Page 107 of Found at Sea
“He’ll need someone to look after him once I’m gone,” I said, looking over at my first mate and exchanging an unspoken request.
Kris nodded. “Understood, Cap’n.”
As I walked across the dock and toward town, a nagging sensation pulled at my insides. As if some thought was trying to surface, but I couldn’t bring it to the forefront of my mind. It’d started with the conversation with the sailor earlier. About Silver Falls being a place where all men were lost.
I sharply exhaled.
The seer’s words. “You must travel to the place where all is lost. And those who seek it must pay the cost.”
Silver Falls was the place where all was lost. Fletcher and I’d believed the answer was to findRan’s roadand summon the goddess, but we’d been wrong. Yet, we’d still journeyed to where we needed to be. Fletcher’s knowledge of Ran’s legend had inadvertently steered us in the right direction anyway.
What had he been trying to tell me? About the old man he’d met?
I hurried my pace, and as hope began to rise up into my chest, no amount of trying to push it back down was successful. My heart raced faster, my breaths came quicker, and my head was a whirlwind of thoughts, making me feel dazed.
Reason told me that breaking my curse was near impossible, but blind faith pushed me to try nevertheless.
Reaching the Inn, I busted through the door and moved with purpose toward the tavern. Patrons shot me curious looks before deciding I was of no interest to them and returned to their conversations and bowls of hearty stew.
Fletcher wasn’t on the lower level, so I took the stairs up to our room. He wasn’t there either. His coat still lay folded on the footstool where he’d placed it the night before, and my coat was nowhere to be seen, which told me he hadn’t returned to the room yet.
“Where are you, boy?” I muttered to myself as I left the room and went back into the hall.
A trickling of panic settled in my gut, but I forced it away as best I could. Fletcher had been so upset when he left my side, though, and I couldn’t ignore the anxiety of not being able to find him.
Eva stood by the stairs, talking to a young boy who’d fallen and scraped his knee. She knelt down at his level and smiled as she applied a thin layer of cream to his scrape before ruffling his blond locks and standing back up.
The boy and his father bid their gratitude and left.
“Have you seen Fletcher?” I asked her.
Her blue eyes examined me, missing nothing. “Is there reason for concern, Captain Flynn?”
“He didn’t return to the room as I’d told him,” I answered.
A smile touched her lips. “Your songbird doesn’t seem like the kind to follow orders. Perhaps he decided to take a walk instead.”
Your songbird, she’d said, somehow knowing my pet name for him.
I thanked her before taking the stairs and going back outside. The cold smacked into me, and I hissed at the ache it caused in my teeth. Snow fell heavier from the glaring white sky, and in the places it was already stuck to the ground, it only added to the heaping piles.
After finding the trail I’d taken Fletcher on before, I saw footsteps on the snowy path.
He’d definitely come that way.
I followed the tracks, cursing my stupidity for not grabbing another coat before returning to the cold. My long-sleeved cotton shirt helped some, though, as did the friction I created on my arms with my hands. I was amazed that Fletcher had gone so far; even farther than I’d taken him days ago.
Rushing water reached my ears after a while, and by the upward climb of the trail, I reasoned I must be reaching the top of some hill or cliff that overlooked the raging sea below.
Not the first time I’d chased my songbird up a hill.
I smiled, and my love for him helped warm me for the briefest of moments. That smile faded when I finally reached the top and saw what waited for me there.
Fletcher stood and looked at me with wide, frightened eyes. My coat engulfed his small frame, and his red hair was a chaotic mess from the wind that was worsened from being at such an elevation.
However, my eyes were drawn to his throat where a sharp blade rested.
An older man stood behind Fletcher, holding the blade, and his menacing smile chilled me more than the weather ever could. A patch covered one eye, and the other one was such a pale blue it nearly looked silver, matching the shade of his long, unruly hair.
