IN THE SEAS OF THOUGHTS AND ENIGMAS

❝

NIGHT had deepened like a bruise over the sky and upon stormy heaps of rumbling clouds. The sea-borne wind would carry sharp smells and echo with the distant clamor of gulls, growing louder with each dash of the carriage on the cobbles as they flew away from the estate. Behind them, out of the fog, the city lights flickered faintly into golden memories—already fading into smoke.

The air in the carriage was heavy with silence-tensed, suffocating, woven through with the aftershocks of blood. Charlotte sat upright at the far edge of the plush seat, hands jammed tightly together in her lap. She could still scent the iron in the air; she could still see the glint of crimson upon Lindice's gloves before the woman hastily wiped them clean. 

But the question that left Charlotte's lips shattered the stillness beyond repair. "Why-why did you have to kill them?" 

Lindice halted in midaction. Her fingers tightened around the edge of the carriage window. For an instant, her face remained inscrutable to Charlotte-stone carved by suffering. Then something shifted behind her eyes, maybe a tremor of memory she had not wished to unearth. 

Once the words tumbled from her, they were murderous and low. "Don't ask me why. Be grateful I cleaned up your mess." 

For a moment, Charlotte's back straightened, but the tremor was steady as a quiet protest. "But they were still human. You are—"

"A monster?" Lindice spun to her, eyes burning like ice. Her lips curled into a cross between a snarl and a bitter smile. "I know. You don't have to remind me."

She shouted again, raw and feral, and her voice claimed the carriage walls. "Now shut your lavish mouth, Your highness. I am the one doing the duty here that you don't have the stomach for." 

Charlotte bit her lower lip, words dying in her throat. She turned away, ashamed not only by Lindice's fit of fury but also by the flicker of truth in her words. Her fingers tightened around the folds of her dress, putting up a fight against the guilt clawing its way up to her chest.

Just outside, the smell of salt grew heavy. The murmur of voices and the growl of ships at rest in the harbor were now a close presence. The carriage swayed with each turn until the buildings were finally past them, and there before them lay the grand, open dark of the port: crates piled high, lamplights swaying from rusty poles, and the long silhouettes of ships gently rocking on the water. 

The carriage stopped close to a narrow passage that opened toward the loading docks. 

Lindice was the first to stir. She swung the door wide and descended, pulling her cloak tight about her shoulders. Pale bloodstains lay hidden under the dark fabric, but even darkness could not tone down the tension in her stance. She glanced once toward the driver's bench, giving the coachman a conspicuous, emphatic nod. 

The man said nothing. He cracked the reins and drove into the night, disappearing into the fog like a ghost. 

Charlotte, closely hugging Lindice, deigned an exit to the carriage, demurely tapping her slippers down against the damp stone, the chill already down her bones. Dockworkers madly buzzed about; ropes were hoisted for loading crates while they bellowed out instructions beneath the flickering lanterns. The winds carried the salty taste of the sea, and Charlotte found her gaze following the infinity line formed where the water extended on and on toward the void—freedom so near, yet so impossibly far away. 

Ahead lay the ship waiting for them like a beast in silence, sails furled and set. Lindice said nothing as she stepped quickly and purposefully up the gangplank. Just once, Charlotte paused to look back-toward the city, toward the life she was leaving behind. Her heart twisted.

Then she followed.

The noise of port drumming into muffled echoes inside the ship cabin. The room was modest in size, simple walls lined with shelves and bolted furniture, yet warm and private-an alien kind of luxury after the chaos of their escape.

Sitting down on the bench seat without exchanging a word, they sank into silence. Charlotte released a breath she never knew she had been holding while Lindice rested against the wood with her eyes shut tight and her jaw clenched. 

"I don't think you had to yell at me," Charlotte finally managed to say. 

"You didn't have to look at me like that," Lindice snapped, still not opening her eyes. "Like I'm this monster without a soul."

Charlotte turned her gaze downward. "I didn't mean to..." An unspoken space rose up. The ship creaked and swayed, and outside, the sound of waves came alive with the lamentations of the sorrowful.

"I just wanted to be free," Charlotte whispered. "Not... this."

It was then that Lindice opened her eyes, and although still guarded, a tiny fragment of softness crept into her gaze.

"I know," she said, and walked into a small corner, closing her eyes again to nap. 

