The crew began to shift to life slowly after that—the fold of paper in Andersen’s hands, the wash of water over a pot as Will tended to what I’d left back in the kitchen, a yawn escaping J.J. as he slumped on his bench.
“Thank you, Perrault.” I rose quickly and made for the door. “I’ll keep all this in mind.”
But I knew better. I would not keep the knowledge. The dread of what lay in wait would keep me.
Perrault had tried to soothe me. But I could not help imagining the tsarytsya’s eyes on me as we neared the edge of her world.
I sensed her watching as I listened out for Godmother Althea at night on my radio; it was enough to still me when Perrault took me aside during the day because he’d remembered a Yotne phrase he wanted to teach me, or a minor point of etiquette I might find helpful.
I wondered what color the tsarytsya’s eyes were. Would they be amber, the color of a wolf’s? Gray, the color of her Imperiya?
They were every color, I knew, of as many shades as she had spies. A fearful spectrum of blue to black, watching from riverbanks and castle corners.
The fear of them kept sleep from me the night before we reached Shvartsval’d. Anya rested beside me, her expression serene in the moonlight, but I couldn’t follow her.
Something about the calm of her mouth and her breathing gnawed at me. Anya’s peace aggravated the itch beneath my skin.
Careful not to wake her, I rolled out of our bed and slunk upstairs to the deck, barefoot and bare-armed in defiance of the night’s chill. It was black as pitch out on deck. Even with the thumbnail of moon overhead, nights like tonight made me understand the word Shvartsval’d—Black Forest.
The trees here stood tall; the tsarytsya’s woodcutters had not ventured this far into the terytoriya. I wondered what they’d been afraid of.
I’d expected to find Homer or Yasumaro on deck. But it was him. I froze, hand on the stair rail, toes digging into the rough wood grain.
Lang was at the helm.
I backed down the forecastle stairs on tiptoe, silent as the night, and went back the way I came.
I should sleep. I would go back to my room and crawl into bed next to Anya and stare at the ceiling for six hours if I had to.
But I stopped at Lang’s door.
I had never been in his room before. And I’d had no intention of accepting his guilty-conscience offer to repay his offense by invading his privacy whenever I liked.
Captain’s quarters, he’d said that first day, shaking his head, as if he couldn’t believe it, either.
I tried the knob, and found it unlocked.
I crossed the threshold.
Slowly, I took in Lang’s bedroom. The bedclothes were drawn up but not tucked in tidily; on impulse, I yanked them down, exposing the fitted sheet over the mattress. Then I crossed to his wardrobe door and flung it open.
Shirts and trousers were hung inside—the plain things he wore on deck and the richer clothes he’d worn at court. My fingers traced a finely woven shirt and a rough-spun pair of pants and the jacket he’d worn to every ball we’d attended in England and at Asgard.
They all smelled of him—salt. Sweat. The ocean.
I took them off the rack, one by one, and flung them on the bed.
Opposite the closet was a beat-up wooden desk with a hutch above. The desktop was clear, so I reached for the clasp on the hutch’s cabinet doors.
I wasn’t looking for anything. I was merely determined to sack the room, to lay it bare, to leave him feeling as stripped and raw as he’d left me.
I ignored the voice that said Lang’s taking the radio wasn’t what had left me feeling so exposed, that retribution wasn’t what had finally drawn me over his threshold.
The release of the catch sent a flood of papers spilling out of the cabinet, onto the floor. I jumped back, startled, then crouched to collect them.
But I stopped short when I saw myself.
I’d come searching for Lang’s secrets. Instead, I saw myself mapped in paper and ink and charcoal on his floor; myself in profile, my face up close, my figure from afar. My nose and mouth and freckles and lashes as I bent over the sink in the kitchen; my hair tangled down my back and the muscles gathered in my arms as I gardened; the elegant slip of my shoulder into the gown I’d worn to the first tournament ball in England.
My fingers left dirt smudges on the papers. I stared at them, unmoving, for how long I didn’t know.
When I looked up, Lang stood at the threshold. I had not heard the change at the helm; I had not heard anything but my own racing thoughts.
His chest rose and fell, rapid and vulnerable, as he took in the upended room and me on the floor. I gripped the papers artlessly in my fingers, held them up, a helpless gesture.
“What—?” I began.
“Don’t.” Lang’s eyes were desperate. “Don’t ask me what they are.”
I swallowed, thinking of Anya and all the rest of the crew in bed. Of the weapons in the hold, of Asgard behind us and Katz Castle ahead and my father at home, of the radio that had spoken little but silence since I left Torden behind. Of his ring on my left hand, heavy as a hammer.
With Lang’s eyes on me, I felt the weight of the night in my very bones.
Lang’s throat bobbed. He rubbed at his eyes and two fine, dark lashes fell onto his cheek.
That night we’d stood talking late in Asgard’s darkened halls, I’d taken his fallen lashes and made a wish on them.
Here, in the dark, having breached the Imperiya’s gray shadow, wishing for Torden felt foolish. Like the childish daydream of a girl who had read too many fairy tales.
Either way, I didn’t dare draw close enough to touch Lang’s face. Not here, with the two of us feeling as if we were standing at the edge of the world.
The darkest, loneliest part of my heart was certain Torden was lost to me forever.
Was it wrong to find myself in someone else’s room? Or was it wise to accept that what was behind me was past, and take what comfort came my way?
I stared down at the sketches of me on the floor and in my grip, at the longing in every line, and wondered how I would draw Lang, if the pen were in my hands, if I had his talent. I took in his rumpled dark hair, the fine bones of his cheeks and jaw and hands, the elegant bow of his lips and the upturned tip of his nose.
I would sketch him like midnight, alluring and unknown. He was every question I was afraid to ask, every curiosity that had been forbidden to me from the outset of my journey.
My heart was a field planted with so many wants it was difficult to know what needed uprooting and what I should allow to remain.
Nothing was clear. Not my desires. Not the future. Not the difference between wish and hope and expectation.
Lang wet his lips and took a step nearer, then knelt a foot or two away, the sketches a puddle of paper as wide as an ocean between us.
Trembling, I drew back. When my spine collided with his bed, I rose just high enough to sit on the mattress I’d exposed.
Lang’s ink-smudged fingers traced the drawings’ edges, touching each page as gently as if he were skimming his hands over my skin.
When he looked up at me, his eyes were pleading.
They told me he didn’t want to hide anymore.
I bit my lip as he shifted toward me, moving on his knees, kneeling before me where I sat on the bed.
“Selah,” he breathed.
I couldn’t look at him. Fear and anger and endless wanting clenched in my stomach.