He chuckles softly, breaking my trance, a fire lit in his eyes. “Thank you.”
“Um,” I stammer, trying to regain my composure under his playful stare. “Should we talk now? Before everyone else gets here?”
He nods once, setting the food down on the railing. “It would be best if I know everything before I talk to them, so yes. We should.” His hips settle on the rail behind the helm, and he crosses his feet out in front of him, the same way he stood the other night when my courage took over me and I worked my way close to him. With everything I need to tell him, I’m nervous to be that close now. My feet stay planted on the deck, and I bite my lip nervously, trying to figure out where to start.
His eyes track the movement before flicking back up again. “Just tell me, Lennox. You don’t have to be nervous about it.”
“I’m just trying to figure out how not to make you turn back into the furious captain I know so well. I know you’re mad at me.”
“I’m not angry with you, but I can be mad at what you did. I’m upset you didn’t tell me, and that you just disappeared. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt that you didn’t trust me. But you’re here, and you’re safe. We’ll figure the rest out.”
I let out a long breath. I stand by what I did, especially after his refusal to let me leave so many times, but I knew it might cause problems between us. I didn’t want him to hate me when I got back, and the relief that floods me knowing he doesn’t is consuming.
“Alright. Well, the night I asked you to send me back to the Voyagers, and you refused, I…went to Sig. We had talked about it before. That’s why I was the one who asked you this time. We thought I’d have a better chance than she did, but we were wrong.”
His jaw tenses, and he motions with his finger for me to keep going.
“I told her I had already decided that I was going back, so she could help me or not. Don’t blame her for any of it. She was only helping me to give us the best chance. I begged her not to tell you for as long as possible after you figured out I was gone. I needed time to get back, and convince them I had been faking everything Mara saw in order to stay alive and wait for my opportunity to get back to them.”
“Like your original plan,” he says.
“Yes. But obviously, I was coming back.”
“That’s good to hear,” he says. I level him with a look, and he smirks again. “Go on.”
“The plan was to figure out how to replenish the dust during the days I was there. Dane and I were going to look for clues before you took me, so I had hoped he found something. I was going to get him to tell me, but when I got there, he had found nothing. He hadn’t even looked because he was too busy searching for me.” He huffs a laugh, because he knows there’s no way Dane could find me under the island’s protection, especially since he hadn’t found the Castaways for so many years.
“I spent the two days trying to find answers. We didn’t stop searching, but there was nothing. I, uh…”
My voice trails away as I try to find the courage to admit the next part. Tingling fingertips distract me and I clench my hands together and release repeatedly, working the nerves from my body.
I wince slightly and force myself to continue. “I even looked on the fountain.”
His spine straightens and his brows furrow. “You went back?” There’s something in his voice that I can’t place. Worry? Fear? Longing?
“It wasn’t my choice. I remembered the imagery on the fountain that helped me find the healing waters, and thought, maybe there was something for the dust, too. I racked my mindtrying to remember the other images, but Dane thought it would be worth the risk of using the dust to go back and look. I tried to talk him out of it so we didn’t waste the it, but he didn’t listen. I was furious, and I panicked as soon as I got there. All I could think about was how many of us could have gotten back with it, and it was wasted.”
“You didn’t stay?”
“What?” My focus on the story is broken as I try to figure out what he is asking. He pushes off the rail and steps closer to me, coming toe to toe with the new boots the island gifted me this morning. I crane my neck up, flinching as the light of the suns flares in my vision, and he shifts, casting his shadow over me so I can look into his face.
“You didn’t stay in Blackwood?” he repeats, as he scans my face.
Throughout the entire story, this is the piece he holds onto? He isn’t concerned about using more of the dust, about not finding answers? He only wants to know why I didn’t stay without uttering those specific words.
I shake my head. “Dane didn’t bring me to Blackwood. But Weston,” I reach out and lace my fingers through his, nervous that he’s going to pull away, afraid of showing any sort of affection in front of the crew. His hand squeezes mine, his thumb brushing over the back of my palm, and my shoulders sag with relief. “I wouldn’t have stayed. I wasn’t going to leave you here.”
His throat bobs and he plants a kiss on the top of my head. “Then what?” he asks.
I go through the entire story, telling him about how Sig and I planned to meet at one house, and he brought me to another, not listening to any of my attempts to make the night go according to plan. I recite everything, and he listens intently, his normal potent silence no longer intimidating.
“Just before everything went wrong, we talked about searching the safe houses because of the magic that protects them, and how they morph and change. The problem is, if the answer to replenishing the dust is in one of the houses, we don’t know if it will only be revealed to the Guardian, and no one else.”
“So if that is the case, there’s no way we could find it, anyway. We’d also never know.”
“Exactly,” I murmur.
He rubs his chin and his lips, processing what I’m saying. I’m sure he’s trying to think of another plan or loophole that would help, but there’s nothing. If the Guardian is the only one who can find it, then Dane truly is in control of everything. The only other way would be if Dane was no longer the Guardian, but I will not let that happen.
