Chapter 4 #2
I scoff. In the past six years, I’ve turned over the city, visited every bookstore, written to every academic, bribed every old mystic shilling folktales in alleys in hopes of saving myself from heartbreak, as Silas must well know. If such a way existed, I would have found it.
“Surely,” he presses, “you’ve read the stories. People healed after journeys to see the finfolk.”
I shouldn’t even be engaging with this. This is improper on so many levels. Silas Price—Silas, whom black rumors cling to like whale-oil stains—in my room, at night, questioning me about August. I should send him away, but I need to know why he’s here.
“None of it’s real.” I lift my chin, trying to sound uncaring. “No one in living memory has been healed no matter what they’ve done. It’s a finfolk lie to fool us into thinking they’re capable of mercy—”
“The stories are missing pieces. It’s not enough to simply do a favor or two for the fae.
You have to appear before them and plead your case.
” As he speaks, he comes off the wall and shoves his hands into his pockets, like he wants to pace.
“I’m taking some of my crew to Drekja for that purpose, the ones who think they’re ready. ”
There’s a feverish light in his eyes that tells me he believes what he’s saying, and that unsettles me.
August and I have both dealt with the guilt of the Volyar in our own ways.
August by throwing himself into his studies, and I by searching for ways to lift my curse—then, when I found none, by trying to forget, turning away from the sea.
Silas, on the other hand, always seemed unaffected, a fact I put down to his cruel nature.
But after all this time, has guilt over the Volyar driven him out of his senses?
“We don’t even know if Drekja is real,” I point out.
Images of the City-beneath-the-waves from Mama’s bedtime stories drift through my mind.
An underwater city with buildings of coral and streets of pearl, guarded by monstrous whales.
The ancestral home of the finfolk. Certainly people have tried to find it over the centuries.
After all, it is said to be guarded by Livyati; the surrounding seas would surely be a treasure trove of a hunting ground.
But no one has ever found it—or, at least, found it and returned.
At the word Drekja, Silas’s mouth twitches in a faint smile, like he’s pleased to hear the name from my lips. “It’s real.” His voice is low enough to almost be a whisper. “And I can find it. I can bring you to the queen there to ask that your curse be lifted.”
“Because you’re finfolk,” I say. A heavy, charged silence settles between us.
I have known this, of course, for six years. August too. But none of us has ever, ever spoken of it out loud.
Because if I turned Silas in, he could just as easily reveal my heartbreak. Our secrets chain us together, a silent doomsday pact.
“Only half,” Silas says at length, smiling a little, to my unease. “And this voyage is the chance I’ve been waiting for. The Whistler can’t get through the ice fields, not safely. But the Heralder can. And my calculations show Drekja will be close to Kielstraat.”
“To liaise with the finfolk is treason,” I say, an automatic response while my mind races to catch up. Even though by any standard we’re far past treason now.
His reply comes swiftly. “Will you turn us in, Lady Fairfax? Or will you come with us? You could be healed.” The smile widens. “At least, you could try.”
I clench my fists in my skirt, feeling the velvet tear under my nails as something small and bright ignites inside my chest. I’ve felt it before. Every time I came across one of those stories of curses being lifted, or met a swindler who claimed they could help me. A maybe. A spark of hope.
And I know what it will feel like when it’s extinguished. I know each time hope dies, it hurts more and more. It only makes things worse.
“Has your crew swallowed this lie, then?” I say, cold and calm. The Cursed Crew, what I’ve seen of them, don’t strike me as fools, but Silas can be persuasive. After all, he convinced August and me to keep his secret these six years. Perhaps that was a mistake.
“I’m not lying to them.” Heat trickles through Silas’s voice, making the monster perk its ears. It wants violence; it’s attentive to anger like blood in the water. “I’m not lying to you.”
I want Silas to leave and take the hope with him. I pour venom into my voice. “I know August loves me.”
Something shutters behind his eyes, storm clouds turning a flat gray. “He doesn’t love anything.”
“Then why did you only show me that moment? If this is true—if he plans to kill me”—I swallow, the words sour on my lips—“you must have agreed, for him to invite you on this voyage. Am I in danger now?”
