17 | The Reveals of Chaos

Archer swirled patterns in the dirt of the floor of the cell. He could hear the crew above him, celebrating and drinking. At least his crew members were up there. Or perhaps they'd opted to stay in their rooms. They had the choice; he'd gotten that for them.

He leaned his head back against the floor, pushing his heels against the bars in front of him. He sighed deeply and looked up at the ceiling.

He didn't feel overwhelmed. He didn't feel out of control. He felt...himself. Despite being in a cell, he was now on a path to something. To figuring out what Silta was up to. He'd interacted numerous times today and hadn't once slipped up.

Footfalls descended the staircase, but Archer didn't bother to sit up. Better he look like he didn't care.

Candlelight threw across the walls as Britter came into view. He pulled the stool against the cell opposite Archer and sat.

"You look comfortable," he said.

Archer turned his head to look, feeling water against his ear. He didn't say anything.

"I don't blame you, Kingsley."

Archer held his gaze. He scanned the older boy's familiar features, although Britter didn't appear to hold his typical friendly spark anymore.

"I knew you didn't belong from the beginning," Britter admitted. "Right there on the deck with Jeanne, there was something fake about you. I told Silta she was insane for letting you on the ship; she told me she knew what she was doing. You stressed me out right until I found out you were sleeping with her, and then I was able to relax. Nobody escapes her aura, so I thought you'd forgo any issues you had with the Avourienne to stay with her. I didn't know what Bardarian had pulled with the ring. I could've guessed that you'd do exactly what you did if I had known."

Archer didn't say anything. Not yet.

"Silta should've known, too," Britter continued. "I guessed you managed to slip under her radar. Still not sure if you did that on purpose."

Now Archer snorted. "You think falling in love with her was a ploy?"

Britter shrugged. "Maybe it's obvious to you, but it's obvious not to everyone else."

Archer didn't care to decipher that. "Why are you talking to me?" he asked, uninterested in this whole conversation.

Britter rested his forearms on his knees. "Do you think..." He trailed off. "Do you notice anything off about her?"

Archer sat up on his elbows. "A few things," he replied.

"The change in her tone, right?"

Archer nodded. "She's acting like Bardarian. All flamboyant and charming and fake."

Britter shook his head. "Not exactly. She acts like Bardarian one moment, then herself the next. It's the rapid changes that are confusing me. And there are...other things."

Archer searched his expression. When he found it to be genuine, he sat up all the way. "Other things," he said.

Britter sighed and leaned forward. "She's...inconsistent. She used to keep Harvi close but since we sent him on your ship, she sleeps around more than anyone I've ever known—but she still wears the engagement ring Bardarian gave her. She changes tactics and moods quicker than I've ever known her to. I've never seen her sleep. And she keeps doing...this thing."

"This thing," Archer repeated.

"Spacing out," Britter explained, his eyebrows drawn. "A few days ago, I found her staring at the wall. Standing up, nothing in her hands. She looked like she was in a trance. Took me a full minute to break her concentration."

Archer frowned. "She was just...staring?"

Britter shrugged. "She's thinking. She does that a lot nowadays. She goes silent and doesn't focus on what's going on around her. She used to only do it around me, but I see her doing it more often now."

"Why is that happening?"

Britter sighed, readjusting his position. "When I met Silta, she had issues with focus. I knew from the moment I met her that if she was left in her head for too long, she'd start to distance herself from reality. When she fell in love with Bardarian, I noticed most of the warning signs disappear. But then she took control of strategy after the Starling fiasco, and she and Bardarian were pretty distant. She'd spent hours in the strategy room, just muttering about things and drifting off into some other world. When I'd ask her to fill me in on her thought process or why we were doing something, she'd insist that it was too hard to explain, and she'd just do it herself. She pulled off some brilliant things that way, but she was drinking a lot, sleeping never and hardly ever speaking to anyone. After a few months, Bardarian and her solved their issues, she went back to normal, and that whole period of time was forgotten. Bardarian had the ability to ground her somehow, and I don't know how to pick up the job now that he's gone."

Archer felt a little too cold. He'd always considered Silta to be walking a very fine line between insanity and brilliance, but he never realized that the only thing stopping her from falling to one side was the very man Archer killed.

