escaped—” He struck the railing a blow then glared into the ocean.
“You didn’t exactly savage me. And no one has charged you with protecting me.”
“But I always wanted to protect you.”
“I managed. I’m fine now. And I don’t despise you.” She brushed his side, ashamed of her pettiness and wanting to soothe him. “I could never despise you, Tern,” she added softly.
“My ship needs a witch.”
“Every ship needs a witch,” she muttered.
He sighed, a defeated sound. “Do you like being a firelighter?”
She bristled despite her best efforts. “Do you like being an explorer?”
He scrubbed at his face. “I hate Kelway.”
She shrugged. “It’s home. Beats sailing off the edge of the world. Better than facing monsters.”
He sank down beside her and said in a voice brittle with despair, “All of my monsters are here.”
She hated and loved him then more than she could bear, so she kissed him, breathed fire into his mouth. He clutched her head, her shoulders, pulled free and gasped into her hair. He began to cry. She held him, gently and fiercely by turns. He sobbed against her, silent and shaking. “Wounds need air,” she repeated several times, as if it were an incantation, some spell from which he might draw succor. Her hands found his neck, and she let her Light seep through her fingers and the palms of her hands. She could see it glowing through his eyelids, shimmering in the tears clinging to his lashes.
She hadn’t given freely of herself in a long time. The effort warmed her. She smoothed the hair away from his face as she listened to his breath steady. “I missed you,” she confessed, “like a lost limb.”
After a long while, he said in a quiet voice, “I never expected you to wait for me, but…” He couldn’t finish and faced the waves. “You have no idea how hard it was at first. I used to go out on deck to watch the sun burn into the ocean, and when it turned that deep gold, like your eyes in full light, I’d pretend you were watching me.”
For a time, she had imagined him near her whenever the wind ruffled her hair. “I thought you left because of me.”
“Cuttle—he just kept getting worse. I couldn’t tell you…. The night I left—I swore that would be the last time I ever let him touch me. I took the first ship that would take me. I didn’t even ask where it was going. I couldn’t kill him; I wouldn’t kill myself, so I had to leave.”
She grabbed his hands. “You don’t have to sail off the edge of the world, Tern.”
“Come with me.”
“You’re going to sail off the edge of the world!”
“Is the world so precious to you?” When she didn’t reply he said, “You hate Kelway as much as I do. You shine too brightly, Candle. You burn. How long do you think you can be a firelighter before they take you to the Asylum? Before you’re the one they’re taking to the Lighthouse?”
She rose. “I’ve made my own life. Don’t try to save me, Tern. I don’t need to be saved.”
He caught her wrist. “My mother doesn’t even recognize me. She didn’t even before I left. Do you think I returned only to talk to her? I came back for you, Candle. I need you.”
“Oh. Well…then that’s different.” She sniffed and wiped a stray tear with the back of her free hand. Sunlight edged through the clouds while the rain continued to fall. She allowed him to pull her down beside him. “But you don’t need me,” she said after a time. “You’re full of your own Light. I can see it even when you’re miserable.”
“Maybe I don’t need you. I need us. Maybe we’re fine without each other; maybe that is true. I won’t argue against it. But we’re better together than apart.”
Satisfied, she kissed him in the sunlit rain on the Bridge to Nowhere or Everywhere. Tern kissed her back. They flickered in the pale green half-light while the Lighthouse shone in the distance, while blood ran in the arena and fortunes turned, while Kelway decayed around them, and somewhere, dragons soared low over the edge of the ocean, and somewhere, worlds burned in the skies beyond.
The End
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