CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I tossed and turned with the night, sleep evading my reach.
The empty space of dreams filled with night terrors, images and sounds scraping along my unconscious mind, a young girl screaming my name, begging for help, the face of my sister flashing in my mind.
Blades to flesh. Mouth to incision. My heart beat from my chest, spreading a tightness through my worn limbs.
I couldn’t stay like that any longer, but my body yearned for rest. The dark pressed close, thick with half-formed horrors, until the hammock felt less like reprieve and more like a grave.
The netted bed swayed as I carefully sat up and massaged my temples to soothe the headache seeping in.
Noctis didn’t budge from his pallet across the floor, his chest rising and falling in perfect rhythm.
Sleep softened him at that moment, but it couldn’t hide the cost. His brow strained faintly.
His hands clenched comfortably like he held onto something he refused to let go.
Noctis slept like he was the storm that had finally burned itself out.
Ensuring my steps didn’t wake him, I walked on to sit at the table atop the main deck. Calm silence poured in from the harbor, still hours separating us from dawn, but sleep wouldn’t have me, so I stopped pretending otherwise.
I was so, so broken. And there was no telling how much worse it was about to get when my memories allowed it.
“You saved him, you know.” Zahara’s low voice startled me, reaching clearly through the casting light of the scarce lanterns. She lowered herself into the seat adjacent.
“No, I failed him. I knew the Xemaari would reform themselves, and I failed to watch our backs…” I leaned over and stared down at my joined hands in my lap. Zahara would never understand the guilt I would spend my life recovering from.
“You dove into a collapsing death trap and somehow dragged him out. So yeah, he’s alive thanks to you.” Her words were finite, leaving no room for arguing. At that moment, she was a captain demanding orders for me to cast the blame elsewhere.
“He would’ve done the same for me.”
“Yeah. He would’ve.”
I savored the quiet moment between us, secretly weighing the love Zahara had for boys who weren’t even her blood against the hollow absence left by parents who were addicted to mine. I envied that devotion, then worked to brush it aside as the harbor slowly came alive.
As dawn approached in the nearing hours, shopkeepers worked in the dark to open their doors. Horse-drawn carriages filled the paths. The scent of early baking and food sale preparations floated to my nose.
I could have gotten accustomed to being bound to the land Bound.
“Jun wishes to speak with you, but he refuses to leave Calvin’s side,” Zahara said at last, her voice a timid break in the stillness.
I gasped. “Jun’s awake?”
Zahara nodded and fell silent again, except for a small sigh as she lowered her shoulders that carried the heavy day. The chair nearly fell as I stood from the table, but the captain placed a hand on mine before I could walk off. “I owe you, water-girl.”
Risk meant nothing to me if someone needed help.
Even a stranger. But Calvin wasn’t a stranger.
He was a bit of brightness in the world that many times did not shine.
I wanted no repayment, but there was something that kept inkling its way back into my mind, nestling like a curse, awaiting me to address it.
I took the opportunity to grant Zahara with the memories of my parents’ addiction, my upbringing, my everlasting trauma. Her brows dipped at every devastating hit. Silver lined her eyes, her hands fidgeting with the cloth she favored to carry.
“I’m not sure what awaits me after all of this. My parents… I was just a child, and now I will carry that weight for the rest of my life,” I choked out, confessing with downcast eyes.
I thought when I agreed to help take down the Royal Vanguard that maybe I would have a family to return to—that they were the main driving force of my rage. But that wasn’t the case anymore. If my sister still lived, her mental or physical state could possibly be beyond repair.
“Ain’t always about where you go next. Sometimes it’s who you go with. Lucky for you, I’ve got a floating home and an open crew.” Zahara managed a small, tired smile in my direction.
It was a strange sensation to grieve something I'd never known with my parents, and yet Zahara's offer had struck a chord deep in my chest. An aching melody had pulled from the strings, settling in my bones with a sense of hope and comfort for what may lie ahead.
I stepped softly down to the map room, ensuring I didn’t wake Noctis as I passed the crew quarters. The narrow corridor cast in darkness, a hanging lantern the only means of light.
Jun’s hand drifted through Calvin’s hair, gaze lingering on the pale silence of a face too still for comfort. When the trapdoor clicked in place, he met my distraught gaze.
