Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The days until my next shift are long and slow.
Since that night together, it has been easier to spend time with the girls, either on deck or in the lounge, in the evenings.
Weston never brings the shifts up to me again, and after his reaction to our return, part of me is waiting for him to take back his permission for me to leave.
But it never comes.
Instead, I wake up the morning of the shift to my dagger waiting for me on the bedside table, and complete avoidance for the rest of the day.
Dusk is falling when I head to Sig’s room to see if she’s ready to leave.
She wasn’t at dinner tonight with the rest of us, I assume to get some extra rest before we are out all night.
I knock a few times and wait, sliding closer to her door as a few of the Castaways trudge down the hall from the crew’s quarters, carrying a big crate between them with a smile on their faces.
There’s shuffling from behind the door before it opens wide, and I pull back, shocked to be looking up into Jorn’s smiling face.
“Ready for your shift?” he says.
“Uh, yeah?” I answer, confused why I’m answering him and not Sig.
“Have a good one,” he says as he slips out the door and past me, heading toward the stairs.
I peer inside the doorway to find Sig, tucking her shirt into her pants, and raise my eyebrow at her.
“What’s that look for?” she says as she reaches for her belt and wraps it around her waist.
I shrug one shoulder. “Nothing, nothing. Just…observing,” I say innocently.
It never occurred to me that any of the Castaways were together, but by the look of Jorn’s smile and Sig’s state of undress, I am rethinking that assumption.
Maybe they weren’t actually together. Maybe it is just what happens after being stuck here so long, but either way, it’s definitely different from the situation back at camp.
She stands and strides toward me, grabbing her sword and sliding it into the scabbard on her belt.
“Let’s go,” she says as she brushes past me. I hide a smirk before turning on my heel and following her up the steps.
The torches are already lit on deck, the sky now fallen dark as Stassia and Auralie wait for us at the gangway.
They stroll down it as Sig and I cross the deck, and my skin tingles with the weight of eyes following me.
Glancing over my shoulder toward the quarterdeck, I find Weston, arms crossed and jaw clenched, as he watches me leave.
Fin bounces around his legs, talking animatedly until he sees me and runs up to the railing.
“Bye Lennox! See you in the morning!” He stands on his toes and waves wildly at me, and I wave back with a smile.
My eyes flicker back to Weston’s, waiting for him to comment or challenge me leaving like the last shift, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t say a word, and I can’t read the emotion behind his stern face.
His emotions are not my problem tonight.
I turn my back and amble down the gangway, but I can still feel him watching me the entire way to the portal.
Sig’s comments must have gotten to him, but truthfully, I don’t care what made him let me leave without creating a fuss.
I need to get off the ship and feel like I am doing something productive again, not wasting away scrubbing the deck and letting time pass for eternity.
Besides, tonight is the night to enact the second part of my plan and find the right time to tell Sig about the dust.
The tunnels drop us out in the canyon near the end of the river, the stone bridge Dane walked me across on my first day off just ahead of us.
Goosebumps cover my arms as I scan the water, remembering the monsters up the river that wanted to make me a meal, but when I ask, Sig assures me they don’t come down this far.
We traipse over the slick, moss covered river rocks, searching the bank for any sort of symbol or clue. I press my hands onto surfaces and take wary steps. With as many portals as the Castaways travel through, I’m even more cautious than before that I might stumble onto a new one.
The rushing water and chirping insects are the only sounds tonight, the conversations between us like last shift nonexistent.
It’s too quiet. Stassia isn’t her usual rambling self, and I need everyone talking in order to have an opportunity to bring up the dust without seeming suspicious.
I decide on the first thing that comes to my mind, and honestly, something I am curious about since the moment I saw him open the door.
“So you and Jorn,” I say to Sig. She’s become my shift partner, so while we hover around each other searching on our own, she stays fairly close. She stands from a crouch and dusts her hands off.
“Me and Jorn,” she says.
“How long has that been going on?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Who really knows? A while. Even though we’re all together on the ship every day, and it can feel small and stifling some days, the thought of spending eternity here is hard. Having…someone…makes it a little easier.”
