Chapter 11 Lily
LILY
I returned to my old villa.
The second I walked inside, I felt Callum’s presence…except he wasn’t there. What I felt was his memory, felt his smell rather than actually sensed it in my nose, felt the love we’d built here like an eternal fire.
I didn’t want to stay in the castle any longer.
I was no longer the ruler of the Southern Isles, and while I understand my father’s anger, I didn’t want to be around him.
Not until he would listen to me. He continued to react to his own memories and his own story instead of understanding mine was quite different.
He trusted me implicitly, trusted me to lead his kingdom after his downfall, but he didn’t trust my word, perception, or intuition. Didn’t trust me to know when love was real.
I was seated at my dining table with an open bottle of wine and an empty wineglass, staring at no one across from me. It used to be Callum, coming to me out of thin air, shirtless and in his trousers, staring at me so hard it was like we were already engaged in conversation.
Then a knock sounded on the door.
My eyes immediately flicked across the room, but I didn’t rise out of my chair. I didn’t want company, especially from my father, not if it was just going to be round two of the same battle.
“It’s me.” Hawk’s voice crossed through the door. “You alright?”
I would normally shoo him away, but our relationship had changed so much since Father had been indisposed and we’d had to fight for our kingdom together. Instead of just being my brother, he’d become…a friend. “It’s open,” I called across the room.
He opened the door and let himself inside, and it was one of the few times I’d seen him without his general’s uniform and armor. He was dressed casually, in dark trousers and an olive-green shirt. His eyes made contact with mine before he crossed the room and took the seat opposite me.
Wordlessly, I went into the kitchen and fetched him a wineglass before I filled it without asking if he actually wanted it.
I didn’t know if my brother even drank wine.
I refilled my own and set the bottle aside with a distinct thud before I took a drink. My arms folded back into their original position on the surface of the mahogany, my fingers hugging the bottom of my upper arms.
He stared at me for a while before he took a drink. “It’s good.”
“Is it?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t drink wine.”
I took another drink.
He examined me again, releasing a long sigh. “You okay?”
“Do I look okay, Hawk?” I asked as I looked at him dead in the eye.
“Dad asked me if I knew about Wrath. I told him the truth.”
“And?”
“I think he’s a little mad at me too now.”
“You did nothing wrong, and neither did I.”
“Maybe he expected me to protect you…but it didn’t seem like you needed to be protected.”
“We’d both be dead right now if it weren’t for him.”
His eyes dropped. “Yeah.”
“Did you tell him that?”
He was quiet for a while, staring at the surface of the table.
“No.” Then his eyes lifted to look at me.
“It wasn’t exactly a conversation. There were embers in his eyes when he asked what he wanted to know, and then he dismissed me like he was disowning me.
He was so happy to see us when he woke up, and now it’s like that never happened. ”
“All he has is my word. I wish that Wrath could speak to him directly, but he hasn’t come back and I’m afraid that he’ll never come back.
” That the last conversation we would have was when we told each other we loved each other—and that was the end.
It’d been weeks, and my heart had somehow managed to become more mangled in heartbreak.
“There’s no way to seek him out?”
“I’ve never been able to seek him out. He just comes to me.”
He was quiet for a while, ignoring the wine I’d poured him because he obviously didn’t care for it.
It didn’t matter. I would just drink it myself.
“You said you crossed his path when you went to that island with your crew, right?”
My eyes had been focused on the wineglass before me, the dark color of the Bordeaux that sat in the bottom like a beautiful lake. It was my favorite wine from Barsetti vineyards, a local family in the Southern Isles that had supplied the wine for the royal family for generations. “Yes.”
“You said the island was strange, dead.”
My eyes lifted to his.
“The Realm of Caelum has an entryway in Riviana Star. What if that island is the entryway to the underworld?”
I felt my spirit float out of my body when I absorbed what he said, when I found a way forward.
“Maybe if you go back to that island—”
“I’ll be able to call for him…”
“Yes.”
I stared at my brother for another moment, my heart giving a jolt as it came back to life.
I got to my feet so fast that I knocked over the wineglass, and it smashed to pieces on the floor.
