He laughs and gives my shoulder a light shove. “I just…I realized I wasn’t going to see you for a few weeks, at least. And I didn’t like thinking about that.” He pauses. “I hate being at court. Everyone there wears so many faces. They’re all full of flattery and lies and manipulations, grabbing at whatever favor they can reach. It’s exhausting. I think you’re the only honest person in that godsforsaken palace. I’m going to miss you.”

Guilt lumps in my throat, impossible to ignore. Despite what he thinks, I know I wear as many faces as most courtiers—more, probably. I’ve manipulated him as much as anyone. I’m doing it right now. But it’s different, I suppose. I’m not grasping for favor or trying to get myself ahead. What I’m doing is necessary, but that knowledge doesn’t make me feel any better.

I roll over onto my side to face him, propping myself up on my elbow. In the flickering lantern light, his features are softer, innocent.

“I’m going to miss you, too, Søren,” I tell him quietly. That much, at least, isn’t a lie.

He frowns. “Are you?” He reaches out to take my hand, tracing the lines on my palm idly with his pointer finger. Slight a gesture as it is, it still makes me shiver. “How?”

“How what?”

“How can you look at me and not see him?” His mouth twists as he says the words. I don’t have to ask who he means, but the blunt acknowledgment of his father makes me feel like I’ve been dunked in cold water. Søren seems to feel that way himself, his grip on my hand loosening.

He hates him, I realize. It isn’t as simple as a son rebelling against his father or an egomaniacal father’s resentment of his young, strong heir who will one day take his place. It’s hate. Maybe not enough to match the hate I feel for the Kaiser, but it’s something similar.

The realization twists my gut because it’s one more thing that makes me understand Søren more—like him more. I can’t afford to like him more.

“Well, now you have to walk the plank,” I tell him, fully pulling my hand from his grasp. “You might be captain, but you can’t go breaking your own rules—”

“Seriously, Thora,” he says. Though the name is a stab in my gut, I’m grateful for it. I need the reminder that this bubble we’ve created isn’t real, that the person he sees when he looks at me isn’t real.

After a moment of thought, I decide to tell him the truth because I don’t think he’ll believe anything else right now.

“I used to,” I admit. “All of you were indistinguishable—you, the Kaiser, the Theyn.” I shake my head and take a deep breath. “Can you imagine what it was like to wake up in a world where you’re safe and loved and happy and go to sleep in one where everyone you love is dead and you’re surrounded by strangers who only let you live because it’s convenient?”

“No.”

“No,” I repeat. “Because you were only a year older than I was when it happened. It wasn’t your fault, and I know that.” I pause for a breath. “You aren’t your father.”

“But—”

“You aren’t your father,” I say again, more firmly. It’s the truth, but I can tell he doesn’t believe it.

Still, his expression softens and I realize just how much he needed to hear those words, even if he doesn’t believe them. Maybe his interest in me isn’t just about saving the damsel. Part of him also wants to be saved. If he’s stained by his father’s sins, then maybe I’m the only person who can absolve them.

I inch closer to him and lift my hand, resting it against his cheek. His eyes are as dark as the water around us.

“Yana Crebesti,” I say.

He swallows. “What does that mean?” he asks.

It could have meant anything, really, and he wouldn’t have known any better. I could have told him that I was planning to kill him, that I hated every Kalovaxian in Astrea—including him—that I wouldn’t stop until I saw them all dead. He wouldn’t have known the difference.

“It means I trust you.”

“Yana Crebesti,” he repeats.

I close the slight distance between us and brush my lips against his, softly at first, but when his hand reaches up and knots in my loose hair, anchoring me against him, there is nothing soft about it. We kiss like we’re trying to prove a point, though I can’t quite say what it is. I can’t quite remember who I am anymore. My edges blur. ThoraTheoTheodosia. Everything slips away until all that matters are mouths and tongues and hands and breath that is never quite enough. My hair falls around us like a curtain, shutting out the rest of the world. It’s easier than ever to pretend that nothing else exists but this, but us.

He must feel it, too, because when we can’t kiss anymore and he’s just holding me against him with my face tucked in the crook of his neck, he murmurs in my ear: “We can keep sailing. In a day, we’ll be near Esstena. A week we’ll be past Timmoree. A month, Brakka. And then, who knows. We can sail until we get somewhere where no one knows us.”

As traitorous as it makes me, I can imagine it. A life where a crown—gold or ash—doesn’t weigh heavy on my head. A life where I’m not responsible for thousands of people who are hungry and weak and beaten every day. A life where I can just be a girl, kissing a boy because she wants to, instead of a queen kissing a prinz because he’s the key to reclaiming her country. It would be an easier life in so many ways. But it wouldn’t be mine, and though he might hate his father and his world, it wouldn’t be his either.

Still, it’s nice to pretend.

“I’ve heard that Brakka has a delicacy called intu nakara,” I say.

He laughs. “Raw sea serpent. It’s only a delicacy because it’s so rare, not because it’s any good, believe me. It tastes exactly how you would imagine.”

I wrinkle my nose and kiss the small patch of exposed skin on his shoulder, just above his shirt collar. “And if I wanted to try it anyway?” I ask.

“Then you’ll have all the intu nakara you want,” he says. His fingers are tangled in my hair, combing through it idly. “Though I’m sorry to say there will be no aminets.”

“Amineti,” I correct him. “The plural is amineti.” As in, I woke up this morning never having had a single aminet but now my count is up to three amineti. With two different boys. I push thoughts of Blaise and his confusing kiss out of my mind and focus on Søren. “But why is that?”

“Because intu nakara is notorious for causing terrible breath.”