The galley is empty except for the crew's chef, a witch of herbs and spice. As Mills had once been. That's what goes through my mind as I sit at one of the many square tables bolted down to the floors and pick through my bowl of what appears to be a milky broth with potato chunks, celery, onion, and the tiniest scraps of meat.

The crew had no time in Saebia to gather further supplies, so what we're eating on this ship now is supposed to last us all the way to Esaria. If that's even possible. At least we'll have plenty of ale for the mates that would rather drink themselves away during the days and nights than eat a bowlful of stew.

Boots thud around on the deck above my head, men and women moving left and right—training, moving barrels and crates of supplies, trying to find something to do with yet another long day with nothing except the sea surrounding us.

Our fleet has remained as one throughout the entire three days we've been on the waters. Three different legions of ships coming together as one, we've created a solid wall on the ocean that an enemy cannot get through. We expected more, I suppose, but the merchant ships we've passed hold nothing other than a small crew, barrels, and crates, and no weapons. I, at least, expected to see Esaria's ships crossing the ocean to finish the job against Saebia, but there's no way the king has any idea what we've planned. Whether he knows we were already in Saebia, or he's unaware of that fact.

We won't know until we arrive back. I've tried to keep myself from thinking about the inevitable in front of us, but the answer lies everywhere I look. The silence of the galley doesn't help, except for the swift rise and fall of the knife on a wooden cutting board. Fish. He's filleting a fish and chopping up the pieces for stew. He doesn't speak as he works behind the counter of the galley, the flaming brick oven to his back and the stove, holding a single pot in place on a rickety ship, alive and smoking. I wonder what he has seen on the ocean; if he has partaken in battles or remains hidden hoping no one comes searching for him.

I wonder if, as a mortal witch, he wishes to live the rest of his existence crossing oceans. There is no security in living on a ship and providing meals for an entire crew. There are stowaways, pirates, people like us that will steal the ship for themselves and become more of a nuisance than a threat, but not ideal all the same.

Being the chef on a ship has many limitations. Nearly every part of that life is one. But I don't bother asking as the grim look on his face is a locked door that doesn't wish to be opened. Instead, I take bites of my stew, choke it down, and try to ignore the overly salted flavor. This is nothing like what Mills would've cooked. He would've been careful about his spices and trusted the power that was gifted to him at birth. This chef is not the same.

Halfway through the bowl is when I smell fresh bread being taken out of the brick oven. I perk up, hoping he'll cut off a piece for me, but with a pointed glare, he moves the loaf to the back counter and allows it to cool. I pout. He is not a Saebia chef, nor does he belong to Idokren. He does not like me for the simple fact that we stole his crew's ship and left him to feed too many rebels beyond the amount of food he brought.

The hairs stick to the back of my neck and my shirt is coated in a thin layer of sweat. The ocean leaves for hardly any entertainment, but Renit has found one thing he doesn't mind doing—over and over again. Training. As no one wants to be a sparring partner to a perfect fighter, I'm left to be his distraction.

After hours of going back and forth and being knocked on my ass while the entire crew and rebellion watched, Renit finally gave me a break. My skills, although better, will never match his. The king's influence on me remains to be that nothing is left. What I have now is what I've inherited myself. Although it's better than nothing, having my body move without thinking about it first, and being able to pull off what I was doing, was monumentally easy.

But I'd never go back to the king's control. Not for the skill and not for the chance at survival. To work at his side...where would I be if Binx didn't go against the king and join the rebellion? It's possible I wouldn't be alive at all if the king decided I wasn't worth the trouble. To this day, I still wonder about his motivation. I stood in Renit's place, yes, but I'm nothing compared to his sons. If Renit and I hadn't fallen in love, would the king have done the same? Would he have kept me alive if he knew Renit wasn't crumbling on the inside to watch me lose every shred of my soul?

I'll never get answers to those questions. As a group, as a rebellion, we'll come face to face with him again. But he won't be alive long enough for me to get closure. There are more important things than my own insecurities.

As I get down to the bottom of the bowl where the carrots are waiting for me in the broth, boots echo down the wooden stairs that lead into the galley. One thing about the king's control was my over-analyzing of everything, including the way people walked and how they carried their steps. I don't have to look up to know Silas is entering.

