It took the crew a moment to respond—still in shock over how close they were to shore. He knew they were in disbelief, still expecting something to happen, something to stop them from getting closer to land as it always had. That invisible force never came.
A man stood at the end of one of the open docks, waving them in.
Doraan’s heartbeat quickened. His gaze collided with Kamira’s as she sprinted across the deck and up the helm steps to stand beside him.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
Doraan could hardly hear her through the pounding in his ears, but he nodded numbly. He wasn’t sure he would ever be ready. He wasn’t even sure what he would say to his parents when he saw them. Would they even recognize him? Would the palace guards even let him in? Probably not, seeing as he had been declared dead for ten years.
“I’m not,” Kamira said.
He looked down at her with a frown. “Why not?”
“I feel like so much is up in the air still. I don’t know if Tarkiin told anyone what I did. Do my parents know? Will I be arrested as soon as I set foot on the streets?”
“Hey.” He turned her head, tilting it up to look her in the eyes. “I won’t let that happen. It will be okay. You will be okay. I promise.”
She sighed, pulling her chin from his grasp and looking back down to the wooden planks of the ship. “Nothing is guaranteed, Doraan. It’s best not to make promises you can’t keep. The Emperor is the ultimate ruler. Not even you can go against his rule.”
“If he’s even still alive,” he added.
“Don’t you think the black banners would be lining the streets and docks if that were true? Look around; everything is just as it always had been.”
Doraan took a deep breath. For some reason, her words only added to the uneasiness that had continuously grown the closer they sailed to the dock. Everything seemedtooperfect. He should be happy that there were no signs of attack on Aksahri, no signs of Forcina, and no sign of his father’s death, but he wasn’t, because the first two didn’t make any sense.
Where had that fleet gone? And where was Forcina? A lifetime of expecting the worst in life obviously had him paranoid.
“We are docked, Cap,” Cormac said, placing a hand on his shoulder. “It’s time to disembark.”
Adrenaline coursed through Doraan’s body. This was it.
He took a deep, calming breath, trying desperately to settle his nerves, but his entire being felt jittery, like all of this was just a dream still.
He watched as they lowered the gangway, flinching as it clanked onto the dock below. A small hand slid into his, holding on tight. Kamira looked up at him and nodded. Doraan squeezed her hand back just as tight as the entire crew walked down onto the Aksahrian dock. Each creak of the wood and clatter of his footsteps grated in his ears. Why did he feel like he was walking to his doom? Like the moment he set foot onto Aksahri land, something catastrophic would happen?
Doraan froze at the bottom of the gangway and stared down at the wooden dock beneath.
“It’s okay, Doraan,” Kamira whispered beside him. “It will be okay.”
He closed his eyes, extended a leg out in front of him, cringed as he lowered it, and stayed that way until his foot landed on solid ground. He opened his eyes again to see and gasped. He was on the dock. Doraan brought his hand up and inspected it. He was fully intact, not translucent like a ghost.
He was home.
The rest of the crew followed suit, and they all headed quickly toward the city streets. Doraan, Kamira, and Cormac all stood at the very end of the dock, just before wood switched to cobbled streets. Each of the crew nodded to them as they passed by, their eyes showing what they couldn’t voice. They were thankful to Kamira for breaking the curse, to Cormac for being their quartermaster and their voice of reason, and to Doraan, their Captain and companion over the years.
Once they had all gone, Cormac turned to Doraan wrapping him in a hug.
“You will always be a son to me, Doraan.”
Doraan felt the sting of emotion behind his eyes and swallowed it back down. “You will always be the father I wish I had. Thank you, Cormac, for everything.”
The older man grunted, released the embrace, and cleared his throat before turning to Kamira. “Kamira,” he began, but sputtered, catching her as she jumped into his arms to wrap him in a giant hug.
“Don’t be a stranger, Cormac,” she said.
Cormac laughed, setting her back down and said, “We’ll see each other often, lass. I’m sure of it.” And with a final nod to each of them, he headed off to his family, to hold his daughter in his arms after so long apart.
“Well,” Kamira breathed, wiping a wayward tear from her eye. “It’s just us now.”
