LUCIA SHOWS ME TO MY ROOM WITH A GRUNT, BUT after a couple of hours, I give up sleep—somewhere between paralyzing fear and nagging hopelessness. Whichever time that was.
The air in the room was too thick, too filled with my own breath.
As I step out onto the deck, the night air bites straight to my bones and I don’t fight it. I let out a low hiss and let the sea air lift the hair from the back of my neck. Goose bumps prickle along every inch of me, and I close my eyes.
I look out off the back of the stern, the moonlight illuminating the white, frothy wakes that cut over the black abyss.
“As much as you dying would solve a lot of my problems, I don’t think hypothermia is the way you want to go,” a low, smooth voice sounds behind me.
I turn. A small fire burns in a metal pit secured to the deck, and Seth sits on a stool next to it, an open tin can in his hand.
Shivers rack my body as I eye him. He motions to the fire with his head, and I walk over. His eye is less swollen, and it’s looking more like a normal bruise. But closer, I can see that his lip is still split, his knuckles still bloodied.
I sigh in pleasure as the heat seeps through my skin, and Seth pulls a folded blanket from under his stool and tosses it to me. I wrap it around my shoulders and sit on the stool opposite.
The fire crackles between us, embers catching the wind.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he asks finally, digging his fork into the tin can.
I shake my head. “The door doesn’t lock, and I keep imagining Lucia duct-taping my hands together and gleefully tossing me to my doom.” It’s a joke, but it’s also not.
Seth rolls his eyes.
“No one is tossing you into the ocean, princess,” Seth says, bringing a forkful of green beans to his mouth. He stops before they reach his lips and holds them out slightly. An offer.
“No thanks,” I say softly, and then his words register. “And you can stop calling me princess, you know.”
“You would prefer ‘Chosen One’?” he asks. His eyes are sunset-tinted in the glow of the fire, and they bore into me. It’s a joke, but it’s also not.
“Charlotte,” I correct. I don’t trust myself to say more.
He holds my eyes for another beat and then shovels a bite of green beans into his mouth.
It goes quiet again, the wind sounding like a low hum rippling over the water. The fire dances in the wind.
“The whole country thinks you’re some traitorous frat boy, you know.”
Seth’s fork freezes on the way back down to the can, and his eyes find mine. “You’re a shit conversationalist, Charlotte the Chosen One.”
“Charlotte,” I grind out. “What I mean is . . . I wish they could know they were wrong. About you.” My eyes fall to the flames.
Seth scrapes the fork over the tin ridges. “It wouldn’t matter.”
“What are you talking about? Of course it would. There isn’t anything good this side of the grave anymore, Seth. I’ve seen it. The best-case scenario is some sort of horrible illness that takes you out before you turn into a monster, your loved ones turn into monsters, or you’re all eaten by monsters. You could give people hope.”
“I thought that’s what you were for?” he asks. It’s a simple question, but it cuts through my chest like a razor. Especially because, in this moment, he’s not saying it ironically. He’s not saying it to get a rise out of me. He means it. Hope is as foreign to him as it is to me, and he’s circling it. Poking it with a stick. Seeing if it’s still breathing, and refusing to get excited until he knows it’s the real deal.
And I’m exploiting that.
Sickness spins in my gut as the full weight of what the hell I’ve done settles on my shoulders. I’ve done something here. I’ve pulled a thread I can’t un-pull.
My mind grasps for something—anything—to redirect the conversation.
“Did Evelyn do this, too? Before . . .”
Something shifts in him, and I see it. Shields up, the massive swipe of raising them extinguishing any flame of hope he’d manage to bring from kindling to spark.
“No. She didn’t get the chance.”
My mouth moves soundlessly as I search for words, but none come. Everything I’ve been fearing—losing Harlow and Vanessa—he’s been through. I should know what to say here.
But words fall short at the look on his face.
“So you were remade by water on the night of blood. That’s what the prophecy said, anyway,” he says. It’s conversational, not inherently a challenge. But I see the look in his eyes, and I know he’s testing me.
“Yes.” It’s clipped, a word cut from the chunk of other things I can’t say and tossed at him.
He tongues his molars, cocking his jaw to the side as he regards me. He shrugs. “And what does that mean? Was it some sort of ceremony? Did some priests in robes anoint you or some shit?”
“No.” My shoulders square. I may not be the Chosen One, but it’s not a lie that there is one. And Vanessa’s been through hell for it. My hackles rise, the blood filling my cheeks.
He sits up. “You understand how ridiculous it sounds. Like the hope invented by people who wanted to give their kids some sort of way to cope with the apocalypse. And the ‘Chosen One’ sounds like a trope from a C-list made-for-TV movie.”
His voice, that word, grates on me, and I feel the anger blooming through my bones.
“More ridiculous than red-eyed creatures? Wake up, Cap, we’ve been in a bad fantasy movie for a long time.”
Seth laughs then and sniffs against the cold. The tip of his nose is red, and for the first time since I sat down, I wonder how long he’s been out here. If he thought it was safe to sleep at all. “It’s nothing personal,” he says.
“You’re calling me a liar. That feels pretty personal.”
For a moment I can’t believe how righteous I can sound while actively being in the wrong. It’s a talent. A shit one, but I’m almost impressed, honestly.
“I wasn’t calling you a liar. I was asking for information. But if you’re asking, yeah, I take lies pretty seriously. I’d even say personally,” he shoots.
“So you’re all about honesty, then? Mr. I Stole a Man’s Ship and Said It Was Mine.”
Seth holds a hand up. “I never told you I was the captain of the Ichorbow. You assumed.”
I laugh this time, and it’s humorless. My breath is visible above the heat of the flames.
“Fine. You want honesty? Then give some. Why the hell did you take me with you if you don’t believe in the Chosen One?”
The air is thick between us, and the fire crackles, unaware of the fight raging over its head.
And then, in that moment, Seth is caught off guard. His eyes meet mine, and we’re at a stalemate.
“I don’t know,” he says finally. He swallows hard and clamps his jaw tight. There’s an emptiness in his words, the shadow left in the space where a promise should be.
I stand, knocking the stool over with the suddenness of it. Then, I’m striding across the deck, the blanket falling off my shoulders.
Maybe I should tell him. I should just tell him the truth. I saw the look when I said his sister’s name. He knows what it’s like to love, I think.
I’m looking down at the deck right when I see the first pebble of rain plop against the wood.
It doesn’t register at first. Not until the heavens crack open above my head, and the clouds I was too angry to notice roil across the air, thunder ripping through the night. Rain pours, soaking me in seconds. I turn just in time to see the fire wink out in a puff of steam. Seth doesn’t move for a moment, like he can’t quite believe it, either.
The silver whole brings the storm to the sea, the mirror on velvet brings the ships to their knees.
Vanessa’s sleep-drunk voice sounds in my memory. The soft look on her face as she stared out the glass, unseeing as the words poured out of her mouth.
Seth stands, squinting as he looks up into the falling rain. When he meets my eyes again, there’s something I haven’t seen yet in his gaze. It’s not an apology. It’s not something reassuring. It’s something I remember feeling with Vanessa: disbelief.
One right thing is a fluke. But two?
“I drowned that night,” I call. “That’s what it meant by reborn. I fell beneath the water, and I died.”
If he feels like an asshole, he doesn’t give that away. If he’s sorry for doubting me, he keeps that hidden, too.
But I’ve just proven him wrong.
It doesn’t feel as good as I’d hoped it would.