On The Water
The boat was small, meant for two people and no more. Rafayel took the oars with practiced ease, his movements fluid as he guided them away from the shore. The sounds of the festival became distant, muffled, as if they had crossed some invisible threshold into a world meant only for them.
Nana sat across from him, her hands clutching the lantern they'd purchased—a simple paper construction with delicate paintings of cranes and lotus flowers.
Her face was lit from below by the candle already nestled inside it, casting her features in warm gold and deep shadow.
She looked ethereal. Otherworldly. Like something that shouldn't exist in the mundane world of duty and sacrifice and ancient curses that demanded hearts as payment.
"I've never done this before," she said softly, her voice barely carrying over the gentle splash of oars in water.
"I've watched from my window every year during the festival, but I've never... thank you. For this."
Rafayel's hands tightened on the oars.
"You don't need to thank me."
"I do, though." She looked up at him, and there was something in her eyes—a vulnerability that made his chest ache.
"You didn't have to help me. You could have let the guards find me, or just walked away. But you didn't. You gave me this."
She gestured to the lake, the lanterns, the night itself.
"You gave me a memory I'll carry forever."
Don't, he wanted to say. Don't thank me. Don't trust me. Don't look at me like I'm someone good, because I'm not. I'm the monster your father warned you about, and you're sitting in a boat with me, and you don't even know—
"Make a wish," he said instead, his voice rougher than intended.
"Before you release it. That's the tradition."
Nana nodded, closing her eyes. In the candlelight, he could see her lips moving in silent prayer, her brow furrowed with concentration. She looked so young like this. So sincere. Like she still believed wishes could come true, that the universe listened, that hope was something other than a beautiful lie we told ourselves to make the darkness bearable.
What was she wishing for? Freedom, probably. A life beyond palace walls. The simple things she'd been denied.
I'm going to take even this from you, he thought, and the weight of it settled over him like a shroud. I'm going to make you love me, and then I'm going to kill you, and whatever you're wishing for right now will never come true because of me.
Nana opened her eyes, smiled at him with such pure joy it was like looking at the sun, and gently released the lantern. It rose slowly, the heat from the candle carrying it upward, joining the constellation of lights already decorating the sky.
"Your turn," she said, and there was something almost childlike in her enthusiasm. "You have to make a wish too."
Rafayel looked at the spare lantern in the boat, then at the girl across from him who trusted him for no reason except that he'd hidden her from guards.
The girl who had once saved his life on a beach when she was barely more than a child herself.
The girl who had lost her parents and still chose kindness.
The girl who had died of disease while he waited for her, year after year, not knowing she was already gone.
The girl he had been given a second chance with, and had decided to destroy.
He didn't have wishes. Wishes were for people who still had hope.
But he picked up the lantern anyway, holding it carefully. Closed his eyes, more for her benefit than because he believed in the ritual.
I wish, he thought, and the words formed without his permission, rising from some deep place he'd thought he'd sealed away, I wish I could hate you the way I'm supposed to. I wish you'd never saved me that day. I wish I could forget you the way you forgot me.
I wish this didn't hurt so much.
I wish I was strong enough to walk away.
I wish__
He opened his eyes, and she was watching him with such softness, such curiosity, that the words tangled and died in his throat.
I wish we could have had a different story.
Rafayel released the lantern without ceremony, watching it rise to join its companions. The night was full of them now, a river of light flowing upward toward stars that looked down with indifferent beauty.
"It's magical," Nana breathed, her neck craned back to watch the ascending lights. "Like the stars are being born right in front of us."
A small smile tugged at Rafayel's lips before he could stop it. It was a nice image. Poetic. The kind of thing his people used to say before—
Before there were no more of his people to say anything.
No! he told himself firmly. Don't let this stupid feeling chain your decision. You know what you have to do. You know what's at stake. One girl, or an entire civilization. One heart, or thousands of lives.
