I can’t sleep.
I’m not sure how late it is, but Micah has been snoring beside me for hours.
I’m used to not sleeping. I haven’t been able to get more than a couple of hours at a time since my father died, but I’m not used to being too excited to sleep.
With the end of this quest so close, all I can think about is that I stand a real chance of finally fulfilling my father’s dying wish.
And Selestra holds the key.
If she agrees to do the trials Lady Eldara proposed and become queen, then we could have all the power we need to kill Seryth and rescue the Six Isles.
I get out of bed.
Micah shifts in his bunk and mumbles something to himself. I shake my head, treading lightly as I leave the room so that I don’t wake him.
Selestra’s room is only a few doors down the narrow hallway. I hesitate before knocking, wondering if maybe she’s asleep already. I don’t want to wake her, but we have to talk. If I don’t say what I need to say, then I’ll be up staring at my ceiling until the sun rises.
Thankfully, the door creaks open and Selestra pokes her head out from the other side.
“What are you doing here?” she asks in a whisper.
She’s wearing a long white nightgown that brushes to the floor, and her green hair swings by her chin, catching the moonlight that streams in through the open window. She is so beautiful it catches me off guard.
For a moment I just blink and stare at her.
Then I remember to actually speak.
“Do you want to go for a walk?” I ask.
Selestra leans back into the room and I see a sleeping Irenya hug the covers closer as the breeze from the open door wafts in.
“Hang on,” Selestra whispers to me.
She grabs a nearby blanket and wraps it around her shoulders, then steps out, closing the door softly behind her.
“Is Micah snoring again?” she asks.
She was subjected to it just as often on Leo’s butterfly.
“He sounds like a blow horn,” I say. “I should stuff a sock in his mouth.”
“And put a peg on his nose,” she suggests.
“I’ll bear that in mind for the next time.”
We walk down the narrow hall of the sleeping quarters and out into the moonlight. The stars are brighter than I’ve ever seen them in Vasiliádes.
We take a seat on the steps by the forge and I waste no time in asking what’s been on my mind.
“Have you thought about what Lady Eldara said?”
“Not you too,” Selestra says in a sigh.
I laugh. “Oh, come on, princess. I had to ask.”
“I wish you’d stop calling me that,” she says in a frown.
“Would you prefer queen?”
Selestra shoots me a look. “That’s not funny, Nox.”
“No, it’s not,” I admit.
She wraps the blanket tighter around herself and breathes in a shaky breath.
“I know that you’re scared,” I say carefully. “I am too.”
Selestra raises her eyebrows, not believing that for a moment. “You’re scared?”
“Okay, not scared,” I relent. “I’m far too manly for that.”
Selestra scoffs.
“But I understand you’re worried,” I say, turning serious. “You have every right to be.”
“I just don’t know what to do,” she admits.
“Do what’s right,” I say simply. “This could be the way to change things for the better, like you said you wanted to. Use your magic for something good.”
“I meant helping you find a sword, not becoming queen,” she protests.
“Well, technically we did find the sword,” I say. “It just happened to be your aunt.”
Selestra groans. She looks down at her gloved hands and a note of anguish passes across her face. “My whole life, I feel like I’ve been crafted from other people’s stories. From their wants and expectations,” she says. “Everything has been about pretend and threats from people trying desperately to cling to power.”
That takes me by surprise.
Surely Selestra doesn’t think Eldara is anything like the king.
“I don’t know who I am,” she says, sounding more tired than I’ve ever heard her. “I was the king’s heir. My mother’s heir. And now I’m supposed to be Eldara’s heir?” Her voice wavers. “I just feel caught up between who everyone else wants me to be.”
The lost look in her eyes makes me shift.
“I know who you are,” I say firmly, surprised by the surety in my own voice. “You’re Selestra Somniatis. Descended from queens and goddesses. You don’t have to be anyone that you don’t want to.”
“You really believe that?” Selestra asks, sounding every bit like she doesn’t.
“What I believe doesn’t matter. It’s about what you believe.”
Selestra squeezes her hands together. “What if I let everyone down?”
“Then we all die,” I say with a shrug. “Personally, I vote for you to succeed.”
Selestra smiles in spite of herself. “That really takes the pressure off,” she says. “Thank you.”
“I just want to make sure you know the stakes,” I tell her, voice as earnest as can be. “The stakes being my life, of course. Which is extremely important to me.”
Selestra shakes her head, but I can see the daring easing its way back into her eyes, replacing the doubt that was there before.
“I think you place far too much importance on yourself.”
“Not possible,” I say. “I’m the most important person in my life. And if you’re not, then you’re doing it wrong.”
Selestra’s laughter blows across to me. “You’re unbelievable.”
“And you’re a queen,” I remind her. “If you want to be.”
Selestra bristles, but she doesn’t look away. Her eyes lock onto mine.
“I believe in you,” I tell her, and I truly mean it. “Even if you don’t believe in yourself yet.”
“You do?” Selestra looks uncertain.
