~Annabelle Keith
It's a masquerade, is it not?
This grand event we call life.
I’d never known Dahlia to be so gentle. Our violence matched.
It more than matched. Sometimes it seemed as if we were competing.
But that night, after spilling her fears about Akareth, something happened.
I saw it in her eyes. I saw it... and I hated it.
I wanted to soothe it, but I had no idea how.
I held her tight, breathing her in as she slept and savoring the soundless, relaxed state of her because I knew it would not last. We were on our way into the fire, searching for the most horrendous dangers the world had to give.
We intended to face them, so there would be no peace for us going forward.
Somehow, we’d found a moment of silence on an island that was anything but.
In a place that was filled with rowdy chatter, crime, and madness.
But the madness of Thorpes was predictable and petty and it sang us both to sleep.
I wanted to remember what it felt like for a while.
Hours after we’d both closed her eyes, something roused me from my slumber.
I wasn’t sure why I woke up, but I felt a need to, and it was never wise to ignore a hunch.
I carefully rose from the bed, glancing down at Dahlia’s sleeping form and the way the covers conformed to her feminine figure like melted wax.
I didn’t want to leave her company, but I felt the urge to go to the window and check on the streets below.
Standing carefully from the bed, I grabbed my pants and slid them on, tying them as I moved to the window and pulled the shutter open a crack.
Down in the street, I saw a woman shrouded in a cloak.
Her petite frame was unmistakable and the red tendrils of hair pouring from her hood were even more so.
I went to throw on a shirt, my belt, and my boots, curiosity getting the better of me.
Dahlia still seemed sound asleep, and I wanted it to stay that way.
She needed rest. Especially a rest absent my nightmares to add to the terror of her own.
I slipped out of the room, quietly descending the steps to the back of the inn where one door led out into a narrow alleyway. Standing there was Aeris. She was just pulling her hood down when I stepped off the stone platform onto the hardened mud.
“What are you doing here?” I said, intrigued. “Without your pirate, no less.”
She was fidgeting, clearly nervous to be out on her own. She looked like an alert, frightened little bird. If she was anything like Dahlia or Meridan, though, I knew she was far from being helpless.
“She is not what she seems,” she whispered quietly.
“Are you what you seem?”
“She’s Kroan. Whatever she is doing with you, it is out of service to her god.”
I crossed my arms, leaning against the wall with a sigh. “She told me what her people did to yours. I can’t fault you for hating her any more than she can.”
“All Kroans want only to serve their dark father. She is with you for some other reason. You must know it. If she is allowed to continue on her path, it will affect all of us.”
“What do you care? You and your pirate are going inland.”
“Do you think I want to? My home is the sea. My people were far more connected with the ocean than hers ever could be. The Kroan defile it and make it cold and dangerous.”
“How can you be more connected with the sea than she is? You were both born there. You both live in it. And only one of you is willing to fight for it.”
“The Kroan stopped listening to the sea a long time ago. When they discovered that horrible trench where they claim the father resides. They let his voice in. They let it dirty their minds. My people… I still feel her. The ocean. I can touch her.” She glimpsed her palms, slowly rubbing her fingers together as if feeling something that wasn’t there and missing it terribly.
“I know how sad she’s become. Yri never needed the father to give us children.
The ocean did that.” She looked up, suppressing anger like it was an unfamiliar emotion to her.
“And the Kroan have been silencing the waters for a hundred years. Why do you think they can no longer conceive without descending to such maddening depths? It is the only thing they believe in.”
“I know there are centuries of history there that no man can ever fathom. Perhaps we were never meant to. And I won’t deny that Dahlia has done monstrous things, but she’s no more monstrous than I.
You will not convince me to turn from her.
I want to assume I could never convince Nazario to turn from you either. ”
She drew back from me a step. “You trust her. Why?”
“It’s… complicated. Let me just say that there is very little the two of us can hide from each other.”
Her eyes made a quick scan of my body, briefly searching. “She’s eaten of your flesh.”
