Navi said that it would take them two full days to reach Serpent Isle. It was cutting it a little close, given that the blood moon was on the night that they were supposed to arrive, but they really didn’t have any choice.

The final stretch was awfully poetic, in a sense. This ship took them to the start of their journey, and now it was bringing them to the end.

What ‘the end’ meant finally sunk in after so long of tirelessly pursuing the prophecy. He was finally reaching the end of everything that forced him into this arrangement. One more stop, and he would be free to go home. Not just him, but Nikolay, too.

Come to think of it, Nikolay didn’t really have a home — not in this lifetime, anyway. Raine had to stifle a laugh after realising that the greatest sorcerer was essentially homeless in modern day society. But to be honest, it didn’t trouble him as much as it should’ve. Nikolay was the type to find his own solutions, and definitely wouldn’t just let himself starve to death once the prophecy was over.

There was always the option that Nikolay could move into his apartment. It was only one bedroom and pretty cramped, even with one person, but they could always move out if Nikolay could help out with rent. Living together wasn’t a foreign concept by any means, considering their travels across Kosira.

Raine jolted back to reality.

Jeez, the trip must be screwing with his head. There was no way that Nikolay would agree to that. They were only living together because of the prophecy. Besides, as much as Raine hated to admit it, Nikolay basically played the part of a housewife — every morning, he woke up to find that every chore had already been done by Nikolay at the crack of dawn. Absolutely no circumstance could persuade Nikolay to continue doing all the chores once the pressure of the prophecy was gone.

And on top of that, there was something more recent that caused Raine to doubt his connection with Nikolay.

It only started feeling this way after they raided the laboratory. He noticed a subtle shift in Nikolay’s behaviour, a sort of recklessness that would never sit right with the Nikolay he knew. Whenever he tried to ask about it, the topic was just brushed off and delayed for another day.

Now, on the ship where they had nothing else to do and nowhere else to run, Raine had planned to finally confront Nikolay and get answers out of him. The only problem was that the distance between them grew even further, to the point where approaching him was difficult, let alone interrogating him. The past day, he hadn’t even seen Nikolay, let alone talked to him.

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Today was no exception. Raine woke up especially early, partly due to his anxiety and partly because his sleep wasn’t great on the rocky ship environment. After trying unsuccessfully to go back to sleep, he eventually dragged himself out of bed.

There was nothing else to do but take a walk around the ship. Although they were out at sea, the scenery still changed slightly each day. Thankfully, Navi’s ship was decently large enough for a morning walk. Raine did a loop around the top deck, then paused to let the fresh air clear his head. One thing he could get behind was the cool sea breeze, which contrasted wildly with the smoggy Marque air that they’d been breathing in for the past week or so.

Finally, he decided it was probably time to get breakfast. As he descended the stairs down to the main deck, though, a strange sight caused him to stop.

Nikolay stood in front of an owl perched on the side railing. He handed a folded piece of paper to the bird and scratched its feathers. The white-grey owl hooted in appreciation, then flew off as fast as a bullet. Within seconds, it was nothing more than a distant white spot.

Now that the anomaly was gone, Raine continued to walk down the stairs. When he drew close enough, Nikolay turned to him.

“Hello, Raine. I wasn’t expecting you to be up this early.”

Raine wasn’t sure if Nikolay was just pretending that he hadn’t noticed him earlier, but either way, hearing his voice caused a lump to lodge itself in his throat. All he could do was stand there mute, staring at Nikolay with pleading eyes.

“If you have nothing to say, I’ll be off,” Nikolay said. “I have things I need to do.”

Nikolay was running away again.

The gap between them felt impossibly large, but Raine reached out anyway. His hand grasped Nikolay’s arm. The other, already moving to leave, suddenly halted.

“Kolya… Please don’t leave,” Raine said in a hoarse voice. “It’s lonely.”

A painfully long second passed. Was Nikolay going to shrug him off again? His heart started to ache in anticipation of the incoming rejection. It was his fault for showing weakness.

Nikolay brought his own hand up to where Raine was holding onto his arm.

Here it came — he was going to pry off Raine’s hand and walk away. He would leave Raine standing alone, wondering where he’d gone wrong.

“I’m sorry,” Nikolay said.

Raine screwed his eyes shut. He willed every cell in his body to not burst into tears, hoping he wouldn’t make a fool of himself in front of his companion.

Then, unexpectedly, arms enveloped him in a warm embrace. Raine’s eyes flew open in surprise. Sure enough, he saw Nikolay’s outgrown dark hair in the corner of his vision.

“I’m sorry,” Nikolay repeated, his breath tickling Raine’s ear. “I should’ve noticed that you were struggling.”

If anything, Raine felt guilty for struggling in the first place. He was the one who apparently couldn’t function without constant validation from Nikolay. He was dragging other people down yet again because of his stupid emotional needs.

Despite all the negative thoughts swirling in his head, though, Raine let his eyes flutter closed and simply let himself take Nikolay’s word at face value. He wanted to believe in all the weeks they’d spent together, in all the memories they made.

For the rest of the trip to Serpent Isle, Nikolay never left his side.