As he pored over maps and tomes in his cabin, Declan received a note from a servant. Opening it with a word of thanks, he read the words, N. turned it down.

He was surprised to hear that Nadia had refused to accept the offer of Rowena's services as a ladies' maid. Not that the girl had much experience in the role, to be fair, but, still. It was also disappointing. He had wanted to use Rowena as a spy for her quiet and unassuming nature, yet the girl was much too guileless to understand or properly engage in courtly machinations. Declan supposed it was for the best. Nadia might be more trusting as a friend than as an employer. And, though he hated to admit it, despite her... familial history, Rowena was still so naive and untainted by the ways of the world, he did not wish to be the one who yanked back that veil of innocence.

"Declan?" Nolan's voice rang through the room.

His cousin knocked on the door just as Declan was making notes about each of the keys on the ring that he had stolen from the marketplace in Milona. In a chart under the column labelled appearance, he marked down, emerald green stone in head, approximately three inches in length. Under notes, he scribbled down, turned bright red, heated in my hand, pointed me toward the hidden staircase of the temple in Milona. Nolan liked to joke that he should have been an academic, not a prince, but he preferred to think more logically. The world was at his feet. Why shouldn't he learn all he could about it?

Closing the leather-bound book, he clasped its closure and got up to greet his cousin. "Nolan. What is it?"

"It's nearly suppertime and I haven't seen you all day. Have you even eaten?" Nolan ran a hand through his shorn auburn hair, the red strands standing out against his pale, freckled skin.

Declan smiled in spite of himself at the concern in his cousin's tone. "You sound like the queen. Have you become a mother hen now in addition to a bodyguard and babysitter?"

"I brought you a tray," Nolan said, ignoring the snipe.

He raised his brows as he set down the food: a platter of various slices of bread, cheeses, meats, and potatoes. Usually, Nolan would insist that they eat together. What was different now? "Thank you."

His cousin nodded. Declan frowned. There was something different about him: his usually neat garments were slightly rumpled, his shirt untucked from his belt, a different scent radiating from him... Declan averted his hazel gaze, not wanting to alert him to his suspicion.

"You're welcome. Good night, Declan." Nolan hopped from one foot to another, seeming eager to leave the room and not meeting his eye. No interrogation? No overly nosy questions? Hmm. Either he had changed or something was off about him.

"Same to you, cousin." Declan kept his tone level as he returned to his charts, completing the inventory of every key before he finally dug into his supper.

The meal was only mildly warm, not nearly hot enough for his liking, and he was half-tempted to go to the ship's galley and demand they heat it up for him. That seemed exceedingly rude and entitled, however, so he stopped himself. Instead, he carefully maneuvered the platter over the fireplace and was just in the process of reheating it, patting himself on the back for a job well done, when the door flew open with a clatter. A piece of bread fell into the fire, immediately becoming toast before it was charred into ashes.

Glaring at the intruder, he snatched his food away from the fire and set it on the desk, cursing as the hot metal scorched his skin. "A knock would have sufficed."

"I-I'm sorry, Your Highness," Rowena said, her voice soft as she stared down at the toes of her scuffed boots. They were of Astroian make; everyone in Milona wore sandals and slippers. "It's only that--I did not know who I could turn to."

"What is it? What has happened?" He stood up, feeling the slight tingle of the scratches on his neck as he had these past few days. Their glow had faded, thankfully, but they ached at times, so fiercely that he could barely sleep. "Is it her?"

"Who?" Rowena's brows furrowed as she looked up at him. "Oh--is it Nadia, you mean?"

"Yes, who else?" he said, before regretting the words. Declan could not reveal too much of his interest in her, whether it was as an experiment or otherwise. "Rowena, tell me what has happened."

For a moment, Rowena looked like the same vulnerable girl he had seen crying outside his royal apartments, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief as she doubled over with the weight of her sorrow. Crying her eyes out about the scoundrel who had mistreated her. Then, she straightened, her shoulders pulling back as she lifted her chin. The pose reminded him of Nadia and all of her defiance.

"It is Nadia. She... we were... she tried to throw herself off the ship."

-

"You had better tell me exactly what happened, Miss Mills," Declan ordered, using the same tone he had reserved back home for impudent servants and insolent courtiers. "Or else."

Despite the tears that had initially trickled down her freckled cheeks, Rowena was not crumbling under pressure, which was nice as it would have been extremely inconvenient for her to do so at such a time. "We were eating supper, and then she said that she wanted to go out to look at the stars. She told me that she wanted to be alone and then when I came out after thirty minutes or so because I was worried, I saw her lying facedown in the water."

His blood ran cold. "She could have been pushed."

Sailors, he thought, were a superstitious lot. Any of them could have decided that having an errant priestess with a strange curse was too much trouble or that it boded poorly for their voyage. Or, one of them could have made an advance on her and then, after being rejected, shoved her off the ship. She didn't necessarily have to have jumped.

"I know," Rowena said softly. "I simply don't know who could have wanted to harm her. She's so lovely and she seems like such a good person."

