Chapter 10
ARIEL
M emories of Tycho stabbing me through the vulnerable spot under my arm flashed in my mind at the sight of the dagger. My scales fell into place without a thought, and I wrenched my raised arm from Eldrien’s grasp as I retreated out of his reach.
He looked at me with confusion and horror in his eyes just as a deafening roar split the air, and I turned in time to see Hemming charge the Minyade leader. He dropped his shoulder and slammed it into Eldrien’s gut, driving him backward through the crowd and well beyond.
“We need to get you out of here,” Shayfer whispered in my ear as he took me by the elbow.
The glint of the fallen dagger caught my eye, and I pulled away from him to bend down and grab it. Something niggled in the back of my mind as I stood in the middle of the chaos and stared at it.
“He wasn’t trying to hurt me,” I said aloud as I worked through the puzzling situation.
“Ariel—”
“He wasn’t trying to hurt me,” I repeated, louder this time, realization fully setting in. “Hemming, stop! You have to stop!” I ran to his side and caught his drawn-back arm before he could slam it down upon Eldrien again. A low, warning growl echoed around us as he looked over his shoulder at me—and the blade. “I understand what I need to do.” I forced my scales to recede and placed the blade to my palm. With a snap of my arm, I carved a line across the tender flesh and let the blood pool. “ Blood daughter …that’s what Aima Kori means.” I looked past Hemming to where Eldrien lay beneath him, face bleeding a little despite the protection of his iridescent blue scales. “Anemosia needs my blood to break the curse.”
As all that was left of a once-thriving nation watched, I crouched down to the stones at my feet and dripped that blood upon them before pressing my palm down too.
“Release them from this burden,” I whispered. “Let my return and my blood break this curse.”
Silence fell upon the crowd as they all watched with bated breath to see if their beloved Aima Kori had indeed delivered them from death and despair.
That silence dragged on for seconds, then minutes, until Eldrien crawled over to where I still crouched above the pool of blood and placed his hand on mine. “I swear to you, Ariel, that was all I planned to do.” Hemming moved to pull him away, but I halted him with a raised hand. “I would never do anything to harm you.” The pleading in his eyes, combined with the confusion I’d seen in them earlier, made me believe his sentiment was sincere.
Hemming, however, seemed less than convinced, given how he hovered above us, glaring at Eldrien as though one wrong inhale would seal his fate. “Perhaps you shouldn’t brandish a blade in proximity to her, then,” he snarled at the Minyade leader. His eyes fell to where Eldrien’s hand rested atop mine. “Or touch her without permission.”
Eldrien quickly pulled his hand away and stood to face Hemming. “I would never be so brutish,” he snapped, disgust rimming his tone. “Nothing is more important to me than she is?—”
“Because you need her?—”
“Because she is my betrothed!” he shouted in response. Hemming’s face went slack, and I choked on those words as if I’d been the one to speak them. Eldrien’s eyes softened as he turned them to me. “Our parents declared this long before we were even born,” he explained. “It had always been their desire for their children to unite in marriage. I did not wish to tell you this way, but I need you to understand that I would never, ever do anything to harm you, Ariel. Please forgive me for withholding this information. I’d hoped to share it at a much better time—in private.”
I gaped at him for a moment as I struggled to formulate a response to something so shocking—and ridiculous. Telling him I didn’t care what either of our parents had planned for us seemed less relevant at that moment than defusing the situation before Hemming recovered from the disbelief clearly paralyzing him and lost any shred of composure he’d managed to achieve.
“I understand your predicament, Eldrien,” I finally said, “and I believe you didn’t intend to harm me.”
Hemming’s body coiled, and Shayfer seamlessly slipped between him and Eldrien, ushering the latter a few paces away. “That was quite a revelation indeed, but perhaps we should table that discussion for now and focus our attention on the curse,” he said as he looked out over the crowd and beyond. “I don’t wish to be negative, but I see no signs of change.”
