Chapter Four
Adeline
Adeline had been quite content to sit in her cabin and rot.
More than content, really. She craved the muffling dim that shrouded her like a thick winter blanket.
The quiet. Not having to speak, or smile, or think, or feel.
Not having to battle the suffocating sorrow that settled over her when she thought of all she’d left behind her.
All she’d lost. Not having to fight the clawing guilt that seized her whenever she caught sight of Kai, nor the swell of warmth and yearning within her when he’d meet her eye.
It was the latter that had her opening her cabin door in the first place, after two full days of that cherished silence. The knock had come and stirred her from her bed, where she lay awake above the covers with her comfortably numb thoughts. She’d thought it was him.
Hoped?
Yes, if she was honest with herself—hoped.
That one ember of warmth tucked into a cobwebbed corner of her chest had glowed at the thought of him on the other side of the door, overcoming all the awful strangeness between them, tangled and barbed as it was.
So yes, she was briefly hopeful at the thought of Kai refusing to give her the space she told him she needed; did need, from everyone aside from—
She didn’t want to complete the thought, even in her head.
It hadn’t been Kai anyway; it had been Ceriwyn.
She’d been bright and smiling as she pushed her way into the room and headed directly for Adeline’s trunk.
She wore a pretty cotton dress, the same blue-green as the waves Adeline had glimpsed that morning before she’d dragged the shade back over the porthole.
Her dark hair was twisted into a neat bun at the nape of her neck, and she wafted a fresh scent behind her that made Adeline all too aware of her own stale nightclothes.
“What are you doing?”
“Good morning to you, too, Your Highness.”
Adeline stood with her fingers still wrapped around the door’s edge, the path of her thoughts moving like muddied waters with no clarity or haste.
She watched Ceriwyn root through her trunk, digging past all the needless tulle and glitter that Imogen had packed until she found a crisp day dress the colour of the cloudless sky and laid it on the bed.
“Come now, you’ll miss breakfast.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Well, come out for some fresh air then. One of the sailors has offered to give us a tour of—”
“Ceriwyn,” Adeline cut in, a little harsher than she meant to.
Her own raised voice beat a dull throb into her forehead, and she closed her eyes against it.
When she opened them, Ceri’s smile was gentler, the light behind it dimmed as though mindful of Adeline’s days of marinating in the shadows.
When Adeline spoke, she tried to return the favour, to soften the bite of her harsh words.
“I don’t want to eat. I don’t want fresh air. I want to be alone.”
Ceri seemed to consider this a moment, giving Adeline a deep, assessing look and then nodding slowly to herself.
“No,” she said.
She turned back to the trunk and continued rooting around until she found a comb and a little box of hairpins. Adeline could only watch her, agape.
“Ceri, I’m not—”
“Look,” Ceri interrupted, turning to face her with a sigh.
She took another deep, steadying breath and sank onto Adeline’s bed, careful not to upset the neatly spread dress or the box of hairpins atop it.
Adeline eyed her warily, but did not move from her spot by the door as Ceri smoothed her hands out over her own lap, pulling taut at the pleats in her skirt.
When she finally spoke, her voice was different. Quieter, but also older somehow, with less of her usual spirit woven through.
“I won’t say I know how you feel, Adeline. Grief is a strange beast.”
Adeline’s next breath broke; jagged. An inhale that stuck painfully in her throat and calcified.
Grief.
She hadn’t named it; the thing that pressed on her entire being, that buckled her knees with every step that took her further away from Eisalaan. Heavy on her thoughts and her body, on her very skin. Her eyes ached with it, her blood thick with it, so heavy she couldn’t quite bear the weight.
She forced a breath through the lump in her throat, aware that her chest might very well cave in if she didn’t try. The sound was a dry gasp, and it didn’t ease the ache in her lungs whatsoever.
If Ceri noticed, she went on regardless, “I don’t know how you feel, but I know how I felt. When I lost my mother. When I lost my father. When I lost my home.”
Adeline’s chest pinched, the pain of it dissolving into her veins to pump alongside that other thing: the grief.
It wasn’t quite guilt, not like what she felt when she looked at Kai—but similar.
Shame, perhaps. Because she knew she wasn’t the first person to lose a loved one.
