Saving The Pirate (Book Two)

66. Catching Up

It had been two days since Christopher told me not to speak, be around, or even think about Hector. He had made it very clear that Hector was dangerous, and it would be even more dangerous if I were to break his rules. 

He meant I'd be fired and threatened it constantly as expected.

But, having faith in my boss (despite what went down with his mother and Jack), I nodded my head but felt a twist in my stomach whether I was making the right decision. Were my morals being bent? Was this all just a drunken inspired decision?

With Christopher's brows scrunched together and his expression showing nothing of amusement, it was solid proof that he was as serious as he sounded. Still, the scruffiness of his beard and redness of his eyes said otherwise. 

"Are you alright, sir?" I asked at last.

The corner of his lips rose to a resting smirk. A powerful expression indeed. He lifted his hand and laid it upon my shoulder, a gesture I wasn't prepared for, and shivered because of it. 

"Couldn't be better."

***

Cora had come back the next day. I had seen her when I was making my new walking rounds of the castle. She was carrying towels, a stern expression cast onto her face. At first, I ignored it, stopping her in the corridor for a quick hello.

"Long time no see," I said, smiling, "where have you gone off to?"

"I had family things to attend to," she said rather sadly. 

"Oh," was all I said. For a moment, we stood in silence before I broke out, saying, "Is everything alright?"

Cora didn't meet my eyes, readjusting the towels in her arms. "Yeah," she said, "they will be."

I wanted her to talk more. "Hey, can I help you maybe? Do you need help with those towels or anything?" Cora looked at the towels, then back at me and shrugged, handing me a few towels. 

I followed her up the stairs, looking around carefully to make sure I didn't see any with a royal title before proceeding to an empty corridor. Cora added her stack upon mine, opening up a cabinet and beginning to stack them in.

"I have a question," I said after a while in silence.

"What is it," Cora said, not looking at me.

"When I asked around for you, they didn't know who you are. Why is that?"

I meant it as a curious thing, something I thought was innocent, but it didn't seem that way to Cora. Instead, she looked at me like I asked if she killed someone. She must have noticed I was taken aback by her expression, for she sighed.

"My name isn't Cora," she began, "it's Ester. I wanted at least someone that didn't know me to not think of me as such a bore."

"I don't understand."

Cora closed the cabinet and walked down the hall to the stairs, me following behind her as she talked. "Ester is a boring name. It's boring to hear, to say, to know. Cora has spunk; it has life, like the Great Coral Reef," she said matter of factly. "Whoever heard of someone interesting named Ester?"

I laughed. "I suppose you have a point."

"Well, of course, I have a point. It's my parents that don't get it. I tried countless times to get them to change it and start calling me it, but what's there to expect? They wouldn't do as I asked." Cora led me down another corridor. "The only person that calls me Cora is my sister. Only she gets it."

There was a little smile that curved its way up onto her face that I liked to see and asked something that I thought would make her happy. "You have a sister?"