“I’m here of my own free will.”
“What of your Guild? Who leads them in your absence?”
“They’re in good hands. And…I’ve left the Guild for good.” He pulled a chain from his tunic until a delicate ring swung out. It was too dark to see, but it was very clearly a woman’s band. “I have to see to Selene’s safety.”
Augustus didn’t know what to say. He’d always assumed Oskar was sewn into the fabric of his life as a Blade, much the same way Augustus couldn’t rip the threads between him and the sea.
“Selene wouldn’t have wanted you to walk away from your entire life for her,” Augustus said. “She’ll?—”
“She knows well that I have nothing holding me in Perean. Not anymore.” Oskar met his eyes for the briefest of moments, then sighed. “I was already preparing to leave. This is only a side road to my final mission.”
When Oskar didn’t continue and stood there with his jaw muscles flaring, Augustus asked, “Is there something we can help you with? Selene and I owe you our lives.”
Oskar fingered his chained ring and shook his head. “It’s a debt I intend to pay alone.”
Augustus nodded pointedly at the ring. “She must have meant a lot to you.”
“They were my entire world.”
Augustus didn’t understand but sensed he shouldn’t pry. “Just as Selene is mine, but I’ve really fouled things up, haven’t I?”
“Have you?”
“She was going to stay in Perean,” he admitted. “We had a massive fight about it, and now… Either we stay together and she never goes home, or I let her go.”
Oskar tucked the ring back inside his tunic and faced Augustus. “That is a choice I would never have wished upon anyone.”
“Sometimes I wonder if the gods meant for us to stay together. After we fulfilled their plot, that is. They don’t need us anymore. I take. I burn. She builds. She bleeds for others. Together, we’re a disaster waiting to happen.” Augustus sighed. “But I love her. That’s the real problem.”
Oskar’s mouth twitched into a frown. “Love can be powerful, but when the gods want their way, it isn’t enough. Winter always comes back around.”
A dark laugh jumped from Augustus’s chest as his heart and soulplummeted toward the plank boards. “It’s a good thing I wasn’t raised on hope, or that would’ve made mereallydepressed.”
“For your sake and hers, I hope you get everything you want—what you deserve. Too many have paid the price for the fucking gods.”
Oskar must have lost many more friends than Augustus knew to the lovers’ prophecy. Four decades worth, at least—since he was younger than Augustus was now, beginning with Nikos Thanides.
Augustus had lost a ship, nearly an entire crew, and his mother. Who else would make that list ten, twenty, thirty,fortyyears from now?
A knock on the cabin door lured the men around.
Augustus strode for the door, calling to whoever stood outside. “Come.”
Lili entered with her hair windblown and eyes bloodshot. When had she last slept? Whatever the answer was, it didn’t stop her from slanting a grin. “Look at you, all shaved and smelling like a rose.”
His eyes strained with a heavy roll. “Where do we stand? With our abrupt departure, we couldn’t have been ready.”
Oskar sank into the corner settee and hooked a boot to the table. “I haven’t told him,” he said to Lili.
“Tell me what?”
Lili dropped beside the assassin with a gusting sigh. “We’ll need to stop for supplies. We’ve got a week. Two, if you like watered ale and half rations.”
Augustus swore under his breath. “Brilliant. We’re sailing with a hold full of air.”
“Repairs were made,” she offered. “And we’ve got what’s left of the crew.”
“Just how small is this crew?”
