Chapter 20 #2
“I knew you were heartbroken. I thought you’d turn soon.” His voice is ragged, like cloth that’s fraying as he drags it out from under the accumulated years. “I was sick over it. Another life lost to the finfolk. Another person gone because I couldn’t save the Volyar.”
“It wouldn’t have been your fault.”
“I know that. Most of the time anyway.” A rueful flicker of a smile.
“But time went on and you didn’t turn. I saw you at church, around town, at the docks.
You were stronger than your curse. You made me want to be stronger than mine.
” His voice drops to a whisper. “I felt like you would be important in all of this.”
“I thought you hated me.” A strange mix of self-consciousness and shame has immobilized me with our hands still tangled together. To the extent I thought of Silas after the Volyar sank, I thought of him with loathing. “You acted like you hated me.”
“I did,” he said with a joyless chuckle.
“I thought I did. I felt so helpless, so out of control, and here you were and not even heartbreak could slow you down as you carried on whaling. I didn’t understand why you did it.
” His eyes open and land on me as he speaks, no longer curse-blank.
Only scraps of oil-slick rainbow seem to cling at the corners of his eyes, pooling like tears.
My mouth goes dry, trapped in his gaze. “But you stayed.”
Silas swallows, throat bobbing beneath flaking red-brown. I didn’t clean the blood off there. He searches my eyes. “Was it a mistake?”
I don’t know the answer to that, and I’m afraid of what will come out if I open my mouth, so instead I extricate my hands from his. Silas blinks in surprise as I brace his face with my left hand, but he lets me tilt his head back, eyes half closing.
His breath catches when I bring the cloth to his throat with my right hand.
The pad of my thumb rests less than an inch from his lips; I could slip it into his mouth if I wanted.
His skin feels like live embers burn beneath the surface; I’m half surprised the water doesn’t turn to steam.
As I move the cloth down the side of his neck, I realize very clearly that this—this is a mistake, and also that I’m not going to stop. At least not yet.
He leans his face into my hand, the movement so slight I’m not sure he means to do it. His eyes have gone lidded, and his pulse races under my fingers. My hands tremble with the effort of staying on course as excess water trickles over his collarbone, between his ribs.
I want to follow it down, to wipe the cloth down his chest, his back. I want to run wet fingers through his hair until it’s clean. I want to touch his skin without the intermediary of gloves or cloth, I want, I want—
“Annie,” he says, voice unsteady. His hands come up to wrap loosely around my wrists, not restricting me, just anchoring me as gravity threatens to crash us together.
Strange how I usually think of Silas as so mysterious and enigmatic, but now his body gives the game away. Breath coming fast, a flush climbing his chest. It makes me feel powerful and terrified at the same time. In control and utterly out of it.
I hear what he’s asking.
But I can still feel the jagged edges inside myself where my heart is broken. To give in, to sink into him—it would let me forget for a while, but I know how this works now. Know that would make the heartbreak all the worse when something goes wrong.
“You deserve someone’s whole heart,” I tell him. The words hurt coming out. “Not broken scraps.”
His eyes glisten, wounded yet unsurprised, when I pull away, sit back on my heels. “Deserve,” he echoes, the word a soft, questioning exhalation. “Most days I think I deserve to be on the ocean floor with the others from the Volyar.”
My throat goes tight. “That’s not true.” I take the bowl and cloth back to the dresser, stumbling slightly because my legs went to sleep without me realizing it.
Try not to watch in the mirror as Silas rises, finds a shirt somewhere, and pulls it on.
Graceful, somehow, even now as the silence stretches.
Then he goes still, all at once, face turned toward the porthole. His breath draws in sharply, the atmosphere in the room suddenly brittle.
I freeze in the act of pulling my gloves on. “What is it?”
He’s moved to the porthole in three silent strides. “Put out the lantern.”
My stomach turns over at the controlled tension in his voice.
I flip the lantern cap down and move to his side as the flame shrinks and dims. In the moment before it sputters out, I see Silas’s and my reflections in the porthole, faces floating side by side.
The thick glass warps our reflections, turning our eyes into dark pits; then we vanish.
It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust after the light dies. The moon is a plump near-circle in the sky, reflecting off the great black surface of the sea. But then more colors start to bleed in. The deep purple undertones to the waves; their whitecaps and the greenish tint to the sky.
And in the distance, the gray shapes of three rowboats. The tall, dark figures standing inside.