Alone
Chapter forty-six
Finn looked from the crow’s nest to where Wren stood in the doorway to the captain’s quarters.
“I’m guessing you told her,” Finn said.
He wiped sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his shirt.
In the past it had been Castien who used their sparring sessions as a way to release emotion he could not otherwise show.
Their roles had reversed, it seemed. They had just finished their last session when Lucianna ran out of the captain’s quarters.
Wren frowned. Castien walked closer to her, concern etched into his brow. He led her back into the cabin. Finn followed.
“She didn’t take it well?” he asked.
Wren shook her head. “I expected frustration to flare. Perhaps an argument, as it seems that’s the way she communicates with Finn.”
Finn huffed a laugh.
“But her emotions toppled over each other like toy blocks. Right when I thought I knew her feelings, another came. Then she fled,” Wren explained.
“She did not say anything?” Finn inquired.
“Very little. I tried to explain my intentions, but I don’t know if she heard me. If her thoughts were as loud as her emotions, I suspect not.”
Wren twisted her wedding band. She had not told very many people about her Gift. Finn imagined to do so was nerve-racking. Castien drew her against his chest in a comforting embrace.
“It may take a little time, but she’ll come to terms with things,” Finn promised Wren, though he wasn’t sure if it was the truth. “I don’t think she’s had many friends outside of her brother. This all may be for a lack of practice.”
Wren stepped out of her husband’s embrace and offered Finn a grateful smile.
“I can sympathize with that. Perhaps you’re right. Her predominant emotion was shock. I just worry that she’ll think I was manipulating her by keeping it a secret.”
Finn’s abdomen tightened as though he were bracing for a punch. He knew all too well how Lucianna felt about Gifts being used on her.
“You should go talk to her,” Wren suggested. “She may open up when away from the ears of others.”
He thought back to when she had come for him. Then he thought of the secret he believed her to be keeping. Maybe she would share. Finn could hope.
“All right, I’ll go. But one of you stand at the bottom in case you mistook her anger for shock and she throws me over,” he joked, earning a laugh from both Wren and Castien.
“Go see to your wife while I see to mine,” Castien said with a nod toward the door.
Finn made a face at Castien’s word choice. Wren giggled and melted into her husband’s arms.
“Have I told you that you’re the disgusting sort of happy?” he called over his shoulder as he headed to the door.
“Not in the last month,” Wren laughed.
“Well, the assessment stands.”
He shut the door on their laughter and shook his head, then lifted his gaze up to the sky where his wife was perched, her hair rippling in the wind.
Finn drew in a fortifying breath before grabbing hold of the shroud and beginning his ascent.
The wind had begun to pick up in the recent hours, and Finn had to grip the rope so that he wouldn’t slip.
When he arrived at the basket, Lucianna whipped around to face him. The wind blew her hair back from her face, and Finn noticed that her eyes were red and puffy from crying. That was unexpected. He stepped into the crow’s nest with trepidation.
“You have worried Wren,” he stated by way of explaining his presence.
“I told her I needed space.” Her hands pushed into her hair in a rare loss of control. “Tides, there’s no room to breathe on this ship. Everywhere I go—” She cut off.
“I’m there,” Finn filled in.
“Yes,” she replied, and dropped her hands. “And that was difficult enough, but now there’s someone who can sense my emotions at all times. I have no bed, no privacy. Not even my thoughts are my own.”
Finn sighed.
“She’s not a mind reader.”
Lucianna let out a humorless laugh.
“Does it make a difference?”
Finn’s brow furrowed.
“Of course it does.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Lucianna argued. “Whatever she senses from me, she can use.”
He expected the sentiment, but it hurt nonetheless.
“Wren would be devastated if she heard you say that.”
The wind lashed at their hair and clothes. Finn gripped the ledge of the basket.
“That does not change the truth!” Lucianna cried. “I am trapped on a ship with a strategist who seeks to use me for his gain, a princess who can turn my emotions against me, and a husband who can make me forget myself and bend me to his will.”
Tears streamed down her face and she batted them away. Finn’s chest burned with a potent mixture of anger and grief.
“Castien is a good man who seeks to do right by his kingdom. It was your father who placed you on this ship,” Finn spat.
“And Wren has only ever used your emotions to comfort you, which is what she sent me up here to do!” He raked a hand through his hair.
“An action I knew I would regret, but did anyway. Furthermore, despite what you believe of me, not only can I not bend you to my will, I would not. I have not.”
“Because you don’t desire me!” She hurled the words at him.
He crossed the short distance between them and framed her body with his hands on the rim of the nest.
“Is that what you think?” he demanded. Lucianna closed her eyes and shook her head. “Answer me, Lucianna: do you think I have no desire for you?”
Her eyes sprung open. Anguish slashed across her features.
“It’s what I hope.” Her voice broke. Except, it wasn’t hers. The realization rankled in Finn’s mind. He met her teary gaze.
“Why?” He ripped the reply out of his chest.
The one word held far more than Lucianna would realize.
“Because I will never trust you,” she choked out, barely audible over the wind tearing through them.
Finn pushed back from her and stepped away. His chest heaved. It felt like someone had cracked his sternum; the pain was unbearable.
He echoed his previous question in a hoarse whisper. “Why?”
“How could I?” she asked him, her expression broken. “I will spend the rest of our lives second-guessing what is real and what is your Gift.”
It would have been better for her to take a knife to his chest. He raked his hands through his hair and tugged on the roots.
“I didn’t choose this!” he all but yelled.
“I know.”
He wanted to explain to her that she was wrong about him, wanted to make her understand. But in the end, she couldn’t. Lucianna had been raised as a weapon, and she saw everyone else the same way. He was a threat. His Gift was an advantage over her. And his wife did not like to lose.
Perhaps they had shared in tender moments, but what would they lead to if she couldn’t trust him? His hands began to tremble. Finn turned around, incapable of facing her any longer.
“One day, you will realize that viewing everyone you meet as an enemy first and a person second does not protect you. It only ensures you will be alone on the day you face a true opponent.”
When he heard no reply, he slung his leg over the basket and climbed down the shroud.