Chapter 3
ARIEL
K aplyn’s command nearly swallowed us whole as he surged toward us, eyes wide with fury, body rippling with dark power. The three of us hovered above the ground, held captive by his magic—magic unlike anything I’d ever seen from him before. But what was most disturbing was the way he stared at us as though we were his enemies.
I craned my head to the left to find Hemming in his normal form, his beast nowhere to be found. On my right, Shayfer struggled against the oppressive magic, which could only mean one thing: neither could use theirs against his.
“There are many things in this world that I will tolerate,” he said, walking toward us with eerily calm, measured steps, “but being lied to is not one of them.”
“We didn’t lie?—”
“SILENCE!” A gust of wind blasted our faces as his voice boomed through the night. “You have done nothing but lie to me from the moment I found you out here earlier. And now you will tell me why.” Eyes blazing like white-hot fire, he looked the three of us over, awaiting our response.
“Because I’m going to Anemosia for answers,” I said, swallowing back my fear.
The shadowy tendril dangling me overhead cinched a little tighter. “Is that so?”
“Yes—and if you don’t let me go, I’ll keep trying. You can’t stop me forever.”
“Oh, Ariel,” he replied, eyes narrowing to darkened slits, “I promise you, I most certainly can.” Something in the way he spoke those words made me shiver, but I steeled myself against his terrifying power and ominous threat all the same.
“If you want to keep me here, you’ll have to kill me. And I know you won’t.”
He took another step closer, and I saw Hemming strain against his magical bonds in response. Kaplyn’s attention snapped to his son and the shadows struggling to restrain him.
“Tell me, Ariel, what it is you hope to learn on this fool’s errand?”
“I know that you and my father omitted the full truth about the Aima Kori . I want to know what that is—and all that it implies.”
Kaplyn’s eyes flared as he turned his attention to his spy.
“I merely told her the proper translation of the title, nothing more,” Shayfer said in his defense.
“And endangered her life in the process,” Kaplyn snapped, his control fraying by the second.
“That knowledge does not inherently endanger her,” he argued. The way his voice strained as he spoke illustrated just how angry Kaplyn was; mad enough to crush his favorite spy to death.
“But taking her to Anemosia most certainly could. I wonder, did it ever cross any of your minds that there might possibly be a reason Kade and I would keep this information from Ariel?”
“That seems a convenient excuse for someone who doesn’t want me to know the truth,” I countered, though his sentiment gave me pause.
“It feels extraordinarily inconvenient to me at the moment.”
“And we all know how you feel about inconveniences,” Hemming snarled.
Kaplyn expertly ignored his son’s scathing retort. “I have only ever endeavored to keep you safe, Ariel. You know this. My actions speak to that fact.”
“I don’t doubt that’s been your goal, Kaplyn. It’s the why that now plagues me.” I hesitated for a moment, uncertain how to proceed. There was no way to say what needed to be said without slighting him, and I knew it, but it changed nothing in the end—so I said it. “I am not your daughter. Not your blood. And yet you’ve gone to such extraordinary lengths for me?—”
“Because I love you, daughter or not,” he said, daring a step closer. “Is that not obvious?”
“Yes, but it’s more than that,” I said, shaking off the sting of his wounded expression. “You told me that you kept my mother and me hidden in the Midlands; that the Minyades were the ones who came for us and killed her.”
“Yes.”
“But there’s something else—a deeper reason. One you’re not telling me.” Kaplyn’s jaw flexed as silence bloomed between us. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
He said nothing.
“Do you know why the Minyades want her so badly?” Shayfer asked, breaking the maddening quiet. “Why does her being their ‘princess’ endanger her?”
Still, Kaplyn did not respond.
Hemming tensed beside me. “What are you afraid will happen if she goes to Anemosia?”
Kaplyn paused for a moment, presumably to craft his response. “I’m afraid she will fall into the wrong hands and meet her mother’s fate, which is something I cannot allow.” His stern expression fell to one of sorrow. “I made her a promise—I cannot break it, no matter the cost. You can hate me for an eternity from whatever prison I’m forced to keep you in to ensure your survival, Ariel, but you’ll be alive to do it, and that is a compromise I am willing to make.”
“A princess should not fear her people,” Shayfer said, drawing Kaplyn’s ire once again. “They have risked much to find her and bring her home. Your concern seems unwarranted.”
“And your ignorance will seal her fate.”
“You and my father said it was the Minyades that attacked us, but I cannot make sense of that when those prisoners seemed so relieved by my presence—so desperate for me. Why would they have done this?”
Kaplyn’s jaw flexed in a way that reminded me of Hemming when he didn't want to say what was running through his mind. “I do not know.” Those words rolled off his tongue so easily, but I could sense the deception behind them. And no matter how hard I tried to work through the details I knew and those I didn’t, nothing quite added up, which left me back where I’d started: in need of answers. Maybe Kaplyn was right to be worried—maybe we were embarking on a dangerous journey—but I saw no other way.
My mind was made up.
“Kaplyn,” I said, “I appreciate that you promised my mother you’d keep me safe, but neither you nor that promise can keep me from learning the truth of what I am and what it means. My fate is mine to determine, not hers…or yours.”
“Do you truly believe the Minyades seek to harm her still? That they could, even if they tried?” Shayfer asked. “Or is there someone else you fear?”
Kaplyn’s jaw flexed again as he bit back his anger. “I cannot say.”
“Can’t,” I asked softly, “or won’t? Because there is a distinct difference between the two.”