The clouds rolled below the vessel so thick and slow that their shadows were cast long over quiet wildernesses of Normaine. The ship sailed into the evening air like a silent sentinel, with the drone of its engine low and steady. Charlotte stood alone on the stern, bracing herself against the brass railing with both hands as the crisp wind blew strands of loose hair around her face. Her eyes searched the horizon, but her mind wandered too far from that scene. The ache in her chest was either fear or freedom; she could not tell. 

Nothing had been the same from the moment she walked away from the estate gates. From the cold-walled manor and perfumed corridors of the Deloney estate to the wind rushing around her head in the open skies—she had walked away from anything she had ever known. Though the ship was now climbing higher, she felt as if, paradoxically, she were falling. 

Footfalls came creeping up behind her, slow but firm. Tense, she did not turn straight away until a voice, deep, low, and composed, entered the stillness. 

"What a pleasant view."

Charlotte turned around, and for a moment, breath hitched in her throat. The man beside her had on a long, dark coat that billowed like smoke in the wind. His face, pale and sharply cut, was half-obscured by a black blindfold carelessly knotted around his eyes. Yet he was recognizable to her all the same. 

"Saevionh?" she breathed, uncertain. 

Slowly, he turned his head toward her, a pause hanging as if he were in the process of mapping her voice with a face. "Do I know you?" He asked politely, without a hint of recognition. 

"We met in Normaine," she said cautiously. "At the public library. You said that you were a substitute there." 

His head tipped at that, a growing smile creeping across his lips. "Ah...the curious young woman asking about Theodore and Mrs. Sinclair," he murmured. "Now I remember."

Her expression sharpened. "You lied."

"I did," he admitted, without flinching. "Though not entirely. I was at the library— just not for the reasons I gave." Charlotte studied him warily. "Then why were you there?"

 "There were sealed records I needed to retrieve. Old files, mostly. The kind hidden behind several bureaucratic curtains," he said, tapping his suitcase. "Cataloging books was not exactly what I went there for." 

"And you have access to those? Just like that?" asked her, furrowing her brows. His lips curled into a quiet smirk. "Only when someone like Madam Dorothea Grimoard sends me." The name hit her like ice water. She straightened, almost choking. 

"You… you work for her?" 

"With her," he corrected, his tone serious; "I am not under her thumb. But I owe her one. Truthfully, more than one." Charlotte blinked in shock. This man, whom she had met so briefly and so casually, had ties to Dorothea Grimoard? The realization settled with another peculiar weight in her chest. How far did the Countess's reach extend, anyway? How many moved quietly under her sphere, bound by favors, blood, or unspoken debts? 

"And so you are working for her out of some sense of gratitude?" He shrugged mildly. "Let's say I have my reasons. We are… distantly related. Blood stretches thinner over generations, but obligations often grow thicker with time." Charlotte had no reply to that one. She simply continued staring while thoughts chartered nervously in her mind. 

"Then what was the case for which you needed the records?" She prompted at length. His expression darkened, and something akin to the finality with which a door is slammed shut settled over him. 

"That is confidential," he said. "You might call it personal." She held his stare or tried to, thrown off by how he seemed to be sighting without seeing. How convenient, that he had just happened to be on this ship too? 

The sea stretched on for interminable miles before them with a dark surface rippling into blurring lines beneath the fading light. Charlotte stood by the ship's railing, her eyes set on the ever-shifting horizon, where sea and sky melted into a blue-gray gloom.gray. 

Beside her, Saevionh leaned casually against the railing with one arm resting upon it, relaxed yet alert in posture. 

"I don't believe in coincidence," he rumbled, low and steady against the wind. "Just timing." 

He turned just slightly toward her. "And you? What brings you here?" 

Charlotte remained silent. The hush settled between them, broken now and then by the groan of the ship and distant cries from the gulls circling in the blue. A sharp chill wind hurried past them, toggling the hem of her coat. 

She had not thought him to wait, but he did. And perhaps that had been the reason she finally spoke.

"I've made a choice," she said faintly, with her gaze still fixed towards the horizon. "A choice that cannot ever be taken back."

A slow nod followed from Saevionh, his expression inscrutable, almost like her words were an echo of an already obvious realization.

"Is that so?" he replied at last. "Then I suppose I'll see you in Albiana. House Grimoard always has room for those with nowhere else to go." 

