EPILOGUE

  They said a storm had most likely taken her husband from her out on the deep sea, a tragic and random act of mother nature, but Lucia Fisher knew that disaster had been trailing her husband even before he left the shore. Somehow, he had always seemed to elude its inevitable wrath—until the day she could only assume he did not.

  Funny, it was. She had only recently let herself believe he could keep them one step ahead, always one step ahead. He had told her everything long ago, for he was her husband and she was his wife, but the truth came with a promise he begged of her: that if anything ever happened to him, she would never tell their son of the Valshynar who doggedly pursued his father. The truth, Sylas said, was a prison. Lie to Elias so that he might be free. Lie so that he might be his own man. And if and when he discovers his powers, let it be on his terms, free from those who would aim to control him.

  This much, he had prepared her for. But one cannot prepare herself for the sudden loss of a life’s love. And because no one had witnessed the cataclysmic event nor found any remnant of the sizable fishing ship upon which her husband had served as navigator, the truth was a slow trickle rife with doubt and drips of hope, stories that were rumors and ships that were spotted—but never his, never Sylas.

  And so the agony came on slowly. They could not say what she needed to hear, offering only theories and not-quite condolences. The choice of acceptance was to be her burden, for no one else would carry its crushing weight on behalf of a widow and her young son. In this way, she felt doubly abandoned, left to drown, as well, deep in her own ocean. Many nights she spent crying, though in retrospect, it was those sunny days of false hope—afternoons spent painting and singing—that she ultimately viewed as saddest of all.

  He had not left her much. A little savings, but he had never been a materialistic man. His wedding ring had gone with him, wherever he was, though he’d owned one other piece of jewelry, a memento half-hidden in the back of his single drawer. He had said he no longer wished to wear the silver ring—whose signet was obscured by a large dent—but that a true friend gifted it to him and that he could not bring himself to discard the piece either.

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  Whatever it had meant to Sylas, the ring meant something else to Lucia. While she grew at peace with the time they’d spent together, her son would never really know his father, and he had been one of the good ones. This bothered her immensely. She would not betray her late husband. She would not tell Elias the truth. But the ring? Was the ring the truth, or was a ring just a ring—imbued anew with whatever story its bestower imparted?

  “This ring,” she finally told her five-year-old son, taking his hand in hers and laying it upon his open palm, “will connect us through the tragedy of time. It is too big for you now, but you will grow into it. Wherever you go, whoever you become, keep it with you. And when you look down at your finger, I want you to imagine the three of us together again—you, me, and your father. You remember the day we moved into this apartment and built a fort out of chairs and blankets?”

  The boy nodded.

  “Keep remembering that day. And last summer when we sailed down the river and camped out on that beautiful beach. Remember the fish your father caught and the melody of frogs that lulled us to sleep each night? You remember the frogs? You loved the frogs.” She smiled.

  The boy nodded and smiled too.

  “Keep remembering that summer. For I know you will grow up and scarcely recall our lives together, but some things are worth storing, and so I want you to hold onto this. Hold onto the idea of us. You never know when you might need it.”

  When the boy nodded one last time, it filled her with an inkling of joy she had not felt in months. She closed his fingers over the ring and ruffled his chestnut hair before lifting him up to their apartment window and its familiar view.

  The boy stared out with eyes just like his father’s. At the dusty intersection, everything tinged the color of rust, and the squeaking carriage that rolled slowly by. At the end of the road and the flat emptiness that waited beyond the eastern edge of town. At the tin-roofed homes his mother eventually directed his attention to, staggered amid scorched gardens and falling fences.

  “You and I will have a home of our own one of these days,” Lucia told her boy. “And you will have an education, my child. This I will do for you. But you must do something for me.”

  The boy peered up at his mother, but Lucia peered up at the big, hungry sky.

  “You will not drown in some miserable ocean,” she said, “and you will not drown in your mother’s tears. You, my son, will skim the water like a dragonfly.”

  Sailor's Rise as much as I enjoyed writing it. The next book in Two-World Traders is Trader's Crown, the posting for which will kick off next Sunday. Going forward, chapter posts will be weekly on Sundays. I know that isn't the fastest, but it is the fastest I can do. I take time with my writing, and I prefer editing with some distance before releasing chapters into the wild.

  Trial of the Alchemist. I don't have plans for a Patreon, and I'm not sure I ever will, so picking up a copy of Trial is one way you can support me—plus, you get a great book to read out of it!