CHAPTER EIGHT
IWAKE TO THE FIRST glimmer of sunshine cutting a line across the mouth of the cave and I might believe the rain of last night a drunken exaggeration were I not waking upon hard rock rather than the swaying bed of Theseus’s cabin.
Theseus?
I look to where he had lain when I fell asleep, draped across his chest. But I’m alone. We’d used his cloak as a blanket and even that is gone.
Maybe he went to find the rest of his crew?
Oh gods, I hope none of them heard us last night.
Last night …
I stretch, my limbs languid, relaxed even for having slept on the ground. And I do not regret it, then, not as I think of each treasured kiss on my skin.
I don’t regret it until it feels like the last thing to care about, until it becomes a very minor point of regret in a wide sweeping sea that begins with me brushing oil on Theseus’s skin and ends with letting his lies land on my tongue and making them my own.
Regret, only a feeling when I have scoured every inch of the beach we washed up on, and found it empty.
There are signs – footsteps in the sand, burnt-out fires, paths through foliage only rushing bodies might have made. And, most damning of all: two clear streaks in the beach, where a moored boat might have been pushed back into the wake.
Which is when I turn my attention from the land to the sea – and catch sight of a ship on the horizon. Pitch-black sails against a still-rising sun.
A ship shrinking, as it sails away.