Chapter 46
ARIEL
I awoke to the feel of soft blankets tucked all around me, enfolding me in warmth and security; but it was the lack of cold, hard skin against me that startled me awake. I shot up in bed with the sheet clasped to my chest to search the room for Hemming.
“He said you’d be worried,” Eldrien said with a wan smile as he looked at me from his perch on the armchair. “He sent me to explain when you woke up.”
I let out a breath and tried to calm myself. “Where did he go?”
“He was anxious about our situation, and he said he can think better outdoors. But he promised he’d return before sunrise.”
My gaze shifted to the hint of light breaking through the curtains, and any ounce of reassurance Eldrien’s words had afforded me was gone in an instant. I shot out of bed, forgetting my state of undress, then snagged the sheet before Eldrien got another eyeful. My panic seemed to induce his own, and he stood quickly as I ransacked the room, looking for my leathers.
“I need to find him.” I snagged my pants off the floor and tried to pull them on with the sheet still wrapped around me. “Of all the pig-headed things to do…walking off in this wretched place alone . He’d have killed me himself if I’d even thought about trying that?—”
“Is something amiss?” I turned to find Shayfer eyeing me from the doorway. “Other than our impending doom, of course?—”
“Hemming’s gone,” I said, cutting him off.
“He went outside to think,” Eldrien chimed in.
“Which is madness.”
“Perhaps your bedroom antics knocked the sense out of him,” he offered with a nervous smile, but the tension pinching the corners of his eyes told me he was worried too.
“Or he lied to Eldrien and went to do something stupid. Something reckless.”
“But why would he?” Shayfer countered.
His question made my chest seize. “To ensure my survival.” I looked up at Shayfer with terror in my eyes. “We have to find him. Now .” I ran over to Eldrien and grabbed him by his shoulders. “What time did he leave?”
“I’m not sure…maybe ten or fifteen minutes ago. Possibly more.”
“Tell me exactly what he said.”
“Nothing, really. Just that the cold wind helps him think and makes him feel like he’s flying.”
“Then I know where he’s gone.” I dropped the sheet and pulled my blood-stained halter over my head. Shayfer and Eldrien were right on my heels as I ran to the bedroom door and threw it open. “We used to sit on top of the mountain together and talk when we were younger—it was one of our favorite places to get away. The cliffs just beyond the gardens are the highest point on this island. That has to be where he went.”
“Surely the guards wouldn’t just let him walk out?” Shayfer said, doubt thick in his voice.
“Why not?” I countered. “Vesstan knows Hemming would never leave me, and with your magic bound and Eldrien grounded, our odds of escaping are minimal, at best. No, he’d allow us the pretense of freedom because he knows it would only torture us further.”
“And he is a sadistic bastard?—”
“Exactly. One who loves games.”
Shayfer’s grim expression had me running down the hall, ignoring the stares of Vesstan’s passing servants. We reached a set of doors that led to the garden and found them unmanned. A sense of unease washed over me, but I thrust them open anyway and stepped out into the last remnants of night. The faded midnight-blue sky was hazy with clouds, casting dark shadows over the garden as I wove my way through the topiaries and cloying flowers. As I ran up the hill to the steep edge of the island, my heart pounded against my chest.
I saw no silhouette looming there.
My legs pumped harder, driving me to the stony precipice, where I found no sign of Hemming. I stared out over the water as the cold wind howled in my ears. “Where is he?” I shouted as I turned to seek Shayfer, who was crouched down a few feet away from me, staring at the rocky ledge.
“Ariel…” His solemn tone sent death’s claws raking down my spine. “You must see this.”
“What?” I asked, terrified of the answer. “What did you find?” Shayfer rose slowly and lifted his palms for the sliver of daybreak cresting the horizon to illuminate.
Deep red liquid coated them.
Fresh blood.
“There’s a lot of it,” Eldrien added. “Too much…”
Dread washed over me, and I rushed over to see the pool of blood at their feet. The sheer amount of it was staggering. Fear gripped my heart as I bent down and dipped my fingers into the cool liquid, silently praying it could tell me all its secrets.
That was the funny thing about fear; it overwhelmed rational thought, twisting you into a being ruled solely by emotion. One unable to see a truth so obvious, it should never have been in question. “It isn’t his,” I muttered under my breath. “It can’t be.” Hope bloomed in my heart as clarity set in, but I looked up at Shayfer and Eldrien to find none in their expressions. “Hemming can’t bleed like this,” I explained. “The Nychterides’ skin shatters any weapon that tries to penetrate it?—”
“Ariel—” Shayfer called gently, but my enthusiasm was too strong to quell.
