These Gilded Seas

Chapter Forty-Two: The Finality of Death and Change

Two days later, the king's body arrives in an elaborate wooden casket, covered in flowers and draped in the Anjordian flag. Eero won't let me attend the funeral because I'm still healing, but Finn and I watch it from the study window.

Half of Lykke gathers in the front lawn of the palace, standing solemn in their dark outfits. More line the streets outside the walls. Women mourn loudly when they clutch children who don't understand but still feel the weight of the sadness around them. Soldiers, some retired and graying in their outdated uniforms and others barely of age with pubescent and pathetic excuses for facial hair in their new, clean clothes, like the wall and audience, swords drawn. Each helmet gleams in the autumn sun and blinds the two of us.

I can't look away, though.

Their song of grief drifts up to us in long, low notes. Eero stands alone in front of his father's casket, chin held high. For the hundredth time today, I wish he would have let me go with him. Even if I had to stand with the staff members, maybe my presence would have reassured him.

Maybe.

Regardless of the maybes, I'm sitting on a couch that Finn and I dragged to the window, shoving Eero's desk out of the way. My best friend sits quietly beside me, legs tucked under himself, his head propped tiredly on my shoulder. Out of the corner of my eye, it almost looks like he has a tail again, but unfortunately, we're both stuck like this.

Who knows for how long.

My magic hasn't come back yet, not in full-force, anyway. I catch fleeting swells of warmth whenever Eero glances at me in our stolen moments during the day, but She's just out of reach when he inevitably leaves again.

Even if She was here, I don't know how to transform us back, and there's no one here to teach me. Papa might have been able to, but I cut myself off from him when I came here. I did this to myself. I'm going to have to figure out how to fix it myself.

"His people really love him," Finn whispers as a long, sad hymn ends and the instrumentalists from Lykke start playing.

I nod. "Well, I think it was the old Soren they liked. The one before Zula tainted him."

Finn hums in agreement and shifts a little closer to me, pulling Eero's blanket up around his shoulders. The poor thing still hasn't recovered from his time in the vial. He's quieter, weaker.

"You okay?" I ask, craning my neck to look at him.

Finn nods.

"Are you sure? You look cold."

"I'm always cold here lately," he says. "Ever since, you know—" He waves his hand around and glances at me. "I'm fine. Really."

I don't believe a single word coming out of his mouth, but what choice do I have? I've asked him to talk to me about it. His answer is always the same: "Not yet." Pushing him would be wrong. I just have to wait.

Unfortunately, patience was never my strong suit.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"About what?" he mumbles, watching the funeral proceedings below.

"About your time in the vial," I press gently, just in case he explodes. "When you were an actual fish."

He sighs. It's a heavy sound, filled with the weight of a thousand carefully bound secrets. Uncovering one might start an avalanche, and we could be buried under them.

Or it might be a forest fire and we emerge from the ashes like newly born flowers: fertilized and ready to bloom.

"It... was..." Finn talks slowly, testing each word with careful antennae. "Cold." He pulls the blanket up to his chin. "And cramped. I could hear everything that was going on around me, but I couldn't say or do anything about it. And every time you moved, it jostled the water and made me feel nauseous."