He smiles at each one before flinging most back.
“Don’t you need to sell them?” I ask him, but if he is taking fish to market, he never tells me and he never seems to be gone long enough to sail to a harbor, though he brings home oil, wheat, wine, and once even lemons, stocking our small kitchen with them one after another.
If he meets with his god, I do not see it, and if he sends word by messenger bird, I catch no glimpse of it.
When he is gone, I work around the island under a bank of sadness, indulge in crying jags where none but the gulls and the statues can hear me, and when I am tired with weeping, I rage and throw things at the silent statues. I dwell often on my theories and the conclusions I have drawn, thinking them through first one way and then another until I am utterly certain in myself that I must find a way to destroy Okeanos. And that I must find a way to draw my reluctant husband into it with me. But though I try to plan it out, none of the plans I think through seem sufficient to turn his heart or trick him. I have never so deviously manipulated another person before. I have always simply ordered and it was done, but now I must do a thing new to me and I must do it perfectly the first time.
I sit and stare at small things—minnows ebbing and flowing in small schools where they can escape the sudden illumination of the sun, a tiny bird snatching up curling strands of grass, the clouds configuring themselves first one way, then another. And I mull on how I will convince my husband to confess all to me, and how I might in turn maneuver him into taking up arms with me against his master. There will be a way. And I will find it.
Two weeks after our confrontation, Oke offers me a chiton of fine linen—still shorter than I find dignified, but while it is appropriate for a wife of a fisherman in its simple cut, it is soft and the shoulders are clasped with a pair of bone fibula pins. These are well crafted and could easily belong to a merchant’s wife. I raise my eyebrows at them and wonder if he has sold a pearl. If he has, I would have asked for sandals instead, as I have returned his to him and my feet are bare as I slip out over the rocks and memorize the paths to the tide pools. But I thank him prettily for his efforts and I catch his half-hidden smile that evening when I wear the chiton over our evening meal. And I try very hard not to feel guilty about how I will use him.
“I brought you an orange also,” he tells me in the way he has that is both shy and strangely sweet.
He hands it to me, and I look at it. He’s kept to what he said he would do and left me time to grieve without interruption, treating me with care as if he believes I am recovering from a long illness. But I cannot find it in my heart to be grateful. I am frustrated beyond words. For every day that herefuses to admit his true nature to me, I lose a day where I might have planned how to use it for his god’s downfall.
“If this orange is an apology, I do not want your apology,” I tell him frankly. “What I want is your trust. You have brought me here to your island—your home, not mine. You have dressed me in clothing you have chosen. Given me tasks that you selected. You know all my past and hold my future entirely in your hands and yet you will give me no truths in return. Not even an answer about your true nature.”
He swallows and looks out to the sea—as he so often does. His emotions pass one after another over his face like squalls over the sea, but to my annoyance, he remains gracious as he always is, never short with me, unfailingly kind, and utterly unmoved.
“Are you done mourning, then, Coralys?” he asks me gravely. “Would you not want just a few more weeks before we consummate our marriage in full?”
I swallow, my cheeks going hot at the heated look suddenly weighting his gaze. I am not, in fact, ready for that. It would feel like a betrayal to Lieve. And how can he suggest it when his body is mangled and broken?
“Are you not at ease in my company?” he presses. “Do you not feel a kind of harmony as we work side by side in the many tasks that make up our life here? You watch me for signs of fever. For my godwound turning bad. For the wince I make whenever I lift something heavy. Do you think I do not see? That is friendship. We could be happy, I think, you and I.”
Without meaning to, my mind instantly compares him to Lieve, but it feels as impossible as comparing a fish to a bird. They are not the same. They cannot be. My beloved husband was a mortal man and this new husband of mine is as much above a mortal as a racehorse is above a goat.
“You mistake the point,” I tell him firmly. “For you have not forgotten your purpose any more than I have, and no amount of harmony between us will matter in the end if you are god touched and must sail off after the wishes of your deity. Until you confess as much to me, the balance of our power swings entirely to you, and that I cannot allow.”
He winces, but still he does not confess. I am insulted that he thinks to keep it from me.
And so, I am diligent. I mend nets. I gather fish. I cook what we need and put the rest with his catch in reed baskets to be taken wherever he takes it, but I am consumed by an ever-growing agitation toactthat mixes with my salty grief and bitter resentment.
It comes to a head on the third week. I open a fish with the knife, skimming through its silver scales, watching blade and skin flash equally in the bright sun—and then, to my horror, the flesh splits open and in the mouth of the fish is a single copper coin.
I swallow hard and draw out the coin from the fish’s mouth with reluctant fingers. It is identical to the omen before the storm, a Crocus Isles coin, stamped with the face of Okeanos. I stare at it a long time before I decide.
I can wait no longer.
This time when I bite my fist and curl on my side of the bed at night—as I do every night—I do not cry myself to sleep. This time, I am waiting. I am going to test his magic for myself. He will not share his secrets with me, and so I must learn to use it myself. I must find a way to his god to take my revenge.
It is a very long time until Oke’s breath evens out and I feel his body melt into the bed beside me. I am about to sneak from the embrace of the ragged blankets when he sits up with a start.
He’s moving in the moonlight before I can react, flinging himself from the bed, half-dressed and barefoot. He limps out the door without a word, leaving it to bang in the wind behind him. I try to follow him. After all, he may be going to his god, but by the time I reach the door, he is out of sight.
I wait with my breath held, watching the water, but if he sails away on his boat, I do not see the gleam of white sail.
I wait what seems to be an hour and then one more just to be sure he is really gone. If I am to try something reckless and possibly fail at it, I do not want an audience. Eventually I slip from the warmth of the bed and out into the night. If he is not on the shore and not here, then this is my chance.
I do not know why I think I might work his magic. I have never been taught any such thing and I feel a bit of a fool as I make my way down to the dock through the bite of the night air, and yet… I saw his cousin do it, too.
It can be done.
And if they can move from place to place with the twistof a hand, then can I not try it, too? I do not know what I will do with such power. But I know I cannot revenge myself on gods from this fair isle. And Oke will not take me home. He has said so. And—most relevant of all—now that I know disaster looms once more for my people, I cannot help but try to return to them by any means.
Something twists in my belly at the thought of the Crocus Isles in trouble. Something that links me still to that place. It’s my blood and my bones and every happy memory I ever had, and while a queen has few friends, still there are those of whom I am truly fond. They may be guards and palace staff and minor nobles who hardly dare speak of what is dear to their hearts with someone of my station, but I have watched them live and grow and bear children as the years unfolded and the thought of any of them in distress etches pain across my heart.
Every choice I have ever made has been for them. What will happen if I do get my vengeance against the gods? Will they suffer for it? I must consider this before I act.
