by Morgan Rice
Ceres did not seem to care.
“You came back for her, though,” Ceres pointed out. “You knew I was alive, but you came running back to Delos for her.”
Thanos shook his head.
“It wasn’t like that,” he insisted. “I felt guilty at having run off, abandoning my wife and child. The sailor I saved from the Isle of Prisoners… she made me see how wrong it was to just walk away like that, leaving Stephania in danger.”
“She?” Ceres said, and her expression hardened again. “It sounds as though you’ve just surrounded yourself with women since I’ve been gone.”
“Felene isn’t—she doesn’t—I just saved her life and she helped me to sail back to Delos. The idea was that she would help Stephania sail away if the king let her go in exchange for me.”
Thanos knew he was getting this wrong, but it was as though he couldn’t stop.
“You offered to trade your life for hers?” Ceres asked, and Thanos could see how still she’d gone. “You love her enough to do that for her?”
“I… I love her,” Thanos admitted. “But it’s different from how I love you, Ceres, and this was obligation, not love. I wanted to do the right thing.”
“I don’t think you have any idea what the right thing is,” Ceres said. Thanos could see the tears falling openly from her eyes now.
He reached out to comfort her, and Ceres stepped back.
“No, don’t touch me. Not after this.”
“Ceres, just let me—”
“Explain? I think you’ve explained enough. I know I’ve heard enough. I’ve heard enough, Thanos, and I… I can’t deal with this. I can’t do this.”
She turned to the door, and Thanos stepped after her. She stopped him with a look.
“Don’t. Don’t follow me. Don’t try to make this right, because you can’t. We’re done, Thanos. I don’t want to see you anymore.”
She left the cabin with all the speed Thanos had seen her use when she fought, almost faster than he could follow. He heard the door slam behind her, hard enough that some of the wood there shattered, sending splinters as long as Thanos’s forearm flying across the deck.
Thanos ran to the door, wrenching it open even though the sharp splinters of the thing dug into his palm as he did it, drawing blood. Thanos didn’t care. The only thing that mattered right then was Ceres. He had to find her. He had to stop her leaving so that he could find better words with which to explain what had happened. There had to be some way to get everything that was in his heart into the open, so that Ceres could see it.
He ran to the rail of the ship, looking for signs of Ceres, not caring that he left a bloody palm print upon the wood. There was no sign of her, though, even when Thanos scanned the dock beyond, looking for her.
He grabbed a nearby sailor by the tunic, spinning the man to face him. “Where is Ceres?” he demanded. “Did you see her?”
Thanos only realized that he was shouting when he saw the fear on the man’s face.
“She ran past,” the man said. “I’ve never seen anyone move that quickly. She leapt from the side of the ship onto the docks like it was nothing. Then she was gone.”
Thanos ran to the railing again, bracing himself against it to copy Ceres. He couldn’t hope to keep up with her, but he knew where she would be going: back to the castle. Back to her brother and her father. He could find her there. He could talk to her. He could…
He stood there and wept, feeling the tears fall silently against his cheeks. He gripped the railing of the ship, and right then it was the only thing holding Thanos up. He felt as weak and shaky as if he had been hollowed out, the world around him seeming to spin as he fought to keep his tears quiet. He couldn’t stop them, but he couldn’t let anyone else see them, either.
He felt the way he had when he’d been told that Ceres had died. No, right then, Thanos felt worse, because this loss was down to him. Without her, he felt so worthless that he might have flung himself into the sea if it hadn’t been obvious that the sailors there would have pulled him out.
How had he made such a mess of things? It didn’t make sense to Thanos then. He’d tried so hard to do everything right. He’d tried to help the rebellion. He’d tried to stop the worst excesses of the Empire’s rule. He’d fought alongside the rebels on Haylon. When he’d heard about Ceres, he’d gone looking for her, and he’d done his best to do his duty by Stephania as his wife.
