Chapter 30 A Sea of Silver
Let the whispers of truth shatter the walls of deceit, for silence holds no lies.
“How many demigods do you keep on this damned ship?”
I’m rife with annoyance as our blades clash into the night. Rhyland stares at me, nonplussed, his eyes once again those cold, guarded pools of midnight.
“Clearly too many, as they fail to keep their mouths shut about it.” The sculpted muscles in his arm and shoulder extend and flex when he parries my wild slash with a flick of his wrist.
He is dangerously distracting tonight, shirt discarded in the heat, hair tousled and smooth as an obsidian river. The high sharp angles of his face could have been cut from the same marble the famed artists of old used. It’s hardly fair.
“Perhaps,” I growl, pressing the attack in a way that forces him back a step, “you simply have a death wish.”
A flicker of something wild, something predatory, dances in those dark eyes. “Death has never been the goal, at least not my own.”
“Ah yes, your pesky ambition. The source that's kept that glacier you call a heart beating. Tell me, what kept it going before hate carved its tomb inside of you?”
He counters my next strike, the steel of our blades singing in the stale air.
A smirk lifts the corner of his lips. “Not what, who.”
Who? The word roars through me with a flame of jealousy so hot I know my cheeks burn red.
“Some beautiful goddess, I imagine.”
I lunge, the tip of my sword a whisper of death at his throat.
Another deflection as quick and easy as the last two times I tried to nick him.
He’s only toying with me. I try to envision what an actual fight might be like but I’ve never seen him up against anyone who matched his skill—Harlow, Solomon, Searle, all pathetic in their attempts to best him.
The heat of my blush travels down my neck.
“Tell me,” I press when he doesn’t answer.
“You truly want to know?”
No. But his implication that I somehow couldn’t handle it sends a stroke of fury through me so potent silver flame streaks from my fingertips to lick across his perfectly formed pectoral muscle.
He lets out a sharp hiss, the skin sizzling.
His fingers lift as though to brush the flame away—leaving his side vulnerable to my blade.
I rush him, prepared to exploit the momentary weakness when my fingers twitch around the hilt.
Hesitation is a wicked thing. It stills my hand, makes my heart stutter in my chest and all he needs is that second. That lone beat.
His hold finds the wrist of my sword arm, iron and warmth. He spins me in such a way that I find my arm bent and pinned behind my back.
“Once, you're blameless. Twice and I'm starting to think you're looking for an excuse to end up in my arms,” he murmurs, a taunting edge to each syllable. “Never let your guard down. Never hesitate.”
I bare my teeth. “Seems to me you’re trying to distract from the subject.”
“You find me distracting?” The smile in his voice, mouth pressed close to my ear, makes my stomach clench.
“Don’t flatter yourself.” My foot lifts. I bring my heel, drag it along the skin of his shin, and down as hard as I can over the toe of his boot.
He grunts, his hold on me loose enough that I can ram my elbow hard into the spot over his kidney.
“Better,” he says after I've danced away to the relative safety of the rail that splits us from the foredeck. “But still not ruthless enough.”
“I don’t want to be ruthless.”
Absently, my hand trails over the rune hidden beneath my shirt and I’m thinking of his theory all over again.
How a god from House Aethelmaer could have come to Aurorae, bedded my mother, sired me.
That she could have lied about it all to keep me hidden.
If godly blood runs through these veins it would be a damming fate, not only because Ireus would seek to hunt me down and finish the job, but because the gods I’ve met so far seem to be the antithesis of humanity.
Cold, ruthless, cunning schemers who put their own desires above, well, everything.
The shrug of his shoulder is all the confirmation my theory needs. “Better ruthless than dead.”
“Who was it, Pirate, this person who started the end of everything for you?”
Stories, half formed. Most of them probably only half true. They rise and fall in my mind like kingdoms of ash. I want the truth from his lips. Crave it.
His sigh bleeds into the night around us. The pearlescent moon hangs heavy in the sky, casting an ethereal glow over the water, the ship, his sweat slicked skin.
“This isn’t a story with a happy ending, Nymph.”
I gesture around us. “Is it ever, Pirate?”
He gives me his cold smile, the one that doesn't come close to touching his eyes, before settling onto the deck, back pressed against the smooth wooden railing. Regret pools in me before he even opens his mouth.
