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‘Why would it be in Iondorran if...?’
‘If this wasn’t Isabella?’ She looked up at him, smiling, knowing—knowingthat everything the Professor and she had believed was true.
‘Can you read it?’ he asked.
‘I think so,’ she replied, moving just a little closer.‘“Our heart, unable to live without he who held hers, chose to stay by his side until his last breath. And then chose to join him in eternity. Long live the Pirate Queen.”’Goosebumps had broken out across her skin, as she realised what must have happened.
‘You were right,’ Mateo whispered and his words turned over in her heart, making her feel both elated and deeply sad for what Isabella had lost that day.
‘They called her a Pirate Queen here, not a princess.’
‘As a sign of their respect for her?’
Evie nodded. ‘The first mate must have been injured in the last battle—the one that killed the Dutch Duke. Loriella and her crew must have come here and...’ She looked at the ship, and then took a step back out into the cave, her hand pressing against her lips in shock. ‘They blew the...they must have used explosives to seal in the ship and...’ She looked back to Mateo staring at her. ‘And she couldn’t live without him, her first mate. Her husband. She...’ Evie couldn’t bring herself to say that the Princess had taken her own life, but Mateo must have realised, because he came to her and took her into his arms. ‘Her crew,’ Evie said, needing to finish the story. ‘That’s how much loyalty they felt for her,’ Evie realised. ‘They touched hardly any of the treasure and they buried her with her husband. The carving, the wooden mausoleum, that would have taken years. They would have used the wooden staircase until it was done. And no one ever betrayed them, no one ever revealed the location of the treasure for their own needs.’
A week ago, Mateo would have been surprised that anyone had managed to inspire that much loyalty, but that was before he’d met Evelyn Edwards. Somehow in his mind, Princess Isabella had merged with how he saw Evie and he could hardly separate the two. His father had looked for the missing princess for almost his entire life, and now that Mateo stood at her final resting place, he hoped that his father felt at peace.
He retrieved his phone from his pocket and swiped across the screen to get to his camera. He held it up to take some pictures, to secure the proof his father had always needed, but Evie pushed his hand down gently, shaking her head.
‘Don’t you want this?’
‘Need and want are two different things.’
Sometimes it is enough for just one to know.
He remembered his father’s words, back from when he was still a child, when he believed in pirate adventures and treasure hunts. It seemed that even though he had lost his faith in such things, he had been destined to find his way back to them.
‘But this could be all you need to restore your reputation. To prove everyone who doubted you wrong,’ he said, staring down into the beautiful depths of her hazel eyes that smiled sadly back at him.
‘I’m not here for that. I’m here so that a king can know peace, can know what happened to his ancestor, that a queen—a daughter—can help her father, and so that a son can find his father again. That’s what I’m here for, Mateo.’
Her words broke something in him, shattering something that hurt, that cost him greatly, but that he couldn’t, wouldn’t look at right now. He held her to him and he couldn’t shake the feeling that, of all the riches and jewels in the room, what he held in that moment was more precious.
‘May I have a moment?’ she asked, after her breathing had settled—clearly as moved as he had been, if not more.
‘Of course.’
He started to leave, when something on the shelf by the door caught his eye. The flash of a memory, his father and a painting, traipsed through his mind, and before he could question it he’d retrieved the object to take a closer look at it in the sunlit cave. But the moment he got outside, he was once again mesmerised by the impressive ship beached on the shore.
He looked around at the cave, realising that Evie must have been right, and marvelled at how Isabella’s crew had managed to bring down the rocks in such a way that the ship hadn’t been damaged irrevocably. Or perhaps that hadn’t even been a consideration, and just...fate.
He sat down in the white sand, staring at the clear blue water, wondering if this was perhaps one of the most beautiful places he had ever been. And for the first time in three years, maybe even more, he wished his father could be there. Without anger, or frustration or resentment, he simply wished his father could see this; the culmination of his life’s work.
His father wasn’t infallible, Mateo had always known that. But he hadn’t understood that, as an adult and not the child he once was, it meant forgiving his father for not being infallible. Acknowledging that his father had made mistakes he bitterly regretted meant letting go of that blame and anger. But when he tried, he still felt the gnaw of heavy responsibility tightening its hold. But the unease he felt swirled around Evie. The absolute and utter shock when she’d nearly fallen through the stairs... His palm fisted instinctively. He heard Evie’s footsteps in the sand behind him and buried his feelings when she sat so close to him that she could lean her head against his shoulder.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked her.
‘A bit overwhelmed, but yes. I...’ She started, staring at the way the water lapped against the beach. ‘It’s the culmination of so much. I wish he could have been here.’
Mateo didn’t have to ask who and instead replied, honestly, ‘I do too.’
‘Will you tell your mother?’
He nodded. Of course he would tell her. But he feared it would cause more hurt and he’d tried so hard over the years to avoid that. And instead of seeing the sand beneath his feet he saw his mother, unable to get out of bed for days at a time, her stare into the middle distance more frightening than any of her tears. And the words she would whisper when she thought no one was looking.
‘I did the right thing. I did it for the right reasons.’
His mother had done it forhim.