He goes perfectly still, unnaturally still, which is how I know I’ve gotten under his skin, made him forget to act human. “I told August he needn’t dirty his hands,” he says. “That your heartbreak would do the job sooner or later.”
“Unless I go with you to Drekja.” I lace my voice with sarcasm, disbelief, to hide that still-burning spark of maybe, maybe …
“Now you’re getting it.”
“And what will this cost me?” I challenge.
He smiles. “You know, most people’s response to learning there’s a cure to the curse that’s actively killing them would be how or simply yes. Not to ask what will it cost.”
“Most people are fools, then,” I say. “Everything has a cost. There’s a reason you came to me with this—I don’t believe it was merely out of the goodness of your heart.”
“Only a promise.”
I exhale sharply, a half laugh. “A promise can be a heavy thing.” I promised Papa I would look after the company. I promised Mama I would take care of Kit and Lydia while she was gone. I promised August I’d love him forever, and he promised me the same thing. “What would you have me promise?”
“Dissolve the company,” he whispers. “End whaling forever.”
Shock stills everything in me; it feels like my heart skips, trembles.
Even if it were possible—and it is the farthest thing from possible—why would Silas want that?
I’m saved from having to think of a reply when, outside in the hall, footsteps fall on the stairs. Heavy. Not Lydia. August. I step back, panic flooding me.
Silas is already moving toward the door, but has to pass between me and the dresser to get there. He pauses close to me, making all the muscles in my body go tense. A faint smell of petrichor clings to him.
“Come to the Spout inn tomorrow night, after dark,” he says quietly. “Down by the wharf. I’ll tell you how it can be accomplished.”
“Leave,” I say, and hope he’ll interpret the quaver in my voice as rage and not the traitorous hope that has suddenly surged through me. “Use the servant staircase at the end of the hall to the left.”
He inclines his head once briefly in acknowledgment, then he’s gone, leaving me in silence that seems loud with his words echoing in my ears. Healing the heartbreak. Could it truly be possible?
A minute later, the footsteps reach my door and August knocks in the way he always does, eight quick raps in the rhythm of the old song. Girls on the shore must guard their hearts …
I haven’t moved, maybe haven’t even breathed, since Silas exited, but the knock startles me back to reality.
Catching my breath, I spin to face the mirror.
I look a little pale, but otherwise presentable.
I quickly let my hair out of its braid and shed my jacket, slinging it over the back of a chair, to create the appearance that August has just caught me getting ready for bed.
“Annie?” comes his voice from the other side of the door. Another knock. I take a deep breath and open the door.
August steps inside my room without being asked, his presence sparking up a battle of love and fear in my guts.
The shareholder meeting is over now, but he still smells like wine and cigar smoke.
He crosses the room and looks me over with concern, hands warm on my upper arms, as the door falls shut behind us.
“Annie, are you all right? You ran out of the party.”
“Noticed, did you?” My voice comes out clipped. Does he really not know why I’m upset? And why did it take him so long to come after me? “I didn’t feel well. I’m tired.”
The crease between his brows says he doesn’t believe me. Whatever his faults, he knows how important this company is to me, knows I wouldn’t have run out of the shareholder meeting without a good reason. “Is it your—affliction?” he asks, meaning my heartbreak curse.
“Why did you tell everyone I was going to Kielstraat?” I’m stiff in his arms, holding my place even as he tries to move deeper into the room. “We didn’t agree to that.”
“Forgive me, my love.” He stares down into my eyes with the expression that’s melted me so many times before, that absolute, unshakable confidence, like he would bring me the world on a string if I asked.
“That’s why I had to do it this way. I knew you wouldn’t agree otherwise.
But it’s right for you to be on this expedition.
The leader of the Fairfax Whaling Company, breaking ground on the endeavor that will save us all. ”
Silas Price’s words echo in my mind. He means to get rid of you on the way to Kielstraat.
But doubt flickers. Maybe August is right and it would be proper for me to go, to be there when the outpost opens.
