Chapter Thirty-Seven
Our makeshift sleeping quarters below deck are damp and smell greatly of rancid fish and rotting wood. On beds of straw and pelts the same as those we use to shield ourselves from the sharp, searching claws of the freezing night that tries desperately to steal us from sleep.
Not that I have been lucky enough to fall asleep in this miserable hellhole. The whole ship creaks with every battering of waves and in the turn of the howling wind the wood groans and cracks around us.
Diarmid was quietly sick before settling down to sleep, curling himself up like a child in his bed next to mine, and hasn’t moved a muscle since.
Lillienne fell face first into a bed that the cabin boy timidly admitted was his, and proceeded to drool and mutter nonsense about an angry governess and stolen boots.
Calli was carried in here by an incredibly unsteady Cole, and for some reason, I pretended I was not awake, closing my eyes tight until I heard he and Calli breathe deep and steady from their beds across from me.
With a few of the crew still on duty on deck, I have realised that all beds have been filled with exhausted, shivering bodies, and Eliaz has not come.
Drops of water splatter on my forehead as I lay there on my back, replaying that moment in my mind, turning it over and over, dissecting every glance, every wanting breath, every touch until it is all a jumbled mess of body parts and words and feelings that make less sense the more I rummage through them.
His hand tangled up in my hair, the parting of his lips, the way his chest rose and fell like he’d never catch his breath again.
He was going to kiss me.
And I would’ve kissed him back.
The man who taunted me, who manipulated my senses, who told me I was nothing and yet – an entirely different man altogether. The Eliaz from today, is not the Eliaz that he hid behind then, even though he might poke through from time to time, he is changed in his views of me.
Or perhaps it was just the ale.
Despite the cold, I hardly feel able to breathe, my skin burning hot all over, the prickling of sweat there on the back of my neck.
The thought of what would have happened, should we not have been interrupted pooling in the centre of my mind.
Would I still be questioning his reaction, the unease of him, how he couldn’t even so much as glance my way?
I kick the pelt from me, turning to my side, my neck straining from the lack of pillow.
I can only lie like this for five minutes before the muscles go stiff.
I turn and turn again, frustration building with the heat that envelops me with every shift in position.
The ship tilts and rights itself, and the putrid smell of fish hits me with a vicious slap of tainted air.
That, combined with my inability to sleep, is enough to pull me from my makeshift bed, so I drape the pelt over my shoulders and climb the ladder to the upper deck.
I breathe in deep and slow as I surface into the salted freshness of the night. The wind picks up my hair and throws it into my face with all of its might, and I spit it out, clambering to my feet.
There are few lanterns lit, tankards rolling around themselves on the deck, the awake crew at their posts, staring quietly, pensively into the star-speckled sky.
I kick a tankard with my foot on the way by, a poor attempt at letting out exasperation, cursing to whoever might listen about my inability to deal with minor inconveniences in a rational manner.
The tankard comes tumbling back to me, colliding with my boot with a hearty thump.
Squinting into the dimness from which it came, I find there, the silhouette of a person.
A phantom body, resting their hands on the railing of the ship.
I consider calling out to them, asking who is there, but seeing as it could be any member of Truman’s questionable crew, I grow hesitant.
Their head turns towards me, as faceless as the men in my dreams, only this time, due to the lack of substantial light.
‘If you wished to voice your frustrations at me, Princess, using your words would have sufficed.’
Eliaz. Of course.
‘What if I deemed you deserving of a tankard to the shins? I’ve grown bored of talking things out, violence seems to send a better message,’ I say, unhooking the nearest lantern from its post and making my way over to him.
‘It’s funny, I specifically remember you lecturing me on the opposite.’ He turns his gaze back to the sea, knowing I will be joining him.
As I near him, the ruffled frizz of his hair becomes apparent, sea sprayed and hanging over his tired eyes.
‘Can’t sleep?’ I set the lantern down on the nearest crate, before joining him at the railing, resting my arms on the frayed edge of the wood and staring outward, as he does, to the endless dark.
‘Haven’t tried,’ he says. ‘There’s too much to be awake for.’
