“Oh good, you’re awake,” she says. “You had us all worried.” She looks like she didn’t sleep well. Dark circles line her eyes, and her hair sticks out in all directions. “Are you okay? Rhat and Royce filled me in on most of what happened with Duke Wystlinos.”
“I was so stupid to trust him,” I say with a sigh. I lean back against the wall.
“Oh, Kora, he fooled us all.” Hettie moves forward and pulls me into a hug. “He even fooled my father.”
As I cling to her, something breaks loose inside me. Maybe the golden coating around my heart. But I can’t hold back the tears any longer. Sobs shake my chest. Hettie holds me tighter, and I let her. I don’t know how long I cling to her, but by the time I’m done sobbing I feel empty. Not in a depleted way, but the slightest bit lighter.
I find her hand and squeeze it. I sniffle until I’ve found my voice. “I’ve missed you, Hettie.”
She’s quiet for a moment.
“I know,” she finally says.
I snort. Her response is so typically Hettie.
“What happened to us?” she asks.
“You stopped coming to visit after the incident.” My voice is hoarse after crying for so long.
She sits up and her face becomes serious. “I wanted to come. My father said I shouldn’t visit you, that it wasn’t safe. I didn’t care. I got a bucket of river water to try dunking you in again because I didn’t want to see you suffering. I tried to sneak into your room so many times that my father locked me in mine. When I learned to pick the lock, he posted guards outside my room for months.” Her hair tumbles over her shoulders as she looks down at her lap. “During all that time, you never came to visit me. I thought you didn’t care anymore.”
“Of course I cared.” I sit up to match her. “I was convinced you thought I was too terrifying to play with.” I lower my gaze. “I guess I believed that was true too, that if even my father couldn’t bear to look at me, how could anyone else?”
Every time my father shuddered at my arrival, every time his eyes sought out the gold instead of me, it was like he was turning me to gold all over again, freezing me out of his life.
Hettie gapes. “The only reason your father can’t stand looking at you is because he can’t bear the shame he thinks he’ll find there. He leaves you alone because he thinks you hate him.”
“But I don’t.” Maybe I did when I’d first been turned back, when I blamed him for everything. That was before I realized how trapped he is by what remains of the curse. Now, I pity him.
“He is convinced you do,” Hettie says. “You’re both too stubborn to talk about it, so you go on making stupid assumptions.”
I open my mouth to refute her claims, but then I close it.
“Are you sure?” I ask, half hope and half fear.
“It’s not like I’ve had years to study you both or anything,” she retorts. “Although, you’re probably better off than me and my father. I think the only reason he remembers I’m alive is because so much of the cook’s budget goes toward making toasted almond tarts for me.”
“He loves you,” I say. “He simply has a tough exterior. He also has a multitude of responsibilities, more than he ever planned for.”
She shakes her head. “He’s never once said he loves me.”
“He will,” I say. “I bet when we get back, he’ll be so happy that he’ll say it a thousand times.”
“That’s if I go back,” Hettie says. “I might stay on board.” Her eyes drift to the deck above us, reminding me of the way my father always looks toward the tower, of how I once glanced toward the deck.
“You really like him, don’t you?” I ask. A slight pang races through me, but I shove it down. I don’t want to think about him ever again. My only consolation is that my heart hurts worse for having trusted him than it does from his absence.
“I really do.” She flops onto her back and pulls a pillow over her face. She raises it up just enough for me to hear, “And I think he really likes me too.”
“What happened to all those counts and dukes you were going to marry?” I tease.
“I don’t care about them,” her muffled words sound through the pillow. “They’re all so stuffy, so like my father. Rhat doesn’t hold me back. He doesn’t tell me I can’t do things. He makes me eat weird food concoctions, and I pretend to hate it. But I don’t. He’s been teaching me to fight, and he doesn’t care that it’s not ladylike. He probably wouldn’t care if I ordered a thousand almond tarts and ate them all in one sitting. He makes me want to be a better person.” She pauses. “Don’t comment on that.”
