Illusionary

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Illusionary Page 16

by Zoraida Cordova


  I take the book back. My body buzzes with this information. “Galatea.”

  “You said her name before.” Cas stands so close I can smell the herbs of his soap and see the pattern of scars on his chest. “But you asked about Princess Galatea.”

  “I have a memory. I don’t know where it came from. It appeared when I fell ill. I saw a battle—on deck was a princess and the crest of her armor was this glowing peregrine falcon. It was made of alman stone.”

  “A Moria princess in one of your memories?” he asks. “Why didn’t you say anything before?”

  “Cas, there’s so much of my magics I can’t control. The last Moria royal family was said to have died decades ago. Before now, I’d never heard of a princess or queen named Galatea. But in my memory she was—” I sigh, the weight of the words on my tongue. “She was with your father.”

  Castian blinks his shock, then slowly grimaces. “As in…?”

  I see Galatea on that ship, nearly relive the vibrant love that she felt when she kissed Fernando. My entire body wants to recoil.

  The ship lurches on a wave. Castian wraps his arm around me, and we brace for a rough patch of sea. Outside the sky is clear, and we’re sailing so fast that it almost feels like flying. When we’re no longer in danger of falling, Castian releases me slowly. His palms linger on my waist.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Because if my mind is breaking, I don’t want you to know, I think.

  “It’s hard to believe without seeing it. I wish I could show you what I saw,” I confess. I touch the crescent scar over the mound of his cheekbone. Then pain flares along my fingertips, like lightning coursing through my tendons. The whorls etched across my palm burst with light, and Castian jerks away. He cradles his face, then examines the skin there in a mirror.

  He breathes fast and turns to me. “What was that?”

  Numbness still buzzes at the very tips of my fingers. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “Ren, I saw it.” He takes my hand in his, tracing the pattern of scars with his thumb. “The image of them on that deck. You shared your memory with me. I didn’t know Robári could do that.”

  “Neither did I. That’s never happened before,” I say softly. I shut my eyes for a moment. He isn’t afraid of my touch or my power. He’s curious.

  “Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

  “Ventári can communicate with other Ventári,” I explain. “It may be plausible that others can combine our magics, too.”

  Cas gently pulls away, walking around the desk and staring at the maps and compasses. All these tools to help us across an ocean, but we can barely navigate each other. This is the longest we’ve been together in days, and I feel myself anchored by the way he touched me.

  “What does this mean, Cas?”

  “It means there’s so much more to my father than I ever thought possible. It means that perhaps there’s a reason why there is virtually no trace of my father’s first marriage.” Castian faces the window. He steps closer, body tense as he watches the calm sea, then whirls around. “Why have we dropped anchor?”

  Marching on deck, we find Leo and Leyre leaning against the starboard side of the ship.

  “What do you think you’re doing, Leyre?” Castian asks.

  She rests her hands on her cocked hips and gestures with the sextant overboard. “Congratulations, Your Highness. In half a day we’ve managed to sail in a circle.”

  Pale green and blue water hugs a snakelike sandbar.

  “Are you sure it’s not a different sandbar?” I ask, but even I wince at the suggestion. It can’t be a coincidence.

  Leyre flips the sextant back and forth, examining the eyepiece before letting out an exasperated breath. “I don’t know what King Fernando meant by this being the one thing that could help us find this cursed Knife of Memory, but all it’s done is get us lost.”

  I imagine her heaving it into the water, so I gingerly take it from her grasp and set it down. “There has to be an explanation.”

  “Why don’t you find it, and I’ll go clear my head and wash the stink off my skin.” Leyre leans into Castian and sniffs. “So should you.”

  Leyre removes her clothes, revealing all the tan lines from where she rolls up her sleeves and breeches. On the railing, her naked body is a dark silhouette in front of the afternoon sun, before she dives into the clear blue waters below.

  “Wait!” Castian shouts.

