Chapter 24 Lily
LILY
Zehemoth and I immediately flew back to the Southern Isles, while the fleet sailed back on their own.
Instead of a journey of days by sea, we made it back in half a day, and the moment we touched down in the courtyard, I felt the exhaustion in my limbs.
Sitting upon the back of a dragon was similar to sitting in the saddle of a horse.
It still made your back and inner thighs sore after a long trip.
The soldiers on duty at the castle immediately greeted me with their salute, a clenched fist over their breast plate. “Tell Hawk I wish to speak to him.” The two large double doors that led to the entrance of the castle opened wide to allow me inside before I reached them.
I entered the castle and headed straight to my room, eager to get the armor off because I’d been wearing it for days straight. My muscles were trained to tolerate the weight, but they eventually became exhausted after carrying the protection on my spine for so long.
I was desperate to take a bath and scrub the mud from underneath my fingernails and wash it from my hair, but I knew Hawk needed to be updated first. But I took off each piece of my armor then hung it up, wearing only my uniform when a knock from the guards sounded.
“General Hawk Rothschild,” one of them announced.
“It’s open.” I missed the days when I lived in my villa and everything was casual. People could come and go as they pleased. But now I was queen—and we were at war.
Hawk burst inside. “The fleet isn’t in the harbor. How did you—”
“Zehemoth. I told him not to come, but he did anyway.” I would be more upset about it if, you know, he hadn’t saved me from being eviscerated by monsters.
Hawk gave a slight shake of his head. “It’s hard to be upset when I’m not even surprised.”
I shared the details of everything that had happened, from King Ithaca’s execution to the vampires to the Behemoths, the entire tale.
Hawk didn’t question the logistics of it, like how I went from being in King Ithaca’s presence to being on the battlefield a second later.
Either he focused on the important aspects of what I shared, or he didn’t want to waste his time pressing for answers he wouldn’t get. “How many ships did we lose?”
“About half.”
“Damn. What about them?”
“I’m not sure. I’ll have to speak with Commander Maverick…if he survived.”
“Where did they find the Behemoths? I thought they only lived in the wildlands far to the north.”
“Must have crossed their path when they attacked Riviana Star.”
“I’m glad Zehemoth disobeyed your orders. Otherwise, you’d be dead.”
I believed Callum would have come for me just in the nick of time. But yes, it was a terrifying moment, watching seven-and-a-half-foot creatures descend upon you. Even if I were Callum, I would have been scared.
“They are vampires now?”
“Some. Not all.”
“Were some, not all, of them vampires before?”
“I don’t think so, but the battle in Riviana Star was chaos.
In either case, that’s something else we’re now up against. I was able to defeat them with the blade because of the strength granted to me and the army of the dead that acted as a funnel.
They’re superior to us in every way. Without those gifts, I doubt I would have survived. ”
I was never one to admit defeat, and that terrifying admission made Hawk’s eyes narrow in stress. “And there are so many of them. At least ten thousand. Even if we destroyed half their fleet, they could take the ships of the Empire Colonies and sail to us at any moment.”
“How’s the engineering of their golden spikes?”
“No different from a cannon. It takes time to load, and then you can hear the boom when it’s lit. Zehemoth was able to navigate it pretty easily, but he was just one target in the sky. If there were dragons fighting everywhere, it would have been a different story.”
“So we’ve lost our biggest ally.”
“Unfortunately. He pleaded for an alliance with them until the end…and got his head cut off.”
“And you warned him,” he said coldly. “He got what was coming to him.”
“But at the expense of his people. Now they’re ruled by Behemoths and vampires and men who will threaten mortal wounds if they don’t comply with their demands. They’ll be forced to sail here to kill their allies.”
He was in trousers and a black shirt, his hair slightly messy like he’d recently taken a shower after his rotation in the barracks.
He crossed his arms over his chest and thought quietly to himself.
“Then we’ll be ready when they come. We can send dragons to spy on them from the air.
That way, we know when they make their move. ”
“We have to be careful, Hawk. Just because they have those cannons on their boats doesn’t mean they won’t build them on land too.”
Hawk stared at me before he gave a slow nod. “Good thinking, Queen Rothschild.”
“You don’t have to call me that.”
“You earned it without that astute assessment.”
“I didn’t earn shit because I went there and got half of our fleet destroyed and good men killed.
” I’d accomplished nothing, taking down some of their ships but not nearly enough.
“What I wouldn’t give to be able just to talk to Father…
” Only in his coma did I truly appreciate his kingship.
Appreciate the way he protected us. Even without being able to raise the dead, he was still the most formidable opponent in this wide world.
“It’s always harder to conquer a kingdom than it is to defend one,” Hawk said. “We lost an ally, but we still have the Brigandine Empire. We still have the Northern Isles and Riviana Star. They may be vampires, but we still have dragons.”
“Where are you on the armor?”
“The forges haven’t gotten cold since your order. The smiths are doing everything they can. But remember, these dragons are big…and that’s a lot of steel.”
