Page 29 of Witchsea

“Yes,” he draws out the word and crosses his arms. “Freckles has demanded that I give you a real chance. My captain seems to be fixated on keeping you alive. Therefore, you’re staying, and you become part of the crew. It’s important that…I apologize and we start over.” He stares at me. “I don’t like you. That isn’t going to change, but I am not a threat to you. I don’t like people in general.”

“Your apology is accepted.” I shrug when it’s his turn to look shocked, and I explain it more. “You’ve never actually hurt me. You may be grumpy and may not have liked me from the beginning, but I get it. You’re trying to keep Ren alive, and I directly oppose that by taking him with me to these trials. He’s your captain, and your job as his second in command is to keep him alive.”

“He would go on the trials with or without you. Keeping him alive has always been a great difficulty of mine.” Chaos leans back. “But he is alive.”

I clear my throat. “How long have you known him?”

“Since he asked me to come on the ship. I knew of him, but until the ship, I did not get to know him personally. I swore the first day that I met him right here that I would protect his life and return him home, and that’s my intention to do until my last breath and I meet the gods in the skies.” He looks up, like he can see the gods up there watching over us.

“When you get the gold, are you going home?” I enquire. Ren won’t talk much about the end goal of all of this except he wants the gold. I hope it’s because he is going to raise an army to oppose the king, to beat the king at his own game, but that might be too much to hope for.

“Yes.” He looks away from me. “When this is over, we’ll finally get to go home.”

“Sounds like you miss it.” I watch him.

“Sometimes. Other times, no. I was judged back at home, and here at sea? The sea does not judge me, it only accepts.” The sea waves slash against the side of the ship in response. “You may think our captain is heartless and cruel, but Ren was the only one who’s ever believed me when I told him my story. And Freckles. I’ve not told anyone else.”

“You can tell me. I’m good at keeping secrets and…I won’t repeat it.” I shrug. “I’d like to get to know you better.”

He huffs. “You probably won’t believe me when I tell you it. It’s hard when you are absolutely certain something happened, and the world doesn’t believe you anymore.” I wait him out. “I have a twin brother, and he looks exactly like me, but he has a birthmark on the back of his neck that I do not. We grew up together, and then when we turned eighteen, he vanished in the middle of the night. I woke up, went to his room, and it was empty. Not just of him, but of everything that was his. His bed, his clothes, his life were just gone. There wasn’t a painting in the house of him that didn’t disappear, not a single piece of him to be found, and when I asked my parents…they thought I was insane. No one knew who he was, and it was like he disappeared. He was erased from the world in the blink of an eye, except for my memory.”

He laughs, but it’s a sad laugh, a laugh of misery, before continuing. “The more I told people, the more I was called insane for it. My family is considered upper class on the island we come from, but the ramblings of my twin, as they called it, were making people question my health. My desperation to find my twin brother led to me being outcast from my family. That’s how I ended up on the ship. Which I call good luck.” He doesn’t look at me, and he is so tense. I think he believes I will call him a liar, too. I won’t. “Sometimes I think I was cursed to remember him, because now I grieve someone no one else ever knew.”

“Where do you think your brother went, then? What do you think happened?” I question.

“Magic of a terrible and great cause must have been at play to make everyone forget his entire existence,” Chaos states. “I don’t know. But I feel he’s alive.” He thumps his chest over his heart. “I know in here that he’s alive, and he’s out there somewhere. I will find him, and we will be reunited. Whether our family remembers him or not.” He laughs once more. “You know, when I told Ren this, I thought he’d look at me and he’d be like everyone else. Ren didn’t know me at the beginning, and he would have every right to judge me, but he didn’t. He didn’t say ‘you’re mad’ or ‘you’ve lost your mind’ but that he believed me. That he would help me find my twin.”

I’m surprised a little, but I don’t say anything.

“Ren told me that, our entire lives, we search for something. Something that we can’t see or know but only feel. I’m talking about mates. When we look for our mate, we know from a very young age that they’re there. You can feel them, feel their heart beating next to yours the second they exist. You know they’re out there. Like I know my mate is out there somewhere. But you can’t see them. You don’t know how to find them. And yet, you know and trust in the magic of this world to lead you to each other. Ren believes that my trust in my brother being alive is the same as that, and I believe it, too. Ren believing in me was one of the few reasons I managed to keep going. I thought I would have to go and join Ixchel, let him take me to see my brother one day when he joined me too, but Ren gave me hope with one speech.”

“And Freckles? You told her?” I ask, gulping.

“I told her one night when I was very drunk,” he admits with a smile. “It was her fault. She supplied the ambrosia. When I told her, she cried for me. She was the first person that felt the grief that I did. Mirrored it in her own face. She is truly special, that one, and this world is far too evil for someone as kind as her.”

“I thought for a moment you and her might be together until she explained to me about the mates and the whole situation,” I admit. “And yes, she is. I saw that from the beginning.”

“I am not her mate, and only the male would know for certain. It’s hard for the females to know.” He sighs at me. “But I care for her, and I always will. The gods are not always kind when they place souls together.”

I touch his arm. “I believe you.” His eyes widen for a second. “You never come across as someone that’s a liar, and there’s nothing we wouldn’t do for family. I see it in your eyes. You won’t stop, and that only happens when it’s family. I believe you, and I’m sorry they didn’t.”

He pats my hand. “Do you have family, Miriam?”

“Yes.” I tell him simply and change the subject. “So, are you going to be nicer to me now?”

He picks my hand off his arm and puts it on my lap before climbing to his feet. “You’re still trouble. I still think you should stay away from the captain, and I admit that you being on this ship is never going to be a reason that I like you. But you don’t have to worry about me knocking you overboard or watching you accidentally die. I will save you.”

“Thank you, I guess…” I mutter.

“You’re welcome.” He smiles once, and it’s a friendly smile. I watch him walk off, shaking my head. It’s only then that I realize he’s mean to everybody because everybody he grew up with was mean to him when they didn’t believe him. I turn back to the sea, wondering what happened to Chaos’s twin.

Chapter

Fourteen

“Why are we stopping here?”

Chaos looks at me, then glances around to see if there’s anyone else that could answer my question, and his mouth falls into a thin line when he sees there isn’t. He continues pulling on the heavy rope to lower the sail.