Page 107 of Terms of Trade (Trade Wind 4)

“It’s not right to be alone now. Would you prefer Pen? Nicholas? Either would—”

“No.”

“I’m very sorry about your brother. This year was to be happy. Fortunate. This tragedy is so painful. A reminder we never know what is in store for us.”

Helen’s eyes drifted closed again, and she wished sleep, oblivion, upon herself.

“Come, sit up again. Let me brush your hair. You can’t go on like this.”

Yes, I can!

Sirena sighed, and just when Helen hoped that she’d given up, she heard a shoe, then another, plop onto the floor, and the mattress shifted as the woman settled onto it.

“Very well. Rest if you need to.”

Helen frowned when Sirena patted her back, as if she were a young child. She would accept the comfort only for a moment before sending her on her way, she decided. But the moments stretched, and still she didn’t move or speak to end it.

“You have suffered losses before this, so you know. The pain won’t ever go away, not fully, but it won’t always feel likethis. Better days are ahead, Helen.”

She made a sound of denial in her throat.

“Yes, they are,” Sirena said quietly but with certitude and stroked her hair again. “You have great strength. Your life from before is gone. I know what that’s like. What it is to leave everything behind and start a new life after great loss.”

Helen frowned, remembering Sirena’s bittersweet expression when she’d shown her the painting of her father, who’d been killed just before they fled Constantinople. Years before then, she’d lost her mother. “Your parents.”

“Yes. And others.”

“Tell me,” Helen whispered.

“You can’t hear about my sorrows. Not when you have your own.”

Without understanding why, she rolled to face Sirena, needing to know more. “Please tell me.”

The chamber was quiet for a long time, then the woman exhaled raggedly and began speaking, still stroking her head. “I knew there had been tensions and problems in the empire, but we didn’t know how quickly our existence would collapse. How the protections and privileges would disappear overnight. Vassilis’s father was respected. My father, too. Then they were killed. My brother was sent into slavery. It was years before I found out he was dead. I already lived in England then.”

Helen found her hand and squeezed it. “You fled onHydra.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Adrian was five. Nicholas, not yet three. I was heavy with child. Vassilis and I decided—the babe was to be named after my father. Alexander for a son, Alexandra for a daughter.”

Blinking, Helen looked up at Sirena, whose eyes filled with tears.

“A day into our sea journey, I started to bleed. Alexandra was born dead.” She swallowed. “Before the troubles, Nicholas was the happiest child you can imagine. Pure sweetness. Always smiling. But losing everything he knew…burying his baby sister at sea and hearing my screams…he became quiet.” She shrugged. “I can’t imagine he remembers any of it. But he changed. We all did.”

Helen couldn’t speak, but she burrowed closer to Sirena.

“I survived, barely, when my daughter didn’t. I mourned her. Mourned my and Vassilis’s families. The lives we left behind.”

Sirena’s pain pierced the fog around Helen in a way her own couldn’t at the moment, and she wrapped her arms around the woman’s waist. Sirena enfolded her in an embrace.

“You see? You are not alone, eh? I’m not only here with you—I know what it is to have a blanket over my head and wish the world away. Or wish it was different. Or wish that I had died with others. Sometimes…life is too much. Too painful to bear.”

Helen had been certain that she’d cried every tear she could, but warm moisture welled in her eyes again.

“Then life carries on eventually, Helen. The pain remains, but you’ll know happiness again. Until then, those around you must carry you for a while.”

Helen shook her head.

“You don’t need anyone, eh? Ofcourseyou do! Perhaps before, you were carrying everyone else. Who carried you? You’re in need now, and you’re not alone.”

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