Chapter 42 Meryn
MERYN
Stark and I dress quickly and then wake the others. Within thirty minutes, Saela, Venna, and Noemi are gathered with us in the common space of our suite. My father heard the commotion and came to join us. I didn’t quite have the heart to tell him to go the fuck away.
I’m still shaky from the intensity of my encounter with Killian and work to steady myself. The room is garishly unlike anything back home, full of color and tilework and sumptuous fabrics, but the familiar faces of my closest companions help to ground me.
“I know I haven’t shared these details with all of you, but I’ve been able to contact Killian through my dreams.” I fill them in as quickly as I can, answering their questions before summarizing what I learned last night.
“He’s searching for more Tears.”
Unlike Stark’s stony expression, Venna’s alarm shows clearly. “How many more could there be?”
I shake my head. “I have no idea, and neither does he. What I know for certain is that when I consulted my foresight yesterday, the only viable path showed us going to a tower. I think I saw us finding a Tear there. So there may be at least one more out there, in that tower—wherever it is.”
I don’t let myself think about the woman’s body in my vision, or Stark’s agonized shouts. How all my visions ended with death—and this one was merely the least bloody.
“The one Tear he has already gave him enough power to conquer a whole kingdom. If he gets more…” Noemi lets her voice trail off. The implication is clear.
With enough power, we might not be able to stop him, alliance with Astreona or no.
Panic begins to crush in at the edges of my heart, my chest growing tight. But then, Saela’s eyes light up with joy—she looks just the same way when she’s figured out a difficult math problem. “Wait a minute.”
“I’m waiting.” Her simple excitement chases some of my panic away. I smile, breath coming more easily.
She jumps up. “I think there’s something…” She hurtles across the room, disappearing into the next chamber.
“Sae?” I call after her.
“There’s something! I saw it!” she shouts back. Venna makes a small, amused sound.
When my sister reappears, she has one of our mother’s tattered journals in her hands. She plops back down on the couch and cracks it open with intention, flipping quickly through the pages. Our father leans over to read alongside her, then pulls back, a startled look in his eyes.
He must’ve recognized our mother’s handwriting.
“Well?” Noemi asks.
“Give her a minute,” I say, kneeling before my sister. I look up at her, content to watch her in action.
Finally, she slaps her hand down on a page and makes an excited sound, kicking her feet. She turns it around and holds the pages open to me. “See? Look, look.”
I reach out and trace my fingers over the image there.
Ramblings are scrawled around the picture, but that’s not what Saela wants me to see. In the center of the right page is something that looks like a six-pointed star or a geometric flower, but each of the points is in the shape of a teardrop. In the center of it is another tear shape.
Saela is breathless. She leans forward to look at the image again, then turns a hopeful gaze toward me. “Do you think… ?”
That these are the Goddess Tears? My eyes burn. Yet another way our mother wasn’t insane, maybe. She knew.
“Maybe,” I tell my little sister. She clearly wants so badly to believe in our mother’s strength. I want that, too. “It’s possible. Seven.”
“Seven total. Which means he can’t go around gathering dozens, at least,” Saela says.
Noemi lifts her head, and her eyes flash. “Seven tears and a tower.” She grabs Stark’s arm and pulls at him insistently. “Stark. The song.”
It sounds like nonsense until Stark’s expression shifts with recognition.
“Is this some Bonded thing I never learned about?” I ask.
Noemi steps closer to me, bright hair shimmering in the morning sunlight.
“My father, Lord Eisenfall, loves this awful song about a man’s unfaithful wife.
She cheats on him with his brother, and when he discovers it, he drags her away and locks her in an inescapable tower where she cries seven tears! Seven precisely.”
“It would be a stretch to call that a coincidence. But it’s also just a song,” Venna pushes, clearly worried we’re getting our hopes up.
“Unless it’s not,” I say.
“You think it’s based on the truth?” Venna asks.
“I’m thinking anything is possible. Yes. What if… what if the Faceless Goddess was the wife? What if she was locked in this tower?”
Stark scoffs, crossing his arms. “So, suddenly you’re a believer?”
My mind is racing. Am I looking for connections where none exist? Or are we finally putting the pieces together?
“No. I don’t know. Whatever these gems are, they clearly hold a wealth of power.
But whether that means that the Goddess was—is—real…
who knows. For now, our main problem is finding this tower from my visions.
We won’t find answers unless we can track it down somehow—and find out if there is a Tear inside. ”
Stark crosses his thick arms across his chest and sighs deeply, his eyes rising to the ceiling.
