He doesn’t acknowledge my presence. Doesn’t even lift his head.
“Are you—” I cut myself off. I don’t even know what to say to him, what to ask him. I came here without a plan, without employing any rational decision-making skills. All I know is that I didn’t want him to be alone.
I should’ve brought a damn lantern.
My eyes scan the boards at his feet, but there’s no shadow following his movements. It could be anywhere now.
“Are you okay?” I manage to say, my voice nothing more than a whisper. The boards squeak as I take another step toward him. From here, I can hear his shallow breathing. Another step.
When my hand touches his shoulder, he flinches. Not wanting to unsettle him, I pause for a moment but do not withdraw my touch. There is a relentless kindness to be found in fearing someone and offering them help despite it, and the pirate in front of me has done that exact thing for me.
He takes in a slow breath and lifts his head slightly.
“You naive, little fish. You came here expecting to do what?” A laugh slips out of him. “Save me? To make sure I feel good? What good is that if I don’t even know my own name?”
I swallow hard and let my gaze wander over his face. Dark locks fall over his knitted eyebrows, and below them, empty, black eyes stare into mine. I blink slowly. Looking away means acknowledging that there’s nothing left to be saved, that seeing him like this is uncomfortable.
“Why are you not with the others? I—”
“Please,” he says through his teeth, looking to the sea now instead of at me. “I do not want to throw you overboard. Butright now, that’s all I can think of. So please—” he draws in a long breath again, then exhales. “—leave me alone.”
Something inside of me stirs.
“Is that what it does to you?” I slowly remove my shaking hand from his shoulder. “It makes you cruel? Makes the monster win?”
“I wonder how long it would take until your body hits the surface. Longer than Ash, perhaps,” he says, and the calculation in his voice makes me shiver. “He was heavier than you.”
Nightglass was right. He has to be right. He is not being himself. The absence of his shadow makes him… different. Like all light has been taken from him. Taking shallow breaths, he slowly turns toward me. The siren in me screams and pumps power through me that can’t go anywhere — that I won’t let go anywhere — and instead breaks against my willpower like shuddering waves over and over again. Run. She shouts. Run.
But I don’t. I lift my chin and meet his stare.
“You think you’re not worthy of being saved,” I whisper, and for a short moment, his eyes flicker in hesitation. “But I know you. I know your shadow. And it has nothing in common with the man standing in front of me now.”
“You know nothing about me,” he speaks through clenched teeth, each word measured. “And nothing about my shadow.”
“I know more than enough.”
Silence settles between us. The sea stretches beneath the stern, dark and endless. His breathing somehow syncs with mine, our chests lifting and falling at the same time. As I glance to the side, there’s a dark figure lurking behind the wooden door. I know it's the curse that makes the shadows detach, but I want to scream at him for doing so nonetheless.
Then the light changes.
It is subtle at first. A pale shift at the edge of the horizon. The sun does not rise here, not fully, but it pushes through just enough, and soon, a muted glow breaks across the water.
Sable stiffens as the light reaches his face, making his skin glow golden. I come to stand next to him, to be able to support him, just in case he needs me to.
The boards at his feet darken as the shadow pulls itself back into place. It gathers beneath him, like smoke curling around his ankles, before finally settling, slow and quiet, like ash falling from the sky after a wildfire. When the last curl of darkness is gone, he exhales and loosens his grip on the rail.
Neither of us speaks. He doesn’t ask me to stay, and I don’t leave. We remain standing side by side, shoulder against shoulder, as the ship moves on, the light holding just long enough for the sea to release him from its hold.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Thewarmthofthesun floods my face with sleepiness, and for the first time in a long time, I dream of home. It meant something entirely different to me than it did to them, the other sirens in our swarm. While they lived under the water, in the dark caves of a sunken mountain, my life happened above the surface. In my dream, I lay on the rocky little island that jutted out of the water and let the sun wrap me in its gentle, warm embrace, before my mother scolds me for spending somuch time up here. Her face appears so vividly to me that I wish I could go back just to see her again. Even just one more time.
Blinking, the world around me comes into focus in layers of golden, bright light. I push myself upward, both hands against the wood beneath me, startled by the warmth that seeps into my palms. The Noctis sways beneath in a slow, steady rhythm that threatens to lull me back to sleep.
I lean forward and look over the rail.
The sea stretches out below, smooth as glass. There are no ripples trailing the stern, no white churn where the hull should be breaking the surface. The water barely moves at all. It gleams instead, pale and glistening, laced with various colors when I tilt my head. It appears shallow and endless, reflecting the sky in colors that remind me of those you’d find on an Abalone shell. Blues and pinks and greens flowing into one another. Glistening and shifting depending on how the light hits it.