Declan ran a comb through his hair, changing out of his dishevelled travelling clothes into a neater suit of garments that he typically wore when dining with his father. Swapping his stained tunic for a starched one, he heard a knock on the door. As he tugged the shirt over his head, Declan slipped his dagger into one of the loops of his belt and turned to open it.

"Cousin," said Nolan, his eyes cast downward. "I-uh... I had some things I wanted to discuss with you."

"Yes?" He continued his grooming and ablutions as he waited for his cousin to speak.

Nolan sighed, running a hand through his close-cropped red hair. He took a seat without asking for permission, which was unlike him. "Remember Olivia?"

Declan paused. How could he forget Olivia? He could still see her red hair blowing in the wind, still hear her delicate laugh, still remember the way she had looked at him, tears in her brown eyes when she had rejected his marriage proposal. I can't be a princess, she had said. I wasn't made for this life, Declan. I want a simpler one.

"I've just received word from her brother," Nolan said, waving a letter in one hand, its flap sealed with blue wax, the colour of the Delroses. "Olivia is dead."
He sat down on the bed, dropping the comb and the pomade, watching the small glass jar shatter against the floor without a drop of regret. Declan could barely register anything, could not even look his cousin in the eye. Words swam in his head, but none of them were right. None of them would fix this. None of them were what he wanted to say. All of them were from the past, swarming up and clouding his eyes like tears.

I love you, Declan. I'll always love you. But we cannot marry. Don't you see? I've seen what happens to princesses. I love you, but I love my freedom more. And if you truly cared for me as you claim you do, you would not force this proposal on me.

Please, Olivia, do not say these things. You don't mean them. I'll give you whatever you want... I'll do whatever you ask...

No, you can't. You cannot give me what I truly need, Declan. You will always be the prince of Astroia, and for that reason, I cannot be your wife. Do you truly not understand? A gilded cage is still made of bars and it still locks like any other cell. The crown you want to place on my head is nothing more than yet another shackle. I want to be free.

We can run away! We can travel the world together... You know I would do anything for you, Olivia. Stop crying. Please, say you'll come with me.

What's the point, Declan? You can only run so far. The world is only so large. It will never contain room enough for your father not to drag you back home. And he wouldn't even be dragging you, not really. You love the crown. You love power. You were born to it, you were made for it, and you wouldn't last a day without it. You may say you love me, but I know I am nothing more than one more pretty face in a long line of them.

The thought of how he had pleaded for her to stay was like a blow to his gut. How he had demeaned himself, debased himself, even, for a woman who had wanted him, but not enough. Would he truly never speak to her again? Declan would have given anything, in that moment, to be with her again, even if it were in the arms of another man. He would have begged for another chance to ask for her hand, even if it only led to rejection. He had stayed away so long not only for this quest, this fool's errand, but also because he had not wanted to be invited to her wedding. He had not wanted to see this--and now he would never again see her.

"Declan?" His cousin shook his shoulder, leading Declan to recoil from his touch. "Declan, are you alright?"

He opened his eyes. The world was spinning. The ship was moving. Waves were steadily pushing them back toward Astroia. Finally, he croaked, "How did she die?"

"You don't want to know," Nolan said softly. And blast him, damn him for that honour, for that godforsaken sense of nobility that sought to protect everyone from the truth. Declan was not too delicate for the truth.

"Tell me," he snapped. "Tell me right now."

"Childbirth," Nolan murmured, clapping a hand on Declan's back. This time, there was no energy in him left to jump away. "She died giving birth to a daughter."

A daughter. One last piece of Olivia Delrose somewhere in this world. Her, and some other man ."Did the babe live?"

Nolan frowned. "Her brother didn't say. I have to assume it's still unknown as to whether or not the child will survive."

Of all the ways they would return to Astroia, Declan had never imagined this one. He had never pictured returning to Olivia Delrose's wake. He had never pictured sending her away, into the stars, as the Astroians said. Wrapped in that gold shroud that all Astroian buried their dead in. Gold made her look pale and sickly. That much, he remembered.

