Venture to Chaos (#2)

29 | The Tears of Chaos

If there was one, singular thing that Archer had learned from Silta, it was that losing something was so much worse than never having it.

Adventure, uncertainty—he'd never longed for those things until he'd lost them. He didn't truly realize that he'd fallen in love until Silta had a knife through her. He didn't really realize how much he loved the Avourienne until it was gone.

Back in the truth circle, when Eiler had said Archer was lying about going back to Jeanne, He'd wondered if he'd ever really loved her. He wondered if he had kept her around just because he wanted to be the kind of man that loved her. It was confusing to call the simple thing he'd had for Jeanne the same name as the extravagant thing he'd had for Silta.

Even so, it was the same thing. Different, perhaps, but the same. He'd loved Jeanne, and Everson's deadly trick had proved that.

But since leaving Oprhano, nearly every part of Archer had twisted. He'd lost some of one trait to gain another: naivety for distrust, gentleness for confidence, morals for intelligence. He would never have loved Jeanne as the man he was now, but that wasn't the point. All that mattered was that he had, at one point in time, considered Jeanne to be the love of his life. She was his everything once, and Silta knew that. She'd taken that one sliver of sunlight in his life and snuffed it out. Her creativity was beyond admirable—she'd designed her revenge with his morals in mind: give him something he could enjoy if he were evil—if he could ignore the wrongness of it—but not something he could have if he were cursed with the need to do the right thing. It was that last, final, mocking lesson: Look, Archer. Look how right I was. Fortune favours the evil, because nothing stops them from getting what they want.

He couldn't be sure how long it had been since the Starling had been blown to bits and the Avourienne sailed on. It could've been hours; it could've been days, but the sky had turned grey again, and the red sea continued to fight with the Avourienne, pouring bloody water over the rails in massive waves and soaking every surface of the ship. There was a thin layer of red water on the floor of the corner room, but Archer didn't even notice as he stood from the bed.

He'd kill her. Silta. He was going to put his hands around her throat until she stopped breathing. He was going to drive the knife through her heart, then pull it out and do it again and again until she collapsed to the ground in death. That's what he was going to do. And if she killed him first, then so be it.

They'd been so close he could taste it. The smell of the salt on her hair, the feeling of her freezing fingers. The silent admission that she needed his help. The sliver of hope that maybe they'd work something out. Maybe things would be okay one day, and the heartbreak would heal. They had been so, so close to freedom, for just a moment.

But she needed her revenge. She needed to make sure Archer paid for what he'd done to Bardarian. If she'd killed Alli, if she'd blown the Myriad to pieces, if she'd gone back for the crown—those things, Archer could take. In fact, he could understand them. Enemies did those kinds of things to each other. But this? Friends did this to the people they once knew at the most intimate level. This was too far.

His consciousness, his rational thought, was hanging from his mind by a thin thread. His sanity was completely in the air, stretching thinner than that thin thread.

The water on the ground soaked right through his boots and into his socks, red as blood. The hallway had more of the same, and a few crew members were working to bail out some of the water. Archer's feet touched each stair, the wood slick. The deck was dark and cold, the sky roiling with clouds like it did the moment before it rained buckets of salty tears.

Across the deck, up the balcony steps, through the door. She'd be there. That sickening face would be there, looking back at him.

He didn't know it, but Rusher was there, too, getting a few more stars from Alli. Britter was there, watching Archer the moment he stepped inside the captain's quarters. Even Marquis was there, discussing something, maybe. Archer didn't notice them, or perhaps he did. Perhaps he did see those people there, knew doing this in front of them could change everything, but he just didn't care.