“Well, come out for some fresh air then. One of the sailors has offered to give us a tour of—”
“Ceriwyn,” Adeline cut in, a little harsher than she meant to. Her own raised voice beat a dull throb into her forehead, and she closed her eyes against it. When she opened them, Ceri’s smile was gentler, the light behind it dimmed as though mindful of Adeline’s days of marinating in the shadows. When Adeline spoke, she tried to return the favour, to soften the bite of her harsh words. “I don’t want to eat. I don’t want fresh air. I want to be alone.”
Ceri seemed to consider this a moment, giving Adeline a deep, assessing look and then nodding slowly to herself.
“No,” she said.
She turned back to the trunk and continued rooting around until she found a comb and a little box of hairpins. Adeline could only watch her, agape.
“Ceri, I’m not—”
“Look,” Ceri interrupted, turning to face her with a sigh. She took another deep, steadying breath and sank onto Adeline’s bed, careful not to upset the neatly spread dress or the box of hairpins atop it. Adeline eyed her warily, but did not move from her spot by the door as Ceri smoothed her hands out over her own lap, pulling taut at the pleats in her skirt.
When she finally spoke, her voice was different. Quieter, but also older somehow, with less of her usual spirit woven through.
“I won’t say I know how you feel, Adeline. Grief is a strange beast.”
Adeline’s next breath broke; jagged. An inhale that stuck painfully in her throat and calcified.
Grief.
She hadn’t named it; the thing that pressed on her entire being, that buckled her knees with every step that took her further away from Eisalaan. Heavy on her thoughts and her body, on her very skin. Her eyes ached with it, her blood thick with it, so heavy she couldn’t quite bear the weight.
She forced a breath through the lump in her throat, aware that her chest might very well cave in if she didn’t try. The sound was a dry gasp, and it didn’t ease the ache in her lungs whatsoever.
If Ceri noticed, she went on regardless, “I don’t know how you feel, but I know how I felt. When I lost my mother. When I lost my father. When I lost my home.”
Adeline’s chest pinched, the pain of it dissolving into her veins to pump alongside that other thing: the grief. It wasn’t quite guilt, not like what she felt when she looked at Kai—but similar. Shame, perhaps. Because she knew she wasn’t the first person to lose a loved one. Knew that many others—people she cared for deeply—had lost that and so much more. Ceri and Kai, the Merrow; their losses, individual and collective, were unimaginable. They’d lost everything.
Ceri looked up, and the furrow of her brow was so strikingly like her brother’s own serious frown that Adeline had to look away.
“I’m not comparing,” Ceri said softly.
“I know,” said Adeline—even though personally,shehad been comparing.
“I’m just saying; you can’t waste away in the dark.”
“Why not?”
She said it mildly, almost absentmindedly, and she could tell Ceri hadn’t expected the question by the way her brows flicked up—but it didn’t seem to throw her either. She nodded, not in answer but deep in thought, giving the throwaway remark the consideration it deserved. Finally, she gave a light shrug of one shoulder and shook her head.
“Because you can’t. Because life goes on, with or without you. And I say that as someone who learned that lesson in perhaps the worst way possible. Ididwaste away in the dark, we all did, for nigh on six hundred years. And lifedidgo on without us. And when I came out—in a strange way, I still craved that stillness, that numbness. Maybe we all did, I don’t know.” Her frown deepened, the tension ageing her just as her sorrow had. “We don’t really talk about it; not our strong suit as a people, I suppose. We couldn’t go back, though, none of us. Because we needed to feel something, and we needed the sun on our skin, and we needed each other.”
That was the difference, Adeline thought. She’dwillinglywalked away from those who needed her. Pushed away those she needed. Perhaps sensing the direction of her thoughts, Ceri stood and crossed to her, gently curving her hand around Adeline’s so she could pry the door from her grasp and let it shut with a soft click.
“Learn from me, Adeline. Don’t waste away.”
“You didn’t have a choice.”
Adeline was mildly alarmed to find her voice thin and broken. Was she crying? When hadthatstarted?
But Ceri only smiled.
“You’re right,” she said. “But you do.”
???
TheArabideaewas the oldest ship of the Empress Vanjir’s fleet—or so Adeline had heard from its First Mate. Pike was a broad, sun-worn man with thick, ropey arms and shining blonde curls that would put a baby cherub to shame. He’d become Ceriwyn’s shadow these last few days aboard theArabideae, popping up wherever she settled and treating her to long, slightly tedious monologues about life on the waves and, in his own words, “his mistress, the sea.”
