Carina grabbed a bag of necessities and climbed on the cheetah’s back. She would accompany them.
“Come back as soon as you can,” Alex said to Simber. He tried not to sound anxious. “We’ll be fine out here, I’m sure. I hope you can find us.”
The stone cheetah growled in response. Alex knew Simber didn’t want to leave, but he had no choice. Slowly the statue ascended with his strange-looking cargo. Carina tapped her fist to her chest and gave a solemn wave, and soon she, Simber, and Sean were on their way home.
Home. It seemed like forever since they’d been in Artimé. Alex stood at the bow and watched the three grow small against the blue canvas of the sky, and tried not to think about all the things that could go wrong without Simber there to save them.
“Alex!” Lani called from the stairs, breaking his reverie. Her hair was disheveled and her clothes dripping wet. She followed Alex’s gaze and saw the dot in the sky. “Ah, they’re off, then,” she said softly. “Poor Sean.”
“You heard?”
“Yes,” she said. “The ship feels so naked without Simber overhead. Makes me nervous.”
Alex nodded. “I’m nervous too.” They watched the dot disappear, and when Alex was sure there was nothing more to see, he sighed and looked at Lani, dripping next to him.
“Oh,” he said. “Sorry—I was lost there for a minute. How’s the leak? What can I help with?”
Lani touched his arm. “Nothing. Just coming up to give you an update. The hole is patched for now, at least. We’re bailing out the rest of the water.”
Alex shoved his worries about Simber aside for the moment. He had more pressing matters right below his feet. “Do you need help?”
“No, it’s crowded enough down there. Thanks, though.”
“Sure,” he said. “Octavia is looking for the rest of the captain’s body parts so she can put him back together, and Florence is repairing broken railings, equipment, and sails. We should be on our way soon.”
“We’ll have to take it slow. We don’t want the waves to break open our patch job.”
“I know.” Alex looked at her. “Is Sky . . . ?”
Lani offered a sympathetic smile. “She’s fine. Working hard. We all are.”
“Of course I know that.”
Lani cringed. “We’re all fine, I mean. Just bruises and scrapes.”
“Oh. Yes, Simber told me. I’m glad.”
Lani held Alex’s gaze for a moment. “Just give her some space,” she said quietly. “She says you two weren’t meant to be. She’s given up on you. But I don’t know.” She looked over her shoulder down the stairwell. “I’ve got to go. There’s a lot of water. I’m working on creating a larger sponge spell to try and soak it up that way, but I don’t have the right components here on the ship.” She turned and headed down the steps. “Maybe a bigger bucket spell . . . nah. Too heavy. Come on, Haluki,” she chided. “Think it through.” Her mumblings grew too soft to hear.
Alex watched her go and almost went after her to see the damage, but decided to heed her advice. Her blunt words hurt—Sky had told Lani that she’d given up on him? It made him feel terrible. After a moment Alex began to pick up broken chunks of the railing and other items strewn about the battered ship, flinging them a bit harder than he intended into a pile on the deck near Florence.
But why wouldn’t she give up on him? He deserved it. Things had been tense with Sky before their harrowing journey around the world, and it was his fault. Completely. He knew that. He’d realized that he liked her so much that he couldn’t seem to do his job properly. Whenever she was around, he got distracted. He’d made a lot of mistakes, like when he almost killed Spike before she had a chance to really live. And when he’d been too careless to find out if Florence could swim, which had caused intense worry for days when Florence was captured by the giant eel. These were big mistakes. Life or death mistakes. The kind he couldn’t afford to make again, not under any circumstances. All of which had led to awkward tension and a vast failure on his part to communicate the problem to Sky.
If only he could explain it to her. But according to Lani, he didn’t have to now. Sky had given up on him.
He stared long and hard at the pile of rubbish on the deck, hardly remembering that he’d built it. Of course she’d given up on him. She wasn’t the kind of person to wait around for someone to be done acting out all of his foolishness. If Alex couldn’t tell Sky the truth, at least she could be free to find whatever it was she wanted from life, whether alone or with someone else. And as long as threats to his people existed, Alex would have to keep away from romantic relationships.
It was for the best. Alex had a million other things to do, and there was no way he could keep making such enormous mistakes with all of the Artiméans’ well-being at stake under his leadership.
Even so, his heart twisted and pain shot through him in a most deep and intense way, more painful than any injury he’d ever sustained, because it came from inside. And while the pain surprised him, it brought with it an even more shocking revelation. For the truth was that in the time since the girl on a raft had washed up on shore, Alex Stowe, Unwanted, head mage and restorer of Artimé, in the midst of turmoil from all sides, had slowly—and quite tragically—fallen in love.
And, unlike Sky, he was having quite a lot of trouble falling out of it.