Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
I stood at the helm with the wind cutting across my face and the black sails full above me, eyes on the horizon, and doing everything in my power not to turn and search for the woman who had completely captivated me.
Corynne sat on a stool with the journal open, checking it against the charts we had spent all morning finishing.
Every so often, I felt the faint pull of her attention like a hand at the base of my spine.
She was matching the oldest pages to the scars still living on my back, muttering under her breath and occasionally cursing.
It should have been a relief. We had plotted a course. The map was whole, at least in her mind, and we were pointed toward a stretch of sea I’d sailed a hundred times. If the wind held, we would reach whatever waited there by tomorrow’s end.
And for the first time in all those years, I didn’t want to arrive.
Finch climbed the steps to the quarterdeck and took up his usual place at the rail without a word, but his silence was pointed.
I fucking hated when he did this.
“Just spit it out, Finch,” I sighed.
“Course is set, Cap’n. Crew can feel the change in the water. They’re restless, but they’ll hold.”
I nodded, not surprised. That same restless feeling was taking up residence in my bones. This was it, the moment I could break the curse of the Mourning Star and not only set myself free, but my crew as well. How would they act when I told them it wasn’t happening? Would they plan a mutiny?
It would be useless if they did. Even if I wasn’t the captain of this ship, I was the map, I was the curse, and I was the cure. All paths led back to me.
“Keep them busy,” I said. “No idle hands, no idle talk.”
“Aye.” Finch scurried away, shouting orders to the crew and jumping in to help where he was needed.
I stayed at the helm until the sun slipped from the sky and painted the sea a bloody red under the burning horizon.
Corynne looked up from where she was working. She wore my shirt, sleeves rolled to her elbows with dried ink all over her fingers. Her brown curls were pulled back into a messy coil with a few strands falling forward over her cheeks, sea glass reflecting the light from the sunset.
Corynne set her quill down and laced her fingers together, her gaze finding mine.
“You’ve been standing at the helm like a man awaiting the gallows. Talk to me.”
“When we reach it,” I whispered, “what do you intend to do with the Stella Mortis?”
Corynne blinked, clearly not having expected the question so directly.
“Well, find it, of course. Prove it exists. Use that to buy the life I’ve been denied since the day I was born a woman and deemed inconvenient to scholarly men who thought they were the only ones who could study things like the sky.
” Her eyes narrowed on me before she asked, “What do you intend to do with it?”
“I intend,” I said slowly, “to give it to you.”
“Wh—what?” she asked breathlessly, confusion and dread written into the lines of her face.
“You heard me.” I straightened. “Whatever the Stella Mortis is, whatever it can do, it’s yours. I’ll get you there, see you safely to it, and then I’ll let you go.”
“Silas—”
“Don’t.” The word came out harsh. I dragged a hand over my face, gathering my nerves before trying again.
“I have spent more years than you can count taking whatever I needed in the name of survival. What I never considered was if I was deserving. After all I’ve taken from you, Beastie, I want to be able to give you something in return.
When we reach the place where this map leads, the only thing I want is for you to have the life you came looking for when you first stepped onto that cutter. ”
“And what about you?” she demanded, the chair scraping across the wood as she stood. “What happens to the curse? To the memories you keep losing? To the man still fighting to stay inside that skin?”
“That is no longer your concern.”
“Like hell it isn’t!”
I met her eyes and let her see whatever ugly truth was written in mine. “I have already decided, Beastie. Do not ask me to explain it further. Just… let me do this one thing right before the sea takes the rest of me.”
That sharp, brilliant mind was already assembling counterpoints and objections, and just when I thought she would start throwing them at me, her mouth set in a thin line.
“All right,” she said at last. “We will get there, and we will see.”
Her thoughts had taken a direction I was incapable of deciphering. I would be a fool, however, to think she was finished with me. For now, though, I was too tired to fight.
She retreated to the cabin before I could say anything more.
On deck, night had fully settled and stars dotted the sky.
I tipped my head back and looked for the ones she taught me, the stars she mapped from orphanage rooftops and barn lofts while the world was telling her that women had no business putting their heads so far up into the clouds.
I had less than a day until we arrived. I’d place whatever power lived there in her hands, and watch her walk away from this wreckage of a man. The curse could take whatever it wanted from me because the greatest thing I possessed was already hers to own. Even if she never knew it.