Page 22 of To Touch A Silent Fury
Seth sighed. “The Dragon Prince is my cousin. The invite came from my mother, Princess Derynallis.”
That did nothing to help it make any more sense. He’d grown up the son of a nobody, and he hated the Sightlands. That’s what he’d said. Always. I stared at him. How had I known him so long and not ever really known him? I thought my power was supposed to help me with that, to see through to the truth of people and their intentions. But he’d managed to lie to me for years. “You’re King Braxthorn’snephew?”
A sailor barged through us. “All passengers to the cabins,” he yelled. “No time for dawdlers on the deck.”
I only stared at Seth, trying to understand why he’d lied.
He grimaced. “Come on, let’s talk about this inside.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
His grimace deepened. “I didn’t want you to treat me differently.”
“Differently?” I scoffed. “You’ve made me a fool. You’re a noble, a man of royal courts. You said you were no one, some boy from the Drowned Villages.”
“He lied,” Thread Ersimmon injected, and I jumped, forgetting the older man was standing right behind me. “Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to go lean over the side until this forsaken sea is behind us.”
The Thread stepped shakily past us, holding onto the side of the boat with a white grip, looking several degrees more ill than he had a couple of minutes ago.
I just stared at Seth.
“It doesn’t change anything,” he said. “I’m still the same.”
“Before you were brought to the island, where did you live?”
He grimaced. “In the palace in Droundhaven.”
I shook my head. Betrayal and confusion met like thunder and lightning, one and then the other. “Why did you think I’d treat you differently?”
Seth’s lip curled. “Because everyone has, my entire life. My mother wasn’t best pleased when she found out her only sonwas a Moontouched. She cast me out when I was seven, wanting as little to do with me as possible. But the Threads knew exactly who I was. They treated me better than the other boys, hoping my uncle might give them more gold for it. The others noticed and hated me for it. But when you arrived around my third span, you had no idea. You were alone like me.”
He pulled off one of his gloves and held his hand out to me. I knew what he was offering by letting me read him. I took one off, too. The moment my hand touched his, I felt his sincerity.
“But why did you think I’d cast you out?”
“I wanted to tell you so many times,” he said. “I thought about doing it after my Fate Ceremony. But then I was bound to serve this place, and I couldn’t fathom the idea of you hating me for the rest of your stay. It was selfish, and I’m sorry.”
Turmoil and sadness flashed through our grip, but also eagerness and pleading. Affection, despair. I felt all of his emotions in that moment, and I found I could not resent him, not truly.
“I forgive you,” I said.
His eyes widened. “Tani.”
“But on one condition.”
Worry prickled his mind. “Anything.”
I smiled. “You must tell me everything about Droundhaven. Do not spare a single detail.”
Seth grinned, and he removed his hand from mine and pulled me into another hug. I held him tight, and he pressed his face into my neck. Once more I had that notion that there was something more to the moment, something too tender about our embrace, beyond what we’d ever discussed. But we both ignored it.
“You have a deal,” he said.
A sailor yelled at us again, and we broke apart, moving towards the cabin door across the deck.
We were a good distance from the jetty and the fog was already reclaiming the island. I could only see its tip now, fading into the clouds. Would I ever return to Eavenfold? I hoped the answer was no, but even the act of hoping made me uneasy. The Threads had picked my Fate, and with any luck it was one that would never again lead me to its gale-battered shore.
A new noise met the whipping wind and the sea birds. A thumping of air. A sailor called out from the top level, pointing up.
