re the one who told me all those stories about far-off places. You made it sound like leaving the palace was going to be the best thing that ever happened to me. It’s the worst. The worst! Now, I’m stuck on a boat that stinks of rotting fish and sleeping on pillows that smell like the men who clean out the stables.”
“This isn’t one of my adventure stories,” I say. “You know what’ll happen to my father if we don’t get the gold back.”
Hettie frowns. “I know that. I just didn’t want you going off alone. I’m your only friend”—she grimaces—“your only sort-of friend, and I thought I should be the one to go with you. And someone’s going to have to carry that gold since you can’t touch it.” She suddenly straightens her shoulders, refusing to acknowledge she’d had a moment of weakness. “I bet you didn’t think about that. I bet you’re glad I came along now.”
I’m surprised she even had time to spare me a thought in her mad rush out of the palace, and I’m actually a little bit touched.
But then Hettie goes and ruins any goodwill I feel toward her. “Besides, how was I ever supposed to find a man with you scaring all the suitors away?”
I roll my eyes.
“It’s true. Do you think Duke Wystlinos even gave me a passing glance? What about any of the other suitors? As soon as they realized you didn’t want them or you scared them away, poof.” She fans out her hands. “They were gone.”
I can’t fathom which suitor Hettie had her eye on. It couldn’t have been Duke Polmey’s oldest son. He was bald and had teeth sharper than cutting knives. The merchant’s son, Tyoul, couldn’t even eat his food with his mouth closed.
I cycle through the suitors, eventually landing on Aris. He’s handsome, dashing, adventurous, and has the most understanding spirit of anyone I’ve ever met. Who else would calm you down after a vision of cursed gold causes you to claw your own skin off?
“You�
�ll find someone,” I say.
“That’s easy to say when you have men flocking to you.”
“I don’t want that. I never did.”
“Then what do you want?” she snaps.
I find myself at a loss for words. It’s been so long since anyone’s asked me that. Actually, I can’t remember anyone ever asking me that. Perhaps people did before I was cursed. Maybe they asked me if I wanted honey-drizzled tulumba or toasted almond tarts for dessert. Maybe they asked me if I wanted a blue dress or a pink one. Maybe they even asked me what I thought about ruling Lagonia someday.
My gaze drifts toward the top deck in a movement I realize is not unlike my father’s glance toward the tower. He always looked for the gold, the thing he wanted most in the world, and in that moment, what I want most is up there, walking around. Because being with Aris puts images in my head that I haven’t dared to think about in years. Aris wouldn’t make me hide. He’s the one who helped bring me out from under my veil. Together, we’d be a team. Slowly, we would show the world that you could survive a curse.
Hettie’s impatience saves me from having to answer her question out loud. “At least I know what I want. And right now, I want to eat something. How do we get servants to bring us food?”
“If you’re seasick, eating’s probably not the best idea,” I venture.
She shoots me a glare. “I’ve already thrown up everything I ate, and now I’m starving. Besides, eating always settles my stomach.”
In truth, Hettie always gets grumpy when she doesn’t eat regularly, but I can’t decide which would be worse: to hear her complain about her empty stomach or to hear her complain when she inevitably gets sick after eating. I decide to put off the complaining as long as possible.
“There aren’t any servants to bring you food here. You’ll have to go find some.”
Hettie rolls her eyes and lets out an exaggerated sigh.
Sometimes I think she would’ve done better growing up on the farm our fathers shared before my father became king, before the Great Oracle ever made that accursed prophecy.
Still pouting, Hettie slides off the bed. “At least I know where they keep the supplies.”
I dash after her, pulling on my cloak as I go. If she’s determined to get something, there’s no telling who she’ll push out of the way to get it.
She ends up leading us to a dark room deep within the ship. The only light coming in is from the small staircase leading down into it. Barrels are stacked atop one another, and yards of sail lay folded in the corners. I swear I can hear scurrying and rustling.
It smells like rotting wood, and my feet squish into the floor as wet planks bend beneath me. No wonder Royce said he needed money to repair his ship. I’m just waiting for the whole thing to give way.
Hettie eases into the room. “I think those are the food stores over there.” The way she says it indicates she wants me to go investigate.
There’s a rustle from deeper in the room. This time it’s unmistakable. There is something else alive down here.
I shake my head. There’s nothing that could convince me to go any farther.
Hettie takes a tentative step forward.
A shadow rises in the middle of the room.
Hettie screams and stumbles backward, hiding behind me and shoving me forward in the process.
The shadow rises higher and higher and higher. It’s far too big for a rat. Or a mouse.
A figure emerges from between several barrels.
As it steps forward into the light, the figure becomes a man with deeply tanned skin. At first, I assume he’s bald, but as he turns slightly, I notice his head is completely shaved except for a long black ponytail in the back. His lack of hair makes him look older than he is despite a surprisingly youthful face. He’s wearing loose red pants and no shirt, his taut chest muscles on full display. So is a necklace with several sharks’ teeth.
Hettie gapes, open-mouthed.
He stops when he sees us, holding a half-gnawed pickle in one hand. “Rhat,” he says.
