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I watch her strip out of her jacket and toe off her boots. She sinks onto the bed and sighs. The silence between us has just begun to get awkward when someone knocks on the door, a quick rap that makes us both tense.
I nod at Maura and move to the corner of the room so I can’t easily be seen from the door. She’s been very careful to keep me out of sight from both patrons and the owner. From what she recounted of her second interaction with the hunter, it doesn’t seem like anyone on this island is a fan of the Cwn Annwn. But I can’t imagine Atlantis is all that different from other places. Gold is gold is gold, no matter what currency. A lot of people will compromise their personal feelings for money.
The food is delivered quickly, a quiet word exchanged and the tray passed over. Then we’re alone again.
Maura places the tray on the small table, and we each take a seat. All the awkwardness from our previous silence is back. It presses against my skin, a weight I cannot escape. I want to believe things will be okay. I want to believe she’s changed her mind. But I’m not entirely certain I can trust her.
“Do you know what got me through those first few years after your father chased me out of Ashye?”
It seems like a trick question, if not for the thread of vulnerability in her voice. The temptation to make a quip about her living the pirate life dies behind my lips. “Please tell me.”
“You.” Maura won’t quite meet my gaze. “You were all I could think of while I was working my way up the ranks of the crew I fell in with. Of getting back to you. Of taking you away from the palace where you seemed so miserable.”
“I was miserable.” I found ways to distract myself from that misery, but it accompanied me every day of my life under my father’s thumb.
Maura fiddles with the fork in front of her. “When I became captain, the first thing I did was try to come for you. You know how that went.”
“You almost died,” I whisper.
“Yeah.” She gives a bare smile. “So I figured I just needed a better crew to try again. It took years to build the crew I wanted to run with. But in that time, the memory of you started to change. I never stopped loving you, Jules. That’s not what I mean. But the older I got it, the more the realities of the world started to wear me down.”
I understand. I don’t want to know or give her any ammunition in regards to being right to send me home, but I understand the way the world can diminish a memory. “Those times with you started to feel like a dream.”
“Yes, exactly that.” She sits back with a huff. “Money makes the world go ‘round. It didn’t matter how many ships I hunted or what spoils I was able to barter because I could never get enough money to replace the life I would be asking you to leave if you ran away with me.”
“But you didn’t ask me. You never tried to come back again.”
She nods. “Rumors reached me, even at sea. I heard about how you’d grown into the darling of the court. That you had countless lovers and paramours, and that you were always found in the latest fashion, draped in jewels from head to toe.”
I stare in disbelief. “We talked about this when we were teenagers. Surviving court is its own kind of battlefield. I did what I had to, and in the end, even that wasn’t enough for my father. It took me a long time to realize nothing I ever do will be good enough.”
“I remember what we talked about. But so much had changed for me, and I couldn’t comprehend a reality where so much hadn’t changed for you as well.” She shakes her head sharply. “I was wrong, Jules. I was wrong about it all, but seeing you again after all these years fucked with my head something fierce. Seeing you in danger. All I could think of was that I needed to get you safe, and in my head, safety meant sending you home.”
I hate that I understand. But I do. Maybe if we had seen each other more during those important years when we transitioned from children into adults. Maybe if we had spoken, even a little bit.
Either way, we can’t change the past. We can only change the future.
Right now, I have to decide if I’m willing to stay angry or if, instead, I can look to the future too. In the end, it really depends on Maura and what she says next. “And now?”
