Chapter 30 #3
Zanta searched her face, no doubt trying to parse whether she should reveal the dream’s contents. It was one thing to share her bed with a woman she barely knew. It was quite another to share something so personal as the disturbed inner workings of her sleeping mind.
Finally, she sighed and lay back against the pillows.
“I dreamed of the night I killed Silver Stroud.”
Nausea curdled in Nia’s stomach. Was this the truth? Or did Zanta somehow suspect Nia’s connection to Stroud? Had she been truly sleeping and dreaming? Or was she awake to witness Nia’s search?
No, the tear stains were still on her cheeks, distress plain on her features.
“It haunts you,” she said.
“It was not what I would have chosen.”
Nia frowned. She had no love lost for her father. He was the direct cause of her mother’s death and all the misery of her childhood. But all the stories of his death painted Zanta as a vicious mutineer.
“What happened, truly?” Nia asked quietly. “I have heard all the stories, but considering I do not see a bloody splinter hung as a trophy above your bed, maybe the stories are wrong.”
“There was no mutiny. At least none led by me. He was…” She took a deep, shuddering breath, her eyes lowering to their clasped hands.
“The mood aboard the Silverfin had been bad for some time. We hadn’t taken any prizes in a long time, yet we sailed all over the Islands, and the crew was growing restless and discontent. ”
“Why?” Nia prompted. “Why sail if not to plunder?”
“He was looking for someone, his daughter.”
Nia sucked in a breath. He’d still been looking for her? A confusion of feelings stirred in her. Should she be pleased that her father had searched for her? Or disgusted that her captor had hunted her? Had he done it out of love? Or so he could get his treasure hunter back?
“His daughter?” she asked, trying to keep the overwhelming interest from her tone.
“He said she was lost, but would not say whether she was drowned or kidnapped or what had happened to her. And not one of the crew had ever seen her. Some said she must have been a figment of his imagination.”
“His imagination?” Nia frowned. “Why would they think that?”
Zanta sighed. “By the end he was raving mad. He could not say whether she was a child or as old as me. The former first mate stole from him, so Stroud became paranoid that the rest of us were stealing from him too. But really he’d just gambled away all our money after finding solace at the bottom of a bottle.
Then finally he lost this trinket that he was convinced would help him find her.
He flew into a rage and…” Zanta’s story trailed off, and she met Nia’s eyes again.
“Emilie tried to stop him from hurting himself, and he murdered her. I killed him trying to save her.”
Nia’s heart hammered in her chest, her mind reeling. So this was the truth. Her father had not succumbed to a brash mutiny, but madness. All because of her. Because she had run away. She bit her lip hard as the realization struck her, the truth of her identity threatening to burst past her lips.
Zanta’s fiancée was dead because of Nia.
“I’m sorry.” It was all her fault, even her father’s death. If she had not run away from the Silverfin…
“I’m sorry if I frightened you,” Zanta said, interrupting Nia’s guilty thoughts.
“It was nothing.” Nia’s belly still rolled with nausea. Conflicting feelings churning like a whirlpool. “I was worried for you.”
How could she ever confess the truth now? It would hurt Zanta too much to learn that the woman who now shared her bed—even if there was no deeper feeling in it on her part—was the one responsible for her fiancée’s death. Better to let her think Nia was just a treasure-seeking thief.
“I’m fine,” Zanta murmured. “It was a long time ago.”
“I’m…so sorry.” Nia barely kept the ragged tears from her voice, guilt eating her alive.
“She was the love of my life,” Zanta said wistfully.
Her words shouldn’t have stung. But their barb pierced Nia’s aching heart.
Zanta had not slept with another woman in five years. Had kept that one last piece of loyalty to her lover. And by some cruel twist of fate, it was Nia who had broken it.
“I am sorry you lost her. I am a poor substitute.” She released Zanta’s hand and began to gather her clothes.
“Nia, I didn’t mean—”
“It’s quite alright,” Nia interrupted, pulling on her skirt and scooping the rest of her clothes from the floor, the key cold as a knife against her arm. “I’m glad your nightmare has passed. I’ll go back to my own bed and let you sleep.”
“Nia, wait—”
But she was already out the door, rushing past the alcove they’d so recently dallied in, toward her own lonely room.
What was she thinking? She had to leave this place.
Take her treasure and go. And though this had always been her plan, she’d been content to linger until now.
She could not share Zanta’s bed or endure her casual affections any longer.
Not when Nia now knew the whole truth, and Zanta knew none of it.
At the next opportunity to flee, Nia would find her way back into Zanta’s chambers, and abscond with her treasure.