He’d tried to be a good man, and yet somehow, it had all become more complicated than he could imagine.
“Prince Thanos,” the sailor he’d grabbed asked, “is everything all right? We’re about to leave port, but if you need some time…”
Thanos forced himself to at least appear as though he had a grip on himself, even though inside it felt as though his emotions were plunging into a bottomless pit.
“I’m fine,” he lied. After all, he was good at lying, wasn’t he? He’d lied to Stephania, and to Ceres. He’d lied to his family, and to the Empire. Every time, there had been what seemed like a good reason. Every time, it had only caused pain.
He felt the ship lurch under him as it started to pull away from the dock, but it couldn’t jar as much as his stomach already was. Even now, he wanted to jump from the ship as it turned, swim the short distance to shore, and find Ceres.
He couldn’t, though. That hadn’t been an option, from the moment she’d run from the cabin. He couldn’t solve this by talking to her. There was nothing here for him. Not while she hated him.
In Felldust, there was something waiting for him. Thanos didn’t know what, but right then he didn’t care. He knew how hostile it was. He knew how dangerous it might be to try to find his brother and stop the invasion before it started. Before, he’d been worried about whether he would be able to come back.
Now, it didn’t matter. He would kill Lucious, and if that meant his death, he was ready.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Felene woke to pain. She lay on her back, spread out and hurting, staring up at the sun as she drifted on the waves. Water washed in her mouth and she spat it out, cursing at her own weakness.
It took her a moment to realize that the pain was more localized, tearing… sharper than it should have been. The kind of pain that only came when something was taking a bite out of you.
Felene spun, flailing, and a small shark swam away before she could do anything to it. She tried to keep herself calm, but there were other shapes in the water.
You’ve had things worse, she reminded herself, thinking of the Isle of Prisoners. Of the tortures and the violence there, the hunting parties of wardens who were no more than the strongest prisoners and the wildling clans of those who couldn’t be controlled.
She’d survived it, though, and if she could survive that, she could survive this.
“Barely,” she whispered, and spat out another mouthful of salt spray as the waves washed over her. “And even that was down to Thanos. I don’t think he’s coming for you here, Felene.”
Or anywhere, given what things had been like when she’d left. Thanos was almost certainly dead by now, killed by the Empire. She would have to save herself, if she could, and that didn’t seem likely now. Not with the creatures gathering in the water.
One came at her then, all sleek deadliness and razor teeth. Felene flailed at it as it came in to investigate her, and somehow succeeded in bringing her arm around through the water to strike the beast on its snout. It curled back, obviously more startled than hurt, and took off into the depths.
Felene had no doubt it would be back, though. There would be other things down there too: knife-eels, spike-fish, maybe blood-squid or worse. And more sharks. There would always be more sharks.
She managed to look up, seeing a coastline ahead, and for a moment, it was hard to remember where it was. Not the Isle of Prisoners, she could remember that much. Then it came back to her. She was off the coast of Felldust. The endless black dust of the place should have told her that much even if she couldn’t r
emember it.
It was too far to swim.
Felene knew that instinctively, the same way that she might know how far she could jump when leaping from one roof to another, or whether a lock could be easily forced in the time she had before guards arrived. She could feel the wound in her back, delivered so casually, as if it were something Stephania did almost daily. Maybe she did.
Felene wasn’t sure how long she’d floated like this. It was hard to keep track. It was a miracle, given her wound, that the big sharks hadn’t killed her already. Them or the worse things that lurked in the deep. Felene had seen enough of those in her time, from the spiked squids whose tentacles impaled their prey to the sea serpents that could glide above the waves for more than a ship’s length on web-like wings before plunging back beneath the surface.
She was so busy thinking of them that she almost didn’t see the remains of a mast floating in the water, obviously the remains of some ship that had fallen prey to Felldust’s coast.
