So I look at him and smile, and it must seem like a yes, for his features soften.
“Will you come fishing with me?” His request is so unexpected that I feel my brows raise and his half smile wavers as if he cannot tell what my answer will be.
I do not want to fish. I want to scream at him and demand he do better. I want to scream at the sky and sob until my eyes and nose are raw.
“If it is important to you, I will.”
“Then we will go now.”
And he looks so boyish when he bites his lip that my heart aches to comfort him, but I do not. Because I must not. Not only because his every betrayal shreds my heart into more tiny pieces but because I must kill him with my own hands and imprison his soul. There is no other way. I must betray him as he has betrayed me.
“Whatever course you take, Coralys.” He pauses, swallows, and then looks me directly in the eye. And I feel a tingling sensation down my spine, for it is as if he can see to my heart. “Whatever course. Please know I absolve you of guilt.”
And then he turns and leads me along the shore, scooping up the marlin as he passes, and I have the oddest sensation that he can do exactly that.
We fish and it hurts that we almost fit together. It rubs atme like a too-small shoe, because we two could have made an excellent pairing, a strong partnership in any circumstance but this one.
But we are on opposite sides in an impossible war.
We do not eat supper. We are neither of us hungry. The fish go into a tide pool where they’ll wait for Oke to either kill and smoke them or set them free.
We slip, instead, into dry clothing and drape ourselves like seaweed over the large bed, and I’m not sure if he sleeps, but once again, I do not.
I do, however, dream. I dream of a sea where instead of fish, you pull possibilities free. I pull out Lieve’s soul and we live in this cottage happily together swimming and fishing. But Lieve of the dream is hollow and lifeless as if my memory cannot do him justice. And the life I see in my imagination feels just as empty. When I finally hear Oke’s breath even out, I bite my lip hard and hope that I do not lose my courage when I do what comes next.
Chapter Fourteen
Islip from Oke’s warm bed into the chill of the hour before dawn. The cold nips at my flesh and a last stealthy glance at him bites at my conscience, but whatever I owe him for these past weeks pales beside what I owe my people and the memory of Lieve.
I mean to leave Oke then, but he rouses, his eyes narrowing when he sees me creeping from the bed. He’s quick to join me despite his wound. I try very hard not to look at it. It will be my one advantage against him if he becomes aware of what I mean to do.
“I must leave to deal with a matter today,” he says mildly as we check my nets for fish, hauling them up dripping and heavy in the rose-pink light of morning. My fingers are growing calluses like his from handling the rough ropes. He guides my work, teaching me as we go with small gesturesand nods. “Would you come with me? Or would you remain here and when I return we can discuss together my plans to build a refuge for our people?”
It’s an offer of a truce. And I wish I could take it. But when I think of his refuge, all I think is Refuge from what? For is he not the source of so many of my people’s woes? Is he not the one who has brought storm and calamity upon us?
He will be dead and that will be the end of it.
“And where do you go, husband?” I ask, begging my face not to show the path my mind has taken. I gather the fish from the net and put them in a reed basket. They flop and dance in the crisp morning air, flinging arcs of water droplets out like golden strings of pearls in the morning sun. I must brace my feet on rounded stones as I catch them and slide them back in place.
And I realize in this moment that it is not only that I am angry and hurt beyond expressing. I am also afraid. I see in him the end of my people, my culture, my very islands. All at the hand of their god. For who is there on whom to call, when your god cannot help? Where do your prayers go, when your god is not listening?
And I cannot leave my beloved people to the fear that has me so tightly in its grip. I must go. I must set this in motion. And I must not let him know what I am about.
“I must treat with my enemies,” he says gently, an echo of my mental list, but he does not look at me. Gold burnishes his face and glints in his green eyes, and he is so sober he could be one of the guarding statues. “I must carve out a little more time for us to act.”
“I wish you well,” I say, not meeting his eyes, tasting the lie on my tongue.
He bobs his head in acknowledgment but says nothing more.
And yet he still hovers at my side all day—there as I clean fish and cook them, as I wash clothing and hang it to dry, as I sweep the house. When I turn, I brush against him; when I lean over something to study it, I feel his breath on my neck. He helps me at each task with gentle efficiency until I feel like I might scream. I need him togo. I do not dare twist my hand and shift realms with him here. He would follow. I know it. And then what? Would he guess my purpose? Would he find a way to stop me? I think this is exactly why he remains so close and so sharp-eyed.
It is midafternoon and the day has grown bright and furious when I finally run out of things to do and he moves in front of me so that I have to look into his jade eyes.
“I beg you forget your revenge,” he says, and his jaw clenches as if this is taking an effort to ask. He hunches forward as he speaks, the muscles of his shoulders seeming larger with the movement and its accompanying intensity.
He knows, then. Or he suspects. A surge of cold fear lances through me, flooding me from forehead to feet.
“You wish for it still, do you not? To have your revenge on me. To destroy my plans and bring me down. Because of the calamity your people face, the death of your husband, the loss of your crown.”