  Leo eyes the water longingly as he unties the front of his trousers. He steps out of his clothes, all corded muscles as he follows Leyre overboard.

  “This is mutiny,” Castian spits.

  I sigh. “They’re not wrong.”

  “We’ve been out here for days!” Castian says, then closes the distance between us. He lowers his voice, even though we are alone on deck. “We’ve done everything right. What if—what if Leyre’s task wasn’t to kill me but to distract us?”

  “I can’t say I completely trust her, but there was something in the way she spoke of her father, of the king, and her own anger—I trust that. I believe that.” Castian turns his face to the side, but I lead his stare back to me with my finger along his scruffy beard. “Leyre’s right. We have to clear our heads. You would say the same to me.” Weeks ago, I would have never suggested such a thing. I would have simply agreed that we needed to keep sailing and then perhaps gotten us more lost. Now, we are surrounded by uncertainty with more questions than we have answers. “Look at it. We’re back at this sandbar again. Perhaps we need to explore why.”

  I pull my tunic over my head. Castian sucks in a short breath, then turns to give me privacy. Ever the gentleman. I step out of my breeches and underthings, and add them to the pile with the others. I take a gulp of clean air and dive, cutting headfirst into the cool blue surface. The water amplifies my heartbeat. The sea is so clear, and for a moment, it feels like plunging through air. Bright orange fish swim across my vision, but they scatter when there’s a fourth and final splash. Castian has finally joined us. His powerful limbs cut through the sea he’s named after. I let myself float, suspended in the water’s embrace. Something large swims under my feet. I open my mouth to scream, but then see a school of silver fish plucking away at the fins of a spotted toothless whale. I turn in the water to catch the others’ attention, but when I look back, the whale is gone. Impossible—it couldn’t possibly have swum away that quickly.

  My chest begins to burn. I kick up to the surface, and swim closer to my friends. Leo is gathering shells on the sandbar while Leyre floats by with her arms tucked behind her neck, basking in the sun. Castian pads ashore. Sheets of clear water swoop down the muscular curve of his back. His long hair curls at the tips, and he squints into the distance—a sea god made mortal surveying the land above. I feel a tugging sensation in the pit of my stomach, a loss of breath.

  “You’re staring,” Leo sings beside me.

  I start and realize he’s back in the water with me. He’s holding a perfect spiral shell in his fist. I don’t know whether I’m angry that I was, in fact, staring or that I was caught, but I sink beneath the surface, hiding every part of my face except my eyes.

  “You’re more worried than usual,” Leo says.

  I follow him to where we can stand, the bottom so soft it suctions my feet. “Yes, for a hundred reasons. There’s something strange about all this.”

  I tell him about what I did to Castian with my magics. “I’ve never shared a memory with anyone before.”

  “Could your powers be evolving? Getting stronger?”

  Another question I can’t answer. I slap the surface of the water, making a tiny wave. “Ventári are the only Moria capable of reading minds, but that moment with Cas was something entirely different. It was like I let him into my mind.”

  “Perhaps it’s a good thing. This way, you’re not alone in the things you keep.”

  What would it have been like to share my memories sooner? I shake away the thought. “I fear this is the type
of memory that will change everything.”

  When I’m quiet for too long, staring far out into the endless sea, Leo sprinkles water at me. “You can’t say it’s life-changing and then not tell me.”

  “It was of a Moria princess named Galatea,” I say finally. He nods along as I describe her armor, the Icelandic ships. “And she was kissing King Fernando. You should have seen the desire and utter devotion in his eyes. That’s the memory that came over me that first day.”

  “No wonder you were ill,” Leo says, understanding dawning on him. “We didn’t know what to do. Castian was half out of his senses. What does it all mean?”

  “I don’t know yet.” The memory of my first day at sea makes me cringe. “But I never thanked you for taking care of me. Even if that tonic was disgusting.”

  Leo scoffs, running his long, musician fingers through the clear sparkling water. “You mean Leyre’s dreadful sea sickness concoction? After she made us each drink some, she ordered Cas to feed it to you in hopes it would ease your malady. I think that was the moment I decided I liked her.”