‘I can’t stop worrying about tomorrow,’ I tell a tiny white lie. ‘What if there is no one there to help us and we are truly alone in this?’
‘Then we look elsewhere. I have to confess, it does bother me that I’ve had that book in my possession for many decades, and not once did I come across that letter.’
I scratch on the wood, carving lines into the soft bark. ‘It was pure chance that I found it. If I hadn’t had that horrible nightmare, it probably wouldn’t have fallen out.’
He snaps his neck to me, too quickly. ‘You had a nightmare? What does that have to do with it?’
‘Well, when I woke up from it, the book was across the room, splayed open. I guess I must’ve thrown it in terror.’ I shrug, trying to feign nonchalance when the images of that dream tickle my spine with fear. Eliaz doesn’t say anything, just stares at me as though waiting for more.
‘It’s funny because I’ve been having these horrible dreams for a while, about different things, most recently a little boy, and I thought – and that is until Calli told me her story and I realised you were rarely there when it happened – that it was you. That you were the one doing this to me.’
‘You thought I’d—’
‘You can’t blame me for that being my initial conclusion considering how you were with me, and the things you can do to people.’
His forehead creases, he licks his bottom lip anxiously and nods, tears welling again. Gods above, why do I always end up making this man cry?
‘And anyway, I think it must be something else. The book seemed to react to my touch, and then it presented this letter to me. It isn’t entirely unreasonable to believe that it is also what is making me dream those things. It’s all connected somehow.’
He takes it in for a moment, considers it. ‘And you think these nightmares mean something?’
‘Maybe. They could be a warning, an omen, of something bad to come.’
‘Maybe.’ He takes in the sea once more. And I take him in once more.
‘Your hair, that is a side effect of the Neyktar? Calli’s is that beautiful auburn still, although her roots match your hair better.’
‘Calli doesn’t use the magic as I do, so it doesn’t drain her as it does me.’
I nod and whisper an ‘ah’ as if he has perfectly answered my question. ‘And what else does it affect, if anything? Dry skin, or stiff joints or something like that?’
He sighs. ‘Why don’t you ask me what you really came out here to ask me?’
I screw up my face. ‘I didn’t know you were—’
And then I realise that route wouldn’t give me what I want, what he knows I want to ask. I look down to my hands, rubbing my thumb over the skin as though to soothe myself, and take a deep breath.
But I can’t face the humiliation of hearing his embarrassment, of hearing that he was simply too drunk and that I just happened to be there, and that he would never possibly go there with me, my father’s daughter. And there it is.
‘Do you think you will ever see me for who I am, instead of being reminded of what my father did every time you look at me?’
This catches him off guard, as I hoped it would. He swallows.
‘Eira, I—’
‘You hide that scar from me, from everyone else, from yourself. But I know it is there, you know it is there. We cannot escape the ideas we had of each other. How can we ever truly move past the terrible things our families have done – what we have done – when it is all we know of each other?’
‘Stop,’ he pleads, grabbing my head in his hands, pulling himself down until we are eye to eye.
My heart cracks open in my chest at the pain in those eyes, in the curve of the worry lines in his forehead.
‘I keep my scar hidden from you so that you don’t have a constant reminder of your father’s betrayal.
So that you can separate yourself from that man. I have no trouble doing it.’
Tears swell and overflow down my cheeks, my lips quiver as I take in his words. He hides it for me.
‘Show it to me,’ I whisper. ‘Don’t hide.’
He searches me for any signs of hesitancy, but I am certain of my demand.
It does not fade into my sight like I thought it would, it is not the slow unveiling that you would expect from magic. The scar is simply not there, then – is.
The deep carved out flesh where my father had taken his blade, that blink of gold the remainder of his presence, the mark my father has left upon him.
More tears blur my vision, and I bring my hand to the skin to trace my fingers the length of it, the rough, bumpiness of the line. I open my mouth, breath trembling, words lost. A tear splatters onto my hand, but it is not mine.
‘You are not your father,’ Eliaz insists.
‘And I will forever punish myself for thinking it. You have a kindness no amount of higher powers could have bestowed upon him. And I didn’t give you a chance to show it before I treated you as though you were him.
I thought you were like him, and you have proven me wrong in so many ways. ’