Chapter 36 The Traitor’s Reckoning #2
There’s a lot of time to ponder less painful things I’ve tucked away—my lineage, the rune burned into my chest. Things I haven’t had the courage to sit with yet.
My father, some lost member of the sea line which makes me the sole surviving member of House Aethelmaer.
A curse, really. A death sentence, if Rhyland was ever to be believed.
But a curse I can use. The sea, terrifying, calls to me through the stone cavern walls.
It’s a singing in my blood. A language of its own, the way of the waves, the currents, the life beneath the surface.
My fingers twitch. I try to call back. If I could pull hard at the water, force it in, I could end this all here and now. Crumble the walls, flood the cavern. Drink the sea.
Would I go to Vaettirheim, then, after all? I'm half godling and half nymph, which more than qualifies me. Join my sister nymphs, see my mother there eventually? No, I think. If I'm going anywhere after all this shit, it's the hels of Eld?heim.
I try to call the sea for the end.
Nothing happens.
Thoroughly abandoned, then.
Hours drag by. A slow march of time, and soon enough there’s little distraction from the pain in my shoulders and temple, and nothing to keep me from prodding at the gaping wound in my chest. Rhyland alone, vulnerable. His crew, dead.
The darkness stretches a suffocating blanket woven from my own despair.
Every breath burns like all-fire, every beat of my heart stings in a dull throbbing sort of way against the cavern’s silence.
Rowan. Her name is a fresh wound, festering in the hollow space where my trust in her once lived.
Not just Cyprian, but her. My friend. My confidante.
She who I had shared my fears, my hopes, bared my very soul to.
How many lies had been spun, how many smiles faked, how many vulnerable moments had been nothing more than a performance?
The thought’s a physical ache, worse than the chains, worse than the thirst. It’s a cold, empty devastation settled deep in my bones.
I had been so utterly, completely blind.
A fool, dancing to the tune of my enemies, believing in a friendship that was rotten to the core.
Anger, when it finally flickers forth, is a weak, dying ember in the vast emptiness.
It should be a roaring fire, not this lone thrum of agony.
A faint creak sounds above, then the soft scrape of boots on the ladder. Not the heavy, marked tread of Harlow, but something softer, hesitant. A sliver of light, quickly masked, pierces through the dark. A familiar shadow detaches itself from the wall, moving with an almost graceful stealth.
Rowan.
That fury flares up in me to see her in the light, draped in the Cloak of Shifting Tides, it's dark fabric a muted ripple in the dim glow of the single lantern she carries.
Its hood is pulled low, but I see the tremor in her hands as she sets a lantern down, illuminating her face.
Her eyes, usually so warm and expressive, are wide and bloodshot, her lips trembling.
She looks…scared. Guilty. A ghost of the woman I knew.
"Vale," she whispers, her cracking voice barely audible above the steady drip of water. She takes a hesitant step closer, then another, until she’s just out of reach. Her gaze fixes on my chained wrists. "Gods, Vale, I'm so sorry."
I want to scream, to lash out, to bite, to tear. But my throat’s too dry, my body too weak. A ragged, broken sound escapes me.
“Sorry?”
"I didn't want to," she rushes on, each word tumbling over the other, desperate. "Harlow…he has my family. He caught me and another stealing from the Son’s treasury. The other woman, she rolled over on me. He killed her. Called her a coward, but not before she told him about my little brothers, how they’d been given placement through Blossom House. Black used his connection through Solomon to track them down. I don’t know exactly how he did it, but he took them from their families. He has them somewhere and he told me if I didn’t turn spy for him he would kill them. And then he brought me to Igor….”
She shudders. So do I, involuntarily. The butcher of Helgate from Godror. Brutal. Merciless. Harlow’s torturer.
“Igor worked on me for days. Harlow wanted all of my secrets. Everything. He doesn’t just use brute force either, but a strange dark magick from the Northern black shores.
He stole images from my mind—you were there, twined and woven into my thoughts.
Half-nymph. Harlow knew it was you. He made me follow you.
Made me trick you. I-I didn’t have a choice.
He said if I didn't help him, he'd…he'd make sure they all suffered.
That you suffered. I had no choice!" Her voice rises into a broken, frantic plea.
"Please, you have to believe me. I hated every moment of it.
Every lie. Every time I had to…to pretend. "
My gaze narrows in silent, burning accusation.
No choice? The words echo in my mind, mocking me.
Hadn't I made choices? Brutal, costly, devastating choices to protect her.