A splash of wine stretched across the floor, but I left it there as I moved to my bedroom to gather my armor and my blade.
“You’re going now?” Hawk called after me.
“Yes.” I put on everything in a rush, my uniform first and then the pieces of armor, clipping each into place before I grabbed my blade and sheathed it in the scabbard across my back. When I came back into the room, Hawk was rooted to the same spot.
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“I can manage on my own.”
“But you don’t know what else could be on that island.”
“You think anything will get in my way?” I turned on my brother, bathing him in flames of hostility that he didn’t deserve. “I will carve the heart out of the chest of any man who is foolish enough to cross me. Stay here and cover for me.”
“How do you expect me to do that? You don’t live in the castle.”
“Just figure it out, Hawk.” I pushed my mind to Zehemoth, finding him instantly because his presence was so entangled in mine. I need you now.
I’m coming, Sunieth. He didn’t question the authority in my voice. Didn’t waste a moment of time.
I left the villa and walked to the enormous courtyard outside the castle where Zehemoth could land.
Hawk caught up with me. “Be careful, Lily. I understand the angst in your heart, but don’t let it cloud your judgment.”
“I’ll be fine.” I looked into the sky, spotting the dark outline of a dragon in the distance from the wildlands.
“It could be a trap, so be aware.”
I turned to him. “Wrath would never try to trick me.”
“The trap could be laid by someone else. He hasn’t come to you for a reason—remember that.”
A warning spread through my heart and entered my veins like a poison.
Zehemoth streaked across the sky before he came in for a hard landing before me. What trouble befalls you, Lily?
“I need you to take me far to the west—to the dead island out to sea.”
Zehemoth dropped his snout close to our faces so he could look me in the eye.
“And this stays between us, Zehemoth. You can’t tell your father our plans.”
What do you seek on the forbidden island? My father told me not to go there as well—
“Take me, or I’ll find someone else to do it.”
He turned his gaze to Hawk and then back to me.
“We need to go now. Will you take me or not?”
Of course. He lowered his body so it would be easier for me to climb up.
I grabbed on to one of the straps and pulled myself up until I was flat in the saddle.
“Lily!” Hawk shouted from below. “Be careful.”
“I know. You said that.”
“I say it again because you didn’t hear me the first time,” he snapped. “Remember the ground you touch does not belong to the mortal world. Remember you’re an enemy on these lands.”
I gave a nod in agreement. “I’ll be careful.”
When my brother finally got what he wanted, he took several steps back so Zehemoth could spread his wings and take off. He left the cliff and turned out to the sea, and when I looked over Zehemoth’s flank, I could see my brother grow more and more distant, quickly becoming an indistinguishable dot.
Do you know the way?
As if I’d ever forget. “Yes. Veer slightly north and you’ll be on course.”
Zehemoth changed his direction slightly with his wings, bringing us straight into the path of the dead island. The silence only lasted for a few seconds before he spoke. And what do we seek?
“The god of the underworld.”
We made the journey in less than a day because traveling by dragon was infinitely faster than cutting through the water with a heavy galleon and just the power of the wind.
It was dark when we arrived, the sky full of stars that reflected off the calm water beneath us.
The island was hard to see, and the only reason I spotted it was because it lacked a reflection.
The closer we came, the clearer the details became.
There was a stretch of beach a short distance from the tree line, enough room for Zehemoth to land.
He came in at a glide then hit the beach, his back legs partially in the shallow water before he walked farther up the sand.
He came to a stop where the sand was mostly dry, and I climbed down.
Zehemoth stared into the darkness of the trees. There is great evil here.
“I know.”
He turned his neck to look down at me.
“Because I’ve been here before.”
Every place in the world has vibrations of life, even in the deepest snow.
But here, there is nothing. No life from the trees, the earth, the water.
It’s a void. Instead, there is a wound that festers with sickness.
The bark of the trees is petrified by the horror they absorb through the soil.
Even when the sun rises, the night here is eternal. Lily, we shouldn’t have come here.
“I’m not afraid.”
I am—and I fear for both of us.