Page 81 of Stranger's Choice
“That had better not have been your way of saying goodbye,” she said when he tried to pull away.
He stopped moving the instant he hit resistance, her arms still latched around him. Then, in a feat that seemed impossible in the narrow bed, he flipped them over. He was breathing heavily when he responded. “Not goodbye. I never want to say goodbye to you, Auraelie.”
“Good, because I’m not leaving.” She slipped his ring off her thumb, careful to keep it touching her skin at all times, and held it out to him.
He tried to slip it back on her finger, but was being so careful not to chance knocking it from her grip, he didn’t even come close to succeeding. “I still want you to have that, Auraelie.”
“And I want to know that it is safe to touch you. It doesn’t fit me very well. You wear it, and I’ll carry one of the other charms so that I can activate it if needed in any other situation.”
Sebin reluctantly slid the ring onto his own finger. “I’ll get you a version that actually fits when we get to Moial.”
“Fine, but I want it to be easier to deactivate it. I want to use my magic if I need to without taking the ring off or prying a stone out of the setting.”
Sebin suddenly pressed her against his chest. “Are you really here? Are you really going to Moial with me?”
She lifted up enough to press her lips against his. “I’m really here, and I’m going home with you.”
“Your family? I don’t want to—”
“You aren’t.” Auraelie met Sebin’s eyes, made sure he could see how serious she was. “My family are strangers to me. I saw them. I didn’t even know what to say to them. My mother never fought for me, and I’m not sure I can ever forgive her for that. My father loves me in his own way, but he had to distance himself and neither of us is sure how to bridge that divide now. My siblings are even more of an unknown.”
She pressed a finger against his lips, keeping him quiet. “I will write to them. That might be more than we know how to deal with at present, but I’ll do it. I’ll even invite them to visit me, to be some of the first oracles across the ocean in hundreds of years. But walking away from them was something they forced me to do as a child. It was already done, Sebin. And it never hurt as much as walking away from you a few days ago.”
“I know,” Sebin whispered. “I’ve regretted it ever since. I was coming down here to write you a letter inviting you to come to Moial.”
His eyes went wide. “Captain Sendion is going to wonder what happened to me.”
Auraelie chuckled. “I bet he can make an educated guess. He knows I am here to convince you to let me sail with you.”
Sebin’s hand slid down her back to curve over her bottom. “And very convincing you are. But I told him I wanted to send a letter before we set sail, and he doesn’t know that letter was meant for you. We should probably get dressed before he comes looking to see if I still want to send it—we can’t have long before we weigh anchor at this point.”
Auraelie slid off Sebin. “I suppose it would be best to be dressed if he might barge in.”
Auraelie loved sailing. Even when the ship traversed the dark wall of storms that had blocked travel between Pynth and Sebin’s continent for centuries, she enjoyed going up on deck. At the prow of the ship, the sensitive stood, using his power alongside air and water sprite artifacts to navigate the storm. She stood next to him and drank in the freedom of the open seas.
The wind tugging her to the side and the rain pounding down on and around her didn’t matter. The raw fury of nature reminded her that she was no longer trapped in the imperial palace. That she was well beyond the Emperor’s reach.
Eventually she made her way back down to the cabin she shared with Sebin, soaked to the bone and grinning from ear to ear.
Sebin was still in the cabin, having called her desire to go above while traveling through the Storm Barrier insane. He took one look at her, dripping water onto the floors, and shook his head. He tossed her a towel. “Are you going to insist on going up every day that we are in the Barrier?”
“How long before we are on the other side?” Auraelie stripped out of her wet clothes and began to dry her hair.
“Four or five days.”
“Maybe not every day, then.” Tossing the towel over the back of a chair, Auraelie walked over to where Sebin sat in front of a desk bolted to the floor of the ship. He watched her, his eyes growing dark with arousal. She stopped next to him and looked at the paper he had been writing on when she came in.
She leaned closer, then straightened, clearly surprising Sebin who had been reaching to tumble her into his lap. “Is that a dictionary?”
She darted over to the chest holding her clothes and scrambled into a dry tunic and trousers. Sebin groaned, but didn’t protest.
“Yes, it is the start of a dictionary.” He handed her a stack of papers, covered in his handwriting. The words were in both Imperial and Continental.
The alphabets of both continents were basically the same, a few letters styled differently, one in Continental that had no Imperial equivalent, but easy enough for Auraelie to read. She had tried reading Sebin’s letters aloud the second day after they set sail. She could say the words smoothly now, but didn’t know what most of them meant.
Sebin had taught her a few phrases in his language while they were in Kalitalo, but he had taught her more every day since they left. Auraelie had tested her limited vocabulary on a few of the sailors, but floundered for words she hadn’t learned or couldn’t remember after only a few simple sentences.
She looked through the sheets of paper, the hundreds of words Sebin had written while she had been above, enjoying the storm. She strung a few words together, reading them carefully. “The weather is today lovely.”
