Chapter 19 #3
I became a master of lurking in those few dark hours of last night.
Choosing the most secluded places so as not to spook my subjects and not ruin too much of their habitat, I wandered around Lyrei like a restless specter.
I simply couldn’t bring myself to return to the palace where I knew everything would be different and infinitely worse without Maren.
Sleep used to be my reprieve from reality, but she made my reality better than any dream could ever be.
With a quiet sigh, she lay down in bed, pulling the cover over her.
“I’m sorry you had to ruin your mother’s pearls,” she said quietly, clearly plagued by the nightmares of last night too.
“Just like I’ve ruined every other thing I’ve touched, both literally and figuratively.” I smirked bitterly. “In this case, however, I don’t regret it, darling. I’d do it again if it helped me pull you out of their clutches. I’m so glad it worked.”
Leaning my head back against the wall, I drew in a long breath and said a prayer of gratitude to whatever deity would listen for having Maren alive, safe, and at my side again despite everything that had happened.
She rose on her elbow. “I meant it, Kye, when I said that all those monsters weren’t after me.
I was just bait to lure you into the water where they could attack you.
You proved difficult for them to catch outright, so Jahanam plotted to get you in the water where his power is stronger.
Have you noticed what they were doing towards the end?
They attacked in groups. One would sacrifice itself by grabbing you first. Its tentacles then would create a glass barrier, restraining you.
Then the other one would hold on to the glass to drag you in without touching you. ”
I did notice that. I was just surprised that in the mad dash for her life, she had managed to spot that pattern too.
“It was all deliberate. Planned,” she insisted. “Arnon and Dorelea are in it too.”
I gathered that much, but I needed to hear the rest. Listening to all the cruel, gory details proved agonizingly painful as Maren recounted what she’d gone through in my uncle’s palace, the place where I had sent her to keep her safe.
That was my biggest regret: allowing anyone to convince me that Maren would be better off away from me rather than with me, where she belonged.
“You know, at first I thought I got away somehow,” Maren said.
“But they intentionally let me go. Dorelea had said to me earlier that evening, ‘You’ll see him again even sooner than you think.’ And at the time, I thought she was just comforting me because I missed you.
But that was their plan all along. After Jahanam put his pearls on me, they allowed me to escape.
They knew I’d run straight to you, which is exactly what I did.
” She released a shaky breath of regret, running a hand down her face. “I was so stupid.”
“There was nothing you could’ve done differently, Maren. Running to me was and always will be the best thing you can do,” I assured her.
“They want you gone. I don’t know how, but I think they want your throne,” she said, biting her lip in concentration.
She was probably right. There simply wasn’t that much else to take from me at this point.
“It’s not easy to end a siren ruling dynasty,” I said and added with a humorless laugh, “though I’m well on my way to doing just that without much effort at all.
Sooner or later, I’ll die without leaving an heir of my blood.
A war for succession will be imminent then.
It looks like Arnon didn’t want to wait however long it’ll take me to finally perish or to fight the war for the now proverbial Crown of Olathana.
He decided to speed things up a little.”
“Were they planning to find a way to kill you, you think?” Maren asked quietly.
It occurred to me that if they succeeded at that, Maren would be the only one who’d mourn my death.
“Very likely, my darling,” I replied. “For a bloodline to end, there has to be no blood of the ruling line left. Even if that means draining my body of blood completely and turning me into a walking, talking corpse.”
“Like those hideous mermaids?” She shuddered.
“Just like them, yes. Though I wholeheartedly believe that I’d make a considerably better looking corpse than them. A more charming one too.”
She exhaled a laugh, shaking her head, and I silently congratulated myself on making her laugh again despite the horrific night she’d had.
“I’m not familiar with Olathana’s equivalent of Code of Laws, but even if Arnon didn’t succeed at killing you, didn’t he still commit a crime? Attempted murder? Treason? Assault, at the very least?” Maren’s voice turned cold and unforgiving. Sharp like the blade of a weapon.
My fierce, vengeful butterfly was after some blood too. I wouldn’t want to be in Arnon’s shoes if she happened to be armed the next time they met. He wouldn’t find a nice and trusting Maren anymore. Not that I would ever allow him to come anywhere near her ever again.
