Across the Midnight Sea

Chapter 33: Truths

Hello lovely readers, thank you so much for being here. I am really happy with this chapter for what happens and I hope you like it too.

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Adira walked through the gardens of the great barracks that was her fathers home.

Your home now too, she corrected the thought. 

Two weeks ago when she arrived she never would have allowed herself to imagine the welcome that her father had given her. 

Late the night of the arrival when he had sat down with her for tea he hadn't pushed her to discuss her reasons for coming all he had asked was if she planned on and wanted to stay here with him.

Once she said yes he told her nothing else mattered and that she could come talk to him about her reasons for leaving when she was ready so long as it was before the full moon which was still another week away.

She planned on telling him tonight though.

The longer she stayed here and the kinder he was the more she felt the burden of her secret hanging between them, and while she knew that the truth behind her journey across the sea was something that could ruin everything she also knew that she could not go on sitting and eating dinner with and talking with her father without telling him.

Even thinking of it now made her palms damp.

"Are you alright miss?" Yeona asked. The Shaynari woman tended to spend the later afternoon as her chaperone. The other staff would attend to her during the day, however for an hour or two before dinner Yeona would come and walk with her or sit in the gardens. 

"Fine thank you Yeona," she offered what she hoped was a reassuring smile. She did not want to make Yeona fret. She cared so much it almost hurt Adira to feel it.

It was strangely uncomfortable to Adira that such a lovely woman was here not as a servant, but as a slave. She had no option of going elsewhere and that fact made Adira feel nauseous every time she thought about it. 

Ever since the plague she had been taught how Shaynari people were evil. When she looked into Yeona's eyes she saw a history of pain yet, despite that there was no bitterness in her. How could someone who had clearly been through so much still be so kind?

The one thing that brought some consolation was the fact that Yeona had said there was no place else and no master she would rather serve than Warden Rathor.

Sometimes Adira saw a strange look on Yeona's face when she looked at Rathor on that made Adira wonder at the circumstances of Yeona coming into her father's service. Her father had been there since the war and Yeona said that he was not her first master. It made Adira wonder if her first master had been anything like Verek.

Verek, the bitter taste that always came with thinking of the Tamerian slave driver made Adira want to wash her mouth out.

As always Imre followed directly after in her mind.

By now he should be almost half way way back up the canal.

A part of her wanted to go to the docks late next month just to see him, the other part knew it was more cruel thank kind to do so.

Every night she prayed that he was okay.

Every morning she woke wondering if her prayers had been answered or ignored.

Had Smither's given him the letter?

Had he even been able to read it?

It was only after already handing the letter over that Adira had realized that there was a very real chance Imre would not have been able to read the words she had penned down for him. It was foolish of her to write them anyways. If Verek or any of the others had seen them.