I laugh. And I’m so glad she had the foresight to stow aboard. Just as her father has always been the support my father needed, maybe she’s the support I need.
She rolls over and props herself on one elbow. “You know who else is surprisingly nice when you get to know him?”
I raise my eyebrows as I blot away the remaining pathways the tears left on my cheeks.
“Royce,” she answers. “He’s actually pretty decent when he’s not sitting there brooding. He even taught me a few moves this afternoon. He’s lightened up a lot now that Duke Wystlinos is gone.”
I manage not to wince at her reference to Aris. A sort of numbness is settling over me, ebbing away the pain as it takes hold. My head hurts too much to think about Royce right now, but not replying only encourages Hettie.
“And I happen to know,” she continues, getting that gleam in her eye she always gets when she’s about to do something she knows her father wouldn’t approve of, “that he isn’t promised to anyone. Well, he was, but once the girl’s family found out his father was cursed, they called things off.”
I groan. I can already tell where this is going. And my head definitely hurts too much for that. “Hettie, I haven’t even processed everything with . . . well, you know.”
And I definitely don’t want to make the same mistake I made with Aris. I don’t want to develop feelings for Royce just because we share a past.
“Don’t spend another moment thinking about him,” she instructs me. “If you’d seen Royce up there sword fighting shirtless”—she mock fans herself—“you wouldn’t even remember Duke Wystlinos’s name.”
“Hettie!”
“What?” She throws her hands up innocently. “I just think you should give him a chance.”
Before I can reply, she tosses the pillow aside and rolls off the bed. “Speaking of Royce, I was supposed to let him know if you were alive or not. And, if you promise to think about what I said”—she smiles broadly—“I’ll even bring you some food.”
I roll my eyes as she disappears through the door. I don’t think she’ll ever learn to be subtle. But she’s Hettie. And she reminds me of home. And right now, that’s what I need more than anything.
CHAPTER 21
After eating several barley rolls drizzled with honey and a mountain of figs, I figure I can’t put off telling Royce about the missing gold chalice any longer. I wrap his journal in one of my cloaks as I make my way to the deck.
But as I pass the door leading down to the crew’s quarters, muffled cries echo out.
I pause. Phipps. It has to be.
Would he even want to see me? Would I only make his pain worse? I figure I have to try. I owe that to Thipps.
I creak down the stairs into the room. Two layers of wooden beds are built into one wall while the rest of the room is a maze of light-colored hammocks tied to posts.
Someone sniffles. “I’ll be up in just a moment, Captain,” Phipps says. “Just needed to get . . . to get my lucky dagger.”
Phipps is already sitting up on his bed and wiping his eyes when I step into view. I barely even notice his gold earring.
“Oh, Princess, I thought you were the captain.” He quickly stands and ducks his head, busying himself by pulling up the sheet. His eyes are bloodshot, and his hair is more unkempt than usual. All hints of his usual cheerfulness are gone.
“Phipps, I’m so sorry
about your brother.”
His hands still. He closes his eyes, and it takes him a moment to open them again.
“He saved my life,” I say, “and I’ll never forget that.”
“Thank you.” Phipps straightens. “But don’t go blaming yourself. Thipps probably thought he’d get to lord it over me for all eternity if he saved a princess.” He scoffs. “You know what he’d say if he were here?”
I shake my head.
“He’d ask if you’d considered our offer.” He forces a smile, but there’s no jovialness like there’d been a day ago.
I smile in return. “And I would tell him he’s already more than earned his share.”
“He’d be happy at that.” His gaze drifts upward. “He’d be happy all right.” He quickly wipes at his eyes. “I should be getting back up before Captain comes looking for me.”
I nod and let him lead the way to the deck.
Night air greets me.
Royce is exactly where I expect to find him after reading his journal entry about watching the stars at night. He’s leaning over one of the railings.
