Chapter 17 Alaric
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ALARIC
She was ready to face her past.
But not ready to be with me.
She never said the word I ached to hear.
Never told me to stay with her.
But I wanted this. Her. A life. Marriage. A future. I wanted to believe staying could be enough.
Still… if I wanted her, but she didn’t want me–due to my profession–what could I do?
The thought hollowed me out.
Not to forget the fact she was a princess.
How?
I sat on the front step, my thoughts churning like seawater as she packed her bags.
Was she somehow related to Sereth?
Was she related to Elias?
Can’t be. They looked nothing alike, and she had that mysterious Black Star whaling necklace…
“I’m ready.” Malia sat next to me on the step.
I placed my hand on her knee and color bloomed in her cheeks.
“I’m going to miss this place,” she said softly.
“We can always come back,” I reassured her. Malia nodded and placed her hand over my own.
“Shall we go?” I asked.
Before she could answer, she went pale, her head turned so she could see the path in the setting sunlight.
I stood, instincts flaring.
I stepped in front of the witch.
Malia didn’t move.
She didn’t even breathe.
Lilo and Niko came up the path, followed by two armed guards bearing the blue wave coat-of-arms of Moanalei Kingdom.
“I’ll keep you safe,” I said, and her fingers curled around my arm.
“Malia, you’re under arrest by order of Queen Sereth of Moanalei Kingdom,” said Lilo, but the hatred didn’t quite reach her eyes.
If anything, she looked exhausted.
“What for?” My voice was rough, and I drew the golden dagger. Lilo and Niko visibly tensed, but Lilo lifted her chin and answered. “For treason.”
“What treason has she committed? You have no evidence.”
“The Queen's justice doesn't wait for lovesick sailors,” one of the guards teased, then both guards stepped forward.
I planted myself between them and Malia. “Not happening.”
The first came at me fast. I ducked under his swing and slammed my shoulder into his gut. He staggered, but the second guard was already on me. His fist clipped my jaw, snapping my head to the side. I tasted blood, but I caught his arm, twisted it, and drove my elbow into his ribs.
He grunted, but didn’t go down. The first guard lunged again, tackling me from behind. We crashed to the ground, the breath jolting from my lungs. I heaved him off with a curse, my muscles burning. I managed to get both of them on the ground winded, but not out for long.
The teenager girl pulled out a cloth from her bag, and I frowned. What was it?
“Five years ago, Malia was found creating a poison… this one.” She held up the cloth. “And she put this poison on an apple, the same apple that poisoned Snow White.”
A lump formed in my throat.
I knew this.
“We’re going now–together–” I said, “To make things right.”
“It’s not just an act of treason, but of betrayal,” Lilo said. “Malia is Sereth’s stepsister.”
And then it hit me.
It hit me so hard I stood there, stunned, like a gust of wind had knocked the breath out of me.
It all made sense: Malia had a stepsister. Her mother had remarried and her stepfather had died, leaving her with a cruel, beautiful stepsister.
Sereth.
Why hadn’t I connected all of this sooner?
Elias calling her princess.
Malia’s ornate dagger.
Hiding her past.
Malia was a princess. She would’ve been the queen had Sereth not stepped up.
From what I heard, the queen’s only daughter had disappeared years ago.
When nobody could find her, it was presumed she was dead.
I still remember the black flags they put up around the kingdom to mourn her death.
And the weirdest part was that they were only up for a few days, and then everyone moved on, forgetting about it.
Forgetting about her.
Now I remembered the princess’s name: Elena Kamalia Keahi.
Malia. Perhaps the kingdom forgot about her, but I’m not going to forget about her. My anger towards Sereth only intensified.
“Malia?” I looked at her.
“I’m so sorry Alaric. I couldn’t tell you…” A tear streamed down Malia’s face. “The penalty of betrayal is death…”
So she knew she was walking to her death with me? She knew, all along. Which is why she never asked me to stay. Never asked me to be a part of her life.
Because she was going to die, and she had finally resigned herself to that conclusion.
Maybe she hoped that, with me, the punishment would be less.
But it was obvious.
Lilo and Niko were here to march her to her death.
“I only meant to help Sereth,” Malia said.
Another tear streaked her face and her hands shook so bad, she pressed them under her arms. “But it’s not what it seems–it never was.
” And in this moment of vulnerability, the teenagers ran to us.
Niko grabbed Malia’s arms. I lunged towards her, ready to knock out the boy.
