2. The Sea-faring King #3
Dorian nods shyly, turning his face in embarrassment. “I visited Percion last month, and a woman who claimed to be a witch said that putting a star under your pillow will grant you a wish.” He laughs, fiddling with his buttons. “She was probably a fraud, but I figured trying couldn’t hurt.”
Tears gather in Sapphira’s eyes before she can stop them. A drop falls across her cheek, and she wipes it away. But not before Dorian notices.
“Whoa, Sapphira. I didn’t mean to upset you!” he says, his eyes growing wide and panicked. “I didn’t have much time, and I know I’m not a professional, but—”
She slaps a hand over his mouth, his breath warm against her hand. “I’m not upset. I’m happy.” She wraps her arms around his neck, breathing in the smell of brass and coconut oil on his skin and in his hair.
“What has gotten into you? You’re never this . . .” he waves, unsure how to finish that sentence.
Laughter pools in her chest. “Too much wine? I don’t know. I don’t feel like myself tonight.”
The wind ruffles her hair, and Sapphira reaches for her glass of wine again. Dorian intercepts her and tips the glass over, a bubble of dark liquid spilling into the grass.
“What was that for?” she snaps.
“You don’t need more wine, Sapphira. You need to talk to me. What’s wrong?”
Sapphira turns the star in her hands. What is there to say? That Agath threatened to never let her out of this castle if she doesn’t find a prince to marry? Or that she’s not as okay with marrying as she thought?
She looks at her best friend, searching for the answer to all her problems in his eyes, desperate to see some glimmer of hope. She finds no such thing. “Is this a preview of what my life is to be?”
This isn’t the birthday Sapphira had imagined.
She thought all of her problems would be solved with the opening of those gates, but they aren’t.
She doesn’t want to be a bride. She doesn’t even know what she wants.
But whatever it is, it will be far away from this island and everything she has ever known.
King Cornelius talked of seafaring and travels, and Sapphira wants that more than she can admit. He opened a chasm inside her chest that she’s not sure how to fill.
“Maybe marriage will grant me freedom from one cage, but what use is it if I’m stuck in another?” Sapphira asks.
Dorian sighs a deep breath, slumping forward in defeat. “I wish I had your answer, but I don’t. Would it be so bad to just stay here and never marry?”
“I have a feeling Agath wouldn’t like that,” she says, ignoring the sting of his words. To marry would be awful, but to stay here would be much worse.
“Why do you care?” Dorian snaps suddenly. Anger flashes over his face and his voice pitches higher. Sapphira watches him, stunned. “Why do you let your aunt and those wicked cousins control you, Sapphira? You have more power than she does. You could put her in her place if you wanted to.”
Sapphira sighs and turns to the vast night sky.
A breeze carries strands of hair across her upturned face.
She has heard it before. Dorian has always made it clear that he doesn’t understand why Sapphira obeys her aunt's wishes, but he’s an orphan.
He doesn’t have any family, so he wouldn’t understand.
“She’s my elder and has my council eating from her palm.
They respect her and see me only as a child.
Until I am crowned queen, they are the ones truly ruling Dansui.
I am only a figurehead. She could make my life more difficult, so I obey her for my own sake.
I have little comforts—you and my swords. She could take those too.”
Dorian lets out a breath, the flames of his anger dimming.
“I’m sorry,” he says. He looks like a kicked puppy, mouth turned down and a crease between his eyes.
“But is it so bad that I wish to continue as we do now, sword fighting and climbing trees? Walking through the gardens at night for our chats?”
“We can’t do that forever, Dorian.” She scoots closer to him, their thighs pressed together as they sit side by side. “We aren’t children anymore.”
Sapphira is sad to crush the wistful smile on his lips. He looks up at the stars, a wavering sheen to his eyes that she tries to ignore. She isn’t the only one who has to grow up. He’s training under Fein and preparing to replace him as the head guard. Neither of them can be a child forever.
“I—” Dorian takes a deep breath, whispering, “I’m leaving soon.”
Sapphira freezes. She pulls back to look at his face, hoping to see a lie there. Some humor, at least. But no. He’s serious.
Dorian begins talking quickly then, like he’s afraid if he doesn’t he won’t get it all out.
“Fein wants me to be his replacement, but the Lady Regent convinced him I need to take on an assignment of my own to prove I can handle it. One that will take me away from Dansui. I didn’t want to leave… well, you . But—”
“It’s your dream.”