“This has to be someone else’s, like a guard that tried to apprehend him. Hemming must have gotten away. Maybe he’s hiding somewhere. We have to find him?—”
“ Ariel .” Shayfer’s uncharacteristically sharp tone broke me from my rambling. I looked up to see him staring off in the distance with a haunted look in his eyes. I turned in time to see my father land not far from us and stride over. His gait was a little too urgent for my liking.
I hurried to my feet, and Eldrien and Shayfer stepped close to flank me, as though they perceived a threat. Shayfer’s bloody hand wrapped around mine reflexively as my father stopped before us.
“I’ve been sent to retrieve you?—”
“Baba,” I cried, stepping forward, “Hemming is missing. Have you seen him?”
My father’s expression tightened, his lips pressing to a thin, grim line. “He’s gone, Ariel.”
“Gone? No, he can’t be. Hemming would never leave without us—without me .”
“He didn’t.” He slowly closed the distance between us as he reached behind his back. I watched, disbelief coursing through me, as his hand came back into view, palm wrapped around something dark and deadly-looking. A black dagger.
I recognized it in a heartbeat.
Obsidian .
And it was in that heartbeat that any hope I held for Hemming began to fade.
“I saw this in Vesstan’s room when he summoned me,” he continued with sorrow in his stare. “There’s still blood on it.”
He reached the dagger toward me and placed it in my shaking hands. “ No ,” I whispered, my voice barely audible over the roaring waves at my back.
“I’m sorry, Ariel?—”
“No, Baba! It can’t be his. This is some kind of twisted trick?—”
“I don’t think it is,” Shayfer said softly as he stepped up to my side.
I shook my head with vehement denial. “No! It’s fake…another of Vesstan’s machinations to torture me.” My hand tightened around the hilt until pain bit into my palm. “It’s all part of his game!”
My father reached over and gently pried the weapon from my grasp. With a quick flick of his wrist, he carved a thin line through his own stony flesh as though it were as delicate as ripened fruit. Blood welled in the cut before spilling down his arm, leaving a trail of evidence even I could not deny.
“It’s real, my sweet girl. I’m so sorry. Vesstan wishes to make you pay—you are right about that much. And now that he knows your weaknesses, he will use them against you until you break.”
“Then he’s already won.” I looked at the golden hue warming the distant horizon as my blood began to boil.
“Ariel,” Shayfer said, looping his arm around my shoulders, “maybe you are right to some degree. Maybe he’s not dead, just hurt. Maybe there is still hope that he got away?—”
“Then where is he?” I snapped, anger eclipsing my sadness like a silent war cry, drowning out all other emotions. “He would have come straight to me to make sure I was all right?—”
“Hemming is a warrior,” he said as he wiped his hands along the sides of his coat, “and he is highly resourceful.”
Fire roared through my veins. “Except his beast is magically trapped inside of him. And his wings?—”
I cut myself off as realization slammed into me like a battering ram.
No wings… What a perfect way to dispose of someone who couldn’t fly; what an ironic end for a former being of flight. It was violent and cruel and everything Vesstan had proven himself to be. And the perfect way to punish me.
I rushed past the others to the cliff’s edge and stared down at the rocks below, engulfed by the raging sea.
Then I dove.
Plummeting toward the violent waves below, I called forth my scales and kept my wings tucked tight until the rocks jutting unevenly from the water grew near. At the last second, I snapped my wings wide and skimmed along whatever shore the sheer rock face offered, searching for any sign of Hemming. Desperation fueled me as I weaved through shards and waves, salt water assaulting me in the shadows of the cliff. But with every beat of my wings, I grew no closer to finding him.
The fire deep within me stoked hotter still.
My scales hissed as the water slapped against my skin. Smoked curled from my mouth as I exhaled hard. And my wings blazed with flames that even the gale-force winds could not extinguish.
With a mournful battle cry, I dove deep into the unforgiving waters. My wings burned bright, bubbles boiling up around me as I swam through the craggy rocks in search of anything that might tell me what had happened to Hemming…until I found something wedged between two stones jutting up from the frothy surface.
I snatched up a soaked leather boot and clutched it in my hands. Pinkish water dripped down my arms as a mix of blood and seawater spilled over.
It was the only piece of Hemming I still had.
The tears that had been drowned out by my anger rolled off my cheeks into the sea, and I plunged into the water’s depths so it could take me, too. The fire surrounding me began to fade to a dull glow.
But my need for vengeance would not allow it.
The sea around me erupted in smoke and flames, and I shot out of the water like a rogue ember. Every beat of my fiery wings ignited it further, until I was little more than an inferno of anger and anguish ripping through the sky. I crested the cliff to find the others staring at me with wide, horrified eyes.
When I opened my mouth to scream my cry of bloodlust, all that escaped was roaring flames.
My body, fueled by my murderous desires, flew on with them burning brightly in my heart, headed straight for Vesstan’s castle.
I would burn both it and him to the ground for what he’d done—god or not.