“Yes, you! As far as your suitors know, you’re walking into your courtships with the aim of marriage. None of these poor saps know they don’t have a chance. That you’re just passing the time with them until you can turn tail and race home.”
“I’m trying to protect my father and my country. You know what’s at stake.”
Lang held up his hands. “And I’m trying to protect millions of innocent people. You’re lying for a good reason, just like I did. Are we really that different?”
I stepped close to him, jutting a finger at his chest. “My plan didn’t put anyone’s safety at risk.”
“Selah, you were never in danger.” Lang bent his head, casting both of us in shadow. A few droplets of rain trembled in his hair. “I had everything under control before y— Well, before.” His face was close to mine, earnest enough to infuriate me.
My breath left me in a rush. Red burned my neck and cheeks.
“Do not treat me like a child,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’m not a fool, and you are not all-knowing. Anything could’ve happened while I was stumbling around blind.”
“I would’ve kept you safe.” He swallowed, and his throat bobbed. “I would have.”
I turned back to the bread, too angry to look at him anymore. Angry at his lies. Angry at my own weakness.
Lang came closer to me, two steps in the silent kitchen. I paused, wrist-deep in my work. When he put his hands on my shoulders, heat spread over my skin, furious and faltering.
“I don’t mind if you’re angry.” Lang’s thumbs stretched and tensed against my shoulder blades. He was close enough I could feel the words against the back of my neck. “I can take your anger. I just can’t take you shutting me out.”
“You were guilty of that long before I was, Lang.” I closed my eyes tightly. “I trusted you from the beginning. You were the one who wouldn’t let me in.” I looked over my shoulder and met his gaze. “And now you’re going to have to wait while I come to terms with this.”
My skin was colder when his hands fell away from it.
3
At dinner, the crew members were cheerful, warmed by their food and one another’s company. By this, only her second night aboard, Anya had already charmed them all; her sunshine-bright beauty had drawn their attention, but it was her genuine kindness that had everyone eager to make room for her as they’d once done for me. J.J. was attached to her side, his hazel eyes downcast and shy but lighting up every time Anya spoke to him.
Even Perrault, my protocol officer, seemed won over by her. I caught him glancing between Anya and me and the folder beside his plate, his expression almost wistful. Presumably, he’d brought the folder to discuss my next suitor—Fritz, of Katz Castle. I couldn’t imagine a topic I’d less rather discuss.
Did Perrault wish Anya were his charge? Was he thinking of how much easier his job would have been had he been tasked with marrying her off, instead of me?
I had sat where Anya sat, once. The crew’s shiny new toy, welcomed and admired. But I couldn’t be her tonight. I couldn’t be that girl anymore.
Skop stood behind her now, hands instinctively protective on her shoulders, laughing at some joke Basile had made. Safe, with Skop at her back, Anya had gotten her happy ending. Mine had slipped through my fingers. I tried not to let myself dwell on the ways that was Anya’s fault.
But if Anya had taken my place tonight, it seemed only fair that I be allowed to choose a new one.
The galley was one space divided in two by a low wall. I could still see everyone sitting at the two long tables from the kitchen side of the galley. But it was all the retreat I could make without looking like a spoiled child. With chores and the dividing wall between us, I felt less smothered by their happiness.
“I can take care of it, Selah,” Will protested, hands hovering uncertain before him as I shooed him toward where the others sat, smiling the falsest smile I’d ever worn.
I caught Vishnu’s eye over Will’s shoulder as I turned back to work. The ocean waves tattooed across the handsome sailor’s forearm swelled and receded as he pushed a hand through his dark hair, and he dropped his eyes away.
He felt guilty.
Good, I thought. They all should.
Cobie always ate slightly apart from the others, standing sentry against the galley’s low dividing wall. Tonight, I mimicked her, eating as I worked.
I felt Lang’s eyes heavy on me, frustrated, impatient, curious. I refused to look at him.
When the dishes were finally clean, I slipped out of the galley, casting a glance over my shoulder at the crew huddled close together. Silver-haired Yasumaro and J.J. with his cap low over his head and Basile with his laugh a mile wide. They were a perfect circle beneath the lamplight, their happiness a golden halo above their heads.
I would ruin their evening if I stayed.
The part of me full of smug, self-righteous anger wanted to remain and force them to confront what they’d done. They deserved to have their comfort spoiled.
The other half of me—the miserable half, the guilty half, the betrayed half—just wanted to hide.
For the first time in weeks, I didn’t feel like one of them.
Lang met my gaze, a question in his eyes. Both he and Perrault half rose, Lang’s lips parting as if to speak, Perrault’s pretty face confused. He lifted the folder in his hands, as if in summons.
I shook my head at both of them, my breath leaving me in a rush, and pushed out into the night and the still-falling rain.
With my cabin door shut tight behind me, I heaved Godmother Althea’s book out of my trunk and retrieved the radio she’d smuggled me from where it lay hidden beneath the back endpaper.
My godmother had been my mother’s best friend, the angel watching over me for as long as I could remember. Missing her was like an ache in my bones.
I wouldn’t be able to speak to her out here on the sea; my little radio and I were too far from a tower to transmit a signal. But it could receive one, if Godmother was speaking into the radio on her end.
I hoped she would be. I longed for the comfort of her voice. I hadn’t heard from her since we’d spoken in Norge a few days earlier.
Torden had proposed to me that day. It might as well have been a hundred years ago.
I sat back against my headboard, swallowed hard, and switched on the radio.
Empty air filled the silence. I was still alone.
One tear and then another spilled down my cheeks as I sat on my bed, my weary limbs splayed out like a broken doll’s.
I’d cried too much lately. I wiped my eyes and nose fiercely, swallowed the lump in my throat, and replaced the radio inside the endpaper. I added another tick mark to the rows of marching lines that numbered the days since I’d left home and my father behind.
I closed my eyes and tried to envision how the marks would multiply as the days passed, weighing the time apart from my father against the choice I had made to help the Waldleute resist the Imperiya.
Daddy would never want me to turn my back on those I had the power to help. I had to believe this, had to believe my godmother would agree that the danger the Imperiya’s subjects faced outweighed my duty to race back to Potomac and stand against my stepmother.
I opened the storybook over my lap and tried to read, to dwell on things that would give me comfort. On my father, on starlit nights on his balcony with him and my mother.