He nods.
“That’s why you were in Percion,” she says, her eyes wide and unseeing as she looks back up at the stars. They blur. Her words sound hollow when she speaks. “You were scouting out the mission. Preparing to move?”
Dorian swallows, rubbing his hands nervously on his pants. “I asked to come back for your birthday. To see you one last time.”
Tears pool in Sapphira’s eyes, and the sky swims before her. The string lanterns and dancers blur into a fog of color as laughter is carried away in the wind.
“We should hurry back before Agath or the princes notice you missing,” Dorian chokes out, hiding his face as he turns away.
“It’ll be okay,” Sapphira says quickly. She stands, brushing grass and dirt from her dress. She isn’t sure why or how she finds her voice again, but she needs to hear it out loud to comfort herself and her friend.
Stuffing the carved star into a fold in her dress, she says, “Maybe I’ll put your star under my pillow and wish us both a better life.”
Dorian’s laughter is empty. “I’d like that.”
Earlier, Sapphira thought she was going through the motions, but when she returns to the party, her life has tilted on its axis.
She observes every color and shape, and hears every sound, through a tunnel.
She’s alone in the dark, and only a pinprick of light is able to reach her.
It’s what guides her as she walks through the crowd.
Everyone is moving around her, but it’s only Sapphira on this plane.
When the Prince of Neptor walks toward her, Sapphira is almost surprised that he can see her.
So this is real. This is all happening. She takes his hand, nods at whatever words come from his puppet lips, and lets herself be led through a dance.
Zain’s hands are cold and clammy, his movements stilted as he pulls her limp body through the crowd, twirling among other dancers, spinning around the dark-green pond, surrounded by moss and greenery and dotted by the twinkling lights above.
Dorian is leaving.
The one person who makes my cage bearable and the only friend I have in the entire castle. He’s leaving.
It feels like losing her parents all over again. Sapphira knows that once he’s gone, everything will change.
Sapphira is so lost in her thoughts that when Cedella swings her dance partner close to her and Zain, knocking into them as if by accident, she doesn’t see it coming.
In shock, the prince lets go of her, and Sapphira tumbles back into the pond.
She falls into the cold, murky water, like in a dream, her dress and weeds tangling around her legs.
In that moment, Sapphira is plunged back into the sea after she dove from her balcony and is getting tossed around in the unforgiving waves.
She struggles as the memory haunts her, fighting uselessly to get to the surface.
The pond is deep enough that she can’t touch the bottom, and she thrashes around, the air in her lungs shriveling up as she gasps for breath. Slimy water races into her open mouth, and fear prickles at the back of her mind. Nothing is going to save you this time.
For a moment, she imagines not struggling. Giving in. But she fights, thrashing her body once more. Strong hands hook under her arms and a rigid body hauls her up from the water. She gasps like a fish out of water.
“I’ve got you. I got you,” a voice croons.
A stunned crowd watches silently, as the princess is fished from the pond. The music and dancing halts as Dorian lays Sapphira in the grass. Her hair has come undone, braids and loose black hair plastered to her face as she coughs up water.
The orange-pink of her dress contours her body like a fishtail as Sapphira leans against Dorian’s chest, her lungs burning as humiliation fills her chest along with the water burning her lungs.
Feigning concern, Cedella strings apologies for the crowd like a skilled seamstress. Ines and Giselle help Sapphira to her feet, but she catches the amusement turning the corner of her cousins’ lips.
“Get off of me!” she shouts, wrenching her arms from the pair of them.
Giselle gasps, drawing murmurs from the crowd. “What’s wrong, Sapphira? I’m just trying to help you.”
“I don’t need your help,” Sapphira says, seething.
Then she pushes through the crowd and past a stunned Dorian who is dripping wet from his dive to grab her.
She ignores the shouts after her and the words of concern as she races back up the steps and into the castle.
The last thing she wants is to speak with Dorian, the sting of his nearing departure will only make her heart hurt worse.
Her face and lungs burn, and tears sting her eyes. I have to get out of here.
Sapphira races away from the party and into the castle, legs like stone blocks as she runs through the deserted halls, dripping pond water as she collapses into a heap on the cold floor in a wide, empty room.
She can’t make it any further on her shaky legs, her room and the many stairs that separate her from it feel much too far.