I can understand that. My eyes raise up to Hala’s moons.
“I was so desperate to come back.” My throat is dry. “To set my feet on Asterian soil. I wanted revenge, Callan. Part of me still does. And yet you ask this of me.”
He doesn’t get angry at my words, and his response holds no judgment. “Revenge would be easily done, if that is what you seek. All you have to do is nothing.”
They’re already dying. Hala’s punishment is greater than any I could have dreamed up. Our gods are cruel, and callous, and their justice is swift.
But they are also generous, and benevolent. Or they once were. I wonder if they could be again. If there might be a reason that Hala’s punishment has stretched out for so long, only for the noose to close as I found my way back home.
If perhaps my fate might be something different to what I had imagined.
My question spills into the air. “Are your people worth saving?”
Perhaps the question is notifI can save them, but whether I should even try.
Callan doesn’t rush to answer. “There are good people in Asteria. People who lived there before the Shift remain. Children who were born there and have no memories of what occurred. But the men who killed that day walk among them also.”
The metal men. I remember them well. And Callan, Merrick—all of them were part of that faceless army.
“Good people do good things. Desperate people do desperate things.” Callan’s voice is hollow. “But evil people do evil things, and you will find all in Asteria, Selene, in the same way that you would wherever you go. If it were down to me, I wouldn’t let you off the ship.”
My brows crease. “Why?”
He studies me, the wind pushing his hair back, away from his face. “Petyr is desperate. He tries to continue the old Caelumnai traditions though there is little need for them, while at the same time turning his face away from the gods who did this to us. We have a dying stolen land, a forced military, people on the edge of starvation and revolt, and yet Petyr holds feasts every night and pretends all is well because he cannot bear the thought of failing a man who died ten years ago. He relies on the broken pieces of a royal court for advice, and at the same time he openly despises them for their gluttony and greed in the face of so much loss. I’m worried about how far he will go in his desire to prove himself as a stronger king than his father.”
A knot forms in my stomach. “He is no stranger to you.”
It’s not a question. Not when he spills the intricacies of this Petyr’s soul in such detail.
“He’s my brother,” Callan says heavily. “Petyr is my brother. Half-brother, in truth, although I have never recognized the distinction. My father—in name, though not in truth—was the King of Boreas, Selene. He gave the order that day.”
Callan doesn’t hide from my gaze. He gives me the truth, not in broken words and fumbled sentences but steady, unflinching lines. “And every time we have set sail since that maiden voyage, my brother has given me orders to find a faeyte. To find one who might have survived and bring her back to fix what we have broken.”
A punch would have hurt less. The truth does not hurt. But thelie—that cuts into my chest far deeper than any wraith ever could, even with its sharp claws and screams of agony. “You should have told me this.”
I have been fumbling along in the darkness, trying to make sense of who I am in this world that no longer belongs to me, and all along, there was aplan.
“It was not my intention to keep it from you.” Callan’s breathing turns ragged. “But I didn’t know that this would happen. I didn’t know thatyouwould happen, Selene. Any of it.”
I am a means to an end. I don’t even blame him for it. “Were you the one who found me sneaking on board? Did you chain me in the storage room?”
Bronze eyes flash. “No.”
Someone did. Someone who knew they needed a faeyte, and when they found me creeping around the ship, they ensured that I would remain here. It’s a reminder I needed—a reminder that despite it all, despite the small acts of kindness, these people are not mine.
He is not mine.
They do not need to be cruel to make me do what they want. It is true that honey catches far more flies than vinegar. And I have spent so long without any kindness, any kinship, that perhaps even the smallest amount felt like it could be something more than a manipulation.
Perhaps I wished to feel part of something bigger than myself again, to no longer feel quite so alone, and so I imagined a connection that did not exist.
He inhales. “Selene—,”
I twist, swinging my legs back over and placing my feet firmly on the deck once more. “You cannot choose your family. But you can choose the person you want to be.”
I steady myself. Tell myself that it does not matter. “I’ll do what I can to help you. For those like Leo, and the others. I am not so unreasonable that I would let this dictate what I know to beright. For I was taught better than that, Callan. And I would be insulted at the question on your lips, except it only proves that we do not know each other at all.”
There is no point in feeling anything. I imagined a friendship that was not there, and now it is clear. But I don’t understand why my chest aches so badly.