Hadn't I defied Rhyland, risked my life for a chance at saving my mother, Rowan, for a chance at a future for all of us?
She had a choice. She could have been honest at any point on our journey.
We could have figured this out—together.
My mouth works, but no sound comes. The betrayal runs too deep, pressing down like a knife point at the base of my throat.
Rowan takes another tiny step, her hand reaching out, then faltering. "I saw how he looked at you, Vale. How you looked at Rhyland. I know…I know how you care for him. Deeply.”
A flare of white hot pain. I abandoned him. Abandoned the crew—they’re all dead. Men and women I laughed with. Grieved with. Gone.
“And I know about the sea. That rune on your chest. I saw when I helped you dress.
Harlow thinks he can control you, but he doesn't understand.
He doesn't know what you truly are. I didn't tell him that. Cyprian sent me out on the deck during that storm. He put the black-tail serpent in the cabin. He said it was to try and unlock your everflame and to throw Rhyland off his scent. I wanted to warn you…I just didn’t know how.
He was always watching. I tried to protect you, in my own way.
I tried to make sure he wouldn't…wouldn't break you. "
A bitter, rasping laugh bubbles up inside my stomach.
"Protect me?" The word has a venomous after taste.
"You led me to this. You watched me walk into his trap.
You smiled. Made me risk my life." The memory of her innocent face, her earnest questions, twists inside me, brings a fresh wave of nausea.
"And Sabre? Was that a lie too? All those whispered secrets, all those stolen moments?
Was that just another part of the act? Another way to keep me distracted? "
I might never be a fan of the first mate, but even she deserves better than this.
Rowan flinches as if I’ve struck her, her face crumpling.
"No! Never that. Sabre…that's real. I care about her.
I care about all of them. And you most of all.
I swear it, Vale. I never meant to hurt you.
I just…I couldn't lose them. I couldn't. I failed to save my brothers before.
My own Mama. You have to understand." Tears stream down her face, glistening in the dim light of the lantern.
She clutches the Cloak of Shifting Tides, my cloak, tighter around her, as if seeking comfort in its familiar folds.
"I was trapped. Just like you are now. Only…
I had to make a choice. A terrible choice. "
“A choice that will still cost the lives of those you claim to love. Even if I survive that arena, Rowan, Harlow will see me dead. And Sabre…well…if she isn’t already gone you can bet the Bastard Black will find a way to take her from you.
I never thought—” The words die away. It hurts too bad, physically and emotionally to go on.
It’s too late. Too late for truths. Too late for sorry. This is gods knows how long a deception in the making. What can I say to make her understand the anguish?
Rage finally ignites. Not a roaring fire; a searing, white-hot blaze that eats away at every other emotion.
Trapped? My eyes burn into hers. You chose.
You chose to sacrifice me. The apology feels as hollow as a shell, filled with papery excuses.
Lies have convoluted everything. Every terrible, awful thing.
First Rhyland, now her. This feels like a mirror, an echo, of the deception we shared.
I’d lied to the pirate, made choices of my own just as he did.
Moves and countermoves to bring me closer to the family who had been ripped from me.
But I’d done everything in the process to keep Rowan safe.
Was our friendship not deeper than this?
Where is the brave little girl who took a beating for someone she scarcely knew?
A stranger stands before me in her place.
It makes sense though. Maybe she’d been trying to hint to me all along. Teasing her deception. I just hadn’t been listening. Not to her, not to myself.
Trust no one. Trust nothing.
I shake my head, a slow, deliberate movement that sends fresh pain flaring through my shoulders.
The silence turns thick, heavy with unspoken accusations and the raw agony of a broken bond.
Rowan stands there, tears silently streaming, clutching the cloak, her plea hanging in the air, unanswered.
She must know, then, that there’s nothing more to say. Not now. Not like this.
With a choked sob, she gently unclasps the cloak and lays it across a cleft of stone, tucked slightly out of sight, then turns to scramble back up the ladder.
The light from her lantern recedes until the darkness swallows the cave once more.
Faint grinding of the metal door above, then silence again.
I’m alone, but the emptiness is no longer cold.
It’s filled with a burning, furious hate.
Hate for Harlow. For the parts of me that want to forgive Rowan, in spite of the deception.
The pangs of empathy that know what it is to have someone you love caught in the clutches of a monster. To feel helpless.
She should have told me. Should have told me.
Words. They’re the only thing left to hold onto.