A cool breeze washes over the deck. It ruffles his hair and the pages of the book he’s reading, although I’m not sure how he can stand to read in the weak light of the lanterns. He must hear me approach because he turns toward me. He flips the back of his book closed over his finger, marking his place.
“How are you feeling?” he asks. His hair is just as messy as when I last saw it, but when his eyes fall on me, the usual hardness is gone. Or maybe it was never there at all.
“Better.” I clear my throat. “But when I . . . collapsed, I saw a vision. I think Captain Skulls hid a piece of gold with the Temptresses of Triton.”
Royce nods. “I was hoping you wouldn’t say that, but that’s what we deduced from your last words to us. We’re headed to the general area where the Temptresses are rumored to be, but a more exact heading would help.” His eyes are soft. “If you’re up for it.”
I close my eyes and let my mind reach out. There’s a flash of gold and then I’m surrounded by cold water. The cup’s a few feet below me. Enough light emanates from it for me to see gold coins scattered around each side.
A shadowy creature launches toward me. I scream and jerk backward, breaking my connection with the gold.
Royce’s arm steadies me as I stumble back to myself.
“Are you all right?” he asks. He keeps his hand on my arm until I nod.
Slowly, I explain what I saw.
He shakes his head. “Rhat thought the treasure might be underwater. He’s volunteered to go with you and Hettie to retrieve it.”
“Hettie?” I question.
“Since the Temptresses’s voices are rumored to be enchanted, luring men to their deaths, we think a woman could ignore their spell. Hettie didn’t want you going by yourself, so she said she’d go as well.”
I’m surprised by Hettie’s willingness to help, then remind myself I’ve been thinking of her the wrong way too—she’s the same cousin I remember from childhood, not the distant one I’d imagined these past ten years.
As I think through Royce’s plan, I run my fingers through my hair. I desperately need a chance to wash it and get out the bits of ash left over from the fire on the island. But that’ll have to wait.
“Didn’t Captain Corelli’s Account of the Sea talk about the Temptresses and how to defeat them?” I ask. When I wasn’t reading about Jipper, I’d pull Captain Corelli’s Account of the Sea into bed with me. I’d run my fingers down the thick pages and imagine a world outside my palace prison. But I can’t remember what Captain Corelli said she thought could be used against the Temptresses. I remember thinking it was odd, that I couldn’t believe it would work. That’s probably why I don’t remember the tactic.
“I’ve never read it,” Royce says.
I nod. I forgot that most people haven’t. Very few copies exist because Captain Corelli was the first female captain to sail the seas. No one would take her explorations seriously, so the only copies were the ones she handwrote herself. Captain Corelli was Sunisan, like my mother, and my mother had brought her copy with her when she’d come to marry my father.
“I wish I could remember what it said,” I say. “Hopefully I’ll remember by the time we face them.”
Royce clears his throat. “I won’t be going. Rhat will.”
“You’re not coming?” Everything I know about Royce points to him never wanting to sit out a fight.
He drops his head, causing his hair to eclipse his eyes. “Rhat and I agreed that only one man should go. Neither of us wanted to leave you and Hettie with the likes of Brus in case we don’t make it back. Rhat argued that because of his skill as a pearl diver and because . . .” He clears his throat.
“It’s because of the gold, isn’t it?” I ask. I unwrap his journal. “Aris gave this to me. He said it was his, that it would help me understand him better. But I guess it helped me understand you.”
He slides the journal from my hands.
“You read it?” He doesn’t look up from where he’s running his finger down the remnants of one of the torn-out pages.
“Yes.”
His hand falters.
“I suppose in a strange way, I’m glad,” he says. “My crew, the ones who know, they try to help in their own ways, although they think ignoring the curse is the best way to deal with it. I, however, can’t pretend it didn’t happen, that my father didn’t matter. He was a great man, but all people remember is his death. They don’t remember how he’d stop to help a traveler whose cart lost a wheel or how he let all our tenants stay in the manor house when fire ravaged through their farms.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of with my father,” I admit. “People only see him as Midas, the king with the Golden Touch.”