At the front of the galley, he picks up a bowl and walks into the kitchens, filling it with a heaping amount of stew. Anyone that isn't down here to eat, either already has or is waiting until the threat of their empty stomachs is too much of a burden to carry.

"Still not a fan of carrots?" Silas asks when he sits down on the opposite bench to the table. The wood creaks and moans, but he hardly seems to notice.

After three hundred years, his mass weighing down furniture is hardly a shock. Silas is larger than most, his brother included, yet somehow, their father will always stand taller. Even if he is not necessarily larger.

I chew on a carrot and wince. "I never will be. But things have changed since I lived in Arego with my family. Back then, I didn't eat them. Now, I force myself to," I say around the bite in my mouth.

Silas huffs a laugh. "At least we have choices, though."

Choices to eat, choices to breathe, choices to even lift the spoons to our mouths with our hands. We've gone through so much that it's impossible to think we're still intact. On the outside, we appear to be mostly normal except for minor cuts and scrapes. Silas is sporting one on his forehead and another on his cheekbone. Both wounds have scabbed over and will heal by tomorrow morning.

It's easy to take the little things for granted in this life.

Silas sits hunched over the bowl of stew, his forearms propped on the edge of the table and the spoon dangling gently in his fingers. He eats like royalty, whether that's what he's trying to do or not. "I watched you and Renit train on the deck. Both of you are improving," he goes on to say.

I take a second to really look at him. The line of sweat on his forehead, the obvious stains on his underarms and abdomen. "I'm guessing he pulled you in next." I wave my spoon at the sweat stains on his shirt. "I think he's trying to find something to do with his days so he can sleep at night."

"He has never been able to sleep at night." Silas shakes his head. "Not since Darlene and Oisin. It wasn't until you started sleeping across the hall that I didn't find him out and about in the castle."

That's impossible. We hated each other at the beginning. How could Renit see me as anything other than a nuisance even when there was a hall separating us? "He must not have entirely hated me, then," I say with some relief. "As long as he's filling his days with something other than glaring at Bren and Alaric, I'm happy to oblige him."

"No matter what my brother goes through, there will always be that part of him there. The small sliver that hates." He slurps down the broth, and it dribbles onto his chin. "Unless you can change him, of course." Silas's smirk, as always, brings out one of my own.

I furrow my brows in his direction and once he realizes I will not finish the carrots in the small puddle of broth at the bottom of my bowl, he pulls it in his direction. I stomached through a few bites. The rest will be put to use in Silas's stomach. "There is no changing Renit," I inform. "There is only helping him find a brighter self."

"After all my brother has faced, I don't blame him. It's easy to become hollow after a terrible ordeal. I've learned that myself." His stare doesn't meet my own, and he focuses on the back wall of the galley, filled with nothing but old pieces of parchment detailing maps and artwork by the crew. Naked men and women, shitty drawings of ships on the water, sea monsters, the chef, and an entire array of self-portraits that don't meet the correct requirements in terms of facial structure and detail.

"How are you doing with that, by the way?" I ask quietly. "How have you fared coming out of your father's control?"

Silas stirs the contents of his stew. "Tell me, first. How did you go about it?"

I shrug. "It wasn't easy." Thinking back to the chairs I threw and the tables I flipped, the panic attacks and the anger outbursts...I can't say I handled it all that well. "There were trials to face, many that left me feeling alone and helpless, but with Renit around, I got through it. Recovery takes time. Both physical and mental wounds are difficult to ward off."

"That's what different about our situations. You have Renit. Avalie..." He shakes his head. "I don't know where she is."

I reach across the table, placing my hand on his own. He doesn't flinch away from the touch as I might have. "You know Avalie more than anyone. If you believe she is strong enough to face the trials at hand, then there's a chance she's still alive. You must have faith."

"Faith is hard to have when everything is falling apart around you." Halfway through his bowl of stew and he rests the spoon into the broth. "I've led this entire operation and held my head high, but...it's difficult. I can hardly talk like a king, or act like one. I don't feel like a king."