I’m a little surprised by my words too. I started this quest with every intention of killing Selestra once I killed the king, but somewhere along the way I found myself wanting to protect her instead.
Selestra isn’t just a witch. She isn’t just a girl, but a maze. A never-ending pathway of possibility, and I can feel myself getting lost in her.
With each day that goes on, every guard I try to keep up tumbles. Even now, when I’m supposed to be convincing her to take this crown so I can get what I want and avenge my father, I find myself wanting her to have faith in herself instead. She has saved my life again and again. Though she may think she is a product of what everyone wants her to be—her mother, Seryth, even Eldara—I’ve seen firsthand that she is nothing like any of them. I’ve seen the fire inside her.
“I believe in you,” I say again.
Selestra brushes her hair from her face in a sigh.
“There’s something I’ve been hiding from you,” she says.
She looks cautiously at me.
“Oh?” I ask. “What’s that, then?”
I don’t expect her to slip off a glove and hold her palm up to the moon. Or to see the king’s mark imprinted on her skin. My eyes go wide and I shuffle closer to her, to make sure I’m seeing right.
“How did you get that?”
The mark of the Festival.
“It appeared the first time I saw your death,” she says. Then she shakes her head and shrugs off the blanket, like she’s shrugging off a weight. “The first time I saw our deaths,” she corrects herself.
“Ours?”
I’m not prepared for what she says next.
“I saw myself die that day too,” Selestra confesses. “At the tavern, in the fire. We were both meant to perish. I thought that by saving you I’d somehow save myself.”
I look back down at the snake on her palm, twinned to mine.
“So that’s why you’ve been helping me?” I ask. I can’t help but be a little disappointed. “To keep your own life safe?”
“That was why at first,” she answers honestly, quickly. “But eventually I started saving you because I wanted to. I care about you, Nox,” she says. “And I’m not a monster. I’m not heartless.”
I’m not my mother, I hear her say.
“I know,” I tell her.
Selestra is nothing like Theola or any notions I ever had of a witch.
“It happened again the night you came to my room,” she says. “I saw myself die alongside you in the castle.”
I can’t help but laugh and Selestra blinks in surprise.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” I say, sobering up my voice. “It just makes a lot more sense now why you wanted me to take you along for the ride.”
“I drowned beside you after being thrown from Garrick’s ship too,” she says. “Every vision I have of your death shows me mine too.”
Suddenly a lot of things start to make sense. Especially why Selestra always had such a visceral reaction to the futures she saw in me. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for her to have to see her own deaths, especially by her own mother’s hand.
Despite all that, she still tried to save my life.
Again and again, even though it risked hers.
“There’s nobody quite like you,” I tell her honestly.
“That’s the problem,” she says in a bitter laugh. “I don’t want to be strange, Nox. I want to fit into the jigsaw of the world and not worry about being the right shape or color. I want to be part of something.”
“You are part of something.”
Selestra takes in a breath and blinks up at me. “Will you stay by my side if I do the trials?”
I nod. “I will.”
She holds my gaze, tethering me to the moment. I’m struck with the sudden urge to reach out and touch her.
I want to feel her without it bringing about some stupid death vision.
“We should head back inside,” she says in a delicate whisper. “Get some sleep before I make my decision.”
It’s the last thing I want to do.
“I don’t sleep,” I remind her.
She bites her lip. “Everyone sleeps, Nox.”
“Not me.”
I look into her eyes, where I once stupidly thought there was only ever cold and dark. Now all I can see is brightness and fire.
I swallow and lean toward her. Her breath brushes my lips and my heart is like thunder in my chest as I reach out a hand for her cheek.
Then she pulls back.
She looks down at the mark on her palm.
“Are you worried about the visions?” I ask, shifting back.
She shakes her head. “No,” she says. “I mean, yes. But that’s not it. It’s you who shouldn’t want to do this.”
“Why not?”
I can’t imagine anything she’d say could make this hunger for her disappear.
I want this.
I want her.
Selestra’s hands tremble and when she takes in her next breath, it’s almost like she chokes on it.
“Nox, about your father—”
“Don’t,” I say, stopping her.
The last thing I want to think of right now is vengeance, or what Selestra’s mother and the king did.
For the first time in years, I want to forget about that.
“Can we not be who we are tonight?” I ask her. “Not a soldier out for vengeance, or the king’s heir. Let’s just be us, without the past weighing us down.”
I can see the hesitance in her eyes.
Maybe I’m a fool for thinking we can do something as complicated as starting fresh, but I find myself thinking a lot of foolish things around her lately.
I take Selestra’s hand in mine and plant a kiss on her gloved fingers.
“You were right,” I say, not wanting to push her. “We should go inside and rest.”
Souls knows we’re going to need it. The king’s army can’t be more than a few days behind us, and with Theola by his side, it won’t be long before he’s able to bypass the whirlpools and infiltrate Polemistés.
This sanctuary we’ve found won’t last.
Sooner or later, the death Selestra predicted will come for us.