Chapter 17 Alaric #2
He swung again, faster than I expected. I ducked, the movement tugging painfully at my side, and barely blocked the next blow. The fight was quick and brutal, but every clash of steel sent another jolt through my battered body. My breath came short, and my legs threatened to give beneath me.
A desperate shove sent him stumbling, and I lurched forward, head-butting him. Pain exploded behind my eyes, but he staggered, swearing. My vision swam.
If I missed my next chance, I wouldn’t get another.
Through sheer will, I threw my weight into him, driving him to the ground. My dagger pressed against his throat, my arm trembling with the effort to keep it there. Rage burned through my exhaustion, hotter than the pain.
“Don’t hurt me, please!”
“This is the last time you’ve come for me,” I said, my voice a growl. “I’ve spared you all the other times. Why should I spare you this time?”
His eyes panicked in the darkness of night. Deep down, I was quite impressed that he had the courage to come after me yet again. Prince Elias must have paid him an unimaginable fortune to get rid of me.
“Because she has my family.”
“Your family?” I frowned. “Who has your family?” Malia had his family? What was he talking about? This man was a trained assassin… it was odd to imagine him having a family.
“My kids…” And then water pooled in his eyes.
I pressed the dagger. “Speak! Who is she?”
“The queen. Sereth.”
My hatred deepened. “Sereth?
“She took my children years ago, trained them to become witch hunters. It’s my fault for abandoning them–my second wife hated them, convinced me to leave them in the woods to starve.
I…” Now he really was crying. “I couldn’t live with myself.
When my wife died, I found out they had survived.
The witch… she took them in. And then they fled to Sereth.
She wouldn’t let me see them. She wouldn’t even let them know I was looking for them.
” He trembled. “Instead, she threatened to kill them if I didn’t do as she said.
And she said the only way I could ever reunite with them is if I did what she asked.
She sent me to kill you. I’ve failed time and again, and if I fail again, she will kill them. ”
Didn’t she want the Corallure crown to get rid of them?
Reality came crashing down on me.
Sereth.
Sereth? The queen. The woman I had saved five years ago from her wicked stepmother. She framed this man?
“I suppose I don’t deserve to live,” he said. “We killed your men. We burned your ship.”
I released my hold on him and sat back. The man scrambled away, feeling his neck, no doubt where I’d pricked his skin. He let out a breath and sat back, his fingers shaking.
“Your children were on board that ship,” I said, trying to put everything together. “Sereth’s orders to me were to deliver them safely to Corallure.” Then I shook my head. “But you were ordered by Sereth to destroy my ship and to kill me?”
He nodded, and, at the same time, understanding poured into both of us.
If Sereth sent the ship to kill me and destroy the ship, she knew the twins were on board that very ship.
Which further sealed the truth of the letter she ordered me to deliver with the twins: she was done with them too. She was trying to dispose of them.
“She was trying to kill my kids!” The man stood and let out a scream, stomping away and grabbing his hair.
I stood too, rubbing my forehead and looking out to sea. My head was spinning: Prince Elias and the kingdom of Corallure were not the enemy at all.
It was Sereth. Snow White.
She’s fooled all of us. And then it hit me: if she was so good at framing this man, his children, and me, how much more would it take for her to frame Malia?
Malia, the soft-spoken herb witch who wouldn’t ask me to stay because she feared it she was an inconvenience. Who cared more for others than herself.
Water misted the distant air and my eyes latched onto a whale breaching in the dark water. The distinct white tail caused my heart to stir: it was the whale that saved me from the ambush.
I should’ve died. I should’ve drowned after the cannon hit.
Yet… I looked up at the stars, and, for the first time in my life, felt something stirring deep inside of me.
What have I done?
My addiction and thirst for power, for control… it released its hold on my heart. All my life, I was terrified of becoming weak–just as my father had been weak–that I was blinded to the truth, to the tender mercies of Akua right before my eyes. He had always been in control, not me.
The whale was proof of that.
While everything felt wildly out of my control at the moment, there was one thing I could control–and that He probably wanted me to control. And that was me and my choices.
And I choose Malia. I didn’t have to figure out all the details about where we’d live, my career, business, working out our differences, and all of that. I loved her, and I wanted to choose a life with her.
If she’s still alive. But hope had been sparked inside of me, and the aching to make things right… not just for me but for Malia, this man I just met, the twins, and even Prince Elias.
Elias! I had blamed him for everything, and now he was the only person I could turn to. I looked down at the whalebone necklace hanging from my neck. For so long I’d held onto this one aspect of my life, not daring to let go.
I’m a whaler, I thought. A huntsman. I’d always be one, or so I believed.
But Akua has other plans for me. He always had, and I didn’t know what the future held, but I knew I would give up everything for her. Even whaling. I pulled the necklace from my neck and tossed it as far as I could. It splashed into the water and disappeared beneath, never to be found again.
“Whoa!” I called after the man as he paced, struggling to breathe through his sobs. “Your children are still alive, and we might have time to find them and Malia.”
“Malia?”
“The witch whose cottage I was at.”
The man nodded and wiped his face. I held out my hand. “What’s your name?”
“Jonah.” He shook my hand and the enmity and bitterness of our past was resolved, feelings of understanding, compassion, and forgiveness replacing the anger and hurt.
“I have an idea,” I said and Jonah looked hopeful. I sheathed my dagger and turned to the island. “And if we can move quickly enough, we might reach them before it’s too late.” Because I hoped, with all of my might, that it was not too late to save any of them.