The word tore out of Rissa like something that had been caged.
"AERYN!"
The black water swallowed the sound; and then the vision shattered.
Aeryn snapped awake with a loud, choked gasp. It felt like she had been held underwater for sometime and finally broke the surface. Her lungs were burning as she fought to pull in air, her chest heaving in the dark room.
She was shaking all over, her collar soaked through with cold sweat. Before she even realized what she was doing, she grabbed Rissa's hand. She gripped it so hard that her knuckles turned white, her fingernails digging into Rissa's skin.
She didn't look like a powerful Queen right now, nor like the woman people across the world feared. She just looked like a terrified girl trying to make sure she was actually alive.
"Aeryn? Aeryn, it's okay," Rissa whispered, leaning in close. "You're okay. I'm right here."
Aeryn couldn't speak. She just held on. That small bit of contact and the warmth was the only thing keeping her from falling back into the blackness she'd just escaped, unconsciously she leaned her head against Rissa's shoulder, her breath coming in ragged stabs, cold sweat slicking her neck, while the remnants of the vision were still burning behind her eyes like the searing afterlight of a struck match.
A witness. Witness well. She shuddered as the voice rang in her ears.
"You're safe," Rissa whispered again, her voice softening as she saw the recognition begin to settle.
Aeryn's hands were the first to stop shaking. Then her breathing slowed, hitching only occasionally. Finally, her eyes stilled. She realizing that she was on rissa's shoulder pulled herself away, locking onto Rissa's face. Something in Aeryn's chest cracked quietly, like a humble surrender. Rissa looked aged then the last time she remembered her just a day ago …she had swollen eyes and the tear-tracked cheeks. She couldn't unseen it.
"...I'm here," Aeryn said. Her voice sounding foreign to her own ears.
Rissa let out a breath that was jagged like a sob. She pressed her forehead briefly to the back of Aeryn's hand, a silent gesture of relief that words couldn't carry.
Across the room, the Captain stood up slowly. He looked exhausted, his face pale and lined with sickness; afterall the curse had taken a heavy toll on his body even in its retreat. He simply raised his head, and when his eyes found Aeryn's face; white-haired, hollow-cheeked, but undeniably alive; he pressed a hand to his chest and watched them for a few seconds, before he looked away, embarrassed to see his Queen looking so vulnerable and clenched his jaw. This was a man who had outlasted three kings, a veteran of a thousand horrors, yet he couldn't hold her gaze.
Aeryn noticed the way he looked away; the drawing of specific shape of his grief and recognized it instantly. She had worn that same weight the night she found her parents' tomb defiled. It was the particular agony of a soul that believed their personal failure was the sole reason a thing had broken. Alas!
She scanned the cabin. The cursed object sat on the small table, blackened and spent. The door was shut, and the shadows of the crew no longer paced beneath the crack. Finn was gone. She registered his absence without a flicker of expression, filing the information away in a cold corner of her mind to be examined later, or perhaps never. And then she finally managed to look up at him. Her voice was just a scratchy whisper. "Captain."
He looked up, his eyes bloodshot. Aeryn held his gaze with a steady, unblinking intensity. "Stand up."
"My queen…I don't…"
"it's an order." She said in absolute command without harshness.
He rose slowly, using the cot-frame as a crutch, his legs trembling. When he was upright, she looked at him properly—this large, salt-worn man who had knelt on a floor and begged for death because he thought he'd failed a decades-old promise.
"You took half a killing curse into your body," Aeryn said, "For me. Without asking. Without hesitating."
"It wasn't enough my la…"
"It was everything." She interrupted as she leaned forward slightly. "Whatever you believe you failed, whatever promise you made to my father in another life, you kept it tonight. You were here. That is sufficient to vouch for your loyalty."
Captain looked like a man fighting with every ounce of his remaining strength not to come undone in front of his sovereign. Aeryn saw that and respected that struggle enormously.
"You may return to your post," she continued. "Captain. Commander. Whatever title this ship requires of you." She paused, catching her breath, her hand on her chest. Rissa moved to hold her but she stopped her with motion of her hand telling her to let her talk, her eyes still fixed on the captain, who himself looked as if aged decades in a single week.
"Or, if you wish to be released from whatever oath bound you to my bloodline; that release is yours as well. I give it freely."
Old man remained silent for a long moment. The only sounds were the rain drumming against the hull and the rhythmic creak of the ship.
"I wish to stay," he finally said in a cracking voice that was full of resolution. "If Your Highness will have me."
Aeryn tried to smile and nodded. "Then you have a ship to sail."
He instantly bowed a deep, formal gesture that stripped away the casual air of a sailor and replaced it with the rigid honor of a knight. He kept on bowing until aeryn gestured rissa who ran up to him to help him up; but when he straightened up his beard was wet with his tears of agony and without looking at the queen he left the room.
Rissa watched the door click shut before turning back to Aeryn.
"The crew," Aeryn said, cutting off whatever Rissa was about to say. "Whatever they heard tonight…"she took a deep painful breath, "…they are under my protection now. All of them." She knew they were ordinary people who were caught in the orbit of a storm that they couldn't understand; she knew that feeling too well. Rissa was looking at aeryn confusedly as if she was not aeryn, aeryn looked at her and seeing her disbelief, she raised her brow, "They sail under the queen's flag Rissa… cannot hurt them just for huddling against the door. can we?" rissa shake her head in no, "then, see that they're fed well."
Rissa blinked in yes and a small, weary smile tugging at her lips. "... you nearly died moments ago."
"I am aware. See that they're fed well."
"…Yes, Your Highness."
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