“Rats?” Hettie shrieks. She jumps onto the nearest barrel.
The man laughs. “No, that’s my name. Rhat.” He drags the syllable out. “It’s short for Rhatan. Captain would never allow rats on his ship.”
There’s another rustling from behind him that says otherwise.
“Then what is that?” Hettie squeals. Her hair is sticking out more than usual, like even it is frightened by the noise. Or maybe it’s simply from the humid air below deck.
Rhat laughs and picks up a big cloth-covered square. With a flourish, he removes the cloth to reveal five pigeons in a cage. “Messenger pigeons,” he says.
The birds coo. One shoves its head under its wings, preening itself.
“Oh,” Hettie says. She daintily steps down off the barrel as if she’s descending a grand staircase and fixes her skirts. “I knew that.”
“They like the cooler temperatures down here. It’s too hot for them up on deck, being in the sun all day.” He’s about to put the cover back on when he pauses. “I could’ve sworn there were six in here this morning.” He scans the rafters as though one might have escaped. “Captain must’ve already sent a message,” he mumbles to himself before repositioning the cloth and setting the cage atop one of the barrels.
“Now then,” he says, “are you ladies lost? I know a big ship like this one can be confusing. If you’re looking for the deck, it’s up you want to go. Not down. I’ve never found that you can go up by going down.” His words jumble out, and he stares at Hettie the entire time he says them.
She nudges me from behind. “Tell him we’re hungry,” she whispers.
I turn and stare at her. She’s never had a problem telling anyone what to do.
“You tell him.” I shove her forward.
She stands there a moment but recovers quickly and begins batting her eyelashes. “Um, is there anything to eat?” She gently sways back and forth as she speaks. Rhat’s eyes follow the slight movement like he’s been put under a spell.
For a moment, I stand in awe. Is Hettie . . . flirting? With a sailor?
Rhat manages to quit gawking and produces another pickle. “Here you go.”
All Hettie’s charm vanishes. “You expect me to eat that? It looks like a sea slug.”
“It’s really quite delicious.” Rhat takes another bite of his pickle. A thin line of juice runs down his chin. “We always get a large supply anytime we pass near the Halpen coast.”
Hettie’s mouth goes slack. Her hand goes to her own chin as though she can feel the juice too. “I think I’ve lost my appetite, unless you have something else back there.”
“Nothing until dinner. We have to ration food. Well, except for the pickles. We’ve got plenty of barrels of those.”
Thankfully Rhat is tactful enough not to mention that we’d have another barrel of food if one hadn’t been occupied by a stowaway.
“Fine, give me the pickle. It probably tastes awful.” Hettie grabs the offering and bites into it with a loud crunch.
Rhat smiles. “Want another one for later?”
“No,” Hettie says. “I just needed something to last me until dinner. And this barely counts as edible.”
I groan. Despite the fact some of Hettie’s tutors stuck around, she still managed to miss the lesson on how to be gracious.
“Thank you,” I say to Rhat. “Maybe we’ll go back to the deck for a little while.” After taking a few bites, Hettie is starting to turn as green as the pickle she’s holding.
“Are you sure?” Rhat asks. “We could stay here, and I could tell you about the Polliosaian Islands. That’s where I’m from.” He gazes at Hettie. “It’s famous for pearls. Pearls prettier than anything you’ve ever seen. I used to be a pearl diver up until . . .”
Hettie clutches her stomach.
Rhat cuts off. “Are you okay?”
Her eyes have gone glassy. I drag her from the galley. Her hand goes to her mouth, and I know we don’t ha
ve long until that pickle makes a reappearance.
I make a wrong turn.
“This way,” Rhat says. He scoops Hettie into his arms and barges up to the top deck, setting her down by the railing.
“It smells like fish up here,” Hettie moans.
The smell isn’t nearly as strong as when I first set foot on the ship. The ocean breeze has done a nice job of whipping away the scent.
“Look at the horizon,” Rhat instructs.
Hettie weakly nods.
“What’s all this about?” Royce says, coming up behind us. His voice is accusatory, like the three of us gathered together must mean we’re planning a mutiny.
I go cold at his approach, but thankfully he’s removed his coat and now wears a loose shirt instead. I hate that I never hear him coming. It may have something to do with the fact that no one in the palace dares approach me—I’m not used to listening for footsteps.
“Just seasickness, Captain,” Rhat says, answering Royce’s question.
“I see.” He relaxes slightly, though that’s like saying the silver suits of armor in the palace halls relax. He still seems suspicious.
“The breeze is better on the other side of the ship. It might help settle her stomach,” Royce says to Rhat, an attempt to be civil. Or maybe an attempt to get us out of his way. “Take her over there and then take over the helm.”
“I’m right here,” Hettie croaks. She lifts her head in a look of pure defiance that’s only marred by the saliva rolling down her chin. “Don’t talk about me as if I’m not here.”
Royce raises an eyebrow at her.
“Aye, Captain,” Rhat says. He edges Hettie away from the railing. I move to follow, but Royce puts an arm out to stop me.
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