Page 56 of A Wrecking of Salt and Fire

“Yes…” Gods was she embarrassed. Her mind had gone blank and she could not think of anything to say. He began to open the door back to his chambers—their chambers. “Ander?”

“Yes?” He turned, flooding with hope and longing, back toward her.

“I’ll stay. I can’t sit back and let the evil of the world win. If there is a war to fight, then my people will fight it. And if we must go to Skiatha to make that a reality, then we will.” Katrin’s voice was soft, but steady. She meant it. She could not let one more man take from her. Not let these people from across the seas ruin what her family had built. The peace they now desperately craved. “That is, if you’ll still have me.”

Ander smiled. “It would be my honor, Starling.”

She nodded. “Then it is settled. This afternoon we sail for Skiatha.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Katrin

The sun began its descent in the later half of the day when Ander helped Katrin up to the deck of The Nostos. He’d said she needed fresh salty air for the salve he had covered her body in to work. She thought he wanted to keep an eye on her as they left port. Make sure she didn’t slip away back into her nightmares and self-loathing.

He had clothed her in a loose skirt and a thin knit sweater to combat the slight chill in the autumn breeze. The baggy clothing an unexpected grace, the materials soft against her healing wounds. Those would take only a day between the salve and her power slowly fueling itself back to life. She was only a month from her twenty-fifth birthday, and those flickers of power that surged through her would be her saving grace.

The internal wounds would take longer to heal. A week or so between her powers and the concoction that Ander had her drink. It tasted repulsive, but anything that would help to get her on her own two feet again she would try. Katrin hated that she was this reliant on another person’s kindness to move, to bathe, to eat. She hated that it was him, even more than she longed for his gentle touch as he guided her toward the stern of the ship.

Then there were the mental wounds. The ones she tried again and again to piece back together. She was not sure if she would ever really be able to heal those fractures in her mind. Like the scars on her back, they would be with her forever. Katrin only hoped one day she would see them as the marks of survival and determination, not shame and regret. That she’d be able to move forward with processing everything that happened as Thalia had mastered.

The seer let Mykonos stray near her, and Katrin was glad for the silent company. The little white creature spent its time either gently lying in her lap curled up in a ball, or threading in between Katrin’s dangling feet. She tried not to laugh when at one point Mykonos darted after a scurrying rat. The rodent did not stand a chance. She half hoped the cat would drop her prey off by Ander’s feet like he explained she did sometimes. He hated it apparently, but it would cause a smile for Katrin.

He’d told her it was a long journey to Skiatha, the first part thankfully calm while her bones healed, but the second he could not promise. Tempests often swept through, nearly crashing ships on the jagged rocks of smaller isles, and creatures much more treacherous than those aboard this ship hunted in the seas and near the rocky coastlines. Ander traveled these shores many times, so Katrin was less inclined to worry. She was more intrigued at this side of the world that she’d never experienced before, either in real life or in word.

The way he described it sounded like pages out of The Odyssey, which she was nearly through. An adventure with sea monsters, cyclops, and sirens. Though the Olympi would no longer be there to protect them—or seek to destroy them.

Ander and Odysseus were kindred spirits, the way they were both always trying to return home, but never could. One to his wife and child, the other to his father and sister—or possibly a woman as well. He never told her why he could not sail himself home. Or had he last night? You were my northern star. No—just another hallucination. Still, the melancholy that washed over him as he stared out at the vast and empty sea left her wondering—what was keeping him away?

She wondered if her sister looked out at the sea that same way. If Kohl did. If he was searching for her again, thinking those evil men held her once more. Not knowing that she now decided to stay willingly.

It still pained Katrin how things were left between them. The day in the olive groves, the stabbing, the actions that followed. Even after these weeks spent away, she still didn’t know how to feel about him. For years he had been her partner, her confidant, her everything. What she wouldn’t do to just be able to simply sit and talk to him like they used to. But all of this would have to wait. For now, they sailed the journey to the lost isle. The one of treacherous myths and legends.

If the journey was to be two week’s time, Katrin would need to find another one of Ander’s forbidden books to read. She could not keep looking out at the sea, contemplating the mess that spiraled in her head. But she would need help to do that. Ander and Leighton were both at the helm, steering The Nostos out of port. She wouldn’t bother them.

She looked down at the little white cat, who was now chasing around some imaginary bug across the deck. “Little one, would you be able to get your—” Katrin did not quite know what to call her. Owner, mother, human, body. None of those seem to fit the relationship between Thalia and her psychí. Mykonos stared back up at Katrin, her little white face cocking to the side, yellow eyes widening. “Oh, you know what I’m asking, just go get your other half.”

She could have sworn the cat let out a laughing sound as she padded off toward the lower deck. Katrin wished she had something like that, a way to turn off her mind and let her body drift somewhere else. To seemingly live carefree if only for a few moments. But most of all, to know she always had someone there. Even in her darkest days, a living being that would not shy away and run scared. That would stand by her, sharing in the pain and the emotions, easing the burden just enough to keep it bearable.

Katrin sat curled up in a blanket on the chaise in the captain’s chambers. She was able to move about on her own now. It had taken a week for her bruises and bones to heal. She was still sore as she meandered about the ship, but it was better than needing a constant shadow to even relieve herself in the bathing chamber.

In that week she devoured not only what had to be all the food on the ship, but also a shelf of books. They were all about the warriors and heroes of the Olde World and the stories of the Olympi and their—dare she say, scandalous—lives.

Then there was the book she was currently reading. This one was something else entirely. The hardback cover had been utterly unhelpful, a plain pale blue in color, its pages well read. Ander was sitting across from her, on one of the plush velvet chairs, sipping wine and just watching her with a devilish grin.

Ander arched one brow. “Are you enjoying your new read, Starling?” he purred, his expression slightly cloudy from the alcohol, but his stare caused a light blush across her cheeks.

“Did you really read this?” Katrin’s voice was hoarse. The things it described—gods, it made her ache. Even worse so, since Ander seemed to be eating up every expression she made as she read. She was always terrible at hiding emotion and this book—well it drove the best kinds of emotion out of her.

Ander chuckled. “I don’t need to read about those things, Starling. I would rather just live them. You know, I could teach you much more than that book ever will.” Katrin gulped. She still couldn’t stop imagining the way his eyes had raked over her body a week ago. The way she had wanted him to take her all in, wanted him in a desperate way she had not felt before.

She chucked a piece of bread at him. “Don’t flatter yourself, Ander.” Her words not coming out as sharp as she intended, because, gods, she did not mean them and he knew that.

Shrugging, he leaned back, continuing to sip his wine once more. “Whose book is it then, your sister’s?”

Ander flinched, his face turning sour. “Well you certainly know how to kill the mood. The last person I want to think about reading that book is my sister. It’s most likely Thalia’s. She has a thing for those kinds of novels.” Katrin’s eyes went wide. She had always heard the seers of Delphine were chaste and bound their life and body to the gods. “I’m sure if you like that one, she has a handful of others you could borrow in her quarters.”

Katrin peered back down at the novel, her whole body heating now. Despite the joking, she did enjoy it, and hated to admit that she sometimes pictured Ander as the harrowing male the author described. The way that he served at the pleasure of the princess. Wondering what it would be like if his hands slid up the gown she now wore, his fingers gliding over her wetness.

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