"Bardarian and her had a lot of secrets," Britter explained. "Things I never knew. Now that he's gone, she's left to work them all out on her own, and she's starting to spiral again. I think it all comes back to this 'other player'—the person we're playing in this absurd chess game."

"You don't know who it is?" Archer asked.

Britter shook his head. "She won't tell me. My guess is Bardarian would know, but nobody else seems to have any ideas."

"You're first mate. You have no clue why you're going to the chest?"

"No clue. We don't want immortality, so we know she has some other reason to go after it."

"And nobody on the crew has shown signs of doubt? They all just trust her blindly?"

Liam's calloused fingers picked at a thread in the knee of his pants like it was food he didn't want to eat. "She's the last link they have to Bardarian. She's never slipped up before, and they don't expect she will now."

Archer sighed, his mind beginning to tire. "What does this have to do with me?"

Britter leaned forward. "She appears independent, but she needs someone to stop her from going off the rails. She's so scarred from Bardarian that she refuses to acknowledge that if she doesn't stop with this madness of hers, she'll ruin every amazing capability she has."

"This still has nothing to do with me," Archer said, even though he very much did know where Britter was headed.

"She thinks falling in love is a mistake. She calls you a mistake, and she calls Bardarian a mistake. And since she will never make the mistake of falling in love again, I have no choice but to turn to the one remaining mistake she's already made."

"Me, the mistake," Archer deadpanned.

"I'm not demanding you start up with her again, Kingsley—I'm not asking you to become the next Bardarian for her. I'm just trying to take this one step at a time. I need her to work with someone in this chess game, and since she won't work with me, you're all I have left."

"She doesn't trust me, Britter. I put a knife through her back. She wouldn't dream of telling me anything."

"Maybe. But you and her have that Myrian mind thing. If you figure out even a fraction of what's going on, she'll cave and tell you everything. I know it."

"I've never known her to cave," Archer pointed out.

"She will."

He leaned back. He could try and sort through everything in his mind, decide if this was a good idea or not, but he didn't want his emotions swaying logic.

"I have to be careful with her, Liam," Archer said slowly. "If she gets me alone and gets in my head like you're asking me to let her, I end up right back where I was a year ago."

Britter shook his head. "If you wanted to live your own life, your chance to be careful came and went the first time around."

Archer refused to believe that. "I want to help you, Britter, but I can't do that without putting everything I stand for at risk."

Britter let out a long breath. "Silta was my favourite person in the whole world when she left the Avourienne and screwed us all over. She and I were never the same after that, and the moment I found a friend I think I want to keep in my life again, he screws me over even worse. I trusted you with my life, and you threw it away like every conversation and experience we had was an act."

"It was an act at first," Archer told him. "It didn't end that way."

"Prove it. Do this for me."

"Ruin myself? Put my already fragile self-control on the line to prove to you that there was a time I called you a friend and meant it?"

Britter lifted his hand as if to keep himself calm. "You're a good man, Kingsley, but you fell in love with an evil woman. That doesn't make you inherently evil just as it doesn't make Silta inherently good for loving you. She and you are not all that different—especially in your minds. You won't be far behind her, Archer. Brilliance needs brilliance, evil needs good. You and Silta are not as wrong as you tell yourself."

He searched Britter's face, but he could only think of the implication that he wasn't far behind her. Archer did have a mind similar to Silta's, and Silta was four years older than him. If there was any indication of what his Myrian traits would demand in return for his gifts, it was what was happening to Silta now.

Archer swirled his finger around in the dirt. "I don't want to end up like that again," he said quietly. "Used and manipulated. Powerless. It feels awful."

"Then don't end up that way. Silta isn't an angel, Archer, she's just a person. You have your own say of who you are that is completely independent from whether or not you chose to involve yourself with her."

Archer desperately tried to find out if Silta had set Britter up to this or if there was any lack of genuine on Liam's part. He felt like he couldn't trust anything anymore.

"The world isn't so black and white, Archer," Britter said. "I get that you're thinking years in the future and who you want to be. But this is happening now, and I'm asking you to do something about it."

He left, leaving Archer to pick apart everything he'd solidified before getting on the Avourienne.

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