“I hope your meditation has gone well. It’s time for your next round of markings before the Abyss,” Ventris announces. The warriors move forward.
I eye them warily. Every time one of these sirens comes to anoint me…I’ll have to give up more and more of myself. Soon, there will be nothing left of me. I want to swim away. To take Ilryth’s hand and tell him to flee with me.
For the first time in a long time, I feel like running.
But this is the duty I accepted. This is the oath I took. I can’t run, not now. I might not remember my family when the time comes. But I will still be giving my life to protect them. I will give everything to keep them all safe.
I push away from the balcony railing. From the corner of my eye I can see Ilryth’s resigned, sad expression. “I’m ready.”
Ventris approaches reverently. For the first time it feels as if he actually sees me as a sacred individual. His eyes are downcast. He moves with purpose, bowing before approaching.
Just like at the manor, I am marked across visible sections of my flesh. I imagine by the time I am offered to Krokan, I will be more drawings than bare skin. A beautiful husk. Even though Ventris is the one marking me, and the warriors remain present, heads bowed in reverence, it’s Ilryth that I’m aware of.
He’s moved to hover over Ventris’s shoulder, watching intently. His broad chest rises and falls as though his breaths are labored. His expression is closed off, muscles tense.
Ilryth seems almost…alarmed? Scared? Put off? I’m not quite sure which, or why, but I tilt my head slightly to catch his eyes and offer a slight smile. Trying to tell him with the expression alone that I’m fine, not to worry.
No matter what my reaction just was, I can do this.
He returns the expression, briefly, but then reverts to his worried look with a furrowed brow as he stares a hole between Ventris’s shoulder blades. It stays on him until Ventris is done. The Duke of Faith excuses himself, leaving with his warriors, and, like clouds burning away with the afternoon’s sun, Ilryth’s expression recovers.
“Are you all right?” I can’t help but ask, boldly resting a hand on Ilryth’s shoulder.
“I should be comforting you, not the other way around,” he murmurs.
“It’s all right. Talk to me,” I encourage gently.
“I don’t like seeing him near you. The idea of him marking your soul is nearly unbearable,” Ilryth admits. I’m too startled to say anything in response before he says, “But, no matter, where were we?” His smile is so jarring from his previous tone that I almost have whiplash. “I believe it was your turn to ask me something.”
I almost ask him to elaborate more on what was going through his mind when I was being marked, but ultimately decide against it. If he wanted me to know the details of what those thoughts were, he would’ve shared them. Maybe I’d rather not know. Safer this way.
But there’s another question I want to know the answer to. My time has suddenly felt so short. The risks of taking chances less than they’ve ever been.
I’m losing everything anyway. What does it matter if I am bold? Brash?
“Have you ever been in love?” I ask.
His eyes widen slightly. Ilryth drifts back to where we sat previously, staring out. “I’m twenty-seven years of age. Like you, I’m not a stranger to matters of the heart. Though, it sounds like, unlike you, I have not found anyone serious.” He sighs. I resist the urge to tell him Charles was nothing but damage. “Though that will have to happen soon. As you know, I need to wed in short order. I’ve postponed while managing your upcoming sacrifice, but that excuse will run out soon.”
The idea of him marrying fills me with an odd sense of sorrow. The sea is stiller, the swirling rot denser. A wondering of what might have been…but never really could have been—not in this world, at least—overcomes me.
“That’s not what I asked though,” I remind him gently, drifting over to his side. The urge to take his hand is overwhelming. I’ve held it so many times. And yet now, I’m held back. Now is different, somehow.
“I…I have no current prospects for a wife.” The words seem difficult for him to say initially. He shifts and our fingers brush again, sending jolts up my spine.
“That’sstillnot what I asked.” A little firmer. I’m not backing down. “Have you been in love? Are you?”
“There might be someone I’m interested in,” he admits, attention dropping to our knuckles brushing together slightly in the currents. My chest tightens. “But it’s complicated.”
“I see,” I say softly. I want to ask more. But he doesn’t let me.
“Tell me about how the lighthouses work?” Ilryth sits, as if the tension was never there to begin with. As though my question meant nothing.
Biting back a sigh, I sit next to him. My thigh brushes against his tail. He doesn’t move away. I read into it deeply as I indulge his question.
“There’s a water wheel that turns a mechanism within the lighthouse. The attendants must…” I tell him all I can remember of lighthouses. Most of my knowledge comes from basic, educational memories that I think everyone in Tenvrath knows—not from my personal experience. Which is odd, knowing that I was a lighthouse attendant, for a time.
Our conversation ebbs and flows like the tides, each topic giving way to the next effortlessly. We are two ships on a calm sea, moving in unison, carried by the same wind. Never in my life has it been so easy to talk with someone about everything. I imagine, had we been using our mouths to speak, our throats would’ve been sore by now.
