Seven
CHARIS MADE IT back to her quarters with an hour to spare before Vyllanthra expected her for a late dinner. Nita rushed to draw a bath while Charis instructed several other maids to pack her new wardrobe into a trunk. Once she’d reclaimed Calera and driven the monsters back into the sea where they belonged, she would have to send a generous gift to Solvang’s rulers to begin repaying them for their kindness.
For tonight, a simple thank-you and the assurance that she was leaving the next day would have to suffice.
“The bath is ready, Your Majesty,” Nita announced as a brusque knock sounded on the door. Before Nita could hurry to open it, Nalani burst in, a paper clutched in her hand. Delaire followed on her heels, her lips pressed tight as her wide eyes met Charis’s.
“Your Majesty, we have a problem.” Nalani hastily performed a sorry excuse for a curtsy and then waved the paper at Charis.
“Nita, please have this trunk taken down to my ship and be sure no one disturbs us.” Charis waited until the trunk and the handmaiden were gone before reaching for the paper, her stomach clenching painfully as her thoughts skipped frantically through the options.
More disastrous news from Calera.
Allies who’d committed to her cause provided she could kill the Rakuuna were having second thoughts.
Tal was dead.
Each thought drew blood, and her hands shook as she opened the paper, silently cursing Tal for somehow still causing her pain when she should feel nothing for him at all. She scanned the message quickly, eyes skimming the words without really understanding any of them. She was simply searching for his name.
When she came to the end and found no mention of Tal, she drew in an unsteady breath and forced herself to slow down and reread carefully, hunting for the problem.
It was the long-awaited response from King Alaric, promising to abide by their treaty and help her retake Calera, provided she upheld her part of the bargain and married his oldest son, Vahn.
There wasn’t a single mention of her offer to rescue his youngest son.
“I don’t understand.” Charis raised her gaze to Nalani and Delaire. “This is exactly what we’ve been hoping for. What’s the problem?”
Besides the fact that there was no longer any reason to sail to the northern kingdom of Te’ash to rescue Tal—a fact that should have brought relief but instead left an unsettling sense of dread in her stomach.
“You can’t sail tomorrow,” Delaire said, her voice pitched higher than normal.
“Why not?” Charis turned to Nalani. “What’s happening?”
“Finn sent a message from the docks. A trio of green lights has been spotted just outside the harbor.” Nalani wrung her hands. “They can’t see the ship because of the thick fog, but it’s probably Rakuuna.”
The air left Charis’s lungs.
For a moment, she was back in the Farragins’ ballroom, the silvery blue décor of the Sister Moons Festival glittering as Rakuuna swarmed the crowd, tearing people apart just to get to Charis and her mother. Her heart pounded in sickening jolts, and the edges of her vision went gray.
“Charis!” Nalani’s warm hands gripped Charis’s shoulders firmly, dragging her thoughts away from the horror of her memories and back into the present.
“Is he sure?” Her voice was a faint imitation of itself, but her muscles felt weak, and her skin tingled as though warning her to grab a weapon and brace for attack.
“Sure of the lights, yes.” Nalani kept her grip firm. “We can’t know for certain that it’s Rakuuna until the fog lifts.”
“By then, it will be too late.” Charis forced herself to breathe deeply. Once. Twice. She couldn’t afford to panic. Not when a single misstep would cost her and her people everything.
“We’ll hide you.” Delaire hurried forward. “I’m sure Queen Vyllanthra must know of a place—”
“I’m not hiding.” Charis straightened her spine and stepped back, breaking Nalani’s hold on her. “We finally know where to get a weapon we can use against them. I’m sailing to Embre.”
“Or you could send someone else!” Nalani’s voice rose. “Someone the Rakuuna aren’t hunting.”
“So that they can find me here and punish these people for helping us? I’m not going to be responsible for Gareth’s and Vyllanthra’s deaths.” Charis squared her shoulders, her mind racing. She needed to attend her dinner with Vyllanthra, finalize preparations for the journey to Embre, and send a reply to King Alaric, but that all paled in comparison to the need to know for sure if the Rakuuna were anchored outside the harbor.
“Change of plans.” Charis grabbed a pair of warm gray pants, a soft black shirt, and a shawl of shimmering cranberry cashmere that she’d intended as her sailing outfit for the next day. “Nalani, you’ll attend the dinner with Vyllanthra as my ambassador and inform her of my plans to sail tomorrow. Make sure she understands I’m going to get the weapon we need to kill the Rakuuna. I want to hold them to their promise to help us fight for Calera.”
“Where are you going?” Nalani folded her arms across her chest as Charis wiggled free of her evening dress and reached for the pants.
“I’m going to take a few sailors and our rowboat to see if the Rakuuna are there.”
“That’s a terrible idea,” Nalani snapped.
“The fog will hide our activities, and if those monsters are lying in wait out there, I need to be at the docks anyway, because we’re going to have to set sail immediately.” Her voice didn’t shake—a small mercy given the way everything inside of her tumbled and churned at the thought of seeing the Rakuuna again.
“But what if something happens?” Worry sharpened Nalani’s voice.
“Exactly.” Charis tugged on a pair of soft black boots and moved to the vanity.
“No, not exactly. This is serious, Charis.” Nalani stalked toward the vanity while Charis rummaged for pins to subdue her tumble of brown curls into a bun.
“I agree.” Charis shoved the pins into her hair and met her cousin’s gaze in the mirror. “A queen doesn’t flinch from facing danger to protect her people.”
“Charis.” Nalani’s voice sounded wounded, and something in her eyes reminded Charis of Father. Charis looked away, feeling suddenly exposed.
“Why not trust Holland with it instead?” Delaire asked as she grabbed two extra pins and rescued Charis’s bun from sliding to the left.
