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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“Don’t look at me in that tone of voice,” Raiden said.

Celeste laughed despite herself. He looked wretched. Absolutely wretched. And yet this, too, became him. As though the deep circles beneath his eyes and the large bandage around his arm made him appear all the more interesting. His dark curling hair was mussed as if he had just woken up. His smooth skin, although a shade paler than usual, still glowed in the light from the flickering candles around his room. He stood in the door, dressed in nothing but a pair of soft pants. The shirtless male form did not faze Celeste. Siren males often didn’t wear bodices. Many females didn’t either, for that matter. And yet she averted her gaze. Her eyes landed upon the Admiral sitting upon his bed, alert and protective. Clever animal , she thought.

“I’m perfectly fine. Except for being shot.”

Celeste placed her hand to her neck and mimicked being unable to breathe.

“All right, and the drowning ,” he added with a smirk.

He took a step back, opening the door wider to welcome her inside. The room behind him was filled with polished wooden furniture. At the back sat a large desk, similar to the navigation room, with scrolls and quills upon it. Beyond that was a wall of windows from which Celeste could see the twilight. Elaborate paintings of ships at sea lined the walls. And at her left was a bed nearly three times the size of her “room,” covered in rich red fabric. All four wooden posts of the bed rose high, carved with depictions of sea creatures. The effect was rather impressive. But none of it gave her any clues to the treasure. Still, she maintained hope as she strode past him into the room. Something had to be here.

As she clutched the wet parchment in her fist, part of her wondered if he did know what his father was planning. That man certainly loves to keep secrets . Raiden wouldn’t risk all their lives for a pile of gold. Would he? Perhaps he was just the selfish, cutthroat human her people believed him to be. She couldn’t tell. Every time she thought she had him figured out, he’d do something to make her question it. He was maddening. And yet he seemed to read her thoughts with a single glance.

“What’s on your mind?” He closed the door behind her with a soft snap.

Celeste crossed to the bed, reaching out a hand to scratch behind the Admiral’s ears. The dog stretched and rolled, offering her his soft belly. She smiled, perching on the edge of the bed beside the silly creature. Raiden waited, his eyes scanning her face. So Celeste handed him the parchment, and he took it without a word. He turned it over in his hands, taking in the blurred text. When his eyes caught on the seal at the top of the page, his jaw clenched.

“Where did you get this?”

She gestured toward his wound.

“Captain Clarke?” He frowned. “Did anyone else see this?”

Celeste nodded and gestured broadly toward the rest of the officers’ rooms.

“I see. I’d imagine Bastian recognized my father’s seal.”

She didn’t need to give him confirmation. He already knew.

Raiden fell quiet, examining the piece of parchment again for any indication of what had once been written on it. He looked angry, and Celeste couldn’t decide if it was because the crew knew about the letter, because he couldn’t read it, or if there was something else. Silence fell as he ran his eyes over the wet parchment again and again. Finally, he set it down on the bedside table. He sank down into the mattress, running his hand through his hair. Whatever he was thinking about, he did not share it with her.

Ocean waves thumped against the side of the ship. The Admiral breathed deeply, perhaps snoring. She reached her hand out toward the animal and affectionately rubbed her thumb along the bridge of his nose.

“Thank you,” Raiden said at last.

Celeste looked up at him, brows furrowed.

“For saving my life again,” he added.

I shouldn’t have.

Another silence.

With her duty now fulfilled, there was no reason for her to stay. But perhaps she could search a bit before he asked her to take her leave. It was the first time she was in his chamber, after all—maybe she could pass it off as idle curiosity. Rising from the bed, Celeste saw the Admiral stir. His large brown eyes watched her as she walked in a great curve around the room, taking in each painting, each little treasure in the room that was not Raiden’s. And some she guessed might have been. But she froze when she found his gun, sitting upon the top of his dresser. In an instant, she was there again. Watching in horror as the bullet went through him. How he crumpled. The bloody trail he left.