It happened. She’d been off a hundred leagues from land before now and still come across the wreckage of whole boats, drifting almost intact with no sign of their crew. There were those sailors who reckoned such things bad luck, but Felene had always been of the opinion that so long as she didn’t run into whatever had emptied them, everything was good.
In this case, it was more luck than she could have hoped for. She swam for it, pulled herself up onto it, collapsed back onto it, too weak now to do more.
She floated some more, staring up at the sky, licking her lips. She was thirsty despite the water around her, but she didn’t dare to drink it. She’d seen men driven mad by drinking seawater when they were thirsty, raving and usually dying. Felene didn’t want to join them.
Then again, she hadn’t wanted to end up like this, either. She should have seen the betrayal coming. She had seen it coming. She’d spotted Stephania’s botched poisoning, and Elethe’s attempt to back up her mistress. It was just that Felene should have seen the last attack coming too.
Somewhere below her, she felt the brush of creatures pushing against the mast.
Maybe she should just have guessed which way Elethe’s loyalties would go, but then, Felene had always been a sucker for a pretty face. There was that time she’d lost almost everything she had in that festival hall in… where was it again? Did it even matter now?
Felene could feel the pain in her back where she’d been stabbed. Worse, she could feel something still in the wound, jammed there like a plug. It seemed that the knife intended to kill her had saved her life. Felene reached around for it, found her hand in the water, and jerked her hand back as something rough-skinned brushed past.
“Maybe I’ll leave it for now,” Felene said.
Perhaps the easiest thing would have been to give in then. To simply plunge beneath the waves and let herself drown. She’d been told by sailors that there were far worse ways to die. That there could even be pleasant visions at the end. How exactly they knew that, Felene didn’t know.
She couldn’t give in though. She found herself thinking of Thanos. He wouldn’t have given in. He’d crisscrossed the sea looking for the woman he loved. He’d given himself up to save a snake like Stephania. He had survived a wound like this, when the Typhoon had stabbed him.
“Now… I just need… to emulate his example,” Felene told herself.
She was still trying to work out how to do it when she saw the driftwood floating along, not far from her. It was obviously more wreckage of whatever had torn apart the ship on whose mast she floated. Felene grabbed for it. Her hand closed around it just as a toothed maw came out of the water. This time, Felene struck with all the strength she had, and the thing sank back down.
It was probably just as well it wasn’t enough to break the wood. It was the closest thing to an oar she had.
Paddling hurt. It hurt as though Stephania were sticking the knife into her back all over again. It was an agony with every stroke of the driftwood she’d collected. Felene had been wounded before. She’d been cut in fights on land and sea. She’d fought for her survival on the Isle of Prisoners. She’d even ripped open her legs on the spikes atop a fence, leaping from the bedroom of a noblewoman whose jewelry she’d been stealing.
None of it had hurt like this, and with every movement of Felene’s hands against the rough wood of the paddle, it felt as though she might pass out from the pain. Curiously, it was the memory of Elethe’s face in front of her that spurred her on.
Felene didn’t know what to make of her. There had been a flicker of something in her eye as Stephania attacked. Almost an apology. Maybe more. Felene had certainly thought there was more in the days they’d sailed together. Maybe she’d just let herself get carried away. Elethe had been quick enough to hold her in place while her mistress stuck her knife in, and she’d lied since the first moment she showed up at the boat.
“Fooled again,” Felene said, with a wince that wasn’t entirely from the pain in her back. It had happened before. The noble who had put her on the Isle of Prisoners had tricked her, after all. Then there had been that courtesan who’d forced her into a duel with a merchant on the Silk Isles, that fence who had run off with her carefully stolen loot down on the street of beggars, an assortment of lovers who had promised… well, almost as many things as she had, over the years.
“Okay,” Felene said to herself as she tried to row her salvaged mast. “I get it. I’m basically an idiot.”
She hacked at the water with her paddle like the worst of landlubbers. Still, she was somehow able to turn the mast around to face the shore. Felene draped herself over it as best she could and continued to row, doing her best to ignore some of the shadows in the water below her.