“Is he getting any better?” I asked in a timid whisper.
Jun nodded. “Slowly, but I’m drained. I tried to heal more, but I can’t.”
I kneeled on the floor before the two men.
“Can Noctis help again? Is he able to fuel your power?”
Jun shook his head slightly. “He’s drained, too. I felt it. Gave all he had for him.”
“I’ve never seen flame the—”
“That’s what I need to talk to you about,” Jun interrupted, clipping his words short like always. A tightness clung to his shoulders, his hands fidgeting with his already perfectly folded sleeves. “I’m… sorry.”
“Sorry? You saved our asses. What could you possibly be sorry about?”
He hesitated, his eyes shifting to the wall.
“You… you don’t understand, do you? I wasn’t born with powers.
” His throat bobbed with a hard swallow he couldn’t quite hide, searching for the words to continue.
“My father gave them to me. Took them from your kind. Twisted them. Made me into something else.” His words tripped on each other, repeating certain syllables.
Jun was good in his quiet, determined way—draining himself to save the one he loved. There was nothing evil in him, except for the memories that surely haunted his dreams like my own.
“Jun…” He held his hand up to stop me.
"I spent years helping them." He paused.
"Years pouring into the stone that ripped the magic from the merfolk bodies.
Years of killing..." He hesitated, eyes skittering away. "Killing your people. My power does not belong to me, and every time I use it, it tears a piece from my soul.” He cupped his face in his palms. “I don’t even know who I am after yesterday. You… should hate me.”
I hesitantly placed a hand on his shoulder, unsure if the touch would be accepted. “I don’t hate you. Nor do I blame you for what you were forced to do.”
“That’s the thing. At first, I wasn’t forced.
” His devastated eyes met mine. “I had no clue what they were doing until I was caught in the restricted area.” He removed his hood, revealing the scar that ran across the top of his head from ear-to-ear.
Jagged edges traced the raised white imprint as if ripped apart by claws.
Along a strip where his straight black hair should have grown, only pale scar tissue remained. Mutilated.
My jaw set tighter with each passing second as my eyes trailed it.
“They almost killed me,” he whispered, concealing the evidence of abuse with the cloak.
I empathized with him, living a similar beginning of life as he—used for nothing more than the magic and abilities that festered beneath the skin. But watching his pain amplified my rage. Something inside me cracked under the pressure of holding it all in.
“How do they pull the magic and use it?”
He shook his head violently. “I can’t. I can’t explain it.” His deep voice cracked. “It’s brutal. I’ve been beaten near death so many times, but what they do in those chambers…”
I couldn’t press him for answers, the fear in his expression and words tearing bits of my heart out.
“Let’s make sure they remember why they should’ve killed us when they had the chance,” I replied, meaning every word with a compassionate grin.
Jun’s lips slightly rose, trembling as he forced himself to smile back.
Wood cracked and groaned, the ship jolting sideways. My body shot into the air, head smashing with the cot beside me. Blood trickled down my face as I blinked away the dizziness, my mind spinning from the impact.
Jun held firm to the unconscious Calvin, ensuring he wasn’t jostled in his condition. My bewildered eyes met his.
“What’s—”
“I can’t leave him…” Jun begged, and I understood. If danger existed outside, he would rather die with Calvin than abandon him.
I nodded quickly and clumsily stormed out of the map room, sprinting to the main deck to find Zahara and Noctis. They stared perplexed over the harbor and into the markets and villages beyond. Water raged around as the ground convulsed as if being cleaved apart.
Three Oricaans tore through the streets like a living, breathing siege tower, its gilded iron limbs pulverizing stone and shattering carts beneath its colossal weight.
Walls crumbled in its path, glass exploding outward, and the ground shook with every thunderous step north of the villages.
Screams and the sound of crumpling steel filled the air like a war anthem.
Sparks rained from their joints as they barreled forward, tearing roofs from buildings and stomping carriages into twisted scrap.
They’re following us.
I met Noctis’s side and gripped the hand rails of the ship, sweat already beading across the surface of my skin.
“Any chance I could talk you into not throwing yourself into danger today?” Noctis uttered softly, his eyes glued to the mayhem. The Oricaans spared no one and nothing, merciless in their pursuit to destroy it all. I was tired of seeing innocent blood spilled.