He pushed off the railing and made to walk away, the flutter of his coat a shadow in the wind's way. Charlotte watched him depart, her heart tightening with quasi-anxiety—an uncertainty, perhaps, or something that ran deeper. 

"Wait," Charlotte exclaimed, halting him just before he disappeared into the lower deck. "Why the blindfold?"

Saevionh froze, his hand grazing the rail lightly. The wind lifted his coat fleetingly, like some ghost's whisper. He inclined his head, almost as though he was really weighing the question. 

"That I do not see the masks people wear," he answered, but not without a slight tremor in his voice. "It allows me to focus on the truth. It's—" and suddenly, his gaze drifted over to the sea, appearing absorbed in something far-off visible only to him. 

His fingers drummed once against the railing in an understated measure of percussion. Once, twice, thrice, tapping with a purposeful cadence. Only then did he cease, when respiration got slightly rapid, an irking change in the atmosphere with a minuscule tremor in his hand, which froze whilst holding an undecided place.

"It's easier that way," he continued after a moment, battling an urge to say it again, to correct something inside himself that had felt wrong, that needed to be fixed. He exhaled briefly, and his words hung in the air like an unfinished puzzle. "Sometimes... things need to match, align. Otherwise, they...they don't feel real." 

The moment lingered uncomfortably, and Saevionh blinked rapidly, catching himself, if he was aware of the shift in tone. Straightening himself up, he pulled away from the railing to look apologetically at Charlotte with a reduction of tension in his poise. "I'm sorry," his voice was quieter now, almost self-deprecating. "I tend to... think too much about these things. Sometimes, I forget I'm speaking aloud."

Charlotte shook her head, speaking softly. "It's all right," her voice was tender but true. "I don't mind. You don't need to regret or apologize." 

At that moment, Saevionh drew nearer, though he noticed her companion. His tone became conspiratorial as he now regarded the dreary corner of the deck. "Don't tell me," he said while covertly pointing, "that you're with her." 

Charlotte followed the direction of his gaze. There, slouched against the far side of the deck, lay Lindice— her left arm draped across her face while her right grasped some insignificant pillow she had snatched from below deck. She was breathing deeply and would, in every way, run counter to the reputation of sinister things, which clung to her oils and waters. A breath of wind sent a lock of dark hair across her lips, but she didn't twitch.

"The maid?" Charlotte muttered and folded her arms tightly across her chest and nodded. "Yes. It was she who brought me here." Saevionh studied her closely now, as if really for the first time, his brows knitted, replacing the Recoil of amusement with temporary concern. "You came with her? Then that would confirm it... You are the one her Ladyship is talking about."

Charlotte tilts her head slightly. "What are you talking about?" He didn't answer right away. Instead, there was a slight hum and his hands folded behind his back as he began to walk along the metal rails of the ship. Charlotte followed beside him. A little way further into the breeze, the ship's bell fractions off the deep clanging sound of the ship's bell. 

"Were you by any chance at a certain ball quite recently?" he asked shifting to another topic, leaning her way as he asked this. Charlotte drew in a soft breath rasping with bitterness. "That was my birthday party, really." 

At that moment, Saevionh stopped for a moment and then made a respectful nod to her. "Then allow me to say, belated–happy birthday." 

She replied in a cold tone, resting her forearms on the railing, "It wasn't a happy celebration." She was staring into the horizon. "I was forced into an engagement... the Crown Prince of Luxtonia." 

A beat of silence follows. Then, suddenly, Saevionh let out a short bark of laughter: loud, careless, and very much like a stone thrown into still water. Charlotte flinched and her cheeks said it was with irritation that she had done so. 

"What is so funny to you?" she asked and glared at him below her forehead.

He raised his hands, still chuckling as he struggled to gain control over his mirth. "Forgive me. It's just—of all the things I expected you to say…" 

She stiffened. "I fail to see what is so funny." 

With the wind tousling his hair, Saevionh grinned. "Oh, trust me, you're not the least bit funny. Just the situation." Leaning casually against the rail, he added, "An arranged betrothal to a Crown Prince stat? That's no small thing. Makes one wonder what you truly are worth for the kingdom." 

Charlotte blinked. "What do you mean by that?" 