“Surely things won’t just improve in an instant,” Eldrien argued. “Anemosia did not wither away overnight.”
“No,” Shayfer said in a sympathetic tone, “but magic of this magnitude has a way of righting things more quickly than not.”
“What are you saying?”
Shayfer let out a heavy exhale. “I’m saying that I’m not sure this sacrifice has accomplished much.”
“Ariel?” Doret called as he squeezed past a sea of legs in his way. “Did you fix it?”
“Will everything be better now?” Filsen added as the two emerged from the crowd to stand before me with hopeful looks.
Then Alred stepped free of the crowd and pinned a dispirited stare befitting someone far older and more jaded on me. “You didn’t fix anything, did you?”
Desperation clawed its way up my throat, choking off whatever useless response I could offer, because, in the end, he was right. It didn’t look like my presence or my blood had fixed anything for him or his brothers.
Anemosia was just as doomed as it had been when we’d arrived.
“Your Aima Kori will not rest until this situation is resolved,” Shayfer said with a tiny bow to the boy.
Fire burned in Alred’s narrowed eyes. “Or she’ll disappear and leave us to our fates.”
Before Shayfer or anyone else could counter his harsh but warranted retort, he folded his brothers under his arms and pushed his way back through the crowd toward the fire. Doret and Filsen looked over their shoulders with sadness in their eyes, and I felt a little piece of my heart die at the sight. Any shred of hope my arrival had created had been ripped away from them that night.
And as Alred’s words settled upon the rest of the Minyades, one by one, they, too, walked away.
The frustration of my failure burned deep in my belly.
“This is not your fault,” Hemming said, as though reading my mind.
“Strange,” I said as I turned that frustration on him, “because that’s exactly how it feels.”
“All may not be lost just yet,” Lyselle called as she approached us. “Perhaps this was never the solution to the curse?—”
“Then what is?” Eldrien snapped. “This has always been the plan.”
She stopped short of him and pinned him in place with the motherly stare Delphyne had given me more times than I could count; and just like me, Eldrien withered a little under the weight of it. “And when one plan does not work, you form another,” she replied. “Perhaps the Oracle could help.”
“Oracle? What oracle?”
She looked at him like he’d taken leave of his senses. “The one the wanderer mentioned to your father. I distinctly remember hearing him tell his men about it. The stranger said it knows all that is, all that was, and all that will ever be. Surely something in possession of that kind of knowledge would know what needs to be done.”
Eldrien, though clearly intrigued by this possibility, looked doubtful. “I’m sure it would…if we had a way to find it.”
The blessing stone in my pocket flared to life, and I instinctively reached inside to wrap my hand around it as Shayfer and Hemming looked on with cautious stares. “And if we did have a way to find it?”
Hope flashed in Eldrien’s blue eyes. “Then we would leave at first light.”
“For now,” Shayfer said, gesturing to where the children sat by the fire, “perhaps it would be best to return to our seats and allow our minds and bodies to settle after that rather… lively interruption.”
“Perhaps you are right.”
Eldrien led the way over with Shayfer right behind him. I moved to follow, but Lyselle gently caught my elbow. “Might I have a word, Ariel?”
“Of course.” Hemming made no attempt to leave until I waved him off. “I’ll be right here.” He lingered for a moment, then begrudgingly left.
Lyselle tracked his every step as though she were the predator of the two. “You have intriguing allies. I’ve been watching them this evening. That one,” she said, gesturing to Shayfer, “is a crafty sort, to be certain. I saw many of his kind come and go from Master Ruven’s home. Dignitaries. Diplomats. Spies . They are all alike, with one common trait.”
She looked at me, silently begging me to ask the obvious, and I took the bait. “What’s that?”
“They’re slipperier than a serpent in the rain.”
I stifled a laugh. “I fear you might be right about that.”