“You'll be surprised to know I fell in love with a mortal. A human woman from a small nameless village.”
It hurts about as much as I expected it to, this knowledge that he was once capable of something…more, but not knowing would be worse, so I train my face into a stoic mask with a hint of marked interest.
“She was everything I needed at the time. Everything we insufferable immortals weren’t.
” His smile grows wane, lost to memories and pain, and he closes his eyes.
Leans back so his dark hair is ruffled at the crown of his head.
“When my father discovered this he punished me viciously. He descended upon Hlódyn himself and reaped the light from her eyes. Ripped the very soul from her. There was nothing left of her to mourn, to bury. But he didn’t stop there.
Her family, her whole village, every place she’d ever stepped, every trace of her he leveled.
Out of pure rage and despair, I sought the crown from him, planned to use it to bring her back knowing what the punishment would be.
I didn’t care. Galen…he—he found out what I was going to do.
Mór saw a vision of what would happen, too late.
They both came for me. Tried to stop me from taking it before Ireus could find out.
We fought over it, three immortals pulling in every direction.
It fractured under the strain. Power exploded.
My strength, warbringer: I could absorb energy from my enemies—the impact fueled me.
But Galen…Galen was softer. Good. Light and joy. Healing. It destroyed him.”
The story he paints comes to life before my eyes—the anguish, the horror he must’ve felt when he found his mortal lover and her entire village dead by his father’s hand and with no means to truly retaliate.
Stealing out of desperation only to bring about his brother’s untimely death.
A deeper understanding of him starts to take root within me, sprouting from my chest, working its way into the organs and tissue.
I wish that I could wrench it free, destroy it with my flame.
There’s no room in me for this…this sorrow.
Still, I dare to ask: “And Mór?”
“Mór was punished, maybe worst of all. Her power protected her, but pulled her from the godly realm. Cast her into Hlódyn. She uses an illusion spell to hide the gruesome scars that decorate her flesh now. When Ireus discovered her role in this, that she had failed to go to him with her vision, he trapped her on Isle Elaris. Made her alone, then drew down Aurorae’s protections so your island was vulnerable to the greed of man.
He knew how much she loved her creations.
What it would do to her to see the nymphs subjected to chains.
And worse, he—” Rhyland swallows, wipes beads of sweat from his forehead.
“The rest of her story is not for me to tell.”
It all sinks in, every horrible drop he’s shared.
He opens his eyes, meets my gaze, and for a moment I let his grief mirror mine.
We both lost something. We both have a chance to get it back, but the challenge remains that for one to succeed the other must fail.
I need the Midnight Crown to settle my blood debt and secure Máma.
Something tells me the trickster god may not take kindly to handing it over to Rhyland after.
Whereas the pirate needs to return the crown to Ireus and regain his godhood.
To ascend the realm and take his place amongst the stars.
There’s no path visible to me that grants both. Perhaps I am short sighted on the subject, but now, knowing what hangs in the balance for him, telling the truth feels even more impossible.
“So.” I clear the hesitation in my throat and blink away from his heavy gaze. “You plan to use the crown to bring your dead lover back? Perhaps Galen as well?”
A slight shifting, as though the direction of the subject has become too close for comfort.
“I discovered, too late, that Njól cannot bring mortals back from the dead, even when whole. She is lost to me. Galen, on the other hand, could be retrieved from the purgatory we gods enter in the rare instance....” He lets the ending float away like ash in a breeze.
Gods, it shouldn’t feel like a victory. Am I truly so awful to feel anything but pity that he cannot bring this woman back? This woman he loved. Loved enough to defy the god of gods over?
You’re a terrible being, Vale. I almost shush my subconscious aloud but instead go forward and slowly lower myself down a few feet from him so that we are both seated, backs pressed against the unforgiving banister.
He studies me carefully, a thoughtful expression that’s limned in moonlight. “Do you want to know the worst part?”
I shiver at the gravel in his voice. The way it’s whispered, how it brushes over my face with a smell that is cool but sweet, like he’s been chewing on spearmint leaves.
There’s something beneath it though—an underlying scent that’s become familiar since spending weeks on the water with a shipful of pirates. Rum.