He inhaled hard as he closed his eyes. “ Can’t . To speak his name aloud would only draw his attention.”
“Someone hunts her?” Hemming’s words weren’t really a question, though he asked it anyway.
Kaplyn’s silence was confirmation enough. “That is why you cannot go to Anemosia, Ariel. This is the only place that is safe for you now.”
His words gave me pause, as did the pain in his eyes as he spoke them.
“I could barely leave your lands before, and even then only if you were with me. Now you’re essentially saying that if I try to go to Anemosia, you’ll make it so I can’t leave at all,” I said, that painful reality burrowing its way into my chest. “So I’m a prisoner either way.”
“Which will conveniently ensnare your son along with her, since Hemming goes where Ariel does,” Shayfer added. “How very fortunate for you, my lord .”
“ How dare you ? That is not my intention at all!”
“That doesn’t make the outcome any different, though, does it?” My words drew Kaplyn’s attention back to me, the pain in his eyes wild and raw. “I love you like family, Kaplyn. I love that you want to protect this promise you made to my mother—that she meant that much to you. But keeping the promise you made to her will cause you to lose me forever, even if I’m forced to stay. I need to know who and what I am. I will not sit around idly, fearing some faceless enemy you don’t dare name or the people I come from. That is not who I am. Not who my father—or mother —raised me to be.”
Dark clouds rolled in overhead, and a clap of thunder punctuated my words. “Please, Ariel,” he barely whispered as he closed the distance between us and took my hands in his. “I know that there is much you wish to know, but you must trust me that it is best if you don’t—for your safety as well as those you love. Your mother was my dearest friend. I loved her like a sister, and I failed her in a way I will never forgive myself for. I cannot fail you too.” His sad gaze drifted to Hemming, and his grip on me tightened. “I have so many regrets in my life. Do not let this moment be another.”
“It will be if you do not let us leave,” his son replied, but this time there was no malice in his tone. “You’ll have won the battle but lost the war.”
A sharp blast of wind blew Kaplyn’s hair back, the icy chill causing his eyes to water as he stared back at me. “Ariel,” he said, a note of desperation in his tone, “I beg you; do not force my hand. I do not wish to harm you?—”
“You won’t,” Hemming said, his voice as cold as ice and sharp as a blade. “You won’t.”
Kaplyn’s stormy expression returned, and he clasped his hands as he slowly made his way toward his son. Hemming’s palm flexed as though it burned for the hilt of his blade—as though he could summon it with a lifetime of anger.
“I can appreciate your hostility, Hemming—why you resent me—but one way or another, we need to resolve this issue, because it’s clouding your judgment,” he countered, a faint note of sadness in his tone. “Especially in this matter.”
“You know nothing of my judgment,” Hemming all but growled in response, “and the only resolution I have ever wanted with my father was for him to meet the point of my sword.”
“I understand why you feel that way?—"
“You understand nothing !” he shouted, cutting off his father. Somehow, he managed to look intimidating while dangling in the air. “You think you understand what my life has been like? What they do to bastard Nychterides with Neraida blood in Daglaar?” Kaplyn said nothing. “Were it not for Kade, I would have been killed in the camps before I was old enough to wield a sword. But he saw something in me, something worth protecting until I was old enough to protect myself.” Cold realization settled upon Hemming’s face as he spoke those words—as their implications weighed down upon him. “Did he know I was your son? Is that why?—”
“He couldn’t have,” Kaplyn replied, stepping closer. The midnight bindings wrapped tightly around us slipped for a moment, as though Hemming’s words had pulled him from his anger enough to force his magic to wane. “Even I didn’t know you existed. There was no way for him to have known…”
As Kaplyn’s confidence began to falter, Hemming’s resolve strengthened, and he scoffed. “Or maybe you underestimated him and are now left to face the consequences.” Morbid laughter erupted from him as Kaplyn’s expression went utterly slack. The possibility, if not truth, in Hemming’s words left him mute and dumbstruck. “Just as you’ve underestimated Ariel.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he argued as the fight slowly left his eyes—the blinding white fading to the crystal green hue I’d always known. “If I’d known about you, Hemming, I’d have done anything to protect you?—”
“Or maybe you did what all fae lords do with their unwanted offspring,” Shayfer said, an edge of ice in his tone I’d never heard before. “Use them as leverage to benefit their own interests.” The rage in Kaplyn’s eyes was immediate, but it did nothing to deter Shayfer’s outburst. “Tell me something, how long ago did you and the general of the Nychterides’ army become allies?” Shayfer’s eyes drifted to Hemming. “Eighteen years? Maybe twenty—” The inky tendril holding Shayfer hostage snaked up around his neck and cut off his words—as well as his air—while Kaplyn raced toward him, shrouded in his dark magic.
But he didn’t make it far.
A deafening cry ripped from Hemming’s chest as his body morphed into the beast once again. The midnight bindings that had imprisoned the man exploded into a cloud of fading grey. Kaplyn’s attention snapped to his son, who stomped the ground once before charging.
“Do not do this,” he boomed as he called back the magic encircling Shayfer and me. We collapsed to the ground as a wall of black grew behind Kaplyn, waiting to be released.
Shayfer raced over and grabbed my hand. In a blink we were beside Hemming’s beast.
“You can solve your daddy issues later,” Shayfer muttered before he slammed his hand down on Hemming’s leathery hide, “but we really must leave now.”
My gaze darted to Kaplyn’s enraged expression before we disappeared into the night.
With any luck, not forever.