The Captain of the Refuge was pressed into the corner of his cabin, perched on the edge of his desk and with as much distance as he could possibly put between himself and the Princess of Sonamire. His head was bowed, and Fynn’s shoulders had caved in around him. Sol had never seen him so vulnerable, so small without his arrogance and swagger. She did not like it, despised whatever had pushed him to such a state.
“Fynn?” she called, cringing at the way her voice cracked, like she had not spoken in days.
He lifted his head, and the quiet prayers ceased. “You’re awake.”
Nodding, Sol pressed her hands into the mattress. She propped herself up against the low, makeshift wooden headboard that Fynn had built from old wine barrels. Pain pierced between her shoulder blades, echoed by an ache in her temples. She groaned. “How long have I been asleep?”
Fynn breathed deeply as he slid down from his desk, his movement not nearly as graceful as Sol had come to know these past months. He sat next to her on his bed, and as he reached for Sol to brush back a strand of her hair, she noted the way he tremored. “Nearly a day,” he told her quietly. “Luca said you were fine, just exhausted.”
She wanted to touch him, wanted to hold his hand and offer him that same comfort he’d always given her when she needed it. Sol did not know what had rattled him, what had shaken him so deeply that those were tear tracks staining his flushed cheeks. “What happened?”
A frown tugged at his mouth. “You don’t remember?”
The way his brow creased, the way his hands still shook as he inched his fingers towards Sol… She supposed it made sense if something had gone wrong after he’d sent her below deck during the storm. “No,” she told him, her stomach churning. “Is everyone all right? Riel and Amael—”
“They’re fine,” Fynn assured her. He watched her carefully, his eyes stripping her bare with the same apprehension that Sol had once regarded him with. “You don’t remember the wave?”
Sol quirked her head. “What wave?”
A shuddering breath escaped him, one that roused a gentle breeze inside the cabin. Books were strewn across the floor, their pages fluttering open on the warm, salty wind conjured by Fynn’s Magic. “Sol, you saved my ship.”
She blinked at him, knocked off some precarious balance as she continued teetering the line between consciousness and sleep. She had not rested enough, had not slept soundly through the night, and even her Magic was begging her to lay back down, to sleep off the pain still beating away at her temples.
“No, I didn’t,” she said, because surely, she’d remember such a thing. “I couldn’t have. I was below deck with Luca and the others. You told me to stay there unless you sent for me.”
“You’ve never been good at following orders,” Fynn retorted. He finally reached for her, grasping Sol’s hand with such tenderness it shattered the Princess’ resolve. She wanted to know what had happened, why he was telling such a tale, and she wanted to know now. “The ship was about to be capsized, Sol. Sunk by a tidal wave higher than the tallest mast. I couldn’t stop it.” A beat passed, two, and then Fynn continued, “But you could.”
She shook her head, pulling herself free from Fynn’s hold. “You’re lying.”
“Sol—”
Her chest heaved, water trickling through her as her Magic surged. “I’d remember that, Fynn. But I went below deck with the others, and I must have fallen asleep during the storm.” Sol’s hands began to shake as she picked at her fingernails, tearing at her cuticles until they bled. “I’d remember that.”
Fynn stretched out his hand, and she thought he was reaching for her hair again, to tuck it behind her ear or to playfully tug on a curl. But Fynn grabbed the chain around her throat, gently tugging free the hidden pendant beneath her tunic. “Do you know what this is?”
Sol took the stone between her index finger and thumb. “A family heirloom,” she said. “Haven’t I told you about it? Silas gave it to me before I left.”
“Yes,” Fynn agreed. “But do you know what it is?”
“A rock wrapped in wire,” Sol answered dryly. “Nothing special. Even Silas made light of giving it to me by insisting he could find a replacement in the garden.”
The Captain closed his eyes, and the warm draft filtering into the cabin through the open port window became frigid. Sol shivered as Fynn ducked his head. He spoke another prayer beneath his breath. “You truly don’t know what you have.”
Sol dropped the stone, the sparkling black pendant falling to rest above her heart. “A rock.”
Fynn looked at her as if she’d slapped him. “A fancy rock,” he said tightly. “Sol, it’s the godsdamned Dragon’s Heart. You’ve had it all this time.”
Her own heart did not stutter, jump, or stall. It simply stopped beating in her chest. “What?”
Fynn rubbed tiredly at his face, smearing away the tracks of salt that stained his skin. Weariness settled deep into the hollows of his eyes, into the sharp lines of his cheekbones. His shoulders caved in once more, shrouding him in such terrible despair the likes of which Sol had never seen from him. This was not the Captain she knew, the arrogance she had grown so fond of. She did not like it.
“I should have known,” he began desperately. “You were learning too quickly, even with Luca’s help. You healed me and barely left a scar, you changed the temperature of the spring in Arrowbrook.”
Certainly, the Captain was sucking the air from Sol’s lungs, suffocating her with his own Magic and leaving her to gasp for breath. He did not replace what he took, did not care to.
“I’ve practiced healing before,” she reminded him, the words scraping her throat raw on their way out. “And in Arrowbrook, you said that my Magic was only protecting me, that it didn’t know you well enough to realize you would never hurt me.”
“It was protecting you,” Fynn said. “But so was the Dragon’s Heart. It strengthens your power whenever it feels you’re in danger. That’s why Indyr gave it to the Ancient who tried to save him—to protect her. To give her a way to defend herself.”
Sol reached for the chain, for the pendant that reminded her of home, of the family she had loved and lost. “Silas,” she breathed in horror. “Did—did he know? Is this what made him so powerful?”
Fynn regarded her with a subtle look of pity. “Probably,” he said. “That’s likely why he gave it to you. To protect you where he couldn’t follow.”
Sol’s hands trembled. “He had this with him during the war. It’s what kept him safe.” She looked at Fynn as her lungs seized, fear and guilt and everything in between coiling like serpents inside her chest. “If I have it, then Silas doesn’t, and if Sonamire and Dyn go to war—”
“Stop,” Fynn said, conjuring cold air in Sol’s lungs. “Your brother can take care of himself. He knew what he was doing the moment he sent you away, and he knew that a war was inevitable. If Silas needed the Dragon’s Heart, he’d have kept it for himself.”
No, Sol thought. He wouldn’t.
She shook her head and forcefully tugged on the chain. Sol hastily unhooked the clasp and removed it from around her neck. “Here,” she rasped, holding the copper-wrapped stone—scale—in her palm. “Take it. I—I don’t want it.”