His blindfolded gaze turned up to the sky, lips curling thoughtfully. "The royal family does not just toss out betrothals like pastries at a fair. There's always a reason. Bloodlines, alliances, hidden debts. You don't simply become the future queen by accident."

Charlotte's fingers wrapped harder around the railing. "So, you think I'm some bargaining chip? A pawn?"

Saevionh shrugged slightly. "We all are, at one time or another. Still, clever pawns can reach the other side of the board and become queens."

Charlotte let out a sharp exhale, weariness lacing her voice. "Riddles, you speak." 

"Do I?" He half-smiled at this point and tapped his side suitcase, which had been ignored until that time. "All I'm trying to say is that maybe things are not exactly as they seem. And House Grimoard—" he lowered his voice almost to a whisper—"we have a way of being tangled in things far beyond what others assume."

Charlotte turned fully to look at him, searchingly. "You talk like you know that something is coming." 

He was slow to reply. He tilted his head slightly, as if at some sound he alone heard, then with a soft chuckle, he indicated with a nod towards Lindice once more: "Well maybe. To think you will meet this house with such peculiar people like the one they say that has murdered lots of people. And yet, look at her—snoring like a drunkard on holiday." 

Charlotte's eyes followed his gesture. Lindice lay fast asleep, one boot half-atop, her mouth hanging slightly ajar. It would have almost been funny had it not been for the strange unease that Charlotte could not quite shake off. 

"I don't think she sleeps like that unless she's been told she's safe," Charlotte murmured.

Saevionh raised an eyebrow. "Or perhaps she knows no one would dare venture to wake her." 

He turned back to Charlotte even then, something sharper, something almost assessing flickering for a moment across his face. "Take heed, Lady Charlotte. You happen to be in a different world now, where dagger smiles are worth less than the sea; and if that maid is going to be your guiding star to our doors..." He let the words hang and trailed off, letting the implication cloak the air in fog. 

Then, with an almost imperceptible inclination of the head—yet this was hardly casual—Saevionh dropped his voice into a lower register. "I must ask you, Lady Charlotte... Will you surrender to the narrative framed by others? Or are you willing to bleed for a different ending?" 

Charlotte parted her lips to speak—but every sound died before it could form. Her breaths must have somehow tangled her thought processes.

Saevionh edged closer, still gazing away from Charlotte, slightly beyond her. "You and I... are traversing along a rendering toward the same end. But do not confuse that proximity with coincidence. If my far-away aunt deemed it fit to embroil you, it means you are no mere passerby in this tale." He inhaled sharply, then let the air escape in a sigh as though he were trying to pacify a dissonance difficult to bear. "No... No, it could never be that generic. Then nothing is truly random. There is symmetry in it. Oh, what a cruel symmetry."

For a moment, he paused and then spoke again in a tone less firm and more distorted, and quiet. "Sometimes I think about how fate is like a line drawn by someone without a scale. It should be straight. It bends, it warps. I want to set that straight. I want to see where it has gone wrong." His hands fluttered for a wee instant in a way that seemed to caress the buttons of his coat, hesitating as if correcting what was far from disarranged. "Because if I find the design... if I turn over the wrong... then perhaps the whole will not engulf me." 

Charlotte was left, rigid and amazed, only watching in disbelief.

Then as if suddenly aware of himself, Saevionh blinked and took a step backwards, carefully fixing the cuffs of his coat. The traces of manic energy on his expression fled, replaced by a contemplative calm. "You must prepare yourself, Lady Charlotte. You are not simply a passenger on this journey. You participated in its very design."

He turned towards the horizon, the earlier smirk transformed by the weight of something older and graver. As he gazed into the distance, silence descended between them. 

Charlotte was left there, still, her thoughts swirling in a storm of questions she would never dare to utter. 

Time moved slowly after that dreadfully slow time. The ocean stretched eternally in all directions, its monotony weaving her into a trance of uncertainty. As the first light of dawn slowly began to bleed into the sky, she watched the sun with painful longing; hoping its warmth would bring clarity. The sea shimmered gold with its rays, but beauty is always transient.

Pretty soon, Charlotte found herself afloat once more, engulfed in a fog of doubt and unanswered truths with the horizon, no longer a promise, but a question.

"A lady adrift in the realm of her dreams—shall she ever uncover the guiding light that may illuminate the path to the future she so dearly desires?"