He had never wanted to think of her as married, though he knew she had plenty of offers and many suitors. After all, to society, she was beautiful and intelligent and passionate and also... a prince's cast-off. Many men would want to marry her, if only to gain some sort of link to the throne. He had dreamed, so many times, of returning to Astroia triumphant, ceding his line to the throne no matter what she said about his ambition, and sweeping her off of her feet.

Declan had never thought he would return home to find that the love of his life was dead.

"Who was the father?" he asked, his voice too hoarse for his liking. For the stars' sake, he sounded as if he'd been smoking a pipe for the past twenty years. Declan could not go to dinner like this, a mess over a woman who had turned him down, who had chosen her own life over joining it with his.

Nolan shook his head. "She never said. Her brother didn't know. She refused to name him."

"She... she was not married?" Declan asked with a furrow between his brows. "What sort of scoundrel would..."

His voice trailed off. Was he that scoundrel? They had lain together once or twice, before he had left... but, no. That was impossible. He had last seen Olivia Delrose a year ago, not nine months ago. Someone else was responsible. His skin bristled and his blood boiled at the thought of some other man leaving his fingerprints on her skin and his taste in her mouth.

Nolan shook his head, a glimmer of sorrow visible in his eyes. "I don't know who fathered her child. But I know--"

A sonorous clanging drowned out his voice. Both their heads snapped toward the door as they heard someone calling, "Supper is ready!"
-

Cutting into a slice of cured ham, Declan surveyed the room with dry eyes. If he thought nothing of the past and ignored the future, perhaps he would be able to focus on the present, to concentrate on the matters at hand rather than those of the heart. Wooden boards lined the Leyria's dining room, the scent of saltwater ubiquitous throughout the ship as it battled with the food's aromas. Across from him, Nadia was still veiled, though her face was bare as she picked at the food on her plate, silvery layers of garb wrapped around her body like armour. Nolan, next to him, sat with red-rimmed eyes and a similar lack of appetite.

The ship's captain had joined them, and despite the obviously sullen aura that permeated the room, he was trying to make conversation. "The journey to Astroia should take approximately four months, barring any unforeseen rough weather. It is not quite storm season yet."

Nolan attempted to give him a rejoinder amid the tense silence. It lacked the wit of a courtier's epigram, but it did its duty well enough. "Really? Coming to Milona from Astroia was only a two month-long journey."

Captain Hayes, as though truly oblivious to the silent machinations and emotions that were sweeping through the guests' minds like a dust storm, responded. "You must have taken the more dangerous route, my friend. Tell me, did you pass through the..."

Declan tuned out the conversation between his cousin and the captain as soon as they began using nautical and cartographical terms, letting the words wash over him like so much nonsense. When he looked up from his bite of ham, chewing thoughtfully, Nadia was taking a sip of the white wine and grimacing.
She caught his gaze, flushed, and looked down again. So strange, that a typical posture of subjugation for her was transformed into an act of defiance.

"Is the food not to your liking?" he prodded. She had not spoken to him all evening, ever since their interaction with the handcuffs. "Or perhaps the beverages are not to your taste?"

Did he speak to provoke her into doing the same, or because he genuinely cared for her well-being and comfort? It wasn't as though he could demand that the ship stock better varieties of wine--after all, he was a prince, not a purser. As well, he wished to avoid the reputation of being a spoiled brat who thought he was entitled to the finest that the world had to offer.

"I have never had wine before," she admitted, before clamping down on her lower lip with her teeth as though to prevent any more secrets from spilling out. As though confessing that she disliked wine were some sort of vulnerability. Or, it must have been her lack of experience that she wished to conceal.  "I find that it does not agree with me."

"Well, this vintage is not exactly the best one to begin with," he mused, swirling the slightly translucent fluid around in his crystal goblet. "It is a touch too sweet."

