Chapter 25
ARIEL
“ W hat did you say ?” I whispered, disbelief nearly rendering me mute.
“There is no escaping this place, Ariel. Many have tried—including me. And this is the price I paid for my attempt,” he said, pointing to the glorified shackle fastened around his throat. “Death would have been a mercy, which is precisely why Vesstan did not grant it. He does not like to kill his captives.” He stepped closer, his body tense with anger and resentment—and fear for his only child. “He would rather punish them for an eternity.”
“You mean he won’t dispose of his toys unless absolutely necessary,” Hemming said.
My father pinned a death stare on him. “Only because he has so few to play with. But make no mistake,” he warned, “he has no qualms about damaging them beyond recognition. This is why you must be so careful, Ariel. Vesstan will test you at every turn to assess your loyalty—and to see if you’re a threat. Angering a god comes at a price. Vesstan is as old as time and longs for novelty and entertainment. That is what you are, regardless of your actions. But attempting to leave him begets dire consequences.”
“But this makes no sense,” I said, pulling away to pace the room. “He already knows I wish to leave. I told him of my plans to return to Anemosia, and he said nothing.”
“Because he’s lulling you into complacency until he decides what to do with you, and determining whether he can convince you to remain with him by choice, or if he must force you.” My father’s hand seemed to drift reflexively back to his collar. His distant stare shifted to Hemming, then back to me. “And he will use any leverage he possesses.”
“What if we sneak away in the night?”
His gaze narrowed. “Vesstan has measures in place to deal with anyone who dares to try. This,” he said, tapping the choker, “does not merely bind me to this place.”
“You’re bound to kill anyone who attempts to flee,” Hemming said, no hint of a question in his tone. He’d put the pieces of the puzzle together far faster than I.
My father nodded.
“But you didn’t kill Hemming and the others when you found them,” I pointed out, desperate to not believe what he was saying.
“Only when I learned that they were looking for you and not trying to escape.”
“It’s true,” Hemming added. “He only halted his attack when we said something about you—needing to find you.”
My mind spun with these unwelcome details. “What if…what if there was a way to escape before you caught us?” I said, hesitating as I spoke.
My father’s brows furrowed. “Impossible.”
“It’s not?—”
“Ariel…” Hemming said, cautioning me with a hand on my arm.
I ignored him completely. “There is a way,” I said, weighing the option of using Shayfer’s powers, “but I won’t use it until we’ve gotten what we came for.”
“If you are convinced that you can escape without consequence,” my father said, “then you should do so now and never look back. Forget this place—forget that you found me.”
“Baba, I won’t leave without you.”
“I am bound to this place, Ariel. There is no saving me, so you must save yourself.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I will not leave without you!”
His eyes softened as he looked at me, pride and admiration in his expression. “You are so much like her…” His fingertips brushed against my cheek as though he were touching the ghost of his past. Then his hand fell to his side and his gaze sharpened to blades, just like his brother’s. “If you are to stay, then the others must leave now, while they still can. Vesstan already knows you care about them. He will use that against you if need be.”
“We go nowhere without Ariel,” Hemming said as he edged forward.
My father swore under his breath. “Then you’ve sealed your own fate.”
The hollow pit in my stomach roiled at his words. “I cannot accept this,” I said, thinking that my need to break the curse would not only damn myself, but Hemming, Shayfer, and Eldrien as well. “There has to be another way.”
“There is,” he said, hesitation plain in his voice, “but it is dangerous, with no margin for error. And though I am loath to admit this, I do not know if you are capable enough to execute such a mission.”
I tried not to look offended by his doubt. He didn’t know me; didn’t know how I’d been raised. And it was at that moment that I realized that he had to know the whole truth. I dared a glance at Hemming, who eyed me tightly, then told my father who his daughter really was.
“I was raised in the encampment in Daglaar by your brother, Kade. I’ve been bloodied and bruised at the hands of males my whole life. I am the daughter of a great Nychteride warrior, and I have earned the right to call myself one as well. So you need not worry if I can handle myself, Baba. I am my father’s daughter.”
Surprise gave way to a proud smile that cut through the worry in his expression. “This pleases me more than you could ever know, Ariel, but being your father’s daughter will not help you succeed in this. It will take your mother’s daughter to do what must be done.”
Confusion furrowed my brow. “But my mother wasn’t a warrior.”
“No, Ariel,” he replied, an endless sadness in his eyes, “she was not. And I pray that you will not meet her fate.”
Hemming tensed beside me. “She won’t.” My father’s sharp gaze cut to him, then drifted back to me, his expression softening.
“Baba, I have no intention of dying here. I will leave with you and my companions after I break the curse upon Anemosia and free my people. But I cannot do anything until I find the Oracle, and I need Vesstan to trust me for that to happen.”
“Why do you need the Oracle?” he asked, confusion pinching his brow.
“Because it might hold the answer for how to break the curse.”
“To break such a curse, you need only break the magic of the one who cast it.”
“Eldrien said that the gods did it to punish the Minyades for what happened to my mother,” I said, frustration in my tone, “which helps nothing.”
My father’s tan skin paled. “Unless it wasn’t the gods in general, but one particular god instead,” he said as he pieced together a puzzle in his mind. “One obsessed with your mother. The one who holds us prisoner here now.”
I stumbled backward, stopped only by Hemming’s steady hand on the small of my back. The sadness in his eyes as he looked down at me made me want to run away all over again. My mind sank into the depths of memories I rarely disturbed to call forth whatever images of that night I still possessed, but none held the face of her killer.
“You’re saying that Vesstan murdered my mother,” I said, voice low and choked with emotion. Not the Minyades. Not some nameless, faceless entity hunting me. Vesstan .
Everything I thought I knew about the events of that night was false.
“And he cursed the Minyades when he didn’t find her in Anemosia?”
“Yes... and you must break him to break that curse.” My father took my hand in his, his calloused thumb lightly stroking my soft skin. “It is his magic that fuels both the collars binding us to this place and the curse on Anemosia. Break that magic, and everything else will crumble along with it.”
“Tell me how,” I said, anger boiling through my bloodstream.
He hesitated for only a moment. “Kill Vesstan.”
Hemming’s fingertips dug into the small of my back. “But you said only a god could kill a god.”
“I did.”
A guttural warning rumbled through his chest. “So you lied.”
My father shook his head. “No. I told Ariel that she would need to be her mother’s daughter if this plan is to work, and I meant it.” He squeezed my hand, begging me to see the implication of his words, but I was too shocked to acknowledge it, so he made the truth plain. “Your mother was a child of the gods…and you are hers.”
Though I understood his statement, I could not accept it. It was beyond unfathomable that my mother had somehow been a god.
Because that would mean that I was one too.