The opportunity had presented itself when King Darias appeared in his chambers a week ago with the offer to reinstate him in the Navy. They’d reached a deal of sorts. At the Succession, King Darias had announced the launch of a special fleet within the Navy dedicated to track down and destroy what remained of Kerlan’s spies in Bregon. Ramson had watched from the shadows.
It was mostly the ocean, here, that brought back so many memories. The waters were warmer in the south of Bregon, and Ramson remembered standing at the edge of his broken-down house by the beach, dreaming of the day that a figure that was his father would return to him and his mother.
His horse’s steps were soft in the sand, and it wasn’t long before he spotted the hill. His knuckles whitened on his reins. His father hadn’t lied; he could make out the white heathers, starkly and vibrantly alive on an otherwise barren shore.
Ramson dismounted and walked to the hill. He carried a small jar tucked carefully beneath his arms.
I suppose you’ll die unknown and irrelevant, your unmarked body rotting along the sewage of the Dams.
Just like your whore of a mother.
Ramson knelt by the unmarked grave. He threaded a hand through the fine, soft sands, the clumps of wild grasses and white flowers that covered the hill like a gods-woven blanket.
Before, his greatest fear had been that he would never amount to anything in his life. That he would die a bastard son of a father who despised him, a man made of lies and deceit and forged by trades of blood. He had loathed his birthplace, the shameful secret that had earned him whispers ofpacksaddle sonandillegitimate childlike knives in his back.
It had occurred to him, in the moments after he’d walked out of Godhallem with his new mission, that he could turn his life story around. He could fabricate a tale of his mother as a duchess from a distant town to whoever cared to ask; he could have requested to retrieve her remains and have them buried in the highest burial site in his kingdom.
But, Ramson thought, running his fingers through the little heather flowers, he didn’t need that. He’d had enough of lies; he’d had enough of pretending to be someone he simply wasn’t.
“I’m back, Mam,” Ramson said quietly. “I’m sorry it took so long.”
The little white heathers fluttered with a gentle breeze.
Once, a long time ago, beneath a blistering noon sun and with the warmth of a wooden jetty at his back, Jonah Fisher had told Ramson to live for himself. Jonah had spoken the words that would define Ramson’s trajectory and haunt his dreams even long after the boy was gone.
Your heart is your compass.
But what happened if your heart pulled in two different directions?
The Whitewaves stretched tauntingly into the horizon. He’d gazed out from the balcony of his private chambers the day she had left, the outlines of Ana’s ships seared into his mind long after they’d disappeared.
Ramson shut his eyes and swallowed, and the crashing of the waves thrust memories pounding into his head, flipping faster and faster like the pages of a book. He’d thought he’d made the right choice, but whenever he closed his eyes,shewas all that he could think of, the fierce glare of her eyes, the stubborn set to her chin, the tilt of her head that beckoned a challenge at him.
He’d let himself go that night, under the torrents of rain and thunder and wind that still raged in his chest. They had clashed like water to fire, and he’d tasted the hunger and conflict on her lips, so close to his own desperation.
She had asked for his help that day, right before the Succession, and it was as close to pleading as he’d seen her come. And Ramson had known he’d made the right choice then—yet that certainty had begun to erode with each passing day.
She was to lead Cyrilia—he believed it—and there would be no space in her life for him. He would not abandon everything he had wanted and worked for his entire life to give way to his feelings.
Ramson ran another hand through the white heather before standing and making his way to the sea.
It was strange, he thought as he stood on the white sands of his past, gazing out at the seas and remembering his most fervent, crazed childhood dreams. He’d wanted to lead the Bregonian Navy. And he’d wanted to stand at the edge of the ocean, watching the sea swallow the sun with his father.
It was as though the gods had granted his wildest dreams with the most ironic twist of fate. He had everything he wanted. And he stood now, watching the waves with the ashes of his father.
But someday, when I am gone, look from the sky to the shining sea, across the magnificence of this kingdom our ancestors have built from the ground. And perhaps, then, you will know a little of how it feels.
The uniform weighed on his shoulders, his new task heavy on his mind. He’d spent his life running away from his father, from Kerlan, from becoming anything those men had ever stood for. But Ramson wondered, as he watched the waves push and pull at the shore, whether he had simply run in a full circle and ended up right back at the beginning, trying to undo the damage those two men had caused in his life, in this world.
Jonah had asked him to live for himself. Ramson wasn’t sure he could grasp that meaning yet—not as long as any remnants of his father’s or Kerlan’s legacy lived on to see another day.
If this was what he needed to do, if this was what he logically thought was therightthing to do…then why did his heart seem to pull in another direction?
The ocean stretched vast and lonely before him, and in that moment, Ramson knew that he was a man with everything and nothing all at once.
He scattered the contents of the jar, watching as the ashes of his father spread over the ocean breeze and disappeared, swallowed by the endless, empty sky.
EPILOGUE
