Illusion of Stars

Chapter Forty-Seven

If I see you again, I’ll kill you.

I gritted my teeth and scooted toward the knife, holding back tears that were threatening to spill.

They’d captured Erik.

They were going to use him, to breed him.

Their prize.

Their weapon.

The hurt in his eyes, the way they burned.

You could say a million words and I would never trust you again.

Wind drove in through the mouth of the cave, cold and biting.

My hands tingled. I twisted so the knife was behind me, wedged the rope against the blade.

I hadn’t meant for this to happen. And yet…

The knife slipped, falling with a clatter.

I repositioned it, cord on steel, and bit the inside of my cheek to keep from crying.

And Erik?

For a moment, we were tangled in his sheets and on the beach, in the ravine, and the memories were traitors, so strong my teeth hurt. We were drinking coffee, on his horse, swimming, and he was pulling me into the ocean, that dark belly of the sea. Water lapped at my ankles, a sting of salt and foam, and I wanted to scrub them out, out, out.

Because I wanted that, wanted him.

I pressed the bindings harder against the blade, and we were back at the Rose & Thistle Inn, he on the hallway floor, head knocked back, mouth ajar, chest rising and falling, rising and falling.

I know what it’s like to be unhappy.

Who was I to go against Larland? I wasn’t smart or strong. I couldn’t command ships, hold armies. I was Isabel Moller, apprentice physician from Hjern. A nobody.

The bindings broke and the knife slipped. Something stung my palm and heat welled between my fingers.

I wiggled my hands out and studied the damage.

Blood. A sheen of it.

I yanked the rest of the ropes with my teeth and crawled to the washbasin and dunked my hand into the icy cold, hissing at the ache.

Through the ripples, I studied the wound. A nick large as my knuckle, thin as a thread. It skimmed the center of my palm.

Blood bloomed.

Outside, the meadow lightened, the pale blush of morning. Grasses swayed, and the silence threatened to swallow me.

Drip, drip, drip came the sound of water from somewhere. Drip, drip, drip, and it matched the hollow knock of my heart.

If you know what’s good for you, you’ll go back to your quiet life.

I could go back, could slip into that life. Maybe I could apprentice to the royal physician for Gormark or Nysklland.

I smoothed my thumb over my bloody palm.

Wasn’t that what I wanted? Wasn’t that everything I wanted?

But no. If you’d been good enough for Jens-Kjeld, he wouldn’t have hired Stefan.

That thought, a mirror of another.

If you’d been good enough for your father, he wouldn’t have shut the door.

The shack. The beach. The seagull’s cry.

My reflection rippled, and I caught my eyes, wide and brown.

My father’s eyes.

My brothers’.

Staring back at me.

I hurled the basin to the ground. It shattered, a shower of water and glass. The bowl of yogurt, the spoon. I threw them.

Crack. Spray.

Tears pricked. My throat tightened, and I was scrambling for something, anything, to hold, to ruin.

Drip, drip, drip.

I snatched the change of clothes Katrina had brought and a paper tumbled out.

It quivered, the edges crisp and white, crinkled from rain. It had been in my pocket, but Katrina must have taken it out when she cleaned me up.

Blood oozed from my palm, soaking into the twilling of my skirt.

My fingers twitched.

I didn’t move.

The paper waited, careful, patient.

You know you want to read me, it seemed to say. You know you want to pick me up.

I’d already read the beginning, had branded the words into my brain, but Hans had written more than that.

I crept forward, scooped it off the ground and cradled it like it was a secret, a snake. The paper crackled. I unfolded it.

Isy,

What I meant to say

I want

I pressed my lips together, stared at the ceiling. Why was I doing this? To hurt myself? I thought I’d moved past that.

I glanced at the page again, the way his writing ran together, the familiar scrawl of it, loose like water.

I took a deep breath.

And read the rest of the letter.

I botched it yesterday. I don’t want a fishing boat. I want you. I chased you to Karlsborn Castle because you were worth chasing. You will always be worth chasing. I love you . I love you? I love you.

I don’t think

You say this job is what you want. If that’s true, I’ll stay for you. I’ll stay as long as you want let me. But I know you better than anyone that.

You think some people are better than others, that being the royal physician is the “biggest” thing you can do. But you’re not that small. You have never been small.

Your father was an idiot for shutting the door. You are beautiful capable enough.

I read the words a second time, a third, traced each line with my thumb, the curve of the ‘a’, the arch of the ‘h.’

He hadn’t signed it, but I could almost picture it, his name scrawled across the bottom, bold as his declaration.

Hans, who’d held me crying behind the chicken coop, who’d helped me overcome self-harm, who’d been there again and again.

You think some people are better than others, that being the royal physician is the “biggest” thing you can do.

Through the tears, I laughed.

He was right. My entire life, I’d felt small, insignificant, no bigger than a grain of sand on the dance floor. I thought I’d come from a tiny town on a tiny island and that meant I was destined for tiny things. Abandoned by my father, sent away by my mother, I thought some people were born less than and lacking, that my deficiencies stitched like scars.

I thought I was a nobody.

But…what if I wasn’t?

I bound a shred of skirt around my palm and ran out of the cave, past the sheep and gardens of rosemary and wild thyme, up, up the path that led not to the beach, but to the bluffs.

You are beautiful capable

Wind tangled my hair, flattened the grasses, howled along the sheer cliffs that dropped into the sparkling sea.

This was the edge of the world, a stop off for whalers and wanderers, a waypoint. This was a place with a pulse, a pull, a heartbeat that thrummed through every leaf and blade and fiber.

I stood at the lip of it, unbound.

I, Isabel Annis Moller, apprentice physician from Hjern. I was a friend and lover. A daughter. Radiant. Not small like sand, but a fulmar unfurling her wings.

And I was going to save Erik.