“But he is not the one that troubles me.” Her wizened eyes narrowed as she leaned in closer. “There’s a darkness in the large one, simmering just beneath his hardened exterior, and it begs to be unleashed. You should not be near him when that happens.”
I inched backward and leveled my gaze on her. “I understand the darkness of which you speak—have seen it several times— and it does not frighten me. There are few things in life I would bet mine on, and one is that Hemming would never harm me.”
“I wish I shared your confidence, but I fear you have not seen the true potential of that darkness—only its shadows.” The elderly woman took my hand in hers and patted it lovingly before releasing it and turning to walk away; but not without one final warning. “Take care, Aima Kori . Your quest to restore this nation will demand it.”
She made her way to the retreating crowd and disappeared into their ranks with ease, leaving me to mull over her haunting words. The last thing I needed was an ominous and vague warning before we embarked on a mission to find the Oracle. And even though I knew I had nothing to fear from Hemming or Shayfer, her insights hung over me like a bad omen.
A darkness all its own.
HEMMING
T here was a strange look in Ariel’s eyes when she rejoined us, and I couldn’t help but wonder whether it was something Lyselle had said to her, Eldrien’s betrothal announcement, or her guilt weighing her down. Even when Doret climbed up into her lap, she struggled to smile. And she deftly avoided my gaze.
“It'll all be all right,” he said as he settled in. “You can fix this, Ariel.”
The way her shoulders tensed at his forgiveness felt like a kick to the gut. Seeing her like that with no way to comfort her was a torture of the cruelest kind.
“It’s very late,” she said, forcing a smile. “I think we should get you home to sleep.” She lifted Doret out of her lap to stand, and his reaction was immediate. Fear filled the youngling’s eyes as he clung to her leg, frantically trying to climb it to get closer to her. She scooped him back up and hugged him tightly. “There, there, now,” she cooed in his ear. “There’s no need to fret.”
“He has nightmares,” Alred said, embarrassment tainting his hardened expression. “We all do.”
Tears welled in Ariel’s eyes, and she worked hard to blink them away. “Well,” she said, clearing her throat, “I can let you in on a little secret if you’d like.” She knelt down in front of them, the youngest still clinging to her for dear life. “My parents died when I was very young, just like you, and sometimes I still have nightmares about it. But do you know what helps me?” They shook their heads. “Knowing I’m not alone.” I’m not sure she even realized that her gaze drifted to me when she spoke those words, but she quickly recovered and looked back at the sad faces in front of her. “And you boys are not alone, I promise you. Now, let’s get you off to bed.”
Begrudgingly, the eldest turned and led the way through the stony corridor filled with doors until he reached the one they’d popped their heads through earlier. He pushed it open, and Ariel ducked her head to go inside. I moved to follow her in, but once I looked through the door, I knew that wouldn’t be possible.
There was barely enough room for the four of them as it was.
A bed scarcely large enough for me lined the wall to the right, with a fireplace on the left. In the center was a tiny table with only two chairs. I’d seen larger closets in Kaplyn’s manor.
I could tell by the look on Ariel’s face that she was thinking much the same.
“Well then, shall we get you all tucked in?” Alred and Filsen scrambled into their places, and once Ariel was able to dislodge Doret, he crawled in between them and rested his head on Alred’s shoulder. She pulled the tattered blanket up under their chins and said, “I wish you all the sweetest of dreams tonight.” Then she stood to leave.
“Will things be better tomorrow?” Filsen asked in a sleepy voice.
Her body stilled in an instant, her eyes beseeching mine as they had when she’d been a child desperate for my help. “I don’t know. But if they aren’t, know that I will not rest until they are.”
She quickly squeezed past me, and I closed the door behind her. Without even a look back, she took to the sky and flew toward the coast. The beast roared inside as I took off after her, but no matter how hard I drove my legs and arms, there would be no keeping pace. Her fading silhouette quickly disappeared into the dark horizon.
Seconds later, her muffled screams filled the air.