Hall. He’d sent word that he was alive and mostly well, but had yet to receive a response. And he likely would not until they returned to port. Nicholas didn’t resist the small echo of longing for the thought of boarding a ship and disappearing into the horizon—for the simplicity of that life, and how quickly it would welcome him back.

Someone began to whistle, a high, bawdy tavern tune that made the men around him chuckle. All at once, seemingly without him knowing, the port city had shaken off the night. Crimson coats dotted the streets, the prim uniforms and gleaming buttons only looking primmer in contrast to their surroundings. Wagons moaned and rattled with the weight of cargo being drawn up and down the path, coming or going, just like the residents of the island. The green palms and underbrush looked as if they had been painted by the sun, glowing with pleasure in the heat, the way they only did after a hearty storm. The old fort stood above it all like a four-pointed star to the west, high walls winking as the light glanced off its wet gray stones.

“Just go,” Sophia said, nodding toward the ships in the bay. “You want an out, you’ve got—two—three—four chances out there.”

“What are you on about?” he asked, batting away how bloody unnerving it was that she’d traced his line of thought. “Are you still drunk?”

“Only observant,” she sang.

“Whatever you think you know, I assure you, you do not.”

“I know you’ve wasted our time here. I know you don’t truly care about the astrolabe, just the first girl who turned her big blue doe eyes on you.”

“That’s not true,” he insisted. “And can a deer even have blue eyes?”

“Then what are we still doing here?” Sophia challenged, hands planted on her hips. “Are you hoping that if we wait long enough, the woman might find her daughter and bring her here to you? We don’t need information about the last common year. It’s irrelevant. If the Thorns have the astrolabe, they’re traveling with it, and finding them is our best bet for finding it. But you haven’t even considered that, have you?”

He was tired; so tired of the Ironwoods, of travelers, of all the meddling in the lives of innocent people and the hardship they suffered over the greed and demands of his kind. He was inclined to say Ironwood could take the blasted astrolabe to hell with him, if it weren’t for the damage he knew Ironwood could do to Nicholas’s own time.

“I made a promise,” was all he said.

“Promises are for saints and losers. Most of the time we can’t even keep the ones we make to ourselves.”

He gave her a sour look from beneath the brim of his hat. “You and I are entirely different people.”

“You don’t say!” Sophia scoffed. “At least be man enough to admit that what you really, truly want is to find Etta.”

More than my next heartbeat. But it was like swimming out to sea in the rain; no matter where he went, he could not avoid the cold drench of truth. Etta would want him to finish what they’d begun by finding the astrolabe.

And leave her to die?

His right hand curled at his side, and he could almost catch the memory of what it had felt like to have her hand tucked there.

And that was it. That calm certainty in knowing her as he knew himself. There was no point to any of this if Etta didn’t survive; the future didn’t belong to him, it had belonged to her, and had always been tied to her dreams. He wanted that success and celebration for her, the chance for her to resolve the unfinished yearnings in her heart. Everything good in this life was her or meant for her.

At the time, it had felt like an inevitability that they would collide, even in the face of such insurmountable odds. Each time something had blocked their path, it had only served to feed that necessity of staying together. Now and then, though, when he stared into the fire at night, or stole a moment to himself, a passing doubt caught him in its snare. They were both so very, very stubborn. So determined to strike back at the rules of life, the way their situation had confined him, that he worried they had only come together purely as an act of rebellion.

But then her face would find him, as fierce as the moment he’d first clapped eyes on her. When his hands were dry and chapped, he recalled the softness of her skin. When the world shivered at the approaching winter, he recalled the warmth of being beside her. When he felt the sneering judgment of the eyes around him, he recalled the invincibility she’d instilled in him with her belief.

And the doubts, they would recede as quietly as they came, leaving a peace as vast as the deep, dark ocean. Nicholas believed they could find that place she had spoken of, the time that was meant for the two of them. He had to believe that.

It was weeks since she’d been orphaned. If she had survived her wound and found help, as he hoped she had, Etta was strong enough to keep surviving and begin finding her way back to Damascus. Perhaps they’d meet each other halfway and continue what they’d begun, rewrite the rules of this life.

Sophia pressed on. “Go find her, sail off into your sunset, and leave me to…”

“To…?” he prompted when she did not continue, already knowing the answer. Leave me to find the astrolabe alone. Oh; he stifled the bitter laugh before it could emerge. She would cherish the opportunity to remove him from the playing field; to not have any obstruction between her and whatever she was planning.

Instead of answering, Sophia turned her gaze back out to the tents and stalls and argued, “What about Rose Linden’s promise to meet you here? Aren’t you sick of sitting here and twiddling your thumbs, waiting for Mummy to tell us what to do? If you want us to find Etta, if that will perk you up and get you back on the trail of finding the astrolabe, then we’ll start by looking for her. It’ll be a risk, knowing Grandfather could get to those Thorns first, but I guess we’ll have to take it. The price we pay for you being so revoltingly lovesick.”