Winds of Fate [Books I-III]

Chapter Fifty-Two: Entwined (Part One)

The door shuts with a tiny click. Eleanore presses her forehead on it for a moment; cold palms splayed on the wood. Silencing the condemning voices in her head, she turns around.

A surprising sight greets her: Anton half-naked and wearing his trousers, sitting on the bed while dragging a thick hair brush through his unevenly chopped graying hair. The curls do not obey his hand, falling in graceless waves about his face. Sweat glistens off his tan skin - the same fine honey brown hue as she remembered it. A thin trail of dark hair runs from his navel to his chest. She cocks her head to the side. Faint stubble is present around his mouth, along his jaw. He is still well-built too, with those defined and powerful muscles.  

She tears her eyes away, a touch shy at her boldness to admire him. But then her body faintly remembers how her fingers had once traced the veins on his arms and her lips kissed his shoulder, one night at port in Havana. Warmth wells inside, reminding her of a mortal body susceptible to mortal sins.

A lovely sin to commit over and over.

Yet, it is not what she wanted for him, for them. Her thumb caresses the ruby on her finger. Nearly two years ago he kindly rejected marriage, telling her he wasn't free. Who would've thought it was curse. She assumed it was merely his love for the sea and piracy. 

Now she knows.

Then that final journey never concluded, and here they are years after-

Still together, despite time, distance, and unsavory pasts. Had she been her former self, she would've left him last night. His refusal to share his secret and his past is reason enough to part ways.

His connection to Davy Jones more so.

What if Davy wanted to trap me? Sending me visions through the medallion to make me fall in love...

Her heart dips. Eleanore shakes her head. No.

It is my choice and mine alone.

Being at the whim of spirits takes its toll on anyone, and she has long ignored how much her life has been directed by these ancient ones and guardians. From Luca and his plotting to Davy's actual hand in her mother's death, they all toy with her like she is nothing more than a puppet to be used for their cosmic play.

Not this time.

"What are you doing?" Anton asks, breaking her thoughts.

"Me? Uh, nothing." Eleanore clears her throat. "Just thinking."

He pats the space beside him. "That was fast?"

She shrugs, walking over to the bed. "They don't... really need me."

"Oh?" He straightens up, rubbing his knee with one hand. "If you want to stay a little longer with them, I don't mind..."

Eleanore shakes her head, determined to carry the burden alone. "No." She puts on a tiny smile, sitting down beside him and throwing off her boots which land beside his - slimmer and new compared to his worn pairs. Seeing the brush shake as it runs through his hair, though, she offers, "Here, let me do that for you."

Anton raises a brow, but lays the brush beside him.

Her woes can guilt her later, when he is asleep. Quietly, she takes the brush and kneels behind him, squinting as the golden sunlight spills from the square window atop the side of the bed. After one deft stroke, sorrow descends like a smothering fog and her fingers lose all sense in them. She stops. "Wait a second." Eleanore presses her fingers in her palm, but the feeling eludes her numb hand.