“Yep,” I say. “You know who we have to ask.”
Twenty minutes later, I’m standing alone in front of Lucien’s chambers and trying to determine what words could possibly trick him into relative honesty. I push the doors open without knocking, and his guards don’t even try to stop me.
I wish they had.
The door swings open to reveal Lucien with an intoxicated, hungry look in his eyes and lips painted red with blood. He sits in a decadent dining room chair, but instead of a table in front of him, there’s a voluptuous, scantily clad woman sprawled across his lap.
One of his hands is wrapped around her midsection, keeping her from falling. Her head is thrown back, expression blissful, giving Lucien full access to feed from her throat.
Lucien looks up as the doors slam open. His eyes lock on me as he dips his head to sink his teeth back into her. The woman moans as he drinks deeply. My stomach tightens in an uncomfortable combination of disgust and fascination.
It’s easier to forget that I’m dealing with my enemy when I’m not looking at him devour his prey.
I ignore the sensation, stalking up to him, refusing to be intimidated.
“Lucien. We need to talk.”
Reluctantly, Lucien breaks away from his meal, and the woman’s eyes flutter as she comes back to herself, clearly dazed. With a twitch of his head, Lucien signals a servant, who trots over to take the woman’s hand and gently help her up and out of the room.
“Yes?” Lucien inquires, but his eyes are still glued on the woman’s generous backside as she slowly departs, the shimmery material of her dress concealing nothing.
I sigh. “Eyes over here, Lucien.”
He meets my gaze with an amused grin and a sweep of his tongue over his stained lips. “You know, it’s considered very rude in Astreona to interrupt someone’s meal. If you’re going to cut in, you could at least offer your own neck instead.”
“I’d rather eat glass,” I shoot back in annoyance. “We’ve stumbled onto something major about the Goddess Tears.”
He sighs and sits up like I’m boring him. “Something major,” he mocks with false excitement. “Let’s hear this revelation, then. Wow me.”
His ego hogs the entire room, but it slowly reduces in size the longer I speak. He even looks intrigued. Worryingly intrigued. The hunger in his eyes is sharper and more focused than what I saw with his fangs deep in that woman’s neck.
Killian’s poisonous words—about how powerful Lucien is and how he must be stopped, too—slither back into my brain. Am I putting trust in yet another beautiful royal who is bound to betray me?
“Well,” Lucien says, leaning back in his chair. He braces his thumb beneath the point of his chin and skates a finger along his jaw. “Consider me wowed.”
“Do you know anything about a mysterious tower near water?” I ask.
He tilts his head. “What will you give me?”
I roll my eyes. “Lucien.”
He chuckles and stands. “It’s mostly legend. There’s an island in the sea that may hold the tower your vision showed you, but we’ve never been able to get through to it. Bring Elias here,” he instructs a servant. “And tell him to bring the maps of the Bloodthorn Sea.”
“Bring the rest of my party as well,” I add.
In no time at all, we’re all gathered in Lucien’s chambers, a pile of maps spread over the large, polished wooden table before us. Lucien gives Noemi a wide berth. Elias’s earring glints in the light as he leans over the table. He’s carefully setting out document after document.
Saela is practically vibrating, eager to get her eyes on them. Stark, Venna, and Noemi are watching in steely silence. My father wasn’t invited to this gathering, at least.
“This is the one,” Lucien says, gently guiding Elias to the side with a hand on the man’s shoulder.
It’s a large map, multiple feet across, and it’s incredibly detailed. Lucien’s fingertip traces the line between our kingdoms briefly. He sighs. Then his hand glides over the map and settles on an area in the Bloodthorn Sea.
I lean one hand on the table and squint as Lucien taps the spot twice.
There are islands there, I realize. Three of them clustered together tightly off the coast of Blumenfall. I’ve studied a lot of maps of Nocturna and Astreona since becoming queen. I wanted to understand the land I was ruling.
But I don’t think I’ve ever seen these islands recorded before.
“One of these islands is where we believe the tower stands,” Lucien explains. He straightens and rests his hand on his hip.
“What’s this note mean?” I ask, pointing to the symbol beside the islands.
“It means it’s unexplored. Or…” Saela considers her words for a moment. “Uncharted, basically. The person who drew this is telling us that the shape they drew here might be incorrect.”
“That’s right, actually,” Elias says, sounding impressed—and surprised. Condescending jerk. But Saela doesn’t notice his tone, just perks up under the praise.