I feel a pang in my chest. Getting to know the Castaways has made hating them harder and harder each day.
I’m starting to really see them as people, Voyagers who are trapped here because of Weston and his deception, and my heart breaks for them.
They have to live here forever, knowing that they can’t say goodbye to their loved ones, and were denied the ability to help them.
But this isn’t only a Castaway issue. This very soon could be the reality for every person on this island.
“Why don’t you just go back to Dane? Ask him to send you back?
Why are you staying with Weston if you really want to go home?
” Years of manipulation might not let her answer this question the way she would have before, but I ask it anyway.
I watched Sig push back against Weston; she’s the only one who has.
If anyone can think through the situation and see that following Weston’s lead isn’t the only way, it’s her.
“It’s not that simple,” she says, her gaze falling to the ground at her feet.
Why isn’t it that simple? Why can’t they go back to the person who brought them all here, the one who helped them and housed them, who cares about them finding the cure?
I think about Auralie, here to save her betrothed, and Stassia, who with her attitude probably had suitors lining up at her door.
They don’t have a Jorn, and who knows if they ever will.
They don’t have someone to pass the years with and, like Sig said, make it easier.
Keeping them on Dawnlin is depriving them of the ability to be loved like they want to be, and is just another thing on the list of what Weston is taking from everyone in his crew.
“I think it’s really simple,” I say, a twinge of irritation in my voice.
“You found the healing waters, and you weren’t granted them.
You just need to tell Dane you want to go home, and he will bring you.
He’s the Guardian. His entire purpose is to protect the waters and bring people to and from the island.
He can’t keep you captive like Weston has been. ”
She heaves a sigh and reaches down, picking up a rock and chucking it into the river, keeping her eyes averted the entire time.
I’m not trying to upset her, but I can tell she doesn’t want to talk about it anymore.
I can’t lose my opportune moment, so I need to drop it and move on to something she can talk about.
“Does everyone know about you and Jorn?” I ask.
“Of course,” she says. “Can’t hide much on a ship. Especially after this long.”
“Are there more? Couples, I mean,” I ask.
“I think Fern and Eirlik have been together on and off for a while. Some of the others do the same. It’s not serious, but it tends to be committed. It’s not like we can escape each other.”
Not Weston, though.
“That’s all?” I ask, my curiosity getting the best of me.
“Are you asking about anyone specific?” she says with a smirk.
I roll my eyes. “Well, I mean, I’m sleeping in his bed. I think it might be pertinent information to know if I’m making enemies on the ship for something that’s completely out of my control.”
She chuckles and shakes her head. “No, Cap hasn’t been with anyone. At least not since I’ve known him.”
“That doesn’t mean they don’t want to. Stassia is clearly interested,” I say, glancing down the riverbank toward where she and Auralie are searching.
Why do I sound jealous?
I’m not. I’m with Dane. It’s just odd that if the Castaways don’t care about having relationships on the ship, that he hasn’t. Maybe the thought of having a woman is too distracting from his need to be in control of everything.
Sig shrugs. “Don’t know. You’ll have to ask him.”
I huff a laugh. I will never talk to Weston about relationships, let alone any women he’s taken to bed.
I don’t need that mental picture.
“So how are there not, you know, babies running around everywhere?” My cheeks heat and Sig breaks into a smile at my obvious embarrassment.
“There’s no time, remember? We’re frozen here, and that includes making babies. At least there hasn’t been a baby in twenty years, and there has definitely been enough fucking to make one.”
Intimacy isn’t openly talked about back in the castle, so Sig’s blunt remarks take me off guard.
My responsibility as the future queen is to produce an heir, and I’m well aware of how that happens, but I guess when it isn’t a transaction to seal a marriage alliance or produce that heir, it is a more accepted part of life.
More normal. Definitely less scandalous discussion.
Sig doesn’t seem to mind at all, which must be why she was so willing to tell me that everyone saw Dane and me on the beach.
“Speak for yourself!” Stassia calls out, spinning on one foot until she is facing us.