52. The Nightmare Prince
Chapter 52
Every mark was set.
Warm air, heavy with brine, beat against the sails. The seas rocked our longships, as though the waters knew there was trouble stirring.
“Fins tell me it arrived not long ago. Deepest the darklands have gone.” Nightseer peered through the thick billow of shadows wrapped around our fleet.
Raum, draped in throwing knives and dark kohl, stood beside him looking ahead. All I could see were clouds and darkness. Occasionally, Nightseer would hum, pulling out more of his sea voice to wade through the pitch. Raum would squint more when his mesmer blurred his impossible vision.
Natthaven.
They had it in their sights.
“The merfolk saw it appear?” Sander stepped beside the brusque sea fae.
Nightseer gave a nod. “Says they’ve been watchin’ for it since a call was sent from our Lady of Blades after she received a distress.”
Heartwalker and his bleeding coherent reason. I’d kiss the fae when I saw him again. Celine Tidecaller was the Lady of Blades in the Ever and could send swift reports through the tides with her sea voice. Her lands were nearest to the border between earth fae and sea fae realms.
Tait made the right call. If Celine spread the word, doubtless the entire Ever Kingdom would already know what happened tonight.
“Think they’re going to pull the land out deeper into those unknown seas?” Raum glanced at Nightseer.
The sea fae popped a shoulder. “Could do. Merfolk’ll keep watch, but too far and they get disoriented.”
“Then we better see to it they have no chance to fade again.” My tone was harsh, and I didn’t care to soften it. Mesmer held me in its clutches, and I could not shake the heat of it rolling beneath my skin.
Fear was jagged in my blood, and if I gave in, I would fall into a nightmare I wasn’t certain I’d escape.
More than once, Von had slipped a few herbs into my palm from the Elixists to stave off fevers, and my father had not left my side, likely tasting every bit of the dangerous fear wanting to pull me under.
Skadi could not afford me wallowing in nightmares. I was the only one in this crew who knew the isle of Natthaven.
While others kept watch on the shores, I hastily made sketches to mark our scheme.
I scratched labels of peaks or swamplands as I recalled them, after the word I would add a symbol or sketch for my father who memorized areas and images simpler than tracking the words that leapt around pages.
It wasn’t a weakness; no one learned maps or plans with such frightening accuracy as Kase Eriksson, and once I reported on the scale of Natthaven and the secrets it gave up during the week I was there, my father was the one to shape the scheme.
Not as intricate as other ploys, perhaps, but this was not meant for finesse or elegance.
Our next steps were designed for destruction until we found Skadi.
I sealed a missive in a powdered elixir meant to keep it dry, then leaned over the edge of the longship.
Round, bulging eyes met mine when the mermaid lifted her face half out of the water. Hair like pure jade glistened with mollusk barrettes and pins. Her skin was not scaled, but against a gleam of light it almost seemed to be.
“To the king.” I turned over the parchment. “This is important.”
She flashed her thin, pointed teeth. “My own hand will see it to him, earth prince. Unless you wish to swim alongside me.”
“I’d never see the sun again.”
“I could vow it.”
Merfolk. Always trying to entice us beneath the waves. “Hurry.”
The maid sank into the dark tides and never resurfaced.
“Jonas.” Sander nudged my arm. “We’re ready.”
I detested the first half of the plan, but it was the only way to get through shore patrols and take the palace straightaway.
My mother hid her vibrant hair under a dark hood and stood beside Raum at the rail of the ship. Daggers were tied to both her legs, and she kept one in hand. Maj didn’t care for swords or heavier weapons; she preferred lighter weight to sneak and keep her hands free to use her mesmer.
My father only left my side for his wife. He took her face in his hands, drawing her close. “Meet your marks, Mallie.”
“Always.” She kissed him, fingers around his tunic, then whispered, “Fight to the end.”
“Fight to the end,” rumbled down the longship, catching wind through the others until the sea was a dark declaration that battles would be won tonight or we would meet to laugh and dine with the gods in the Otherworld.
Sander embraced my mother briefly. I looked to the deck for a pause, despising farewells.
Wars of childhood deepened my fears of loss to the point of debilitation, but even then I could not stomach the fear of a last goodbye.
There will always be another hello, even if it is in the Otherworld. No one ever truly leaves. Words from Silas, one of the fae kings, had soothed me as a boy.
I clung to them now when my mother waited for me to meet her gaze.