  “But you fed me the medicine,” I say.

  The confusion on his features is chased away by a shared realization. Leo was not with me when I was sick. I snap my gaze to Castian across the sandbar, sifting sand through his fist.

  I remember everything at once—how strange it was that Leo was so quiet, how he didn’t speak but two words to me. I was seeing so many things that day I failed to realize it was Castian who made me drink, who listened to me say those things—Oh, my Lady, I said so many things. Castian glamoured as Leo! He let me bare myself to him.

  He’s so beautiful and so terrible.… I want to hate him.

  “Wait, Ren!” Leo shouts, but I’m already swimming for the ship.

  I climb the rope ladder and land on the deck in a wet heap. I tug on my clothes, my own words echoing in my mind.

  It wouldn’t be so terrible to… want him. Sometimes I do.

  Castian’s trousers are right in front of me. I throw them overboard. Humiliation colors my line of sight. I don’t even know where I’m going until I’m below deck and in the only place I can think of: the gambling room, where we hid the day of the storm. Leo and Leyre must have been here earlier because a game of cards is scattered on the red tabletop.

  “What’s gotten into you?” Castian slams the door behind him. His wet pants cling to his thighs. Rivulets of seawater run down his neck and chest. Everything I feel for him is due to proximity—it is because we are forced to be together every day. Hate and love and desire rolled into a storm I can’t outrun.

  “You tricked me” is all I manage to say. “You tricked me, Cas.”

  He stands right in front of me, eyes searching mine for an answer I cannot speak. “I did.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why.”

  I shake my head; beads of salt water drip at my feet. “Help me understand.”

  He traces the outline of my shoulder, my arms. “I couldn’t stand seeing you hurting—it killed me. I left Leyre at the helm and went to administer the draft. When you opened your eyes you told me you hated me.”

  “Cas—” I try to say that it wasn’t his face I saw. It was Fernando’s, but he glances at the floor and offers a sad smile.

  “I knew that Leo was the only person you would let in, the only person who you’d trust to help you. I have never wished I could be someone else in that moment, and then I remembered I could be. I would be anyone for you. Hells, I’d be my own brother if that’s what you wanted.”

  I remember Dez on the boardwalk of Little Luzou—reckless, brave, but now something else. Lost. Changed. I was so worried about how I have become different that I didn’t stop to realize that so has everything and everyone around me.

  “Don’t say that. I don’t want you to be Dez,” I say softly. “I want you to—”

  When I bite down on my own words, Cas becomes so still. The heat of his stare rakes down my mouth, to the wet clothes clinging to me. My heart beats so hard it feels like thunder in my ears.

  “What do you want from me?” His deep voice wavers.

  That is what I’ve been trying to figure out. I see the boy who was my friend in the palace, his angelic smile, our secret pact, how much it hurt to leave him. Then there’s the boy I hated, the illusion of a murderous prince. The one whose public executions I’d heard of across the land. The man who danced with me and asked whether I remembered him. The prince I almost beat to death, and the Cas who is in this room now. I am startled to find that Castian is all those things, and I want him. But I can’t bring myself to say it because when this is all over, I will be gone, and he will be king.

  “Everything hurts all the time, Cas.” I sit on the edge of the gaming table. “My power is becoming something I have no control over. I’m afraid of wanting anything at all. My memories of you, the real you, were so buried, I didn’t even recognize you when we met again. How could you have remembered me after so long?”

  He pressed his fingers to the center of his chest. “Because you’re right here, Nati. I’ve kept you here as my light. When I have done wretched, cruel, unspeakable things, I thought that would be the moment that I’d rip you out of my heart. That I would reach a point when I didn’t deserve a shred of goodness. But it never worked. In the moments that I wanted to give up, I remembered you. My friend who saved me from the worst kind of loneliness.”

