She asked me why I couldn’t understand. Why I wanted her to leave Ymirskald. Why I couldn’t just let her stay.
I said what I thought was true. “Why can’t you plan aboard theBlack Marrow? Nerina—take all the time you need. I’ll give you space, I’ll give you anything, just… don’t stay here. Not in this place. Not with him.”
Her shoulders squared instead of easing. The fire in her eyes made my chest ache.
“No, Alaric. This time—it’s my choice. My whole life, I’ve been told where to go, what to do, who to be. The Tidekeepers. My mother. Even you.” Her chin lifted, defiant. “But staying here? That was mine.”
She stepped closer, voice steadier than I have ever heard. “I’m not staying here for him or leaving for you. I have to do this for myself.”
Her words cut, but beneath the steel I saw the cracks—the weight pressing against her shoulders, the ache she carried alone. She was hurting.
I swallowed hard, fighting past the bitterness clawing my throat. “If you want to fight them—if you want answers, vengeance, justice—then let me help you. We’ll make a plan. Together.”
Her eyes flickered, shadows and fire warring inside them. “I don’t even know where to start,” she whispered.
I stepped closer, unable to stop myself. “Then let me help you. You don’t have to do this alone.”
I wanted her to see it—that my plea wasn’t just about Veyrion. Not just about the war festering between us. It was about her. About the way I couldn’t stand to watch her breaking.
But her jaw set. “I have to stay here, Alaric. I don’t know who I am anymore, and I won’t find out by running. Not this time.”
I stepped closer, lowering my voice until it was only for her. “Then stay,” I said. “I won’t stop you. But I won’t walk away either.”
I didn’t add the rest—that I’d rather rot on foreign shores than lose sight of her again.
Her silence pressed in until the air felt tight in my lungs. And when she finally spoke, her voice trembled against the stones. She asked about my past. I knew what Veyrion had told her. I knew what she feared. So I gave her the only thing I had left to offer.
The truth.
“I won’t stand here and pretend I’m a good man,” I said, my voice raw. “I’m not. I never claimed to be. But I’m notthatman anymore.”
She just stared at me. Firelight flickered across her face—unreadable—until at last she spoke. “Tell me everything,” shesaid softly, but there was iron in it. “The truth. No half-truths. No more secrets.”
I’d never spoken it aloud before. Not even to myself in the dark, where silence was easier than memory. Now it spilled out like rot from a wound I’d hidden too long—ugly, festering, impossible to stop once it started.
The truth I’d buried beneath sea and shadow. The truth she deserved. Even if it ruined what little might have been left between us.
“I didn’t want eternity for myself,” I rasped, my chest tightening, body shuddering. “I wanted it forher. My mother.”
I told Nerina how every raid, every slaughter, every sacred place I desecrated had been for my mother. Not for coin. Not for glory. For her. For more time.
“My father taught me how to be a pirate before I could even hold a blade,” I said, bitterness on my tongue. “He taught me how to lie. How to cheat. How to steal.”
I dragged in a ragged breath. “And my mother’s greatest fear—the thing that kept her up at night—was that I would grow into him. That I would lose whatever light she thought she saw in me.”
I let out a hollow laugh. “And in the end, she was right.”
I remembered the Sanctuary of Milos—their songs turning to screams as I tore apart something meant to be holy. Where Ispilled blood into waters so ancient and sacred the sea itself recoiled.
My hands trembled. I pressed them into my knees, trying to still them.
“I told myself it was worth it,” I whispered, voice cracking. I dragged a hand over my face, nails biting into my skin. “But it wasn’t.”
The admission shattered something inside me.
“She died sick. Alone. While her foolish son scoured the seas chasing lies—too blinded by arrogance to simply stay with her—” My voice broke, and I had to swallow hard before I could finish. “—to simply hold her hand. To be there.”
A bitter laugh left me. “I never even got to say goodbye.”
