“We should keep moving,” I say.
“We can stay a bit longer, if you need to.” His fingers tighten slightly, not yet ready to give up.
I shake my head. “I want to—need to keep moving.” I need to see this one thing done. Because I’m afraid that if I stop moving now, I might never start again. Forbidden temptation might win, and I might seek refuge in the embrace of this enigmatic, intriguing, and unexpectedly gentle man who has begun to ensnare me, despite all my best efforts to protect my heart.
CHAPTER22
It’snoon by the time we return. Hard to believe that we were gone for only one night. We go to the armory first. The soft singing from within stops the moment we enter. Ilryth swims over a group of men and women—some of whom I recognize from Fenny’s failed breakfast. Lucia was leading them in song and continues to do so once Dawnpoint has been returned to its place. The spear supports a rebloomed anamnesis and the Duchy of Spears is back under the protection of Lady Lellia’s magic.
We then head to the treasure room. The chest Ilryth had brought me weeks ago is still in the center of the room.
“Go ahead and fill it with the silver,” he instructs me as he lowers the satchel off his shoulder. Despite its weight, it hardly seemed to bother him as we swam back. “I’m going to check in with Fenny and Sheel, then I’ll return.”
I nod and set about my business as he swims off to attend to his.
The chest quickly fills with the silver we took from the wreckage—every bar is a bit of hope for my family’s future. I neatly arrange them into lines. He’s still not back by the time I do that, so I find a dagger and carve my name into the chest—that way, there’s no questioning to whom it belonged and hopefully to whom it should go.
But my name alone still doesn’t feel like enough, so I begin to roam the shelves. Poking about the various items.The mug, perhaps? No…
“What about the mug?” Ilryth jars me from my explorations. I didn’t see him enter. He hovers by the chest, assessing my work.
“Oh, I was thinking I would leave something else with the treasure. I wrote my name on the chest, but I thought it couldn’t hurt for my family to have further proof that it belonged to me. Moreover…I want to add a personal touch that might offer them some kind of peace.”
He hesitates, his gaze turning soft. “It would be cruel to let them know you still live.”
“You don’t think I know that?” I tilt my head and give him an incredulous look. Ilryth’s expression remains unchanged. Internally sighing, I wrap my arms around myself. I am back on that beach he left me on after I escaped Charles. There is a wet cold so deep it would set into my bones, and my lungs, and make me think that the sea and sirens gave me back only for the chill to kill me. But I would carry on. I would survive. For myself—for them.
“Idon’twant them to think I’m alive. If anything, I need them to know the opposite. I returned from the dead once already; they could still harbor hope,” I say softly. “After that night at the lighthouse, they heard of my demise only to have me return a few years later, better than they left me. Thanks to your magic, I made a name for myself as the unsinkable captain. I pulled through, time and again, no matter how impossible the situation seemed. My sister once told me that, no matter how much she worried, she didn’t really believe death would ever be able to hold me. After all that, they might spend years expecting, hoping, and living like I could return any day. It’d be cruel to put them through that when there’s no hope for me, this time.”
“Ah.” The sound is a soft hum across my mind, sinking into all the dark places I previously thought only these grim musings could reach. “You want to kill their hope early.”
“Yes. I don’t know how,” I admit. “I’m not sure what I could leave in this chest that would tell them I am gone—to not wait for me to return. But I have to try something.” I shake my head. “I know you will not understand it. I know I have no right to ask anything more of you.”
“Yet you do.” The words are slightly amused. Ilryth isn’t bothered in the slightest by my demands. “Very well.”
“Pardon?” I meet his eyes, startled.
Ilryth approaches, fumbling at a small pouch in the belt he wears at his hips. He comes to a stop before me, holding out a small, golden compass that fits in the palm of his hand.
Every crack and ding are exactly as I remember, every scuff in its place, plus a few new ones. I slowly reach out, my fingers gliding across the fractured surface of the compass.
“I put this in its spot at the bow of my ship when I went into the Gray Passage,” I whisper. Then, I think of Ilryth swimming down by the bow. The wraiths surrounding him. “You…”
“When I was patrolling the wreckage while you were getting the silver, it caught my eye. I knew it was precious to you, so I grabbed it,” he says as if it’s no matter. I remember when he told me to swim. When he dipped down out of sight at the bow. This was what he was getting.
“How did you know it mattered so much to me?” While it wasn’t a secret, it also isn’t something I’ve told him. He shrugs. “Ilryth,” I say with a probing tone, so he knows he’s not getting out of this.
“There were a few times, when you were setting sail, that I caught glimpses of you.”
“You visited me?” I whisper. “Why?”
“You fascinated me.” He gestures to the room. A room of seafaring “treasures.” Even though I had my suspicions, I also had my doubts; it couldn’t all be because of me…could it? “Besides, I had to make sure my protections on you were still strong,” he adds offhandedly.
“Was the compass going to become part of your room of treasures?” I’m uncomfortable with the idea of something so important to me being little more than an item on his shelf. One of dozens. Like my old wedding band had been.
He shakes his head and rubs the back of his neck, fingers catching in his hair. “I was thinking it could be a parting present before you went to the Abyss. Something to help you find your way in the world of the gods.”
Gifting this to me at any point sounds a lot like holding on to a tether to this world. But I don’t say as much. This gesture was profoundly kind. It was something he didn’t have to do—something that benefited him in no way and, if anything, risked much. Yet he did it anyway. For me.