I held up my hand, absent my leather bracer and the wooden fingers that often made it look like I wasn’t missing two fingers. She glimpsed the missing digits and wrinkled her nose.
“And you still believe the things she says. How, when she has shown you her teeth? Her true nature?”
“Like I said. It’s complicated.”
Aeris seemed taken aback. Confused. Words had become lost to her. I dismissed it and thought of the coming days. We were about to venture into untamed territory and we needed allies. I stepped in closer to her, lowering my voice.
“Listen to me. There is one enemy out there that all of us should fear and it should be faced together.”
Her eyes flicked upward, but I could tell she was not convinced. Not yet.
“You can flee. Go inland. Run from everything. I can’t blame you.
But you and Nazario must know what it feels like to be without allies.
Humans won’t understand. Sirens won’t understand.
We do. I don’t know how you came together.
I don’t care. Nothing we have makes sense and perhaps it doesn’t need to. ”
“What do you want me to say to that?”
“Come with us. The more we have on our side, the better.”
“You talk like us few can change things.”
I shrugged, smirking at her as I stepped back again.
“Why can’t we? Look, we’ve all lost a lot.
Endured a lot. I don’t know your story, but I see it in your eyes and I saw it in his.
The fact that you love him is proof enough that this war between land and sea doesn’t have to continue the way it is. ”
“This war isn’t between man and sirens. It’s between man and the Daughters of Akareth.
Most sirens don’t even care much for the flesh of men and they care less that we’re being hunted by them.
It’s easy to flee ships that cannot go further than the surface of the water.
The Kroan choose not to run. They choose to attack and shed blood. ”
“A fact I’ve come to see more clearly as of late. Dahlia has much to atone for and more to avenge. All of us do. I have a hard time believing your life has remained free of guilt.”
She went quiet for a moment, opening her mouth as if to defend herself, but she stopped. “What do you plan to do?”
“For starters, go to Dornwich. We have a friend there and if they really are getting cozy with sirens, I’d like to get her out. Perhaps gauge where we can no longer anchor and narrow down the places we can.”
“Your wanted posters are there.”
“Hmf, they’ll be everywhere by now.”
“Nazario told you—”
“He told me enough to pique my curiosity. Unlike your captain, my crew sails toward the monsters.” I paused, searching for any hint that I was getting to her.
“Aeris, your curiosity is writhing inside you, too. And if you truly don’t want to leave the sea behind and run, then talk to your captain.
Make him understand there’s still a fight to be had.
If all men flee the water then those who wronged your people will prevail. ”
She took a deep breath, lifting her chin as if to solidify her resolve, and then pulled her hood back over her head.
“Even with Nazario and his crew, what you face cannot be fought by men and their ships,” she said. “I pity you, Vidar. If you truly care for her, then it seems you're destined to die protecting her from something that has never failed to get what it wants.”
“And what is that?”
“Madness. Kroans are prone to it and she may kill you one day because you could not see her for what she truly is. Whatever this quest is, it’s to save her above all else.
I can see it in your eyes. I can hear it in the tone of your voice.
But you cannot save someone from madness.
You cannot defeat something that exists in someone else’s head. ”
“And what of the thing in the trenches you only just mentioned?”
“Intangible. Something no one can see. A ghost Kroans believe to understand.”
“Well, I think are all prone to madness,” I said with a shrug and a smirk. “And I can prove that I can, indeed, save Dahlia from it.”
She stood a moment longer, her eyes roaming over me once as if to memorize what I looked like. Then she turned and walked briskly down the alley and into the shadows.
I couldn’t lie to myself and say her words didn’t make me think. Even Dahlia seemed to wonder if she might harm me. Madness was reaching for her, clawing at her skin, and trying everything it could to pull her down where I could not reach her.
It only drove me to hang on tighter. Perhaps one day my inability to yield would tear her in two.
I told her, on the shores of that northernmost place full of ice, that she was mine. The whole world would know it.
The world hadn’t even begun to realize it yet.