Soft footsteps sounded upon the carpet. She turned to see Raiden standing behind her, looking at her. It was unnerving, being seen like this. It was as though he looked into her very soul. Saw the beating heart inside her. A heart she did not wish for him to know. Celeste made to step past him, when a gentle hand circled her wrist.

“Are you okay?”

The touch sent a shock through her. But for once it did not make her shake like a battered sail. Her eyes fell to his hand, so loose she could pull away. She didn’t. It took a moment to remember what he had said. Her eyes found his face, so open in the candlelight. So unlike the hardened, cocky pirate she knew. Was he only searching for more information? A bat of the eye or a curve of her lip that would betray her?

Of course she wasn’t okay. But it wasn’t his business. And who was he to check on her? This man who had threatened her after she saved his life, and in doing so, ruined hers. Why did everyone think she was this weak thing that needed to be checked on?

And what’s worse... Why did she wish she could tell him everything? This prince who somehow knew everything she was feeling and told her so little. This man who was an enemy to her people. A killer. A pirate. Even if he was sincere. Even if he cared about her... wasn’t that worse? She was sent here to kill him.

She should do it now.

The dagger hidden at her side suddenly felt uncomfortable. Celeste pulled her hand away from him, trying to break their connection. But it remained. They stood so close together. Close enough to stab him. And yet too close to breathe. Heart hammering, Celeste slid her hand to her hip. Beneath her fingers, she felt the hilt of her dagger. It could all be over . She only needed to be quick.

“I thought I heard a noise coming from your room,” he said.

Celeste’s hand curled around the dagger’s hilt.

“I’ve been shot before. It’s a sort of occupational risk.” He paused and took a breath as if he wanted to share more but thought better of it. Instead, he continued. “But today scared me. I’ve never been with people this inexperienced. When we were surrounded, I was afraid of my crew getting hurt. Again .” The way he said that last word left her ruined.

Why was he telling her these things? To gain her sympathy? Her grip on the dagger tightened. In silence, she watched him step away and sink back onto the bed. His shoulders sagged, and he stared at the floor. It wasn’t the son of her enemy before her. It was a captain who was haunted by those he had lost. Without meaning to, her hand fell to her side.

“I knocked because—” He lifted his eyes to meet hers, and he sighed. “Honestly, I don’t know why I knocked.” Celeste walked to the bed and sat down between him and his dog. In response, the Admiral snuggled a bit closer, his head against her thigh. “I suppose I wanted to see if you were all right. If you needed some company...” Raiden let the sentence trickle off at the end, a question. The dagger against her hip burned.

A part of her wanted to accept this peace offering. To dive into it headfirst and see how deep it was and where it went. To share every color of these feelings inside her with him. But she was sent here to kill him, and she was beginning to realize that being around him made it too hard. This path did not lead anywhere good. In fact, she was sure it would lead to her own ruin, in one way or the other. And so, despite every part of her wishing to stay, to lean into this warmth and let herself be seen, she lifted her stubborn chin and rose from the bed.

Perhaps today she was not strong enough to kill him. But she had to be strong enough to leave.

If Raiden was unconvinced by her performance, he didn’t say anything. He merely nodded. She could tell there was something else he wanted to say. Something hanging in the air between them. And yet he turned his gaze away, to the darkness beyond the windows.

“Goodnight, then,” he said.

She closed the door behind her.

* * *

Alone in her room, Celeste lay on her back, staring blankly at the ceiling. What had possibly been the third-worst day of her life was now over. The second and first being the day she betrayed the Chorus and the day she arrived in Port Romsey.

How unfortunate that all of them happened to her within a week.

Her body still felt the echoes of waves crashing and rolling against her from earlier in the day. Sleep remained fickle, evading her. So she lay in the dark, letting the minutes pass with only her thoughts for company. A part of her wished she had stayed with Raiden in his room. A part of her wished she had stabbed him. And a part of her wished she had never gone into his room at all. It took a night like tonight for Celeste to wish she had a hammock with everyone else. At least there she could be listening to Oakes’s snores that the others loved to complain about, instead of her thoughts swimming around. They circled like predators, ready to devour her whole.