Because she’d lost too many people she loved to those monsters. And because a queen who failed to save her family and her kingdom didn’t deserve to have anyone take risks for her.
“I’ve made up my mind.” Charis’s voice wavered, and she cleared her throat. “If all is well, I’ll see you when I return to the palace tonight. If not, I’ll send you a palloren once we reach Embre and secure the poison so that you can coordinate attack plans with the rest of our allies.”
Nalani slid her hand around Charis’s and squeezed gently. “You do realize you’re worth protecting too, don’t you?”
The chasm that had opened within Charis on the night of the invasion shivered, and she withdrew her hand. “So are you. If there are Rakuuna at port, they’re after me, not you. You’ll stay safe here; that way if something happens, there can be a seamless transfer of power. The Calerans need a ruler.”
“No, the Calerans need you.” Nalani pulled the shawl out of Charis’s hands and wrapped it around the queen’s shoulders before drawing her close for a hug. Charis stiffened at the contact, and Nalani just patted her back the way Father used to when he knew something was wrong and was just waiting for his daughter to finally drop her guard.
Charis couldn’t drop her guard. There was a tidal wave of ruin within her, and if she let a single drop escape, the weight of it all would press against that crack until it shattered her.
Tears stung Charis’s eyes, and she blinked rapidly as she stepped away. “Don’t wait up,” she said as she left Nalani and Delaire standing in the middle of her chambers.
Twenty minutes later, Charis, Reuben, and Vellis met Finn and Orayn at the docks. The sky was a swath of black velvet punctured by the diamond-shine of stars. Ribbons of cloud drifted across its surface, limned with the sapphire light of the sister moons that hung in the sky like ghostly blue crescents. The wooden dock they stood on stretched out into the fog-drenched harbor, creaking and shifting as the ships tied to it rocked gently in the waves. The frantic activity of the day had subsided, leaving the docks nearly deserted.
“Your Majesty.” Orayn and Finn bowed in unison.
Movement behind them caught Charis’s eye, and she reached for her dagger. “Who’s there?”
“It’s just us, Your Majesty.” Grim and Dec emerged from the shadows and bowed.
Charis gritted her teeth. “What are you doing here?” She kept her voice down, though it was unlikely their conversation would carry over the frothy splash of the waves against the shore.
“I asked them to join us,” Orayn said. “We need extra rowers if we’re going to move quickly. Thank the sister moons we’ve got this fog for protection.”
Suppressing a shiver of dread, Charis said, “Let’s get this done.”
They followed Orayn down the creaking dock until they came to a boat the size of three carriages put together. It had a small, sheltered cabin overlooking the bow, and a collection of nets, barrels, and spears lining the outside of the cabin’s wall.
Moments later, they were rowing the little vessel toward the mouth of the harbor, and Charis found herself willing the thick fog to blanket them. They hadn’t lit a lantern, but she had no idea how well the Rakuuna could see in the dark. Since she’d personally witnessed them sink a merchant vessel in the dead of night, she assumed they could see much better than she.
“Your Majesty,” Reuben spoke from beside her. “If you could take a step back from the bow, that would be safer. Let one of the Montevallian spies take your place.”
Reuben hadn’t seen what the Rakuuna could do at sea. If the monsters saw the vessel and decided to destroy it, they would come from beneath the waves, tear a hole right through the hull, and drag every person on board into the depths in less time than it would take to walk from one end of the boat to the other.
Her heart raced, and her nerves vibrated like the plucked strings of a violin. Forcing herself to draw a steadying breath of damp, salty air, she braced her feet against the swells and tried to smother the spark of panic that wanted to spread through her.
“I’ll stay where I am,” she whispered, pushing the words past a tongue gone bone-dry.
The boat nosed its way out of the harbor, hugging the shoreline, though being within swimming distance of land wouldn’t help them if the Rakuuna were truly here.
Clouds scudded across the sister moons, and a sharp wind kicked up, rocking the vessel until Reuben had to grip the railing, swallowing audibly against the sickness that rose up his throat. Finn, Grim, and Dec left the oars on Orayn’s quiet orders and came to stand near the bow with the rest of their small company. Vellis, accurately assessing Reuben’s situation, positioned herself close to her queen, putting her body between Charis and the Montevallians.
For several long moments, they stood there, braced against the rocking motion of the sea, eyes streaming as the wind tore at them with icy fingers. Billows of fog crept over the surface of the water, smothering all sound, and Charis strained to see anything past the short span of visibility around their boat.
“Maybe we need to row farther out,” Finn muttered as another cloud obscured the moonlight. “We can’t see any—”
A haunting wail cut through the night, as though a woman was singing, screaming, and laughing all at once. The cry rose in pitch until she could barely stand the pain in her ears.
Her breath caught in her chest as the cry was met with several others.
It was impossible to tell how far away the creatures were. Charis reached for her dagger, though she knew it wouldn’t save her.
The cries dropped into a series of rapid clicks, like dry bones rattling across cobblestones, and in the distance the mist gleamed a faint green as a single ship became visible for an instant before being swallowed whole by the fog.
Vellis swore softly. Orayn ordered the boys to row them back to the docks as quietly as possible. Reuben left the railing to stand between Charis and the distant ship, as though somehow his wiry body could save his queen from the monsters.
Charis gripped her dagger until her palm ached as the boat nosed its way back into the harbor.
The Rakuuna were here.
Maybe they’d somehow learned where she was and had come to take her home. Or maybe they were here to assess what it would take to do to Solvang what they’d done to Rullenvor and Calera.
No matter their reasons, there was only one play left for Charis. She had to warn Gareth and Vyllanthra and then leave Solvang before the monsters realized she was gone.