“By the law of our land, treason is a greater crime than murder. But I can see how Arnon came to feel entitled to my throne.” It pained me to make any excuses for Arnon after what he’d done to Maren, but his crimes against me at least had some reason and foundation.
“He’s been ruling Olathana for decades, with no crown, no added magic, and no honor or reverence that comes with the royal title.
He’s been tasked with all the responsibilities of a monarch with hardly any privileges in return.
He always said it was an honor to serve the kingdom, making me believe that was all the reward he needed.
I failed to recognize how he might want more. ”
“It’s Dorelea too,” Maren added. “She talked about you with so much disdain.”
“Rightfully so,” I sighed.
It was hard to condemn these people for their desire to harm me when I had caused grave harm to their family.
At some point in the recent past, Arnon could’ve possibly convinced me to step down on my own had he talked to me openly and in earnest. As rotten a man as I’d turned out, despite my mother’s best efforts to raise me right, even I could see that having a cursed, childless king confined to a glass palace was not in the best interests of the kingdom.
A king like Arnon, with a living, breathing heir, would be an improvement. What did I have to lose by giving up the title and even the rest of my life along with it? A few more centuries of uselessly staring out at the horizon and slowly losing my mind to solitude?
Not anymore, however. Now, I had a great reason to stay alive, at least for as long as Maren lived. I was her only protector in this world, and she had given me not only the reason for living but also the motivation to rule better than I’d ever done before.
“Tell me Kye, what have you done to make them hate you so much?” Maren asked.
I flexed my jaw, clenching my teeth against the memories I never wished to revisit. Yet they haunted me daily, nevertheless.
“I’ve done many bad things, darling. Some of them you already know. But... But I’m also responsible for the death of Delmar, Dorelea’s nephew and my best friend,” I croaked, forcing the words out through my tightening throat.
“Responsible how? You didn’t kill him, did you?” Her voice dipped.
I never cared about anyone’s opinion of me as much as I cared about hers. But there was no salvaging it the more she learned about my rotten past.
“My hand might not have been the one that drew the sword through his chest,” I said, “but it certainly could’ve been. Delmar was one of those who went to Sarnala on the night of the full moon.”
She paused, her forehead wrinkling in concentration.
“I...overheard some of your conversation with Arnon when he came to the palace that one time,” she said. “He mentioned you sent Delmar to Sarnala. Is that true?”
“It was my idea, yes,” I admitted it loud and clear, possibly for the first time ever.
It’d been so much easier to deal with guilt by denying and deflecting the blame. Admitting it proved soul-crushing, as I knew it would. But in a way, it was also unexpectedly liberating. The guilt became slightly less oppressive somehow, now that my sins were fully exposed.
“The idea to send them?” She seemed confused.
“The idea to go to Sarnala and fight the big, scary werewolves in their most dangerous form.”
“But why?”
I exhaled a bitter laugh, then rubbed my forehead. How stupid it all looked now, a hundred years later? Back then, however, when I was that much younger, it all made sense.
“To prove how brave we were?” I scoffed.
“For some fucking glory we foolishly believed we were owed? Olathana had enjoyed a long period of peace, thanks to my mother’s clever diplomacy in politics.
The young hotheads like us thought we were robbed of wars, of an opportunity to kill and be killed.
I said something stupid along those lines while drinking with my friends the night before my twenty-first birthday.
We were fantasizing out loud about all the kingdoms we would conquer when I became king, and I boisterously declared that we didn’t need to wait until then.
We could fight anyone anytime we wished.
What was stopping us from going to Sarnala that night, for example?
From showing those werewolves that they couldn’t intimidate us, not even on the night they were at their strongest, most vicious, and monstrous? ”
“So you went?”
“I personally did not,” I huffed. “I went to bed and fucked an hour away with a couple of court ladies.”
“A couple, huh?” She gave me a look. “One wasn’t enough?”
Did I hear a tight note in her voice to match her pursed lips and scrunched-up nose or did I imagine it?
“What exactly are you disapproving of, my dear? Of the act itself or the number?” I clarified.