“Aye,” he replies, a smile tugging at his lips. “You should’ve.”
He walks me to the forward ladder leading into the orlop, then towards the back of the ship. At the end of it, we use the ladder to get into the galley, then slip past the wooden table and climb the narrow ladder tucked against the back wall, emerging into the hallway in the quarterdeck.
“Where are we going?” I ask him in a low voice as I follow him down the empty corridor.
“My cabin,” he replies as he reaches the door and turns the knob, then keeps the door open for me to pass through.
Once inside, he walks towards the working desk in long strides and takes one of the leather-wrapped notebooks. I knit my brows together as I close the door behind me carefully, not wanting to alert anyone to our being here, and follow him to the desk.
“Here,” He holds the notebook out for me to grab. “I know you can’t read, but you’ll be able to understand anyway. You’re pretty smart.”
I meet his eyes for a brief moment and then take it from his hands. The leather string comes loose easily beneath my fingers, and when I open the cover, the pages inside reveal lines of careful black ink. The handwriting is neat at first, but as I reach the end, it turns messy and looks rushed, as if the person who wrote them was running out of time.
“They’re my journals,” he explains.
I turn the pages slowly, even though the words themselves mean nothing to me. Yet I can tell that he wrote a lot, and I canalso tell that he wrote about me. I recognize the letters of my name, as my mother taught me to write it in the sand when I was little. As I flip to the next page, Sable’s shadow leans closer.
“A girl boarded the ship tonight,” Sable reads. “She was escaping hunters.”
My breath catches. This was from the night I boarded the ship. Even though I can’t remember how I ended up on the ship, I remember him telling me he saw me do it. The shadow’s finger traces further down the page.
“She claims she is not a siren, but I know she is lying.”
A smile tugs at my lips at the memory. He knew what I was from the very first meeting.
“Siren.”
A row of question marks trails after it. The next page is completely messy, with many words being stretched out, and notes added between the lines.
“Shadow gone.”
“What did I fucking do to her in the hold?”
He told me he can’t really remember what he does when his shadow is gone. But the way he writes about it now makes my chest tighten. In the crow’s nest, a few days after the incident in the hold, he told me that he wasn’t himself that day, and I remember it sounding like a confession. It all makes sense now.
“My shadow gifted her a dress. At least I do not remember giving her one. It gets worse.”
“She looks beautiful in it. She is beautiful.”
At the compliment, I lift my gaze from the journal to his face. Our eyes meet, and I find myself smiling at him, something warm and quiet settling in my chest. I can’t believe he has thought this way about me all this time, that he never truly saw me as a threat or someone he despises.
Sable’s shadow lowers his head again, his attention returning to the journal.
“Remember: She helped us through the intermaria,” he continues to read for me.
“I will hold the tribunal when the sun is the highest. Hopefully the shadows of the crew will be there.”
By the seas. Even that decision was made to protect me. He knew the crew would be less likely to vote against me if their shadows were there.
“My shadow jumped after her before I could.”
At the memory of almost drowning, a shiver runs down my spine. I remember how he looked at me right before he jumped, how his eyes darkened, and how an invisible force pushed me upward, toward the surface, toward Sable. My breath catches. It was him. Always him.
The shadow turns another page, continuing to read out loud.
“We arrived back home. Cailia seems to like Eryse. She said we have to sail to the Sea of the First Song.”
I almost laugh at that. It didn’t feel like she liked me from the very start, always calling me Siren instead of my actual name, but she began to loosen up when the sea told her that Sable’s fate and mine are somehow intertwined.