  “Castian—” Why is it so hard for me to just say the things I mean? Isn’t that why I went in search of him earlier? I was willing to allow myself to want, and now I am retreating like a creature of the depths, too afraid of the sun.

  “What do you want from me?” he repeats.

  I place my hand over his. A heady rush fills me. His pulse is frenzied. The pit of my stomach feels like a cavern, and the rest of me is falling straight through. That’s what surrendering to this strange desire is like—falling.

  I wrap my hand around the back of his neck and tug him closer. I shiver as our damp bodies press against each other. He stands in the open space between my knees, and I yank him back with me against the velvety surface of the table. His body presses hard atop mine, but he doesn’t meet my lips. Instead, Castian brushes his mouth over my ear. When he speaks, his words warm my skin. The vibration of his voice permeates my body.

  “What do you want from me, Nati? You have to say it.”

  “I want you to kiss me,” I exhale, and the admission of this want leaves me breathless. I dig my fingers along the waist of his trousers, where his skin is still cool from the sea. He shudders, and I can feel how much he wants me with the pressure of him against my belly. He cups the sides of my neck, tracing the line of my jaw, drinking me in as our lips touch softly. It is the kind of tortuously slow kiss that deepens, awakening a spark of hunger. Then he pulls back, and I want him again.

  “Kiss me and make me forget,” I whisper.

  It’s the wrong thing. Castian’s hands come down on either side of me. He sighs and takes my chin in his fingertips.

  “No, Nati. When I kiss you again, truly kiss you, it will be to make you remember.”

  With a grunt he pushes himself off and walks away. I trace the ache on my lips, feel the chill he leaves in his wake. But before he reaches the door, there is the resounding pop of cannon fire.

  My mind clears with a rush of panic. We clamor up to the deck to find a massive galleon ship with what appears to be a hundred people on deck. They’ve cast hooks onto our hull and are reeling us in like trout.

  “Where did it come from?” Castian asks.

  “I don’t know,” Leo says. “It appeared from the ether.”

  Leyre has her arrows drawn, but I see the terror that passes across her features. Us versus a small army. She meets my eye and gives a shake of her head, lowers her weapon.

  The Queen of Little Luzou’s words ring in my ears as sharply as our attackers’ bells.

  Pirates.

  WE’RE PARADED ACROSS DECK, TIED TO
EACH OTHER WITH OUR HANDS BOUND behind our backs. The pirates are not what I was expecting. Though I’ve only ever heard bedtime stories, I was preparing for a ship full of middle-aged men covered in filth and stolen gold. Dez used to say that pirates were simply wraiths without a cause or a country, stealing and killing for their own glory. But I am not entirely sure what to make of our captors. Boys swing down from the sails, and groups of young girls cease their wooden swordplay to stare. Weathered elders pause as we’re herded by.

  At the front of our line, I feel the brunt of their scrutiny. A boy of perhaps ten, with ruddy cheeks and a nest of red curls, opens up a hatch. Hands begin to shove me down, and my natural reflex is to struggle, but another pirate runs to stop us. She nearly doubles over panting, the sun reflecting on the deep brown skin of her bald head. In her hand is the sextant.

  “Wait! Cap’ll want to see them right away.”

  I lurch forward, but I’m overcome with a wave of calm. The breeze tickles the baby hairs at my temples. Music is coming from somewhere on deck, and I hear the slap of the red-and-gold flag above. My heartbeat slows, and then I’m walking up wooden steps and through a shadowed threshold. The wide cabin is empty, and we’re positioned in front of a mahogany desk littered with parchment, quills, and coins from different nations. Deep purple velvet drapes are parted to let in the light. A boy runs in with a metal tray and sets down a pot of café and a clay mug. His wide eyes glance at the empty chair with relief before darting back out.

  “Wait here,” the bald girl murmurs, and her voice has a distant chime. She moves her hands slowly, like she’s controlling the strings of a marionette. Copper rings adorn each of her fingers.

 

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