Chapter 21
Chapter twenty-one
Jax
If Sofie was surprised when Jovus collected my bedding and surviving personal effects from the captain’s cabin, she said nothing of it to me. Nor did we speak after Violet returned to her usual bed on Temerity and became her new bunk mate.
It wouldn’t be appropriate for us to share a private cabin any longer. My marriage to Sofie—a desperate farce—was coming to its natural end. She’d done what she’d said she would. She’d broken the curse.
In return, I’d promised to bring her back to Aegle. And if she hadn’t quite followed the spirit of our agreement, neither, then, would I.
My future had disappeared along with that curse. I hadn’t expected that. All this time, I’d told myself that things would go back to normal, or be better without that dragons-blasted curse.
Instead, I had nothing. No Queen of the Sea to open the world to me and my crew. And above all, no wife I could trust.
I thought we’d come to an understanding these last few days. I thought she understood me, and what I was about. As a pirate lord, I was hardly an ordinary man, but here I was, faced with a common problem: A woman was trying to change me.
Because the woman was Sofie, she was trying to force me to be who she wanted me to be.
A man who didn’t care about the treasure, about his future, about the freedom the seas of Duskhold offered.
Every withering look of disappointment she now leveled at me whenever our paths crossed on deck—or worse, one of heartbreak—said I should’ve been grateful for what she’d done.
She would never understand. I’d given everything for this voyage. I’d given lives for it. My crew had done the same. There were dark stains on our souls none of us would be rid of now.
As a balancer, she should’ve understood.
She should’ve known that in order to be worth the last seven years of our lives, in order to be worth the lives it had cost, that treasure was meant to save lives.
We could’ve ferried wasting elves, fae and other magical creatures to the City of Nox, where they would not fade away—for a price, of course, but we were bound to let a few charity cases through.
We could’ve united families. Could’ve bridged the divide between east and west known as the ship-breaking Diam Sea.
Instead, we had nothing to show for our sacrifices. For their sacrifices.
My brides. My crew. All gone for nothing.
I couldn’t forgive that. Nor could I stomach Sofie’s betrayal. How could she look at me as though she loved me one moment and destroy everything I desired in the next?
I knew the answer, even if I didn’t wish to. Sofie had said it on the beach: I needed to choose between her and the treasure. She expected me to choose her as proof of my feelings. Further proof she understood nothing about me.
She wasn’t just asking me to choose between her and some prize. She wished for me to choose between her and the life I led. She’d fallen for a pirate and expected him to be somebody else.
And I’d fallen for my doomed bride, expecting her to be my savior.
She’d ruined me instead. And I’d been too caught up in my feelings for her to see it. This is what Sofie did: She destroyed things.
Jovus set up my new quarters below deck. And I avoided Sofie as much as possible, because I knew what needed to be done.
“Are you certain you want to stay on the same ship with her?” Violet asked, hanging in the doorway of the first mate’s cabin she’d lately been occupying.
“I have to see this through,” I answered stiffly. I’d given Violet our destination yesterday, and already we moved north at an impressive pace.
From the lack of flush on Sofie’s cheeks, I suspected she was using her magic to that end, summoning wind. On the heels of all that fire she’d summoned on the Hidden Isle, it was leaving her drained.
The wind continued anyway, always blowing northward. Once or twice, Violet spoke to her in low tones, and the wind’s direction shifted.
She had no idea what was coming.
After two weeks of angry silence, Sofie spoke to me at last, with the following words, delivered immediately after she’d kicked in the door to my cabin:
“You vicious cur of a sea dog! How dare you go back on your word!”
I lifted my head blearily from my pillow, as if I’d been able to sleep. It was late morning, and I’d had a pounding megrim all night. Even now, it threatened a resurgence.
Trying and failing to shake off the fog of both sleeplessness and head pain, I began to sit up and slide out of bed, only to hear a surprised yelp from Sofie.
“What?” I demanded, slow to catch up.
Ah, yes, I was sleeping in nothing but my small clothes, now that I wasn’t sharing a cabin with anyone. “Don’t be silly,” I said, standing and searching for my trousers and shirt anyway. I found them discarded on the floor. “You’ve seen me shirtless before.”
“You were injured. That’s different.” Her back was still to me, and her hands lifted to cover her eyes for good measure.
“We’re married,” I pointed out.
“A sham of a marriage, that you tricked me into.”
“You tricked me right back,” I said, shrugging on my less-than-fresh shirt. “I’d say we’re even.”
Though I was now fully dressed, if a little rumpled, I watched Sofie stand like that for a long moment, observing the way every line of her body was tensed. As if the sight of me repulsed her.
“You can look now,” I said, my voice as rough as the prior pair of weeks had been.
She was the first bride I’d loved—truly loved—since Amarylis. And she wasn’t even the person I’d thought.
