Chapter 6
I don’t sleep that night, but Nolan does. Maddox and Charlie assure me that it’s for the best, that he needs rest, but it takes everything in me not to rattle him awake every three seconds, make him tell me he’s still there.
Charlie and Maddox make pallets on the floor of our room, and from all the tossing and turning I hear, I get the sense they don’t sleep at all either.
By the time morning comes, we all look as if we’ve been punched in both eyes, purple bruises underneath our lids, our eyes bloodshot.
But Nolan wakes, and I could die of relief.
“Please don’t tell me you’re all going to be on my case after this,” says Nolan.
“I’m telling the crew this morning at breakfast that I’m taking over as temporary captain until you recover,” says Maddox.
Nolan’s previously heavy lids shoot open. “You’ll do no such thing.”
“Fine,” says Maddox, crossing his arms. “I’m telling the crew that I’m taking over as temporary captain while you enjoy some much needed quality time with your bride.”
Nolan glares at him, but this time he doesn’t argue. Maddox and Charlie exchange a concerned glance. I take it that Nolan giving up on an argument this early isn’t a good sign.
“Thank you two for coming to my aid last night,” says Nolan. “Now, if you don’t mind, I would like some of that quality time with my wife now.”
Charlie and Maddox look at me for confirmation, and I nod. “Just stay close by?” I ask.
“Of course,” says Charlie.
Once they leave, I turn to face my husband.
He’s already propped himself up in bed, his chest bare.
Already, the tattoos he commissioned to mask his illness are proving inadequate.
The graying tendrils from the magic poisoning have grown past the lines of the tattoos, seeping into previously healthy skin and casting the illusion that his tattoos are bleeding.
When I glance back up at his face, I realize his gaze has been tracing mine. “If only we could have wed before all this. I’d have been much more fun to look at, I assure you.”
“I remember what you looked like before,” I say, which earns me a sly grin as I crawl into bed and trace the wounds with my fingers.
He shivers underneath my touch. “Your hands are frigid,” he says, but I don’t pull away.
“I did this to you,” I whisper.
“Yes,” he says, “and if you don’t stop that, you’re going to give me frostbite in addition.”
I shoot him an annoyed look, and he grins like that’s exactly what he’s been hoping for.
“I’m serious, Nolan,” I say, sitting back on my hips and placing my hands into my lap. “You’re dying because of what I did.”
“Objective bystanders assessing the situation might say that I brought it upon myself,” he says.
“I didn’t have to do it, though. I could have kept you from killing Peter without maiming you. Or just let you kill him. Then everyone would have been better off.” I bury my face in my palms, rubbing my temples with my thumbs.
“I tried to exchange your life for my dead wife’s after luring you into that cave under pretense. It was an understandable reaction,” says Nolan, shrugging. “Besides, I like seeing you angry. It’s sexy.”
I throw a pillow at him, and he tosses it right back so that it hits me in the face.
“Well, I’m going to figure out a way to get you out of this mess,” I say.
“Are you now?”
“You don’t like that idea?”
“On the contrary, I quite enjoy seeing you all determined. Especially on my behalf. But Darling, if we only have so much time together…” He says it carefully, like he’s walking on eggshells around me, before finishing the thought.
“My preference would be to make the most of it together. My worst fear isn’t dying.
It’s spending the remainder of my life searching for a cure that isn’t out there.
Missing out on my best moments with you. ”
“Yeah, well, as romantic as that sounds, my worst fear does happen to be you dying,” I say, unable (and not really trying) to mask the annoyance in my voice.
“Well, perhaps you’re correct, then. Maybe you should have considered that before you maimed me irreparably.”
“You’re such an imbecile sometimes, Nolan Astor.”
He flashes me a grin. “Did you expect that to change just because I had a wedding band on my finger?”
Against my better judgment, my annoyance melts.
“No,” I say, curling up against his shoulder.
“Against all reason, I happen to like you the way you are. However, I’m not content to just let you waste away.
Besides, you need your rest. It’s not like you’re going to know whether I’m combing through the library looking for cures while you’re asleep. You’ll be none the wiser.”
“How devious you are,” he says, flatly, but then amusement tinges his voice. “What library do you speak of?”
“The one on the ship,” I say. “Charlie mentioned it to me once.”
“Ah,” says Nolan. “That library.”
The reason for the mocking in Nolan’s voice becomes evident as soon as Charlie shows me what she previously referred to as the ship’s library.
One of the newer crew members who used to be a healer agreed to stay with Nolan for an hour while Charlie, Maddox, and I made our excursion to the library, but library is a generous term.
There is one bookshelf on the opposite end of a room that seems to be otherwise dedicated to maps and atlases. It’s not even a properly sized bookshelf. In fact, it reaches to about my collarbone, and I’m not a particularly tall individual. And the bookshelf itself isn’t even full.
“This is it?” I ask.
“What were you expecting?” asks Maddox. “I mean, I know you grew up with an entire library wing at your disposal, but really, Wendy. This is a ship.”
“I thought sailors read all the time to pass the boredom,” I say.
Maddox laughs. “Yes, we each have our favorite book, and that stays by our bedside table, and we read it over and over. Those of us who are literate, I mean.”
I cross my arms and look at Charlie, who shrugs. “Sorry, but this is all we have.”
I spend the next half hour searching through the dozen books on the shelf, but they’re all related to sailing, either charting stars for navigation, or how to clean the barrel of a cannon, or how to make ship repairs.
There’s absolutely nothing of use.
Giving up, I turn to Charlie and Maddox, who are both at a table pretending to search through books they know good and well are irrelevant to our search. They haven’t spoken to each other the entire time we’ve been down here, which I note as odd for them.
