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That’s a lot to process. Again, I wonder if I misheard her, but I couldn’t possibly have. “You kidnapped…yourself.”
“Well, yes.” She tucks her hair behind her ears. “I waited for six months past the agreed-upon date, but you never came, and it occurred to me that it wasn’t fair to ask you to do all the work.”
Her words strike right to the very heart of me. I can’t pretend I don’t remember the promises we made at sixteen. It was ten years ago, but it might as well have been yesterday.
Promise me, Maura. Promise me he won’t win. Promise me we’ll be together.
I promise, Juliette.
I’m a godsdamned liar. But then, so is she.
“That was a long time ago,” I finally manage.
“Well, yes, but…” Her smile dims. “Oh, I see. You don’t mean it fondly. You mean you never meant to honor that promise.”
3
JULIETTE
My father was right.
I hate that my first thought feels like a betrayal of Maura. I hate that I’m standing here, smiling like the worst kind of fool, while she stands there looking sick and vaguely guilty.
Even with that expression on her face, she’s still the most stunning woman I’ve ever seen. Her skin is a few shades darker than when we were together, no doubt courtesy of living outside in the sun every day, and her blonde hair is a few shades lighter. She’s got new scars, too. There’s a scattering of burn marks along her hairline, as if someone threw embers at her face, and a silver mark that starts at the corner of her mouth and curves down past her chin.
Her wet clothes are plastered to her athletic body, her lean muscles on full display in a way that would make my heart beat harder if it weren’t in the process of breaking.
“You were never going to come for me,” I say slowly, testing the words out. “You lied.”
“It wasn’t a lie when I said it all those years ago.”
Somehow, that just makes it worse. “Is there someone else?”
She jerks back like I struck her. “Juliette, we were sixteen when we made that promise. Don’t pretend like you’ve been celibate and waiting for me these past ten years. I may be on your father’s Most Wanted list, but I still hear things coming out of Ashye. You’re the social darling of a nation, and your list of paramours is as long as my arm.”
I set my chin, refusing to feel guilty. “Oh, because you’ve been waiting for me all these years?”
“It’s complicated. But to answer your question—no, there’s no one else. It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it like? Because I’m having a hard time understanding.” Gods, I hate how my voice gets choked. It feels like she reached through time and distance to stab the dreaming girl I used to be. “Just tell me why. I deserve that much.”
Maura sucks in a breath. She’s not looking at me, and it’s a relief and an agony all at the same time. “We’re from different worlds. Maybe that didn’t seem like an insurmountable obstacle when we were sixteen, but we’re not sixteen anymore, Juliette. You are the crown princess, and I am a pirate your father has spent significant time and resources trying to catch so he can hang me. We are not the same.”
“I’m not.”
“That’s what I just—”
“No, that’s not what I mean.” I shake my head. “I’m not the crown princess anymore. My father deemed me too irresponsible to be trusted with the throne, so he’s passed me over for my cousin Drake.”
Maura finally looks at me, but I almost wish she hadn’t because of the pity in her green eyes. “I’m sorry. I hadn’t heard.”
It’s been months since the announcement was made, and while part of me wants to give her the benefit of the doubt, the truth is that rumors run across the sea just as fast as in the city. If she didn’t know, it means she hasn’t been seeking out any crumb of information about me the way I have with her.
Which means she likely doesn’t know my father had every intention of shipping me off to the sticky heat of the north to marry the monarch of Edrines. That, more than anything, is what spurred me to go looking for Maura. There is no coastline in Edrines. If I moved there, any hope of a future where she came for me would be gone for good.
Except apparently she never had any intention of coming for me at all.
“You tried to reach the port when we were nineteen. Just three years after you left.”
She’s still watching me with too much and too little in her eyes. “I was still young enough then to think I was immortal. I almost got my entire crew killed as a result.”
There’s no reason to think a future with me should outweigh the lives of so many. But that’s an excuse and we both know it. There are other ways into the city that don’t involve sailing into the bay. She didn’t come because she didn’t want to.