But Lilo came from behind me and shoved the cloth in my face. A distinctly sweet scent filled my nose. It smelled like an apple… at first. But then it became putrid, and almost immediately, the world began to blur.
Malia screamed and fought against the twins.
They gagged her mouth. Tied her hands behind her back.
“Alaric!” she cried, but I was on my knees, unable to move. It was as if the deck pitched below me. I told my body to move, but the strongest sleepiness had come over me.
“Malia…” I blinked. My eyelids were heavier than an anchor dropping to the bottom of the sea.
Malia… I fell to the ground, barely watching the twins drag Malia away before the world went dark.
Smoke.
As the world came into view, I watched as flames licked the stars above.
It’s night? I suddenly remembered everything.
The twins.
The poisoned apple.
Malia.
“Malia!” I bolted up, finding my strength to be exhausted. I felt more sluggish than a drunk after a whole night of ale. “Malia!” I was next to the well.
Must’ve been dragged there.
Shadows danced across the area from…
I turned to see her cottage in flames. The roof already caved in, and the walls blazed with fire.
“Malia…” Her home. Destroyed.
I pushed on my hands to stand up but froze when the grass felt unnaturally sticky.
Blood. And it wasn’t my blood.
My stomach tightened, like a net being hauled in too fast, cutting into itself. This was worse than a shipwreck, worse than watching a man go under and knowing you couldn’t save him.
Did they kill Malia?
A scrap of fabric from her black dress sat on the ground. Soaked in blood.
I saw them drag her away… Then why was there so much blood?
They killed her…
No.
No.
No!
I stood and rushed to the house, wondering if they threw her into the flames, as they did before. But the place was ransacked, everything destroyed. And there was no sign of Malia.
Not a body.
Just that scrap of her dress and the sticky blood on the grass.
If they didn’t kill her on the spot she was, no doubt, dead by now. They had dragged her away and I’d been out for hours. Malia was arrested with the intent of being killed as soon as she reached Sereth.
And the worst part? Malia had committed a crime. A terrible crime.
It was one thing for a member of the royal family to be threatened by a commoner. But by another royal?
That’s why Sereth killed her stepmother…
And now she’d kill Malia. If she hadn’t already.
The twins were right.
Anger boiled inside of me: anger at myself, anger at Malia for not telling me the truth sooner, but anger especially that now… we would never be together.
She was gone.
Gone!
I kicked a metal bucket, falling to my knees as I let out a scream. My head was spinning, a million emotions kicking in all at once. But the strongest emotion–stronger than the anger and sadness–was grief. Grief because I’d lost her.
I lost her. The one person that had ever become important to me, more important than anything else… and I lost her. I didn’t protect her. I didn’t open myself enough so that she felt safe telling me the truth.
The whole truth. We could’ve avoided all of this if we had both been honest–completely honest–about our pasts.
I was an idiot. I had to get out of here. I hurried towards the ocean, knowing it would not solve my problems. But I had to get away from her cottage, away from this situation that was so wildly out of my control.
I paced along the shore, knowing I had to do something. Anything. But what? Malia was a criminal, and even I, as powerful as I had become, could not save her. The most powerful, wealthiest, untouchable whaler in all the seas could not save her.
I kicked the sand and ran my fingers through my hair, frustrated. Furious at myself. Furious that I hadn’t discovered her past sooner, or at least confronted her about it sooner.
We could’ve run away. We could’ve made it work.
But she made the apple that poisoned Sereth.
I just wanted to believe that she was good, but even she nodded to me that it was, indeed, the truth.
Barefoot, I stepped into the water and let the waves brush past my ankles. The saltwater was soothing, comforting. This was where I could think clearly, where all the troubles of my past and present seemed to disappear. If only for a moment.
The moon sparkled on the water and I now noticed something coming towards me. A boat? Yes, it was a rowboat, with a figure in it.
I frowned. My blood boiled. I grabbed my dagger.
The tall form of the assassin was unmistakable, and when he got closer to shore, he abandoned the boat. I prepared for him, knowing that whenever he surfaced, there would be a fight.
Prince Elias probably sent this assassin, I thought. We did not like each other, and though he said it wasn’t his ship that attacked us, I knew better.
Rising from the water, the assassin charged.
I barely had time to raise my dagger before his sword came down.
The force from blocking the attack jarred through my arms, sending a hot ache into my freshly healed ribs.
My grip faltered, and he pressed harder, forcing me back a step into the slick sand.