CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT #2
Ashe nodded to her from near the bow where she studied a weathered chart, her red-streaked hair whipping in the wind. Further along the rail, two barrels had been lashed securely, their contents—gunpowder and glacenite blades—hidden from casual inspection.
The thought of wielding the glacenite again sent a chill through Thalia that had nothing to do with the morning breeze. Those hallucinations still lingered at the edges of her mind, waiting for moments of weakness to resurface.
The schooner itself was a marvel of efficiency—smaller than Frostforge's standard vessels, but crafted with obvious care.
Its dark blue sails had been cut to catch even the faintest breeze, and its hull sat low in the water, designed for speed rather than comfort.
A ship built for stealth, for slipping past watchers in the night. Perfect for their purpose.
Thalia made her way across the deck, adjusting her stance to the vessel's gentle roll.
The fjord opened before them, a ribbon of steel-gray water winding between towering cliffs.
Soon they would reach the open sea, where the Southern currents would carry them swiftly toward Verdant Port—and toward whatever awaited them there.
At the helm stood Roran, his hands resting lightly on the worn wooden wheel.
He moved with the ship as if they were extensions of each other, anticipating each swell and gust with subtle adjustments.
The wind had teased his black curls into wild disarray, yet he seemed utterly at peace amidst the elements.
No—not peace, Thalia realized as she drew closer.
Focus. As if the sea and sky demanded every fragment of his attention, leaving no room for doubt or fear.
"You handle her well," Thalia said, coming to stand beside him. "As if you were born to it."
A ghost of a smile touched Roran's lips. "Perhaps I was." His voice held no bitterness, only a quiet acknowledgment of the heritage he'd hidden for so long. "The sea recognizes its own."
Thalia watched him for a moment, seeing him with new eyes—not as the Southern merchant's son he'd claimed to be, but as Rorik Stormchild, born of Isle Warden blood. The revelation should have changed everything, yet somehow it changed nothing. He was still Roran. Still the man who had kissed her in the quiet halls after his trial’s end, who had stood between her and a storm mage's lightning.
"Why are you doing this?" she asked, the question that had plagued her since they'd formed this plan. "Why risk so much for me?"
Roran's eyes remained fixed on the horizon, but something in his expression shifted—a softening around the edges, a vulnerability he rarely allowed himself to show.
"You freed me," he said simply. "When I was chained in that amphitheater, waiting for death, you came back for me.
You cut my bonds when everyone else was running for safety. "
"Anyone would have—"
"No," he interrupted, his voice gentle but firm. "They wouldn't. They didn’t . They left me there." His hands adjusted the wheel slightly, compensating for a crosscurrent. "You risked your life for mine. How could I do any less for you now?"
Wind snapped the sails taut, driving them faster toward the mouth of the fjord. Thalia gripped the rail beside the helm, steadying herself against the increased pitch and roll. "There's more to it than repaying a debt," she said, not a question but a certainty.
Roran was silent for a long moment, his eyes tracking the movement of a lone seabird against the pale sky. "Yes," he admitted finally. "There is."
He shifted his weight, adjusting their course by degrees. "Despite my blood, I'm a Southerner. I was raised in a coastal village. I walked its markets, swam in its harbor, knew its rhythms and seasons." Pain flickered across his face. "And I watched the Wardens take everything from me once before."
Thalia's heart tightened in her chest. The merchant parents he'd spoken of—the ones the Wardens had killed, driving him to Frostforge.
"My adoptive family," he clarified. "Good people who took in a strange child with no questions asked.
Who loved me despite not knowing what blood ran in my veins.
" His knuckles whitened on the wheel. "I was thirteen when I watched my father die.
He tried to fight them—a merchant with a machete against warriors born to battle.
My mother hid me in the cellar, made me promise not to come out no matter what I heard. "
He fell silent, the weight of memory pressing down on him like a physical force. Thalia wanted to reach for him, to offer some comfort, but sensed he needed to finish his story without interruption.
"I kept that promise," Roran continued, his voice rough.
"Even when I heard their screams. I stayed hidden until long after the sounds of fighting had stopped.
" His eyes, when they finally met hers, held a pain so raw it stole her breath.
"I won't let you suffer that same helplessness, Thalia. Not if there's any way to prevent it."
Understanding bloomed between them, a connection forged of shared loss and stubborn hope.
Not love—not exactly—but something equally powerful.
A recognition of broken pieces that echoed Thalia's moment with Kaine in the hold, yet distinct in its contours.
Different paths leading to the same destination: the fierce need to protect what remained.
"Thank you," she whispered, the words carried away by the wind almost as soon as they left her lips.
The fjord widened around them, the sheltering cliffs falling away to reveal the vastness of the open sea.
The schooner surged forward, sails billowing as they caught the full force of the morning breeze.
Far to the west, storm clouds gathered in bruised layers, a darkening line against the horizon.
Beyond them lay the wall of eternal fog that shrouded the archipelago—the Wardens' ancestral home, and the source of the threat that now reached toward the mainland with grasping fingers.
Roran's eyes fixed on those distant clouds, a flicker of something like recognition passing over his features. "Storm's brewing," he said, though his tone suggested he meant more than mere weather.
Standing beside him, feeling the ship's eager pulse beneath her feet, Thalia felt the weight of their mission settle on her shoulders.
Find her family. Save her home. But beneath those immediate goals lay something larger, more nebulous—the need to understand what drove the Wardens to such desperate measures.
The storm mage had spoken of "what waited beyond the fog." Kaine's research had uncovered a reference to a "threat from the sea." Whatever lurked beyond that veil of mist, it had terrified Frostforge's Founders and the Isle Wardens in equal measure.
Whatever it was, it was pushing the continent to deadly war with the inexorable force of the tides.