Page 56 of The Isles of the Gods
His gaze snaps across to me. “It couldn’t have beenmoremy fault. If I hadn’t been aboard—”
“They’d still have killed us as witnesses.”
“Well then, if I’d made the sacrifice on time, the progress fleet wouldn’t even have—”
“Leander,stop.”
And he does, dark eyes on my face, lips pressed together against what he wants to say.
“Look,” I say softly. “You should have made the sacrifice a year ago, yes. And believe me, I was furious when you came aboard theLizabetta.You stopped me from getting to my father, who I haven’t seen in a year. I missed catching a ship up the North Passage before it closed for winter.”
He winces, but I hold up a hand to stop him, and he stays silent.
“What youdidn’t do,” I continue, “waskill people.”
“Selly, it was foreseeable that—” He cuts himself off when I glare at him, presses a hand over his mouth.
“There’s plenty of blame to share here, plenty of justice deserved. But whatyoudeserve is to be lectured, to be shoved in an uncomfortable hammock on a leaky ship to think about not living up to your responsibilities. Not to watch people murdered in your name.”
“I—” Again he stops himself.
“You’re really not used to letting other people get the last word, are you?”
“I have to admit, they don’t usually try.”
And perhaps another time, if we were talking about something else, we’d smile. But instead, the tension singing through both of us eases a touch. And that’s not nothing.
A few days ago we were a world apart. But now he’s just a boy, and a scared one.
“Can I ask…” When I look across, his dark eyes are on mine, and he crunches down on his apple to indicate he won’t interrupt. So I ask my question softly. “Whydidn’tyou go?”
He doesn’t reply straightaway, chewing slowly, looking down at the journal tucked under the thwart next to Keegan, then up to the rigging.
“You don’t have to answer,” I say eventually. “It’s not your fault, whatever the reason was.”
He shakes his head, keeping his eyes on the sail as the ragged edges of it flicker and billow and slowly unknit themselves. “If you asked anyone at home, they’d say I was too busy having fun,” he says quietly. “If you’d askedmeat home, that’s what I’d have said.”
“What’s the real reason?”
He’s quiet a moment. “The journal. The journal’s the real reason.”
“What do you mean?”
Our eyes meet again. “My father died before my first birthday. Fell from a horse when it stumbled—no warning, no reason for him to think he wouldn’t see tomorrow. My mother became regent until Augusta was old enough to take the throne. Bothmy sisters remember him, but I came years after, and I don’t at all. He wrote in the journal, though, as my grandmother did, and all the generations before her. Whoever made the trip to the Isles. They wrote about what they saw, what it was like, left messages for whoever came after.”
“Is there something in your father’s entries…?”
“I don’t know,” he admits. “I haven’t read it all yet. It’s like…when I do, that’s the last part of him there is left. The last part I don’t know. And I didn’t want it to be over. That’s the truth.”
We’re both quiet as the boat reaches the top of a wave, and I correct her course with my jury-rigged tiller, keeping her straight as she descends. It’s a rhythm as familiar as my own heartbeat.
“I suppose, considering, it’s a good thing my da stayed up north,” I say eventually. “Safest place to be, if things go wrong.”
“I wish you were there with him,” he replies quietly. “How were you going to join him? I’d have thought the North Passage would be closed by now.”
“There was one more ship due to make the run,” I say. “TheFreya.She was moored next to the progress fleet.”
He pauses, and I see it click into place. “You were trying to get to her the day we met.”
