Chapter 4
Chapter
Four
NAKOA
M y sleep had been fitful and when I finally woke, it was to a sharp pain in my chest. In mine and Mareina’s tether. Something had changed, and intuitively, even without my Knowingness, I knew what it was. Anger seared my veins. For her increasing number of betrayals. At him because he had dared to claim what rightfully belonged to me. The other half of my soul.
Most of all, I was furious at myself because I knew that no matter how I tried to ignore the fact, I knew that she had bonded with another male because of how I’d treated her. Miroslav’s words echoed in my mind.
“If you do not cherish the soulbound Akash has gifted you with, you shouldn’t be surprised when she is stolen from you.”
Before jealousy and despair could consume me, I forced myself from the bed, slipping on trousers and a shirt. The halls of the palace’s mostly abandoned north wing were blessedly empty as I made my way to my mother’s dungeon cell.
A vision overtook me, making me stumble and the world tilted.
Peanut and Bellona ran past me, barking happily and tails wagging as they rushed into the open arms of a kneeling, smiling Mareina.
The sight stole my breath like a fist, crushing my lungs.
I could feel both the joy and love of my future and the anguish of my present self, poisoning it.
Mareina’s eyes lifted to mine, her expression stuttering for a moment. Her mouth formed words that disappeared like smoke in the wind ? —
The vision disappeared, and I realized I’d stopped in the middle of the hallway. Thalia’s head tilted as she studied me with keen interest. “Does that happen often?”
I gave a noncommittal grunt and resumed our journey down the hallway.
“You’re having visions, no?”
At my silence, she continued, unperturbed by my rudeness. “I used to know someone who had them.”
My eyes finally slid to hers for a moment. Her expression took on a sudden hardness as though pained by a memory. “And?”
Her frown deepens. “And they’re dead.”
“… That is not what I meant.”
Her eyes flicked to mine, annoyed. “You really don’t make it easy for someone to like you, ya know. I thought we were trying to be allies.”
A tiny pang of guilt knotted in my chest. “I suppose I’m not very good at… this.”
Thalia gave me a scrutinizing smirk before clapping me on the back with the strength of an ogre. “Nor am I… Now, let’s get you to your mother, petulant prince.”
My eyes narrowed, even if a corner of my mouth quirked. “I am not petulant.”
She huffed a laugh. “Prickly? Ah, yes. That suits. Little …” Thalia’s eyes gave me a cursory side-eye “… The behemoth prickly prince…”
I hummed in consideration. “Hmmm… doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.”
Thalia rolled her eyes, grinning. “Shall I add petty? Persnickety? Punctilious?”
I snorted. “You just taught me a new word.”
Thalia chuckled, shaking her head as we arrived in the dungeons. At my hesitation, Thalia arched a brow. “So what happened with your friend if you don’t mind me asking?”
Sadness flickered on her face. “She said that the outcomes sometimes changed. Nothing was guaranteed. It all depended on our decisions and choices. Something about lessons and repeating them endlessly until we actually learn them.”
Anxiety tightened in my chest. I could only pray that somehow, someway, Mareina and I would swiftly learn whatever lessons needed so that we could have love between us one day, as it had appeared in my vision.
Thalia turned away, continuing down the dungeon’s steps. “Come on… This place gives me the creeps.”
Admittedly, the female was charming, but even without Miroslav’s warning of Thalia, which had been gradually working its way deeper into my mind, she had been keenly obliging when it came to opening my mother’s dungeon door, and it had only made me that much more distrusting of her.
How the fuck did she know how to open these doors hidden and sealed by magic?
As if reading my mind, she wiggled her dainty fingers at me to display a plain, unsuspecting ring. “It’s a family heirloom; cuts through wards.” She pressed a hand against the wall glamoring Zurie’s cell door, and that strange ephemeral barrier appeared with glowing runes. Thalia pushed the door open a crack before winking at me and turning on her heel to leave.
“What happened with the harem?”
Thalia hesitated for a moment, shifting to look back at me. “They were eager to please and even more eager to be free. Most of them anyway. A few of them requested to stay, but they still vowed their silence.”
“Stay for what? Loyalty to Zurie?”
Thalia shook her head. “I don’t think so, no. I think they were just afraid to go back to wherever they came from.”
“Even after you offered to give them the coin they needed to start over?”
Thalia’s brows pinched, frowning. “Money can’t always solve the problem.”
I grunted, neither in agreement nor descent. “Maybe. But that sounds an awful lot like something only someone who’s never known poverty would say, princess.”
Something dark flashed behind Thalia’s eyes. In the next moment, it disappeared, swiftly replaced with a condescending smile that had me seeing her with new eyes. I tugged at my Knowingness, but it remained silent.
“Well then, by all means, oh great and mighty King, why don’t you try and see if all the money you’ve just stolen will heal them from a lifetime of?—
“Shut you’re fucking mouths. Grating on my last fucking nerve, and I have a godsdamned migraine,” Zurie called out from inside the dungeon. Her voice was unusually raspy, as though raw from screaming and crying.
I pushed open the door fully to find she’d remained just where I’d left her, sprawled out on the dungeon floor. Only now…
Mother of fuck, is she dying?
Zurie managed to roll red eyes that she strained to recover from the back of her head. Her voice was little more than a croak. “Aetra.”
Realization washed over me. Of course, she would experience withdrawals after half a fucking lifetime on the stuff.
Thalia stepped forward to gain a closer look, something like actual concern twisting her features. “Oh, Zurie…”
Zurie’s face hardened into a spiteful glare. “Why would you even bother in pretending to care?”
Thalia frowned, holding Zurie’s gaze for too long to be meaningless before silently turning and striding away.
