Page 102 of Of Serpents and Ruins
Elias nodded, arms still folded over the railing. His tunic and tabard had been dampened by the salt spray, but he did not move back. "I’ve rarely seen him so angry. He believed we’d condemned you, but it would have been even worse to abandon you there on Earth, to leave you alone in your misery. He was willing to leave you there for another fifty years."
My stomach knotted. "Brandt was trying to keep the curse from destroying me, from destroying this kingdom too. We didn't have answers. My coming back here forced the curse to resume."
It had put everyone at risk.
Elias shook his head. "We could have done so much more. You were trapped there. Abandoned. Isolated. No one to protect you. That was wrong." He lowered his head, the ragged sigh that followed merging with the hiss and call of the waves.
Maybe what he said came from a good place, but it angered me nonetheless.
"Everyone did what they could. My life on Earth was not the easiest, but it wasn't the worst either. I survived, and I am here now. That is what matters."
The sharpness that had entered my voice did not sound like me. Or rather, it sounded more like another version of me. Perhaps the old Stella. The one who understood that being a ruler was about making hard choices. Or maybe the one who knew her husband loved her with all his heart and was doing the best he could.
Brandt's pleading gaze returned to my mind's eye, his voice so startlingly gentle and heartbroken.
Elias's jaw tensed, but he nodded. "You're a brave woman." His voice softened though he did not look at me.
"I'm not. Not really. I just love and trust my husband, and that is Brandt."
He nodded, his head still down. "It is not my intention to undermine your relationship with Brandt."
"My marriage."
"Your marriage," he conceded. "I just… You gave up everything already, Stella. If there's any chance for you to be happy—"
"There is no chance for that if Sepeazia is destroyed."
"You are worth so much more than Sepeazia," he said, his gaze still on the sea below us as the waves rushed and sliced along the hull. "Even if you were the only one who could be saved, it would be worth it."
"It would not be worth it to me." My voice sharpened. "I am not worth more than all of Sepeazia. I have hidden away and scraped to gather what I used to be. I am not worth more than anyone here."
His jaw tightened. "I don’t know how to convince you that that is not so."
"You don’t have to. It isn’t even important to this discussion." I knotted my fist and pressed it against my chest, holding the necklace tight. My thumb stroked the smooth stone. "I am no more important than anyone in all this. Queen or not."
"Please. Hear me. You are to the people who love you," he said quietly, "and sometimes too much is asked of those whom we love."
A weight pressed within my chest. Not that I was a good lie detector, but he seemed to be speaking the truth.
I placed the necklace in the pocket on the side of my butter-yellow dress. "I am going to speak with Kine about everything and confirm what you have said. Then I will decide whether I will wear this."
He nodded. "Please do."
I slipped away, taking up a position on the other side of the mast, peering out to the east. At this point, we were far enough away from Sepeazia that I could see we had been beneath some sort of barrier.
The magical force that was draining us maybe? Whatever it was, it looked like a purple dome over the top of Sepeazia. My blood chilled, and I shivered despite the heat of the sun against my head. That sinister energy, I hadn’t even noticed it really before we left, but now…how could anyone miss it?
A vague memory stirred in my mind. I recalled seeing this before. The day the sky had started to change color. The tang in the air. The dryness. The first day those dark marks in the land appeared.
It was odd regaining memory in this fashion, to brush against reminders and realize that there was more there than I initially realized.
The weight in my chest intensified. All of this…all of this would die because of the Gola Resh.
I remained there, staring out over the sea until Sepeazia vanished from my sight. After that, I went to help prepare food, another old task that my hands remembered well.
Sen, the ship’s cook, didn’t flinch at all, nor did he refer to me as "Your Majesty." He was an older man with an oiled and beaded grey-white beard. Unlike most I had seen, he wore only green and turquoise instead of incorporating black, red, blue, or gold. He simply grunted at me, indicated the pile of sweet potatoes, and offered me a small knife, as if my coming here to help was the most natural thing in the world.
I suspected that it was, and that comforted me. The wood-handled knife fit easily in my hand as I began on the sweet potatoes. The thin orange peelings dropped into the bucket while Sen prepared a large salmon-like fish.
