Page 81 of A Wrecking of Salt and Fire

She shimmied off the bed, padding over to unhook the several locks that were added since she was last in Alentus.

“Oh, Katrin! It’s really you!” Her sister flung her arms around Katrin in a gut-wrenching embrace, Ember’s sobs deafening against her shoulder. Behind Ember stood the commander, who only nodded, a curt smile tugging at his lips.

Katrin brought her hand to her sister’s head, stroking her straw locks like Kora used to do when they were children. “Everything is alright now, Ember. I’m home. I’m home and I am not leaving you again.”

She meant it. This would be the last time she was taken from these shores. Katrin would sooner die than endure another moment knowing she was lost without a path home. Be so far from the people who truly mattered in her life. A bubbling of regret filled her lungs. She willingly stayed with The Nostos to fight this non-existent war. Never again.

“Oh gods, Katrin. There is so much I need to tell you!” Ember stepped back from their embrace.

“There’s so much I need to tell you too.” She cupped her sister’s face, her thumb grazing against a faint scar by Ember’s temple. “You tell me first though.”

Ember winced, her breath hitching. “You may want to sit down for this.”

So they sat and Katrin willed herself out of the fog that had consumed her for the last week, because she had to. For Ember’s sake.

Katrin could not bear to be around other people anymore. Not while they coddled her like a fragile glass doll, afraid she would step off the balcony and down the cliffs below. Or worse, when they expected her to smile and curtsy and proceed as if she had not been absent for months.

The only person she allowed in her wing of the castle was Ember. Her sister had been the only person who truly fought for her the entire time. The only person Katrin knew with her whole breaking heart she could trust.

All Katrin knew was that she was unbearably tired. But when Katrin would try to go to sleep, it only evaded her. For weeks on The Hydra she had been in and out of a drunken daze, sleeping, but not truly resting—or healing.

Now even that was impossible.

Tonics did not help. Books did not help. Wine no longer helped. Katrin was in a state of perpetual spiraling, the little bits of spark she had seen return during her time on The Nostos and in Skiatha snuffing out with each successive day. In the few moments where she somehow drifted into a hazy sleep, she was met by his face. Ander’s face. The lines that formed around his lips as he clenched his jaw. The bob of his throat as she held her dagger against it. Brows scrunched above the anxious longing and regret in his crystalized eyes. Katrin could not stand this image. Could not stand to see him, his lies, his half-truths, his smile, his lips, his breath hot against her skin.

I never said the woman I loved was back home, Starling.

You always have a choice with me.

You were my northern star…the thing I knew would lead me home.

Every moment that passed remembering the way he touched her, kissed her, held her when she was breaking convinced her even further. It was all an illusion. A fabrication in her mind. One that Ander put there to torment her.

Katrin reached for the vial of ink on her desk, smoothing out a wrinkled piece of parchment from the drawer.

Dear Ander Alexander Nikolaos,

I don’t even know how to start this. I feel as if I have written it again and again in my mind during the weeks I spent on The Hydra sailing back to Alentus, back to my home. Gods, I don’t even know what to call you. Ander just doesn’t seem right anymore.

When I think of that name, I think of the small boy who gifted me the beautiful sea glass comb and played with me on the shores of my isle. When I think of that name I think of the prince who carried me to safety, bloody, beaten, and unconscious. Who bathed me and nursed me until my scars faded to nothing more than memory. The man who helped bring me back from the darkest places of my mind and taught me the strength my power holds. To always trust myself even when that overwhelming feeling of darkness calls.

But you weren’t him. You are not Ander. You never really were. Not since you were a child. And even then, was it all for show? Playing nice with the younger princess, while your parents brokered deals with mine? Were you always the manipulative prince your father made you into? Did you always loathe me? Loathe me enough to do all this?

You are not Ander. You are Prince Nikolaos Alexander Kirassos II. Heir to the throne of Nexos. God of Shield and Storm. Abductor. Liar. Betrayer.

I know you will never read this, but I fear if I don’t write it down it will eat me from the inside out and I can not have one more thing picking away at my mind. I trusted you. Only you, with all my secrets. All my scars. Bared my heart, my mind, and my soul and the blackness that filled each one. You made me feel like someone knew me. Truly knew me, and yet would stay. Was not afraid of the weight tying down my limbs, threatening to sink me to the bottom of the seas to drown.

Was any of it real? Was I just a means to an end? Did you gain my trust and break me once more for sport? Did you ever truly feel the way you whispered to me that night in the mountains? How did you do it? How did you get inside my head? I don’t think I’ll ever forgive you. For infiltrating my darkest thoughts. For making me see things that never were. For pretending.

You are nothing, like I was nothing to you.

-Katrin The woman whose will you shattered

Katrin thought the time she spent in Skiatha healed a piece of her that had been broken for so long. That she finally put the puzzle pieces of her scattered mind in place. That he helped her heal those wounds that ran deeper than flesh and bone and blood. A lie. Her curse. A life set to repeat itself again and again until she was nothing more than a shell.

She tore the piece of parchment from her desk walking over to the fireplace that burned in her living chambers. Katrin placed the corner of the parchment over the flame, watching as the fire ate the words she poured out. Hoping the smoke would engulf her anger and betrayal with it on the wind. But it did not.

So Katrin ran. Out of her chambers and into the darkness of the night sky. No moonlight to guide her. Past the barracks and out of the castle’s gates. Away from the sloshing sounds of waves against the shoreline. Into the groves that led to the Triad Mountains.

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