Page 44 of A Storm in Every Heart (Enchanted Legacies #2)

And most of all, I can’t stand watching someone do something stupid and not fixing it for them.

I can’t delegate. If there was a problem in the kingdom, I wouldn’t be able to just watch it happen or hand it off to someone else to fix it; I’d need to fix it myself.

I’d need to control the entire situation, regardless of what anyone else thought.

I don’t know how to explain all that to her though, so I ask: “Do you know what kings do during wars?”

She shakes her head. “No.”

“They watch.” I sigh, and lean against the railing. “Kings send other people to fight, but they don’t go into battle themselves. They ride onto the battlefield and stay at the very back of the army, watching all the foot soldiers get slaughtered.”

“You’d want to get slaughtered instead?” she asks, and again I have that inexplicable feeling I’m being tested.

“No, but I wouldn’t want to watch either. I would never want to send someone to do a job I could do better myself.”

“And yet you claim you’re not arrogant,” she says with a teasing smile.

“I’m not, I’m just cursed with needing to control everything. Actually, it would be better if I was arrogant. Even good kings need to be a little arrogant because that’s the only way anyone can be in charge of thousands of people without having a nervous breakdown.”

I look sideways at her, trying to read her reaction to all this. She doesn’t seem like she’s about to run screaming off this boat, which I suppose is a good sign.

“I don’t know anything about being a king,” Odessa says matter-of-factly.

“But on ships, the captain is always the best at everything—best sailor, best navigator, the strongest fighter. I once saw my father cook an entire week’s worth of meals for the crew himself because our chef had fallen ill—the captain knows how to do every job because if you’re in the middle of the ocean and you lose your crew no one is going to save you. ”

“That I can understand,” I say, smiling.

“So what would you do if you weren’t going to be a king?”

“Based on what you just said, maybe I should be a ship’s captain. This ship, for example.”

She looks around the deck of my ship and smiles. “All the other ship captains would make fun of you for sailing around on a boat named after yourself.”

“I could rename it. It could be The Odessa .”

Her cheeks flush, and her smile widens into a grin that somehow makes her look more beautiful and more tangible at once. “But really, what would you do?”

I shake my head, tearing my gaze away from her smiling face before I make an idiot out of myself. “I don’t know, actually. Maybe I’d be a soldier, or I could do what my mother’s family did and help keep storms from reaching the city.”

“I could see you doing that.”

“What about you?”

“What do you mean?”

“If you could be anything, what would you want to be?”

She shrugs, and opens her mouth to answer, but before she can say anything we’re both distracted by shouting coming from the docks below.

Odessa leans over the railing, her fingers curling around the wooden beam as she squints at the scene below.

My heart skips a beat, and I swallow the impulse to grab her waist and tug her back to safety.

My mind races—surely she won’t fall. The thought is completely irrational, and yet a vivid image of her slipping overboard flashes through my mind.

I give my head a brisk shake to clear it and narrow my eyes, focusing on the commotion below. A cluster of men at the docks flail and shout, fists flying as they jostle and grapple in a chaotic brawl.

“Who do you suppose started it?” Odessa asks, shooting me a smile that feels as if she’s sharing a private joke with herself.

“They’re boxing. When I was a kid, I used to sneak down here to watch. It was far more interesting than anything my tutors had to say.”

She looks over her shoulder at me, biting her lip. “I know.”

My brow furrows. “What do you mean you know?”

She laughs lightly, and points back toward the fight. “I bet you 50 gold that the human will win.”

“I thought you didn’t gamble.”

“It’s not gambling when it’s a sure thing. I’ve seen him fight before.”

Her eyes widen, as if she’s trying to tell me something with her look alone. I don’t understand what she’s getting at, and I look from her to the fight below, confusion swirling in the back of my mind.

My eyes land on the human-looking man in the ring—the one I know is really a doppler who has been scamming unwitting Fae for decades—and all at once a memory comes to the forefront of my mind and the answer hits me with more force than any of the punches being thrown down below.

It’s her. The girl from the pier…

The memory is hazy. It must have been ten—no, eight—years ago now, but I remember meeting a boy my age and his sister…

a sister who is the entire reason I started lying about my name every time I left the castle grounds.

The sister who gave me an old brass key that I still have back in my room at the palace.

I knew Odessa seemed familiar.

Words fail me and all I can say is: “You!”

She smirks. “Glad you’re finally catching on, Your Majesty.”

“I’ve met you before,” I clarify, just to ensure I’m not going insane. She nods once, and an overwhelming feeling of disbelief washes over me. “How is that possible?”

She shrugs. “How is it possible that anyone has met before? Coincidence, maybe? Or luck? Or perhaps it wasn’t that unusual if you spent a lot of time around those docks as a child.”

I hear her, but I’m not exactly listening. My head spins. This girl, whom I’ve only known for a matter of days but already holds all my attention, has actually been in the background of my life for years.

How many times in the last eight years did I take out that old key and look at it, wondering where it fits? How many times did I make up a fake name and think of the bold red-headed girl who made fun of me for not hiding my identity better?

This doesn’t feel like a coincidence to me. It feels bigger than that.

“You gave me your key,” I say, more of a statement than a question.

She nods. “I’m sure you’ve long since thrown it out.”

“No, actually, I didn’t…I still have it, but why?”

She smiles, looking pleased even as a pink flush stains her cheeks. “I don’t know. At the time it just felt right. Objects can be promises, you know.”

I nod, even though I don’t really know what she means. Whatever sailors’ superstition that is, I’m not familiar with it, but in some small way I feel like I understand. “What’s the key for?”

She smiles. “Treasure, supposedly. Or, who knows? Maybe it was just old junk.”

I shake my head wordlessly.

If there’s any treasure to be had, it’s her. It’s finding her again, and the inexplicable feeling I have that this was always meant to happen.

Like maybe there’s a version of history where she never went to live in Vernallis with her aunt and I met her on some random day in Hydratta.

Like maybe if I’d never tried to talk to her in the hall—if I’d never stolen her boat and wasn’t standing here now—that we’d run into each other again sometime in the future.

Like, that key isn’t a promise; it’s the anchor of some invisible string, drawing us back together.

I extend my hand, fingertips grazing the side of her face. Her soft gasp is carried away by the ocean breeze, and for the briefest second, the air between us crackles with a raw intensity.

Then, I grip her chin and bring her mouth to mine.

And in that moment, everything changes.