When Royce looks at me, his eyes are intense. “That doesn’t have to be us. It took me a long time to learn it, but we’re not destined to repeat their mistakes.”
“I hope so.” I hold his gaze.
He smiles softly. “We’re not.”
The way I find myself staring at his smile reminds me too much of how I used to look at Aris. I look away quickly.
Royce must sense my change in mood because he says, “I’m sorry about what happened with Aris, that I didn’t warn you sooner.”
“It’s not your fault,” I say.
“I know how it feels,” he replies. He stares out at the murky waves stretching into the distance, his face unreadable in the dark. “Her name was Isadora,” he says quietly. “We were betrothed before my father was cursed. She came to me the very night my father died and tossed the ring at my feet. She wouldn’t even get close enough to me to place it in my hand. We never spoke again.”
“I’m sorry,” I stammer.
“Don’t be,” he says. “I never could’ve been happy with someone like that. What if my father had been cursed after we were married? What would she have done then?” He shakes his head, his hair scattering over his forehead. “I guess my point is that it’s better you found out who Aris really was before . . . Well, before anything worse could happen.”
“I just wish I’d been smart enough to see through his charade,” I say with a sigh.
He touches my arm lightly. “Don’t apologize for wanting to believe the best of people,” he says. “From what I heard from Hettie, it wasn’t even your idea to bring him to the palace. None of this is your fault.”
I nod. “My uncle thought a match between us would appease Archduke Ralton, Aris’s uncle, who’s gathering troops to rebel against my father.” I run my gloved hands along the railing. The tattered bits catch on the wood.
“I’m surprised your uncle didn’t know better. He’s the one who questioned both Aris and me after the Orfland treaty disaster. I was sure if anyone could get the truth out of Aris, it was your uncle. He detained me for three days straight, giving me barely any food and waking me up at all hours of the night for questioning. But Aris, he let go a
fter one day. My former friend is a better liar than even I give him credit for.”
“I can’t even imagine what my uncle will say when he finds out,” I reply. “Between that and Hettie running away, I’m not sure I want to be nearby when that happens.”
“I’m pretty sure your cousin can handle that one.” He laughs. “You should’ve seen her up here fighting earlier. I feel sorry for anyone who makes her angry.” His eyes are curious when the moonlight hits them. “Can you fight like that?”
I shake my head. “Hettie and I used to sneak into the training grounds and watch the guards practice. Hettie always said she was going to be a guard someday because all they had to do was stand around. She’d make me mock fight with sticks in the garden, but I don’t think that counts as training. And even that stopped after . . .” I gesture to my skin.
“I get it,” Royce says. “And I’m sure Hettie could teach you a thing or two now. But if she’s too busy, I could teach you to fight. Just a few moves, though, in case something goes wrong when we meet Captain Skulls. Unless . . .” He nods toward my hands. “Unless you plan to defend yourself with your power.”
“I don’t want to use it again. I didn’t want to use it last time,” I say. Images of the man with the two Xs on his forehead pop into my mind. “I know what it’s like to be trapped inside that shell. I’m not sure anyone deserves that.”
“Not even Aris?”
“Maybe him,” I concede. “I just hate the way the gold clings to . . . to my soul when I absorb it.”
“When you absorb it?”
“That’s how it works,” I say. “I have to touch something gold first. When I do, I then absorb it whether I want to or not. Then the next thing I touch turns to gold.”
“So you can’t turn anything you want to gold?”
I shake my head. “And I wouldn’t want to. Even if I could control what I change.”
“See”—he shakes the journal in my direction—“I was right. Neither of us is destined to repeat our father’s mistakes.” He tucks his journal under the book he’d been reading.
The spine of that book is so tattered that I can’t read the words, but the lanterns swing toward us and glint off the cover. I’d know that cover anywhere.
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