When I wasn’t falling asleep reading fairy tales, waiting for the sound of my godmother’s voice, I was working in the galley, gardening on deck. Will had cared for my plants as best he could, but they’d withered a little while I was away. I dug into them now, softening up the earth around their tender shoots, watering them carefully. Within a day or two, life came back into their leaves, green and full as they ever were. I plucked sprigs of rosemary and put them under my pillow, hoping their scent would ease my sleep.

And the crew filled my head with words, drawing me into their circles and their stories. We sat side by side on deck late into the night all that week, Skop and Yu at my sides, Lang at the helm, or sketching, if Homer or one of the others was steering. Perrault stayed in his quarters, but even Cobie kept company with us, in her own way. She sat in the crow’s nest overhead, her black clothes flapping in the wind like a pirate’s flag beneath Potomac’s blue-and-gold standard.

We were a mere day from Norge the night I turned to Yu, my voice quiet beneath the sailors’ voices and the waves washing over the hull.

Lang had told me their place was between me and everyone else.

I wondered if that applied to Alessandra and the ones who’d forced me away from home. If the crew would stand by my father, as well as by me.

I believed they would.

“Yu,” I whispered, “you’re a doctor. Can I ask you a question?”

He nodded, looking concerned. “Of course. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” I said quickly. “But—if someone lost a lot of weight in a short time—someone who wasn’t trying to, they just didn’t have any appetite—what would you suspect was wrong?”

Yu frowned. “Well, weight loss can be symptomatic of many conditions, but without more information, it would be difficult to say.”

I thought of my father, of how weak he’d looked before I left. “Sleeplessness. Tremors. Says he has pins and needles in his hands. I think his vision’s getting worse, too.” I shook my head. “He’s just not himself lately.”

“Who are we talking about?” Yu’s broad forehead creased.

I studied my hands, picking at a cuticle. “My father.”

How I wanted to get home to him.

For a brief moment, I wondered if accepting Bear would have saved us. If returning home right away with a fiancé at my side and the English crown behind me would have put an end to all our problems.

The question had risen in my mind again and again, threatening to follow me around like a shadow through my days aboard ship, to stand at the foot of my bed at night. I cast it away once more and turned back to Yu.