It's not even a choice.But if it wasn't a choice, why did it feel like he was being torn apart?
"Thank you," Nana said again, softer this time. She was still looking at the sky, at the lanterns that painted the darkness with hope.
"For tonight. For all of this. I know I'm just
a stranger you helped on a whim, but... it meant everything."
You're not a stranger, Rafayel thought but didn't say. You were my first friend. My first love. My first lesson in how hope can become a weapon that cuts both ways.
You were everything, and then you were nothing, and now you're here again, and I don't know which version is worse.
"What's your name?" she asked suddenly, turning to look at him with genuine interest.
"I've been so rude, monopolizing your time and not even asking—"
"Rafayel,"
he said, and watched carefully for any flicker of recognition.There was none. The name meant nothing to her. Why would it? She'd been eleven when she learned it, and she'd died before that memory could solidify into anything permanent.
"Rafayel,"
she repeated, testing it on her tongue. A small smile curved her lips.
"It's a beautiful name. Different."
"It's from my homeland,"
he said, which was technically true.
"Near the sea."
"I've never seen the ocean,"
Nana said wistfully.
"My father says it's dangerous. That storms come from there, and raiders, and..." She trailed off, then laughed at herself.
"Everything is dangerous according to my father. The ocean, the market, the world outside my window. Sometimes I think he'd keep me in a glass box if he could, safe but suffocating."
"Maybe he's just afraid,"
Rafayel found himself saying. "Of losing you."
Nana's expression softened.
"Maybe. But you can't protect someone from everything. And trying only makes the cage smaller."
She met his eyes directly, and there was a quiet strength there that caught him off guard.
"I'd rather live one day free than a hundred years safe but not really alive. Wouldn't you?"
The question hit him like a physical blow. Because wasn't that exactly what he'd done? Lived a hundred years after her death, safe in his kingdom beneath the waves, not really alive because living hurt too much.
Trading existence for true life, purpose for passion.
And look where it had gotten him. Here, in a boat with her ghost wearing a new face, planning her murder.
"I think," he said carefully,
"that freedom and safety don't have to be opposites. That maybe the right person could give you both."
But I'm not that person, he didn't add. I'm the danger your father is trying to protect you from.
Nana considered this, her head tilted in thought.
"Maybe," she agreed. "But I haven't found that person yet. For now, I'll settle for stolen nights and kind strangers who give me adventures."
She smiled at him, unguarded and genuine, and Rafayel felt another piece of his resolve crumble to dust.
This has to stop, he told himself desperately.
You're getting too close. You're forgetting what she did—what she didn't do. You're letting her in again when you know exactly how that ends.
But the boat continued its gentle drift across the water, and the lanterns continued to rise, and the girl across from him continued to smile, and Rafayel found that he couldn't make himself care about strategy or sacrifice or the weight of kingdoms that needed saving.
Just for tonight, he told himself. Just for these few stolen hours, he would let himself pretend.
That he was just a man and she was just a girl and they were floating on a lake under a sky full of wishes that might actually come true.
That the bond mark on his arm pulsed with joy rather than accusation.
That the price of her heart wasn't her heart itself.
Tomorrow, he would remember why he was here.
Tomorrow, he would harden himself again, rebuild the walls she was so effortlessly dismantling.
But tonight—
Tonight, he let himself row her across the dark water, let himself enjoy the sound of her laughter, let himself smile when she pointed out patterns in the lanterns that only she could see.
Tonight, he let himself be Rafayel the boy who had waited on a beach, rather than Rafayel the assassin who had come to claim a debt paid in blood.It was weakness.
It was foolishness.
It was the beginning of the end for both of them.
And somewhere deep in his chest, in the place where his heart should have been nothing but stone, something dangerously close to hope began to grow.
No, he told it silently, fiercely. You'll only destroy us both.
But hope, once planted, was harder to kill than he'd thought.
Even when you'd spent a century trying.
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🐚🐚🐚
To be continued __