“She chose it?” Agnes asked.
Eneas nodded. “Xavier chose yours,” he said to Leo. He felt as if he had become glued to his stool. The thought of his father picking out his name was too foreign a concept for his brain to fully comprehend.
Eneas turned back to Agnes. “Ambrosine was going to keep you,” he said, the barest hint of a growl in his voice. “She was never going to let you return to Kaolin with Xavier and your brother. She was going to keep you here and use you as she had wanted to use Alethea. To make your life about power and Culinnon and a new nation to control. She wields this island as a weapon and you were the magic bullet. An heir, at last.
“And she was never going to hold up her end of the bargain. She had never intended to let Xavier have so much as an olive branch from Culinnon, never mind a mertag and Arboreal.”
He pressed his hands against the table, fingers splayed.
“I took the papers and went to your father at once. He was still with Alethea, still cradling her on her deathbed as if she might yet wake.” He swallowed, and it was loud in the utter silence. “I told him we have to leave, now. I told him what I’d seen, what Ambrosine was planning. ‘She killed her,’ he said. He kept saying it over and over again. He blamed Ambrosine for her death, for making him bring Alethea to Culinnon, though he had made that decision as much as Ambrosine had. As much as Alethea had. I shook him then, hard, and made him look at the papers. ‘This is not what Alethea would have wanted,’ I told him. ‘Will you let her dying wish go unanswered? Will you leave her daughter with this woman?’
“That seemed to rouse him. We went to the nursery and got the two of you. I carried Agnes and he took you, Leo. He could barely look at either of you. But when we approached the dock where our ship was anchored, we discovered Misarros swarming it. We were trapped.”
“How did you escape?” Agnes asked.
“Ezra,” Eneas said, pursing his lips. “He wanted Xavier to take him to Kaolin, to get him as far from Culinnon as possible. She hates him, but he is technically a Byrne, so she couldn’t let him go. He led us to a small ship that I was able to sail by myself. I told Xavier, we cannot take Ezra with us. It wasn’t worth the risk. She would be furious enough when she discovered we had gone with the children; why add insult to injury. And personally, I had never liked Ezra, never trusted him. Xavier promised him, though—he promised him that once his children were safe, he would find a way to get Ezra out from under his mother’s thumb. And he did. It only took eighteen years.
“The mertags knew me and let our ship pass. We made it to a port where we could purchase berths on a larger ship that took us to Ithilia and from there back to Old Port City. It was a long, dark journey, but your father grew even darker over the course of it. The change in him was startling. He never held either of you again after that first night. I never heard him laugh the way he used to. He threatened me never to tell the two of you about Alethea or what life was like before you were born. And I knew his threats were real—he could send me back to Pelago without a second thought, and then I would never be able to see either of you again. I would have broken my promise to your mother, to make sure you both knew you were loved.”
Leo felt another twist of guilt remembering all the times Eneas had offered him a compliment or a sweet or even just a jovial good morning. And all the times Leo had scoffed or rolled his eyes or wished he hadn’t.
“Your father became cold and hateful,” Eneas continued, “and his hate was directed both at Ambrosine and at Pelago, at the country he felt had given him the only woman he had ever loved and then taken her away. Xavier was not going to look after you. It was left entirely to me.”
He turned to Agnes. “But when you wanted to apply to the Academy of Sciences, I found I could not refuse you. I could not prevent you from living your life as you wanted it, the way your mother would have wanted you to. Even if it meant bringing you within your grandmother’s reach. I thought, so much time has passed. Perhaps she is not the same anymore, does not have the schemes she once did. Eighteen years and not a whisper of rebellion in the northern islands. I thought she might have given up on that plan.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “But once I left you at the Seaport, a growing fear took root inside me. I should have gone with them, I told myself. I should not have let them go alone. I purchased a berth on the first ship I could find.” Eneas placed a hand on top of Agnes’s. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “You should have known all of this, from the very beginning. I tried to protect you and I fear I only made things worse.”
Agnes squeezed his hand. “It’s all right,” she said. She looked at Leo. “We know so much now. It’s better than never knowing at all.”
Leo nodded. “But why risk coming here with Matthias?” he asked. “Won’t Ambrosine be furious if she finds out you’ve returned to Culinnon?”
“Ah,” Eneas said, a clever smile spreading across his face. “But this is not the end of my journey. Or should I say, our journey.”
“What do you mean?” Agnes asked.
He gestured around at the cabin. “Matthias and I have brought you a ship.” He leaned forward, candlelight shining in his eyes. “We are going to get you to Braxos.”
30
Agnes
AGNES CREPT INTO VADA’S ROOM AFTER SHE AND LEO returned from the ship.
“Mmph?” Vada mumbled, rubbing her eyes. But she became alert once Agnes began whispering all that Eneas had said on the clipper. When she told Vada about Braxos, she sat straight up in bed.
“When are we leaving?” she asked.
“Soon,” Agnes said. “Matthias will let us know.”
“Sera will be much relieved.”
“Yes,” Agnes agreed, even as her heart sank at the thought of losing her Cerulean friend. It would be harder for Leo, though. She’d never seen her brother so content or relaxed as he had been these past few days on Culinnon.
She wondered how Sera would feel, leaving him behind.
Agnes slept in Vada’s bed that night—she’d grown accustomed to sleeping beside her on the Palma so it had felt strange to sleep alone. But it was a restless night. Braxos was so close now and Agnes didn’t want to wait a second more than necessary to start the journey there. She felt a little guilty at the thought of deceiving her grandmother, but Ambrosine wasn’t really the person Agnes had been dreaming of her whole life. And after the way she’d spoken to Matthias, and how she’d thrown her father into a terrifying cavern, and all that Eneas had told her . . . Agnes knew she would never be what Ambrosine wanted her to be. And Ambrosine wasn’t the connection to her mother Agnes had hoped for.
But Matthias was. And Eneas was here. There was more to her mother’s family than just Ambrosine.
The next afternoon, the four of them gathered in one of the sitting rooms. Vada was teaching Leo how to play dice while Sera sat listlessly braiding and unbraiding her hair, her eyes fixed on the glass walls that looked out over the ocean. Agnes was skimming a book on one of the past Byrne matriarchs, but her mind kept wandering to the fact that her father had actually loved her mother. She simply couldn’t fathom it and now that she knew, she wasn’t sure how she felt about it. It made her happy to know her mother had been happy, but it also made her resent her father even more for acting all these years as if he hated her.