"Does anyone feel like a king until the crown is actually on their head?" I raise my eyebrows at him, and he rolls his eyes. "No one is a leader until they are one. When you're on the throne, you won't make decisions like this. You won't be your father." A reminder that although everyone compares him to half his blood, Silas is not that.

The crown prince of Esaria drags a scarred and tattooed hand over his face. The spirals of ink wrap around his fingers like rings. "It's hard to be so confident when no one trusts me. But I've watched the way Renit holds himself. If anyone looks down on the Marron line, it's not because of me. It's because of what Renit and my father did in the past—together. Watching Renit overcome that obstacle...it gives me the courage to stand for myself," he says.

"Both of you have faced many things beyond what you should have." I shake my head. "Your lives were never fair, and it's not the fault of your own. It's entirely your father's."

"Did you..." Silas begins, his voice trailing off. "Did you have nightmares?"

I nod. I'm not afraid to admit it anymore. Nearly everyone knows. "I had plenty of nightmares. So many that I stopped sleeping and went mildly insane. I was afraid to close my eyes at night, but again, Renit was there. He helped me through the panic attacks that came after."

"I've had so many nightmares about being underneath my father's control again or killing someone I care about. Sometimes it's you, sometimes it's Renit, sometimes my father is killing me or you're under his control again and you're killing all of us." He waves his hand about as he speaks, fingers trembling slightly. "Do they ever go away?"

"When you find closure, they disappear on their own. It's when you're still fighting the battle to heal that your mind is open to playing tricks on you. Hateful tricks, but tricks all the same."

Silas considers. Nothing in his face changes and not a hint of relief washes over his features. It's not fair what he has to face, not only recovery but standing as a leader of a rebellion and taking Alaric's place without having to ask for it.

"When we get back to the kingdom, are you going to have the determination to kill your father?" I ask quietly. The floorboards creak underneath the boots of the chef in the kitchen as if he might stop to listen to our conversation, but he's moving again and disappearing behind the wooden wall that separates the kitchen from the dining area. A second later, he resumes cutting vegetables.

The witch sitting before me doesn't know what to say. His mouth opens as if he wishes to speak, but no words come out. His grey eyes shift to the table in disappointment. "I don't know," he finally says. His throat bobs. "If I had a nightmare, that's the one I'd wish to have. That way, I can see myself doing it, and I know that I can. After being rescued from his control, I don't want to kill anymore. Taking the lives of the soldiers in Saebia's courtyard was hard enough, but I had no choice. None of us did."

"Your father deserves it," I remind him. "Although I'm certain you know that, and I'm certain you are not blocking out what he's done, it's fair to say you don't want to. If you wish, I'm certain Renit would be more than happy to take that burden off your shoulders. Hell, I'll do it."

Silas laughs out loud. His shoulders rise and fall and once again, he rubs at his face. Once his hand comes down, I see the exhaustion in his eyes. "No, the tradition still stands despite chaos. I will not lie—" he purses his lips together during a pause "—I don't want to do it. But that doesn't mean I won't. I want to be the one that kills my father."

I can't help but feel slightly relieved. "Whatever you believe is right. We'll stand by you, no matter what you decide."

He sighs. "I'm doing this for all the times Renit was beaten, for all the lives of mortals and immortals that lost their freedom too soon, the people that feared him, for you, for Celestine, and for myself. I can't allow anyone else to die."

There's no better time than after that statement for Renit to come thundering down the stairs, his hands bracing against the walls surrounding the staircase so he doesn't trip. His eyes don't have to search far into the room to spot us and Silas turns towards him, already half-standing from his seat.

I've seen that look of dedication on Renit's face before. It only comes when he's ready to fight or when someone is about to die at his hands. Merely an hour ago, I witnessed a similar expression before we began our training and it has returned. His hair is slick with sweat and his clothes are damp from his continuation of training with one sad sack or another.

"We need both of you on the deck," he orders. "An Esaria ship is approaching. We're going to sink it."

No deliberation, no asking, no question as to whether that's a good idea or not. We're in agreement before having to go through the process of figuring it out. Another group of Esaria soldiers falls today. 

Also, another cute goat picture because I can't get enough of them.