𝕾𝖍𝖗𝖔𝖚𝖉𝖘 - 𝙺𝚊𝚣 𝙱𝚛𝚎𝚔𝚔𝚎𝚛

XII

It was dark, well past midnight, when Mira padded out of the cabin. She appreciated Nina, she saved her life—something Mira will have to repay her for later—but staying in that room was stifling. As she ascends the stairs, the smell of the salt, so much purer than the reek of tainted water in Ketterdam, finds her like a song sung at dawn.

Her footsteps are silent on the wood, covered up by the splashing of waves against the hull. She finds the railing, despite the time, the sky is alight in fire. Stars shining down, hung in the darkness like diamonds, nestled into the inky velvet of nothingness.

We're all just floating. Nothing compared against everything. She traces her hands along the wood grain as she finds her way to the bowsprit. The sound of the waves is louder now, and the feeling pulses in her head like blood, her own heartbeat syncing with the vastness of something she can never truly comprehend.

She steps over the barrier to balance on the narrowing piece of wood. One foot in front of the other, she makes her way to the end, where she settles in, straddling the wood and letting her feet dangle over the water, so close that a mermaid could reach out and drag her under.

"I don't think Nina would like to see all her hard work threatening to drown herself."

Mira smiles, looking over her shoulder. "Jesper, I would come over to thank you for saving our asses, but I'm pretty sure your ego is already inflated." She likes Jesper, he had the courage to try and get her to listen to Kaz that first day, even if she was a stubborn mule about it. The fact that he was an unparalleled shot was also helpful.

The lanky Zemini laughs, stepping over the railing but staying at the base of the jutting plank. "I'll take that as the compliment it is." His laughter dies, but his smile stays, even if it is sadder. "How's Inej doing?"

It stings, the thought of the frail girl below deck. Mira shakes her head, returning her eyes to the water. "I wish I knew." She likes to think in another world, her sister would be a Healer. She was always gentle, the sun to Mira's moon. Maybe if she had been, she could've stopped the bleeding. Or maybe she would've been a Heartrender like Nina, able to defend herself from anyone who even looked at her wrong.

Jesper's voice pulls her from her musing. "What's it like?"

Mira lifts a leg so both are on the same side and she can look at Jesper easier. "What?"

He gestures to the waves, and the strain in his voice—what he's trying to say hardly comes. "Being so... open. About who you are, what you can do, what you do with your abilities."

She watches him so intently, he tries to shy away, but she pins him with her icy eyes. Her next words come out slow, testing the weight of each one before she lets it past her lips. "I think it's because I have to be." The safety of darkness makes it so easy to utter words that she'd never let herself think in the daylight hours. "Because if I don't have the fear that comes with being a demon, I'll be nothing. I'll be weak and everyone I love will die because I can't save them." The testing of the words couldn't prepare her for the feeling of leaving them in the open. They seem to hover in the air before either of them fully absorbs their meaning.

She stands and walks over to Jesper, her feet thankfully steady, not affected by the storm in her mind or by her feet. The pain in her side fading, the tide washing it away. "How do you do it?" She looks up at Jesper. "Hide what you are?"

She doesn't know when she figured it out, maybe his inhuman aim, maybe the need to expel energy in a way only the release of what you are can give, maybe it was "like calls to like". But now she knows.

His eyes widen, but he bows his head. "Because I have to be." Their reasons are the same, their methods couldn't be more different.

She nods slowly. "Our secret?"