Nadia began to relax a smidgen, the rigid line of her shoulders softening. "Well, of course you would say that. Certainly, you do not seem like the type of man who likes to enjoy life at all."

That was a different view of him than most people had. Courtiers with whom he danced and drunk and gambled would call him thoughtless, pleasure-loving, even bordering on hedonistic. His father considered him barely responsible enough to undertake this journey by himself and had accordingly assigned him a nursemaid in his cousin. Declan carefully cultivated his image, straddling the line between a carefree prince and a capable gentleman, but he had not expected Nadia to see him as someone who was as dull as Nolan.  

"Why do you say that?" he asked. Did he truly care for her answer, or was he only seeking to fill the silence? Was her opinion important to him at all? "I enjoy plenty of the finer things in life, Miss Sancta."

"Do you now?" She cocked her head to one side, leaning back in her seat as if to survey him from another angle. "Such as what, exactly?"

As the others spoke around them, the Captain's speech was peppered with gesticulations such as waving wildly in the air. He overturned the wine bottle and Declan righted the decanter just in time to watch as Nadia jumped up, backing away from the table before it was able to completely soak through her clothes. However, the liquid had made it onto the bodice of her gown, splattering it with droplets. He saw her eyes widen as though in panic. Something in him wanted to pry her apart and see what kind of upbringing she had had, what sort of formation she had been given so that she responded so strangely to such commonplace events.

As Declan kept his gaze on her while she hurried out of the room, he realized that he still did not know what made her the creature that she was, all luminous scars and veiled appearance and strange reactions. Buried deep in a vault in the heart of the oldest temple in Milona, like a hidden gem. Before he realized what he was doing, he put down his fork and knife, crossing them over his half-empty plate and excused himself to follow her.

She had not made it to her room. Instead, she was hunched over in the corridor with a cloth napkin clutched in her hand, dabbing at the stain as though that would somehow make it go away. When she heard him arrive, her head snapped up. He half-expected her to snarl at him, but she was too civilized for that, too well-bred. Better-mannered than a prince, he thought with a scoff.

"What are you doing here, prince?" she asked, planting her hands on her hips and staring up at him with those big green eyes of her. They were red-rimmed now and slightly swollen from crying. "Were you afraid I would turn into a mermaid and dive into the sea, never to be seen again?"

The thought amused him more than he would admit. Declan had spent a childhood full of fairies and mermaids and vampires, things with sharp teeth and wings where they shouldn't be and scales that did not belong on a fish. If he was quite honest with himself, the uncontrollable fascinated him. Magic fascinated him, precisely because it was atavistic, ancient, primal. It came from a time before man had ever set on this earth and pretended he could harness it.

"I'd like to see you try," he suggested, letting a smirk lift a corner of his mouth. He felt more human when he was teasing her. "Go ahead. Strip down and swim into the ocean. I'd like to see if you do have a tail under all that fabric."

"You are a lecher," Nadia responded, her cloth napkin fluttering to the ground as she unballed one of her fists. The wind whipped through her garments, pulling back her veil to expose her hair. Either she was too distracted by her anger or did not care enough to pull it back.

"I prefer the word charmer," Declan said. Though truth be told, he had never really cared for women outside Olivia. After their dissolution, he had sought comfort in a few other women of ill repute, but nothing had ever inspired him to flirt with every woman he saw.

"Well, if I jump off this ship, it will be because I am pushing you overboard and you've decided you don't want to die alone," she said, ignoring his retort. Her dark curls fluttered about her face, causing her to push them back with a huff.

He raised an eyebrow, leaning against the rail. "Does anyone want to die alone?"

At his words, something in her gaze broke, something crumpling in, caving in. She turned away, wrapping her garments more tightly around her petite frame, her slim brown fingers standing out against the white fabric. "I am quite tired. Good night."

With that, she returned belowdecks and, though part of him wanted to, Declan didn't stop her.