And now that he’s made the announcement, it will look even worse if I don’t go.
Everyone from the shareholders, the merchants, the officers, down to the greenest sailor would all know me to be a coward.
Resentment at August for putting me in this position churns in my gut, even as he brushes an open-mouthed kiss against the side of my neck, making me shiver.
I pull back enough to look into his face.
Even in the dark his eyes glitter and his lips curl into a familiar smile, one that says all the plans in his mind are slotting together into a vision of a perfect future.
But does that vision include me? “What about Silas? Why do you want him there?”
A faint trace of irritation mars August’s face for half a second before he smooths it away. “It might be useful, having someone like him on the expedition,” he says. “It was before, on the Volyar. Useful.”
My breath catches. I don’t want to think about that. August presses his lips against my neck.
“Think how glorious it will be,” he exhales, breath hot on my throat, chasing my thoughts away.
“The whole world will hear about us breaching this new frontier together.” As he speaks, he moves his hands down my arms. His fingertips brush carefully over the scales until he weaves his fingers through mine, sending warmth through my body—and, with it, guilt.
Silas Price is a scavenger. Disgraced. Why have I let his story worm so deep into me that it’s making me distrust August—August, who has been at my side for six years now?
Who’s supported my work with the company, kept the secret of my curse when he didn’t have to, loved me when anyone else would have run screaming?
August knows I’m heartbroken, knows it’s getting worse. If he wanted me gone, all it would take would be a tip to the night watchmen and I’d be taken away, locked up like Cousin Mary or worse. But he’s kept my deadly secret. And even like this, he still loves me. He still wants me. And I need him.
I let myself relax into August’s arms, turn my face into his kiss.
His thumbs move reassuringly over the backs of my hands as his tongue parts my lips, and the taste of sweet wine seeps in.
The doubt is still there, a stubborn whisper in the back of my mind, but I’m not going to let it rule me, I decide as I stand on my tiptoes to press my body up against August’s.
Maybe it’s perverse to let August’s kisses distract me from my heartbreak, fully knowing that in the morning the doubts will sweep back in and the scales will come back worse.
But I’ve survived this long by fighting the curse with every method at my disposal, and no weapon is better than August kissing me, clutching me to him like he can’t get enough, like I’m the one keeping him alive and not vice versa.
Still, my heart isn’t in it. I gently detach from him and pull back. Understanding pools in August’s eyes and he drops his hands to hold mine, his energy instantly shifting from hungry and aggressive to protective and tender.
He helps me out of my outer clothes, kneeling to unlace my boots, and he folds the blue dress and drapes it over the back of the chair alongside his jacket.
When he’s just in his shirt and trousers and I in my shift, he takes my bare hand and guides me into bed, then lies down behind me, curling his body around mine.
It’s not molten and wanting and frantic like our kisses, but this too is familiar and precious.
He wraps his arms around me—my own hands clasped safely against my chest—and presses his face into my hair.
A mirror of how he held me on the lifeboat that night, so long ago and yet not so very long at all.
August was barely less of a child than I was. He must have been terrified, yet he held me in place as my heart broke and scales erupted and Silas watched. Held my wrists so I couldn’t attack them; hooked his legs over mine so I couldn’t jump into the sea.
Just like he did then, he whispers into my hair now, “Everything will be all right, Annie. I promise.” And just like always, I feel like arguing that he can’t know that, can’t possibly make such a promise. Yet so much of me wants to accept it, to believe him.
I feel wrung out by everything that’s happened.
If there’s any truth at all to Silas’s claim that the finfolk can lift curses, I owe it to myself—and Kit and Lydia—to learn more.
But I won’t be blinded by hope, or let the seashell poison me against August. I can hold two opposing ideas in my mind at once.
I can find out what Silas is offering while still keeping my own counsel about August.
With his steady heartbeat behind me, his breath stirring my hair, my body takes over, and despite the faint shadow of doubt still staining my thoughts, it’s easy to fall asleep in his arms. But I know, even as I drift peacefully off, that I will dream of storms and freezing water and the smell of petrichor.