I bested my mother in height long ago, and it did not ease the disquiet when she felt so small in my embrace.
“We will find her,” she whispered.
I closed my eyes, throat thick with emotion. “You remember the path through the wood? And what to say if any treetop folk stop you? Then the palace?—”
“Jonas.” She pulled back and clasped my hands. “I know my marks.”
I glanced down. “Be safe, Maj.”
She stepped to the rail, Raum and Ash at her side. My mother pressed a hand to her heart, a silent declaration to her men that she loved us.
“At first sight,” Daj grumbled, a heaviness to his own voice.
Raum gave a meager salute.
There wasn’t another word before my mother, Ash, and Raum dove into the tides. Nightseer only hissed once or twice at lingering merfolk to leave them be and watched through the clouds of darkness.
Ten breaths, twenty, time dragged on.
At long last, with a soft hum, Nightseer faced my father. “They be on land.”
The king propped his foot on the rail, looking through the shadows of his own mesmer. “Then we wait for her call.”
The first mark was set.
We were too close to the isle to shout commands lest we signal the elven we were here. Signals were passed across the longships through lanterns and hand gestures hidden behind the unnatural mesmer shadows.
As the word spread, the glide of steel against leather sounded over the sea.
I faced the shore. We’re here, Fire.
Time was the cruelest foe of all. Endless pockets of nothing, only the gentle lap of the sea against the hull of our ships was heard. My fingers ached on one hand from clinging to the hilt of my black steel short blade without rest, and my other from keeping my fist clenched.
Sander knelt by the rail, watching the endless darkness. My father kept to the stempost, unmoving, silent, waiting.
Beautiful thoughts of my wife kept me lucid and grounded when fears of what might be happening to her clawed at my mind.
Mere days after I’d shown her the library, I thought she would toss me into the Nothing for daring to mark a place in a book by bending the corner of the page. It took my face between her thighs and an afternoon undisturbed in the washroom for her to forgive me.
Sometimes Skadi could not turn off her mind for the night. I’d grown accustomed to stroking my fingers through her hair until she fell into slumber.
A smile crept over my mouth recalling the morning I caught Skadi in a battle with Ylva. She wanted to learn how to make my favorite savory buns, and Ylva took the request like she was being banished from the kingdom.
In the end, I found the princess muttering curses under her breath as Ylva barked her commands and drank br?n while my fire worked.
To think I once planned for my arranged vow to be nothing but indifferent strangers forced into a position we never wanted was laughable.
Skadi was my daylight and nightfall. She was every moment in between.
“She’s calling.” My father’s low, rough voice broke the melancholy. He spun around, eyes blackened with mesmer, and gave me a jerky nod. “They’ve spotted her.”
Pleasant memories were cut away like a jagged blade sliced through me, and made room for the ice of violence and rage. I rolled my shoulders free of the tension and aches of waiting, and took a second dagger into my free hand.
Hooded, blood burning, I faced the shore.
My father raised his palms. The shadows encircling the fleet of longships shifted and spread into one endless wall of inky night in front of each curved stempost on every bow.
Sander adjusted a strap on his shoulder. Aleksi cracked his neck side to side. Von winked.
There were curious bonds crafted by alver folk, simply called alver vows, that went beyond typical vows. They intertwined the magics in the blood of partners. Through their bond, my father could summon my mother’s fears; they beckoned him to her.
The shadow wall could take in anyone who held a fear if my father opened it wide enough.
I’d yet to meet a soul who feared nothing.
Skadi was not an alver, but when this was over, I wanted alver vows with her. The same as Bloodsinger had said about Livia at my vow feast, any way I could be bonded to my fire, I wished it so.
By slipping through the darkness, we would avoid the shore patrols, and meet my mother wherever she’d spotted Skadi.
A little longer.
My father bellowed for our folk to ready their blades, to prepare for anything. He shouted for them to meet the darkness. Roars and drums and cries of twisted glee were returned across the sea.
Silence mattered little now. The isle could not run from us, not anymore. The elven kings were marked, and we were about to meet them.
“Jonas. This is your crown and your kingdom. You lead here.” My father waited for me to step to the stempost. “We follow you through.”
Damn a kingdom, sink the isle, I cared little if it did not bring me Skadi.
I rolled my short blade in my grip once, then stepped over the rail of the longship as though I would step onto solid ground, and faded into the cold welcome of darkness.