Chapter 38
ARIEL
C onsciousness stirred as heavy footfalls echoed in the distance, and I pressed up off the stone floor, preparing to face whoever was coming. Given their quickening pace, I feared it was Vesstan, eager to return. I scrambled to fasten the bodice hanging around my waist before he arrived, as though that strip of leather could protect me from him in any way. Just as I managed to tie it off, a narrow slat near the bottom of the door slid open, allowing firelight to penetrate my cell—and highlight the figure staring in.
“ Ariel ,” my father said with a heavy exhale, “you’re alive.”
“Baba!” I cried as I rushed over. “Can you get me out of here? I have to find the others?—”
“I can’t, Ariel. I don’t have the key, and these doors are magically warded. It’s going to take some time for me to get them open.”
“What about my friends?” I asked, panic gripping me tightly. “Have you seen them? Do you know where they are?”
His hesitation did nothing to inspire confidence. “I don’t know for certain, because my sole focus has been finding you, but I have my suspicions.”
“You were supposed to be with them?—”
“That was the plan, but something went terribly wrong.” Sadness creased the corners of his eyes. “For both parties, apparently.”
“I know.”
“Are you all right, Ariel?”
One look at my battered face from the other side of the cell door should have been answer enough, but I indulged him all the same. “I’m fine, Baba. Just tell me what you know about my friends.”
He leaned in closer to the slit in the door. “I snuck into the ball and spoke with Hemming. Based on what I could see, I knew it wouldn’t be long, so I made my way to Vesstan’s room and waited; that’s where he usually takes his new conquests. Time passed with no sign of anyone, but I stood vigil until it became clear that something had changed his routine. As I searched for where he might have taken you, I heard noises from the hall that leads to these storage rooms, and I rushed there just in time to see Vesstan’s guards taking your friends away.”
Fear lurched through my body. “Where are they, Baba? Where were they taken?” When he didn’t respond immediately, I pressed my face to the narrow slat and stared at him. “What aren’t you telling me?”
His brows pinched together as he stared at me. “They were dragging them off toward the prison cells,” My father grew silent once again, and I wanted to reach through that tiny opening and shake the truth from him. “From what I could see, the Minyade appeared relatively unharmed. Hemming must have been unconscious, because it took four of Vesstan’s men to carry him.”
More silence.
“And Shayfer?” I asked, my heart in my throat. “What about Shayfer?”
My father’s expression tightened even more. “I’m sorry, Ariel. It appears that he’s gone.”
“Gone? What do you mean ‘gone’? He escaped?” Shayfer would never have abandoned us unless he planned to come back for us later. Hope rose within me at the thought. “If he escaped, that means he’s got a plan to rescue us! You just have to find him and tell him where I am, and then?—”
“ Ariel ,” my father said softly, but even in that gentle tone, the weight of my name cut me short. “He did not escape. I watched his lifeless body being dragged down the hall behind the others. There was so much blood that it stained the floor red in his wake.”
I stared at him in disbelief, his words too unbearable to be allowed to take hold.
Shayfer wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be.
“I’m so sorry, Ariel. By the time I found them, there was nothing I could do.”
“Shayfer’s dead?” I whispered into the darkness of my cell.
He reached through the slat in the door and cupped my cheek, stroking the blooming bruises. “I should never have allowed this to happen. I should have made you leave here that first night and never return. Perhaps if I had, he would still be alive, and you would not be trapped in here.”
Sorrow impaled me, and I let the tears slip down my cheeks into his hand. Shayfer was dead. Eldrien and Hemming were, at best, prisoners somewhere in the bowels of Vesstan’s castle. And though I was the descendant of a god, I could do nothing to stop any of it.
“I would never have gone,” I replied, leaning into his touch. “I’m a stubborn mule.”
He managed a somber smile. “Just like your mother.” As quickly as it had come, that smile fell away. “What went wrong, Ariel? With Vesstan?”
I exhaled hard and turned away. I couldn’t bear to face him. “I thought I had him where I wanted him—that I’d played into his fantasy so well. But he’d figured me out.”
“He knew you were going to try to kill him?” my father asked, confusion in his tone.
“No, not exactly.” I struggled to find a way to tell him that, because of one quick lapse in judgment—one moment of weakness—I’d unraveled the entire plan. “He realized that I was lying to him and manipulating him. He knew before we left the ball, and he led me down to whatever this place is. There were no signs until it was too late.”
“That’s why he didn’t bring you to his room,” my father mused.
“I imagine he brought me here so he could punish me in solitude. He did not expect my attack. I gutted him before I stabbed him in the heart, but he survived ,” I said in a faraway tone, the memory of his wound disappearing before my very eyes playing over in my mind. “Not even my fire could bring him down. I don’t think I would have succeeded even with help.” I dared a look through the metal door at my father. “I couldn’t kill him, Baba. I can’t kill him.”
Those cold, dark eyes narrowed. “You can kill him,” he said with determination, “and you must, if you ever want to leave this place.”
“But how? I did everything I could to take him down, and it didn’t leave so much as a scratch! I have nothing else?—”
“You do!” His booming voice echoed through the dank cell as his hand shot through the slat in the door, reaching for me. “You have the blood of your mother and the power she gave you as a result, Ariel. You have to dig deep to find it, or you will perish here on this island as Vesstan’s slave—and so will the others.” Though his words were harsh and unfeeling, they were also true, at least the latter ones. If Shayfer truly was dead, then I had not only lost my dear friend, but we’d also lost our backup plan to escape Vesstan’s grasp. At that moment, I realized just how fragile that plan had been. “You’ve already lost one friend, Ariel,” my father said in a much softer voice. “You have to find your power before you lose the others…lose me .”
His words ricocheted through my mind, assaulting me with all the things that would never happen if I failed. I’d never get to see my father return to his homeland of Daglaar. Never get to save the people of Anemosia. Never get to hug Sophitiya and tell her I was sorry for leaving again without saying goodbye. And never get to make things right with Kaplyn—tell him I was sorry for doubting him. That leaving the Midlands in search of the truth had caused nothing but trouble.
But worst of all, I’d never get to see Hemming again.
Something deep in my gut began to burn with the heat of the sun.
“No, Baba,” I said in a low, gravelly voice. “I won’t be losing anyone else.”
His eyes sparkled with hope. “I wish your mother could see you now. See the fearsome thing you’ve become. I’m glad I did. Your arrival here is the best thing that has ever happened to me.”
“I love you—and I won’t let you down again.”
A wicked smile overtook his face. “I know. But for now, I must go. I need to see if I can find the key to this room, then confirm the location of your friends. I will return as soon as I can. Until then, my sweet girl.”
Without another word, he rose and disappeared from sight, leaving me alone in the darkness. Leaning my head against the cool metal door, I closed my eyes and imagined Hemming behind me, lending me his strength as he always had when I’d needed it most.
And I would need it more than ever if I had even the smallest chance of finding this inner power I’d never known and unleashing it on a god.