Slowly, Sofie turned. Before I said anything else, I studied her carefully. The way she avoided eye contact with me. Her high, rigid shoulders. The shadow of grief or, I flattered myself, regret, that scudded over her gaze like clouds when she finally met my eye.
This wasn’t the sorceress I’d married. This woman was strangely subdued—almost defeated.
Ironic, then, that in destroying my plans she’d broken something in herself. “You gave me your word,” she repeated, her voice laced with pain. “Can you not even do that for me? Is it really so hard to keep it, to put me above your own petty wants?”
When I finally spoke, my words were softer than I wished them to be. “Who are you to judge that they are petty? You’ve spent a handful of weeks on the sea. You know nothing of our way of life. You clearly don’t understand it.”
I gestured for her to sit at the chair beside the first mate’s desk, but ever defiant, she remained standing.
Which made it all the more unusual that she said nothing in reply besides this: “Explain it to me then. Make me understand.”
Alas, poor, foolish Sofie. It must be a difficult thing to have so much power and so little sense.
I would not make this easier for her. Not after what she’d done.
“A pirate’s crew is not made of the choice members of society.
We are not the fortunate ones. We are the ones who choose not to accept it, and to make our own fortunes.
That is the path we’ve chosen, and if it makes us ruthless and cutthroat at times, then that is a reflection of the way of this world.
” I stepped towards her, not caring that I towered over her.
“You want me to be softer. You ask me to make the sentimental choice. The romantic one. I don’t live in a world of romance, Sofie.
If that’s what you want, you don’t want a life with a pirate. ”
I might’ve imagined it, but I thought her lower lip trembled. “What are you planning?”
“Restitution.”
The answer was simple, final, and not the one she wished to hear.
She marched to the porthole window, throwing back the curtains and forcing me to wince as the late morning light flooded in. “Look out that window and think about who you’re taking on.”
Dewspell Academy loomed on the cliffs, proud and imposing.
The white towers and red clay tile roofs weren’t dissimilar to the grand houses on the isle of Starfall, and yet there was no comparison.
Dewspell looked as if a god had reached into a small mountain and stretched it into the sky.
As prim and pretty as it was, it left a raw, imposing impression that almost—almost—made me think twice.
“You may have fooled me, but you won’t get the better of them,” Sofie said, her cheeks flushing for the first time in days. “I’ll ask you one more time, before you make another massive mistake and drag your crew down with you.”
Low blow, Sofie.
“What. Are. You. Planning?”
I couldn’t help but offer her a smirk in reply. “Dear Sofie. When will you learn? Your path in life may be to destroy others’ lives, but a pirate is always making something new. We never would’ve worked out.”
“What?” Her face was practically scarlet. “What did you just say to me?”
Ah. I’d hit a nerve. Nice to know such a thing was still possible.
I flashed my teeth at her. “And here I’d thought you heartless.”
“Me? You think I’m the heartless one?”
“Don’t mistake me, Sofie. I don’t think we could cobble together a full heart between us.
We’re neither of us good people. But I have my duty to my crew, and you just have your obligations to Dewspell.
” I took another step closer, till I was near enough to grab her hands.
I enveloped them in both of mine, my voice almost a whisper as I said, “You have a long way to go to even grow half a heart.”
Sofie gasped—and not because of what I’d said. I doubted she even registered it.
For I had lashed her wrists with a figure eight of magic, binding them together.
I might not have much ability in this new world of chaos magic that Sofie apparently thrived on, but I practiced a great deal, so the magic I’d learned at my mother’s knee wouldn’t fail me when I needed it most.
“Safira,” I called.
As expected, my navigatrix was waiting in the shadows of another cabin. Safira moved in to seize Sofie with the fluid grace of a siren, lulling her into a sense of calm she tried to fight.
It wasn’t worth the energy. Some things, even a powerful chaos sorceress could not resist.
Sofie’s features went slack. When her eyes softened, I tried not to notice how similar they were to the way she used to look at me.
“The crew have everything prepared,” Safira confirmed before I could even ask.
“Thank you, first mate.”
Instead of excitement over her promotion, there was a weariness in Safira’s eyes. “Are you sure about that, captain?”
“I’ve never been surer of anything.” I sidestepped around Safira and Sofie, leaving them behind without a second glance. The truth was, I couldn’t resist Sofie anymore than I could resist a siren’s allure.
I was almost as sure that, if I thought on this any longer, despite everything—despite what Sofie had done—I’d doubt myself, and soon after, I might even cave.
I was building something. I tried to remind myself of that. I was trying to rebuild what Sofie had so selfishly destroyed.
But the weight in my stomach told me that I was too quick to sacrifice her, my final bride, for what I needed.
That I wasn’t any better than her.
But as I made my way onto the deck, I knew that I would make this choice again and again. If that made me the villain in Sofie’s tale, then so be it.
The sea gods knew she’d been the villain in mine.
And the heart of it, too.