Declan made a hmmph noise that neither agreed nor disagreed. After all, he had not really known Nadia Sancta for long enough to comment on whether or not she really was a good person. Instead, they walked briskly in a crisp silence until they reached the highest deck of the Leyria. He stomped up the stairs, unaware of how brutal his footsteps were until Rowena glared at him and told him not to draw too much attention to them. Why was he so concerned, anyway? What sort of agitation moved him--was it the pressure of not wanting to lose a girl who was essentially his experiment, his novelty, an interesting plaything?

After all, Nadia Sancta was only a toy to him, some neat little creature in a cage that had left golden scratches down his neck and had matching ones on her arms, not to mention the bite mark on her ankle. The taste of her blood suddenly rose up in his mouth, as though forever seared into his tongue: iron and the tang of bitter salt, but mingled with something else. Staring at her lying limp on that deck, her damp robes lay in a tangle beneath her body to reveal that beneath, she was clad in a simple shift. Her chest rose and fell in shallow breaths. The taste of her blood was so strong in his mouth that he felt a headache pulse at his temples, as though throbbing in time with his heartbeat.

"Nadia?" Rowena probed gently, patting Nadia's shoulder.

She gave a small gasp and Rowena helped her sit up. Nadia looked dazed, her green eyes clouded, and she reached for her sodden clothes, trying to wrap them around her body. Declan removed his cloak and passed it to her. She was no good to him dead, after all. With a shiver, Nadia accepted it reluctantly, giving a small, spluttering cough that spat up seawater directly onto his shirt. Rowena giggled.

Declan frowned but said nothing of it, giving a look of disdain in spite of the tense circumstances. "What happened? Why do you look like a drowned rat?"

"That is no way to talk to a lady, Prince," she said. Using the corner of his wool cloak, Nadia wiped the water from her face in gentle dabs. "I thought you were better-educated than this."

The jab stung a mite. He had been brought up in a palace, but he had spent his formative education amongst soldiers and sailors as well as courtiers, rough-talking men as well as the perfumed elite. Still, he had never truly felt at ease in any of those worlds.

"This is not the time for petty arguments," Rowena said softly. "Let's get you to the hospital ward."

Nadia flung out a hand to stop her. "No. That is unnecessary. I grew up by the ocean and I know how to swim."

"Then why do you appear as though you have nearly drowned?" he demanded.

She rolled her eyes, still hacking slightly. "The ocean currents are a tad more difficult to swim in than those I grew up with, Prince Declan."

He averted his gaze from her body, the outline of which was made clearly visible by her sopping wet gown. Trying to soften his tone, he asked, "Did someone shove you into the ocean, then, or did you simply decide that it would be a good idea to go for a midnight swim?"

Nadia pointed at his wristwatch with a trembling finger. "It is ten o'clock, not midnight."

"That is irrelevant and you know it." He felt almost as if he were arguing with a child. A very angry, shivering, soaking wet child whose hair was slowly dampening his cloak. Then she shifted, the movement revealing the slight curves of her body, and he changed his mind. No, Nadia Sancta was most definitely a woman. "Go to the hospital ward, priestess."

Rowena's gaze darted between the two of them. She worried her lower lip as a dog would a bone. "Should we not alert the ship's captain? There seems to be a hint of foul play at work in this situation... Dare I call it, crime."

Nadia frowned at her. "You read too many detective novels."

Despite the disapproval in her tone, Declan sensed a hint of... affection, almost, for the younger girl. Nadia Sancta had a bigger heart than he had realized.

"If you grew up by the ocean and no one pushed you off the ship, why did Miss Mills find you floating facedown in the water?" Come to think of it, how had Rowena fished her out? She appeared to weighs ninety pounds soaking wet if she weighed anything.

"How did I get here if I was in the ocean?" Nadia asked, touching her hand to her face. A trickle of blood dripped down her forehead, which looked ashen in the light of the moon. She drew her hand away and stared at the red stain as intently as he'd seen one of his sisters examine the pattern for her wedding gown. Then she laughed darkly. "The second time in three days."

It took him a moment to decipher her meaning. Blood. She meant that it was the second time in three days that her blood had been spilled. "What happened to your head?"

She pursed her lips. "I... do not know."

Rowena piped up now. "I saw you in the water... but you must have hit the side of the ship on your way down. I managed to get one of the crew members to dive in and help me bring you up. But after I came back with Prince Declan, he'd disappeared."

"It doesn't hurt," Nadia murmured, her voice sounding almost absent as she rubbed the slick substance of her blood between her fingertips. "There is blood, but no pain."

"You must be in shock," Declan suggested, having seen soldiers in a similar state before. One of them had even had his leg amputated, and still felt no pain for at least a solid hour. The body could not handle the amount of stimuli that was being provided, so it had to shut some part down. "Nadia, you need to go to..."

He watched, mouth parted in awe as he watched the red turn to gold, her blood becoming a fluid similar to the renditions of the ichor of the gods that he had always pictured. Then it dried and vanished. Whatever wound was on the side of her face closed up, as if it had never been there in the first place.

She looked at it slowly, blinking a few times. Then, with a smirk, she said, "I suppose I don't need to go to the hospital ward, after all."

Easily pulling herself into a standing position with a hop, she extended a hand to an open-mouthed Rowena and passed Declan his cloak. As their fingers brushed, some odd sensation ran through his veins. From the look on her face, he knew Nadia felt it as well.

He managed to eke out, "I suppose not."