Every night as a human felt like this. She’d get in bed, bone-tired, and then spend her night slipping between torturous thoughts and horrible nightmares. Sometimes she avoided sleep, as if she were afraid of it. And every time she closed her eyes and began to drift off, she’d remember her mother’s face, or the fight with the Chorus, and her mind was off again, racing down familiar paths.

She missed home.

The tears came quickly, overwhelming her until she was shaking with them. She was trapped in a body that wasn’t her own, upon a ship that was sailing toward its doom, surrounded by the very creatures her kingdom feared most. She couldn’t even protect herself! At least in the water she was a competent fighter, if not the best. Now she was voiceless. Hopeless. It was a miracle she survived the fight today given how many times that sword fell from her hands.

It was a miracle Raiden survived.

He shouldn’t have.

It would have been so easy. To let him drown. She wished she knew why she had done it. Why she continued to stay her hand. She only had to let him die . And even at this she managed to fail. They had been aboard this vessel for days, and she had very little to show for it. There wasn’t anything more to find. She knew this in her gut. These were pirates working for a king who desired untold riches found on a remote island. This feigned investigation was a ruse. A flimsy attempt to delay the inevitable. She didn’t want to kill him. Not really. But if she refused, she’d never be able to return home. Could never return to the sea for fear of being tracked down and killed for her crimes.

A sob escaped her throat. She missed her family. She missed being a siren and knowing with certainty what her future held. She missed following orders she understood and trusting someone else to tell her what to do. She missed Maeve. She even missed Shye. But what she missed most was herself. In Staria, she was a princess. A siren. A daughter. A sister. A soldier. She had a future. But her stars were no longer aligned. And it was all her fault.

If she had been more like Kiyami, she’d never be in this situation. Kiyami was every bit the hero in those stories Celeste had been told her entire life. Strong, but not only in the physical sense. A girl who was straightforward and knew why she was here, what she wanted. A girl who would do anything for her family. Everything Celeste was not. And Kiyami being thoughtful enough to ask if Celeste was okay was salt in the wound. As if Celeste needed the reminder of what she was. Betrayer... weakling ... Her sobs grew louder. She shoved her face into her pillow to muffle the noise. The life she had was gone. Nothing remained of the siren she once was.

A scratching sound came from the bottom of the door, near Celeste’s head. It was late, well past midnight. No one would be up except the night crew. The scratch came again, more insistent this time. Celeste rubbed her eyes with her fists, a half-hearted attempt to hide all evidence of her emotional state. She stretched her arm above her head, cracking open the door without getting up. A wet nose pressed its way into her room.

“Hello,” Celeste whispered in common with a watery smile. The very act of speaking felt like a soothing balm. Even if it was to an animal. Her voice cracked from lack of use, but she felt herself beaming. The first word she had ever spoken in the human tongue.

The Admiral wagged his tail.

“Inside?” she whispered, cracking the door open wider.

The dog’s tail beat back and forth as it trotted into the room, which felt smaller with the added presence. Even so, it found a place between Celeste’s hip and the wall to curl up. Its head rested once more against her thigh. She closed the door with a soft click and rested her hand on its back, stroking down its curling fur. It was funny to think that last week she watched this dog yip and dance around the deck of a different ship. The creature looked so strange to her then. Now it pressed against her, belly rising and falling in even breaths.

“You did not find me on your own, did you?” she asked.

The dog’s back leg twitched.

Celeste remembered shutting the door behind her as she left. And Raiden always locked his door. The Admiral was a clever boy, but he couldn’t work a doorknob. Raiden clearly hadn’t believed she didn’t want company. But she wasn’t annoyed. Her hand found the wall between their rooms, her fingers brushing the grooved wood. She considered knocking on the wall. A little signal to let him know she knew what he had done. But instead she let it rest there.

After a moment, she took her hand away. She laid her head back onto the pillow. The Admiral adjusted to fit the curve of her hip. And for the first time since she had become human, Celeste fell into an easy sleep.