“What about the platinum?”
He shook his head. “You were gone for five days, Lily. I didn’t accomplish much on that front either. Perhaps we should send a messenger to the Brigandine Empire to check for news. They’re the ones most likely to find it.”
“I understand. How’s Mom?”
“Honestly, she’s with Dad most of the time, doesn’t leave the room much.”
“I’ve never seen her like this.” Absent and distant…heartbroken.
“Yeah, but I don’t blame her.” He turned back toward the door. “I’ll send the dragons and prepare for battle. You rest. I can tell how tired you are.” He headed to the other side of the sitting room and grabbed the handle before he looked at me.
“I’m not tired,” I whispered. “Just utterly fucking defeated.”
Once the maids filled the large tub with steaming hot water, I undressed and slipped under the surface.
My muscles immediately relaxed at contact with the warm bath, but I scrubbed my nails and washed my hair anyway because I was desperate to get clean.
Once that was done, I sat there in the tub, knees pulled close with my arms crossed over my belly.
My eyes stared across the room at nothing in particular, and my thoughts just floated there… like a ship on the sea.
I closed my eyes for a while because they were so heavy. I’d slept on the ship, but it’d been brief because of the anxiety of the impending battle. But every time I closed my eyes, I saw the Behemoths sprinting toward me, King Ithaca pleading for his life, and the sight of shipwrecks in the sea.
I chose to open my eyes instead, and they immediately landed on Callum, seated in an armchair against the wall, dressed in his casual attire instead of his bulky armor and large two-handed sword. He watched me with tired eyes, even though tired was something he didn’t feel.
I stared at him for a long time, finding comfort in his presence even though I was in the throes of loss. “Am I a complete fool for believing I could conquer their fleet?”
“No, Xivin.”
“I lost good ships and good men. Could have lost Zehemoth too.”
“But you didn’t lose Zehemoth,” he said calmly. “And war always comes with a price. In your case, at least it was a small price. The rest of your fleet is here, ready for battle.”
I pulled my knees farther into my chest and stared at the surface of the water. “I suck at this.”
“Your father is alive because of you. Riviana Star survived because of you. You tried to save King Ithaca from a horrible fate, and you would have succeeded if his heart hadn’t been infested with greed.”
“I only did those things because of the gifts you granted me.”
“And if the same gifts had been granted to someone else, they would have used them in a much different way. You decided to put others before yourself. You decided to wield those powers responsibly. I gave you strength, but you chose how to use it.”
I kept my eyes on the water.
“Xivin.”
I released a sigh that made the water shift underneath my nose.
“I’m scared.” I felt my bottom lip tremble, and I did my best to keep it still.
I didn’t want to shed tears like a little girl.
My father wouldn’t retreat to his bedchambers and cry despite the enormity of what he faced, so I couldn’t either.
Huge palms suddenly cupped my cheeks, and the water level rose up the sides of the tile several inches.
My eyes lifted to him across from me, naked with me in the water, his thumbs gently swiping over my cheeks, ready to catch the tears when they fell. “It’s okay to be scared, Xivin.”
“No, it’s not.” The moisture in my eyes grew, broke the bottom lid, and then streaked down my cheeks.
But he was there to catch it, to absorb the tears into the pads of his thumbs.
“I’m supposed to be the fearless leader of the Southern Isles, to be the ferocious queen my father believed me to be, to defeat these monsters and protect the people of these lands. But all I can think about is…the fact that we can’t do this.”
“But you can, Xivin.”
“Maybe my father could, but I can’t.”
“You believe your father was never afraid, but he was always afraid. Worried that an enemy would strike down the kingdom despite the last decades of peace. He was afraid when you sailed away on your journey. He was afraid when he marched into Riviana Star. A good ruler is afraid, Xivin. That means they aren’t arrogant.
It means that they care about others more than themselves.
They understand just how dire the consequences of failure are, and they carry that every day.
” His hands forced my chin up so I would meet his gaze instead of continuing to hide from him. “It’s okay to be afraid.”
My hands moved to his wrists, and I held on to them like I’d held on to that little sailboat at the back of the galleon. Held on to it like it was my safe passage home. My quiet tears continued for a few minutes before his touch calmed me down, before the air felt right in my lungs once again.
He gently pulled me toward him, toward his side of the big tub. His back hit the opposite end, and he pulled me to his chest, his thick arms locking over my body like a warm blanket. He brushed a kiss to my hairline as he held me there.
The water should have gone cold by now, but I felt it gradually heat and then steam once again. I watched the tendrils of vapor rise from the surface and lift into the air until they disappeared. “Is that you?” I said quietly.
“Yes.”
I remembered the way he’d conjured fire in the dark forest of the underworld, made a torch from a single branch on the side of the dirt pathway. He seemed to have done the same here, lit an invisible fire that made the bath feel fresh again.
Warm in the water and safe in his embrace, I finally closed my eyes, and all I saw was a white-sand beach with turquoise waters and gentle waves. I slipped further into my dreams…and found him waiting there for me.