Knew that many others—people she cared for deeply—had lost that and so much more.
Ceri and Kai, the Merrow; their losses, individual and collective, were unimaginable. They’d lost everything.
Ceri looked up, and the furrow of her brow was so strikingly like her brother’s own serious frown that Adeline had to look away.
“I’m not comparing,” Ceri said softly.
“I know,” said Adeline—even though personally, she had been comparing.
“I’m just saying; you can’t waste away in the dark.”
“Why not?”
She said it mildly, almost absentmindedly, and she could tell Ceri hadn’t expected the question by the way her brows flicked up—but it didn’t seem to throw her either.
She nodded, not in answer but deep in thought, giving the throwaway remark the consideration it deserved.
Finally, she gave a light shrug of one shoulder and shook her head.
“Because you can’t. Because life goes on, with or without you.
And I say that as someone who learned that lesson in perhaps the worst way possible.
I did waste away in the dark, we all did, for nigh on six hundred years.
And life did go on without us. And when I came out—in a strange way, I still craved that stillness, that numbness.
Maybe we all did, I don’t know.” Her frown deepened, the tension ageing her just as her sorrow had.
“We don’t really talk about it; not our strong suit as a people, I suppose.
We couldn’t go back, though, none of us.
Because we needed to feel something, and we needed the sun on our skin, and we needed each other. ”
That was the difference, Adeline thought.
She’d willingly walked away from those who needed her.
Pushed away those she needed. Perhaps sensing the direction of her thoughts, Ceri stood and crossed to her, gently curving her hand around Adeline’s so she could pry the door from her grasp and let it shut with a soft click.
“Learn from me, Adeline. Don’t waste away.”
“You didn’t have a choice.”
Adeline was mildly alarmed to find her voice thin and broken. Was she crying? When had that started?
But Ceri only smiled.
“You’re right,” she said. “But you do.”
???
The Arabideae was the oldest ship of the Empress Vanjir’s fleet—or so Adeline had heard from its First Mate.
Pike was a broad, sun-worn man with thick, ropey arms and shining blonde curls that would put a baby cherub to shame.
He’d become Ceriwyn’s shadow these last few days aboard the Arabideae, popping up wherever she settled and treating her to long, slightly tedious monologues about life on the waves and, in his own words, “his mistress, the sea.”
And as the Merrow girl seemed determined to keep Adeline in her sights at all times, they’d both had a front row seat to the sailor’s antics.
Adeline supposed it was a fine way to pass the time.
The storm having set them back, the passage to Dhalias would now take closer to two weeks, and for the non-crew members, there was little to fill those long, slow days.
Having Pike show them around had actually been interesting enough to breach the fog that seemed to cling to Adeline’s mind and cloud her every thought.
They’d learned the layout of the Arabidae, and the proper terms for every part of the ship—though the only details Adeline could recall were the castle and forecastle.
Words that stuck purely because Ceri declared they could each rule a kingdom from either end of the deck.
The crabby old Captain Aegus, who’d stood at the helm at the time, had not taken kindly to the suggestion that someone else might rule his ship, but Pike had just laughed and corrected her; It’s pronounced foxle, actually.
He was, however, notably quick to usher them out of the Captain’s sight and off to meet the rest of the crew.
There were thirty Dhali sailors aboard, ranging in age from grizzled Captain Aegus to their cook, Patch, who seemed younger even than Ceriwyn with his wide, blue eyes and round ears that stuck out a little on either side of his head.
But he’d snuck Adeline a sweet, sharp slice of Dhaliaan lemon tart on their way out of the ship’s kitchen, and at first bite she swore the boy must’ve been cooking before he could walk.
Adeline put as much warmth as she could muster into each introduction, and in truth, it wasn’t hard. They were kind men, most of them, welcoming and happy for a brief respite from the gruelling work of ferrying them over the Common Crossing.
Adeline had yet to admit it to Ceriwyn, but her own respite had helped too. The sunlight had warmed some of her numbed nerves, and the rippling blue of the deep waters parting around them was rather lulling. She couldn’t say she regretted letting Ceri drag her above deck.
But in the quiet moments, when the crew were busy, and Ceri had buried herself in a book, Adeline would stare blankly at the pages of her own book and let her mind wander to a different scrap of paper.