Quint pushes it right back. “You haven’t eaten since this morning,” he presses.
Every muscle in my body is taut, and every breath I inhale feels like a battle. Forget eating. Forgeteverything. They tried to kill mybrother. I long to find a horse and a crossbow and ride into the Royal Sector and shoot every consul I can find.
I’d be dead—or captured—before I made it through the gates.
“Sommer said the brigantines didn’t return,” Quint says. “Our sailors have never been able to navigate the rough seas southwest of Sunkeep, so there’s no reason to assume they would suddenly be able to now. Captain Blakemore surely would have spotted brigantines long before they were a threat. Prince Corrick would know thatyouwouldn’t send warships after him. I have to believe Captain Blakemore would be able to use his nautical skills to evade them in unfamiliar waters—and those ships were destroyed in the rough seas just like so many others.”
I’ve had these thoughts, too. They feed me a few crumbs of hope.
But I want more than crumbs. I want more than the hope that warships simply sank.
“Is this more of your perpetual optimism?” I ask, and as soon as I say it, I see the tiniest flinch in his eyes.
I frown. “That’s not condemnation. I envy it.”
He’s quiet for a minute. “If the consuls believed those warships were successful, they would have been bragging about their victory right along with the claims they’ve already made. There’s a reason this hasn’t been made public. They don’t want to advertise failure.”
Also true.
It still does little to ease the burn of anger and worry in my heart.
Is this my fate? To have everyone I love taken away from me?
“You said yesterday that you must be serving some kind of penance.” I draw a heavy breath so my voice doesn’t break. “Is this mine?”
“For what?”
“For everything.” My fingers press into the table. “For everything I’ve done wrong.”
He shifts closer, and his hand brushes over mine. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”
I sent Corrick away.I swallow, and my throat is tight.
“Do you think he’s dead?” I say.
It’s the first time I’ve spoken these words, and they fall like a stone into a pond. The silence that follows is deafening, accented by the crack of the fire in the hearth.
The fact that he doesn’t answer immediately makes me assume the worst. I look up and find Quint studying me in the candlelight.
My chest clenches. “You do,” I whisper.
“No. I was debating whether to share a story. I thought it may provide some . . . hope.”
I frown. “Then why were you debating?”
“Because it doesn’t have a happy ending. It might not offer any hope at all.”
My heart gives a lurch, and I want to refuse. But he hasn’t left my side all day, and I keep thinking of the way his hand fell on my shoulder when we were questioning Sommer. He misses Corrick, too. I run a damp hand over the back of my neck and say, “Does it giveyouhope?”
“I won’t know until you hear it.”
I draw a long breath. “Very well. Go ahead.”
“When my grandmother was young, she had a sister who disappeared in the woods when they were picking flowers. She said she was quite distraught, because she and her sister had been very close. Couldn’t be consoled, really. Her mother, too. Her brother and her father had half the town come out to help look for thesister, and everyone kept reassuring them that they would find her. So many people were looking.”
I study him. He already told me the story didn’t have a happy ending. “They didn’t find her?”
“They found her body. She’d been killed by a wild animal.”
