The shadow surged—and then, a voice like seafoam breaking on a rocky shore. “Augustus.”
A siren. His safe harbor.
“It’s a dream.” The voice didn’t chase the shadows—it pulled himthrough.“Wake up.”
Augustus bolted upright and nearly knocked heads with Selene. She gripped his face, anchoring him to the real world, and her eyes—one like freshly tilled earth, one like sapphire—darted around his face. Budding sunlight cast her reddish-blond hair in a halo.
It was morning.Thank the gods.
He clutched her head and drew her so close that their breaths mingled. “Thank you.”
Selene’s hands roamed and caressed, unknowingly pulling him to safety. “I wish you’d tell me?—”
“I can’t.”
“You called out for Cassia this time. Is that who?—”
Augustus twisted out of her arms and perched on the side of their massive bed. It was so high, his feet barely reached the tiled floor. Across the room, a cool breeze blew gauzy curtains toward them from open floor-to-ceiling windows.
He inhaled deeply the brine scent off Castona Bay. Gulls dipped in and out of the water from a clear sky. The sea glittered in the morning light. So close, and yet impossibly far. Just like everything else in his life that used to make sense.
The vast spread of water was nothing but a reminder of how different things were. These days, he made choices for someone else, rarely for himself. After all, he’d already lived an active and full life. Selene hadn’t, so he would keep quiet and let her navigate for a while. What was a few months compared to the decades they had ahead?
And anyway, didn’t this classify as a new experience? He’d been all over the world and stayed in plenty of nice rooms, but he’d neverlivedin one. And neverwithanother person. Little pieces of himself and Selene were all over the place. From jewelry to vases to intricate little paintings of the sea on gold stands. Weapons were strung about, lazily discarded like everything else. Things one or the other had spotted in passing and purchased on a whim.
This was an especially big deal for Selene; she’d been a slave her entire life and had never owned anything of her own.
Selene wrapped around him from behind, her body still warm from sleep. Her fingertips skimmed across his bare chest. “It’s time.”
Augustus stiffened. After weeks of nightmares, patiently sitting by without explanation, she was finally going to force him to talk.
He wasn’t ready.
He couldn’t.
The details of that day, the prophecy, Cassia’s death, how could he share those things with her? The prophecy didn’t make sense, and if she suggested picking it apart…
Not now. Maybe not ever. It would be like staring into his mother’s last breath.
Augustus peered over his shoulder as her fingers played in his long strands of hair. “Selene?—”
“I promised Dimitrios three months. It’s been four.”
His breath shot out, and he almost laughed. “Five, actually.”
Where had the time gone? How had his entire world turned so upside down in just a few months? Who he had been when he first boarded theSorisnine months ago was not the man he was today. Sleeping beside the same woman every night. Led instead of leading. Living in a world where his mother no longer existed, something he once thought impossible.
He’d chosen this life with Selene, and the gods knew there would be no living without her, but the rest?What was he doing?
Selene hugged him tight, and her lips pressed into his shoulder. “Let’s go. Anywhere you want. You still have theEntia?—”
“I don’t have a crew.”
Nearly all of his mother’s old crew left months ago, having experienced all the fun to be had and itching to return to sea. Most had returned to the Triarius fleet, which, last he’d heard, was docked outside Warian Bay. No sign of Tristan Thorne or his promise to wipe his family out. Augustus never thought Thorne was the type to bluster false declarations of war, but here they all were. Alive and untouched.
Maybe Thorne had heard about Cassia and decided they’d suffered enough. It’d been her he’d truly hated, anyway.
Selene tugged a lock of his hair. “Hire a crew, Augustus.”
