Blood Ties

Chapter 15: Nadia

Sinking into her bed one evening into their journey, about two weeks after they had departed Milona, Nadia hugged a tasselled cushion to her chest and thought of the past. Nadia thought of all the things she had been deprived of at the temple - feeling actual objects against her skin, being able to touch paper without fear that it might slice her skin open if she didn't wear gloves, embracing a friend without worrying about whether or not by some strange accident they might make her bleed.

If she admitted it to herself, the attack had liberated her. Selfish as it was to think, Prince Declan had destroyed an entire city yet saved her life. In that temple, she had been treading water and waiting to drown, not seeing a single ship pass by her as her clothes gradually grew heavier and her limbs slackened, tiring out.

That had not been living in the temple. She had not lived in Milona. She had waited for death to come. Yet she could not say it out loud. She would not confess those words with her lips any more than she could stop saying prayers before her meals or performing sacrifices over a candle with whatever scraps of food from her meals that she could spare. To say that the ransacking and destruction of her temple had been her release from a mindless life of drudgery was selfish. It went against every instinct, against every teaching. Yet she felt some dormant part of her stir and awaken with each passing minute that she spent drifting out on this deep blue sea, further and further away from the island she had once called home.

She no longer needed to wear layers of restricting clothes that protected her yet felt suffocating. She had kept her veil simply for practicality's sake when she was on deck, so the wind did not make a tangled mess of her hair or chafe her skin into reddened scales, but other than that, she felt a new lightness to her movements. Nothing weighed her down but the past, the memories haunting her dreams. She slept and saw visions of Mari lying crushed beneath a temple pillar, blaming her for her death. At other times, it was Evie and Siena, running away from a massive fire that gradually spread across buildings before engulfing the entire city. Or she would see Matron Abigail, staring at her in disappointment and disapproval as the city became ashes around them.

Nadia looked at herself with disapproval. How could she move on so easily from an event that had tumultuously overturned her life as she knew it? Sometimes, right before she woke, she would see that crone, with a pair of green eyes that so closely matched hers, hunched over in the temple and reciting her curse back to her. Then she would be greeted with rays of sunlight and the gentle rocking of the ship and the soft lapping of the waves.

Then she would have to remind herself that none of it was real. None of it could hurt her. It was all in the past. The past did not exist any more than the future did. All of it danced around in fragmented snippets and dashed hopes, shattered dreams and unspoken words.

"Nadia?" A knock on the door jarred her from her reverie as she heard Declan's voice. "Are you there?"

"It's midnight, Declan, where else would I be?" she asked, irritation seeping into her tone before she tempered it. One of these days, she would learn to watch her mouth around him. Today was not that day, apparently, and her tongue wished for her to be beheaded if he were a tyrant and this ship was his domain. "Come in."

Just as she had wrapped a stifling robe around her thin shift, he pushed the door open with a creak. The room was smaller than his, no doubt, more suited for second-class passengers than royalty. It held a bed, a chair, a desk, a small porthole, and a washbasin. The furniture was all bolted in place in case of theft or perhaps simply in case it slid around in a particularly tempestuous storm. She had not thought of it as particularly shabby or minuscule until he stood in it, with his knee-high boots and long coat and piercing way of looking at the world that made everything in it seem small and manageable. He made her feel small, almost, inferior, and so she straightened her spine, tilting her chin upwards to look him in the eye.