“Fine,” I say, slumping down in the seat next to Charlie. “But there has to be something we can do.”
“You got any ideas?” asks Maddox.
There’s one that’s been chewing at my mind ever since Nolan’s heart attack last night. “We could go to the Eldest Sister. She’s the one who Marked him in the first place. She could maybe Mark him again, or at least restore his health.”
“Nolan already met with her, remember?” says Charlie. “He’s not exactly on her good side. She wasn’t willing to heal him then. I don’t know why she would have changed her mind.”
“Oh,” I say. I’d known Nolan met with the Eldest Sister, but he’d only ever told me that it was to try to track me down, and that she’d shown him the tapestries of our alternate life.
It makes sense that while he was there, he would have also asked for a cure for his illness.
I suppose he didn’t feel the need to bring it up, given the answer was no.
Besides, when he’d originally told me the story, he’d left out the part about his illness altogether.
“It was a good thought,” says Maddox, but I feel like he’s placating me, well-intentioned as he is.
“I did have another thought,” says Charlie.
Something twists in my gut. I can tell by the hesitation in her voice exactly where she’s going with this.
“I know,” I say, burying my hands in my face. “I thought of it too.”
“Am I missing something?” asks Maddox.
I take my hand from my palms after rubbing my eyes, probably causing the redness to worsen. Strangely enough, Charlie doesn’t answer him.
“Captain would never make you do that,” she says.
“Make me? I’m more concerned with whether he’d let me. He’s not exactly eager to be searching for a cure at all,” I say. “I very much doubt that going to Peter would stoke his motivation.”
Maddox looks back and forth between the two of us. “You think there’s a way to transfer Peter’s Mark back to Nolan?”
“They transferred it once. I don’t see any reason it couldn’t be transferred again,” says Charlie.
“Except the first time, Peter was a willing subject,” I say.
“You never know,” says Charlie, taking a swig out of her flask. “Peter might be tired of his Mark. He might want out, the same way the captain thought he wanted it gone. It was driving him crazy, you know. Can’t imagine what it would do to a lesser man.”
I bite my lip, thinking. “I wonder if it would kill him. The same way it’s killing Nolan.”
“Wouldn’t that be a bonus?” says Maddox.
Charlie shakes her head. “Wendy has a point. If Peter has any inkling removing the Mark even has a chance of causing him to contract the same illness the captain has, I doubt he would go for it.”
Maddox shrugs. “So we make him.”
Something twists in my stomach.
“Uh-oh,” says Maddox, glancing at my hands, which I only now realize that I’m wringing together.
“He doesn’t deserve to live after what he did to you,” says Charlie.
I shake my head. “No. I know. It’s just that I’ve had my life traded for someone else’s before. For someone more loved. Or at least, that was the intention. It feels wrong, doing that to someone else. Even Peter.”
Charlie and Maddox go silent for a moment.
“You have an annoyingly tender conscience, you know,” says Charlie.
I swallow. “I’m not sure that’s what it is.”
After another drawn-out silence, I say, “I’m not saying I wouldn’t do it for Nolan. It just gives me a bad feeling, and I’d rather find another way.”
Charlie taps her fingers on the table, thinking.
“As much as I’d like to see Peter dead, it’s the riskiest of the plans.
You’re right. I doubt he’ll give up that connection to you willingly, especially if he gets wind that it could endanger him.
And even wounded, I wouldn’t want to bring him into our predicament if we don’t have to. ”
I nod, shoulders sagging in relief, glad that my friend understands. That, when Peter’s involved, you’ll always be giving up more than you bargained for.
“So that’s all we have?” I ask. “A Fate with a wounded pride who will revel in my husband’s death…”
“And a scorned lover who would enjoy it even more,” says Maddox grimly. Then, his face softening, he places his large hand on top of mine. “You know, maybe we should take a break. I bet the captain’s awake again and would like to see you.”
Something about the resignation with which he says it, the implication that he thinks Nolan is right, that an attempt to save him is futile and I might as well just stay by his side waiting for my husband to die, has my insides flaring.
“What? You’d rather just give up on him?” I snap.
Maddox snorts. “Give up on him? Who do you think has been wracking their brain, bribing every rumor peddler at every port for the past two years looking for a cure? Do you think I enjoy watching my best friend succumb to slow death? But I’ve come to terms with it.
Come to terms with the fact that I wasn’t there to stop that dagger from coming down, and I’m just as helpless to find him a cure as I would be trying to sew his hand back onto his body. ”
Shame washes over me. Maddox is right. It’s astounding that he doesn’t hate me, the person whose fault it is that he’s having to watch his best friend fade.
“You’re right. I’m sorry,” I say, choking on the lump in my throat.
Maddox swallows, then nods, but he doesn’t look at me as he stands from his chair. “I’ll be needed back on deck,” he says.
When he leaves, Charlie puts her hand on my shoulder. “Don’t mind him. He’ll be over it once he does his hundred push-ups for the day. You two will be the best of friends by dinner.”
Something numb crusts over in my heart. Charlie’s probably right, and that only makes me feel worse. Maddox has no reason to forgive me.
“You two are fighting, aren’t you?” I ask.
Charlie rears back. Her response is much too exaggerated to be honest. “What? Us?”
“You hardly look at him. When he asks a question, you don’t answer him. The two of you are usually cutting up. What happened?” I ask.
Charlie just shrugs and stands from the table. “Don’t worry about it. We’ve had our disagreements before. It’s nothing. Like I said, Maddox gets over things quickly.”
The way she says it reminds me that she doesn’t.