I gave Zurie a pitying shake of my head. Her eyes squeezed shut as if swallowing back pain before she managed to speak again. “You’ve come to make your vow?”
I couldn’t help but huff a sardonic laugh. “I’ve come for you to introduce me to my father.”
“As soon as you vow what we’ve agreed upon, plus a supply of aetra.”
“Truly, your delusion knows no bounds.”
Her doll-like features slackened with numbness. “I prefer the term optimism, Your Majesty.”
Her retort nearly made me laugh. “Get up.”
She pursed her lips, haughty despite being covered in blood and filth and dying . “And why exactly would I do this without your vow?”
“Because, for some reason, you chose to give me away the moment you gave birth to me.”
Her expression faltered at my words. “Only if you give me aetra. You don’t have to give me anything else. Just the aetra.”
Fucking hells. This female was willing to sacrifice everything just for aetra. I squatted down beside her, studying her features… Our similarities. Something like compassion twisted in my chest as I took in her desperate state, softening my words, infusing a calm in my voice that I didn’t feel. Based on tone alone, one would think I was murmuring platitudes and reassurances to her.
“I am going to raze and burn the fields of aetra on every Kahlohani Island. I’m going to ban it across Atratus. You will never touch aetra again.”
Silence stretched between us as she held my gaze and took in the truth of my words. Resignation settled on her expression.
“I don’t want to be here anymore.”
“… The dungeon?”
“Here as in… Alive. In this realm.”
“So because you can’t have aetra anymore, you’d rather die and go to a hell realm?”
She gave a bitter laugh. “Darling, this is hell.”
I glanced around the dungeon. As far as dungeons went, it wasn’t all that bad. I’d experienced far worse. For one, there weren’t even any rats. I fucking hated rats, thanks to the handful of prisons I’d spent time in.
And she hadn’t even been tortured yet.
“If you think withdrawals from aetra and a little solitude in a dungeon are the worst form of suffering imaginable, then you’ve led a very privileged life.”
Zurie rolled over, giving me her back. “Oh, I’m well aware. If you think this is my first time in this dungeon, you’d also be wrong.”
My Knowingness whispered the very words I’d spoken to Mareina only a week ago. Truly, monsters are made, not born.
I couldn’t help but wonder what this world had done to this twisted creature that had made her so grotesquely inhumane.
However, at this particular moment, I didn’t have the time or patience to ponder it.
I permitted a minuscule tendril of my magic to slip through the barriers of flesh and bone, seizing her lungs and drawing the air from them. A prickle of guilt wound through me as I watched her ribs spasm, trying and failing to breathe. After a few moments, she rolled over, clawing at her chest and throat. Her brow hardened with anger and anguish as she held my gaze.
“If you think I’ll let you die this easily, you’re gravely mistaken. I will spend every fucking moment here beside you in this hell, torturing you until you bring me to my father. The fact that this is hell to you shows me just how fucking privileged and sheltered you are.”
Her struggle slowed, eyes rolling in the back of her head.
Ohhhh, no, you don’t.
Zurie gasped for air, coughing and wheezing to catch her breath.
“How are we feeling now? Agreeable?”
Zurie glared up at me, but I’d inflicted enough torture over the years to recognize my enemies’ bitter submission.
“I want out of this dungeon. I want my room back. And I want your word that no harm will come to me.”
I tilted my head, holding her sharp, crystalline gaze.
“I owe you nothing, Zurie. Either you do as you’re told, or you will discover methods of torture that will have you begging for Mors to rescue you.”
I turned, striding back towards the door. The sound of rustling behind me the evidence of her persuasion. Rather than travelling down the hallway that led out of the dungeon, she led us deeper into it, towards a circular room with an arched doorway. A shaft of sunlight poured into the center of the room where a dais lay. Runes lay carved into the floor, and the closer we drew, the more powerful the hum of magic became. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.
“You remind me so much of him,” Zurie murmured with surprising softness.
My heart began to thump a nervous beat. I’d dreamed my entire life of meeting my father. And to think, he’d been in Zurie’s dungeon this entire time.
She climbed to the center of the dais and tore a chunk of flesh from her wrist with her fangs. Blood spilled, and she began to murmur words in an unfamiliar language. The runes crisscrossing the circular stone platform upon which she stood glowed with an otherworldly light.
But how? She was wearing a fucking palladium collar.
In that same moment, her eyes, alight with satisfaction, lifted to mine. “There is no power in this world that can stifle the magic of words or the magic in your blood.”
The ground beneath our feet began to tremble and Zurie’s gaze snapped back to mine as she shouted to be heard, her eyes bright with dark excitement.“He might kill me, you know.”
When my eyes lifted from the runes to hers, her grin grew broader. “Only you have the strength to stop him from killing me if I’m wearing this palladium collar.”
She seemed entirely content in laying her fate in the threadbare net of my compassion.
“What if I could bring Mareina back to you?”
Her fangs somehow glinted in the shadow as her smile grew impossibly wide. Fucking manipulative wench.
“Is it possible that you’ve been so surrounded by asshole-sucking sycophants that you’ve lost your talent for manipulation?”
Zurie cackled as the ground beneath our feet splintered before it stilled, and we held our breath for several moments.
“And I’m certain the only person who hates you more than I do, is her. You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t have faith in your capabilities to perform such a feat.”
From the grin on Zurie’s face you’d have thought I’d said something charming. “Of her own accord, my darling. What if I could get her to come back to you? To give you a real chance… And eliminate the competition.”
Disgust and something darker suffused me. “The one thing I place above my own well-being is hers. And as much as I resent him, if there’s anyone else who will protect her in this world, it’s him. I will not take that from her, even if it’s at my own expense.”
Zurie’s expression was lined with disappointment. “You really are your father’s son.”