When she couldn’t manage that, she tried looking beyond them. There were buildings down there of smooth stone, looking as perfect as if they’d just been left behind a day or two ago. She could see fish down there, swimming among the remnants of whatever settlement it had been before the wars that had driven off the Ancient Ones from the world.
She kept rowing, and now Felene could feel the push of a current underneath her. No, not a current, the tide. The tide had caught her, and now Felene knew that what she had to do was hang onto the mast that was keeping her from drowning. Even so, she kept paddling, because a sailor who left herself at the mercy of the tide was a sailor who ended up on the rocks.
As if the thought had summoned them, Felene spotted plenty of spikes of dark rock to her left, jagged and throwing up foam where the water struck them. Felene didn’t want to think about what would happen if she struck them too.
She was going to find out though. There was a patch of dark beach away to her right, but one half-rotted plank wasn’t going to be enough to pull her there. She felt the mast crack as it smashed into a rock and Felene put every last scrap of effort she had into swimming for the shore. If she didn’t make it now, there would be no second chances.
Felene paddled while her muscles burned, and her back did more than burn. She screamed against the agony of it, but she kept going. Eventually, finally, she felt the mast scrape against shale and sand as she pulled herself up onto the beach. It was a thing with other wreckage already strewn on it. Including what looked promisingly like an intact barrel.
She stumbled forward, heading for the barrel. At least she’d left the sharks behind. Except that, even as she glanced back, Felene saw a leathery, crocodilian shape pulling itself from the breakers.
“Really?” she demanded of any gods who might be listening. “Have I really done this much to offend you all?”
She held her length of driftwood out in front of her while the crocodile advanced. She waved it as if it might somehow dissuade the creature from attacking. She tried to leap back as it snapped its jaws, but they fastened a tight grip around the wood, ripping it from her hands.
“Can’t we just call this one a draw?” Felene asked the thing, but it kept waddling stupidly forward.
There was only one thing t
o do, and this was going to hurt.
She didn’t hesitate, because hesitating would only make it worse, and because, frankly, it would have seen her eaten. Instead, she reached around to her back, screaming as she snatched out the dagger Stephania had stuck in her. The crocodile roared in response, then lunged forward.
Felene threw herself forward to meet it, around the gap of those jaws, aiming for the beast’s back. She threw herself onto it, close as a lover, although even most of Felene’s lovers hadn’t brought knives with them. This one was long and sharp, leaf shaped and deadly looking. Felene guessed she ought to be thankful. Stephania didn’t use inferior weaponry when she tried to murder people.
She stabbed down, again and again, not daring to stop. Below her, Felene felt the crocodile thrash, the hard ridges of its scales cutting into her while Felene tried to hang on. The only question now was who would bleed to death first. Who was more stubborn.
There was only one answer to that, and Felene kept stabbing.
She kept stabbing until she felt the crocodile still, and beyond, because this wasn’t the kind of beast you took chances with. She rolled from its back. She wasn’t even going to try to stand.
Her eyes fixed on the barrel. It looked like the kind of cask a sailor might use for brandy. She really hoped it had brandy, right then. She crawled her way up the beach to it, and when she got to it, she started rolling the barrel the way she might have helped an old friend to shore, using it to prop herself up while she pushed her way up onto the dark sand above them. Felene eyed the tide line, knowing that she had to claw her way above it, or all her efforts would be for nothing. Some landlubber might have stayed on the wet sand, but that was just a recipe for drowning later, rather than now.
Thinking of Elethe didn’t give her the strength to push that far, not after the fight with the beast, but the image of Stephania did. Felene had brought Thanos back for her. She’d pushed him to come back, when he could have been safe, as far from Delos as he could get. Felene had brought one of the few men she truly respected to his death for Stephania, and the princess had betrayed that with a knife in the back.
