Chapter 18 #2
Cutter exhaled through his nose. Whatever humbling he’d suspected she’d experienced, it had worn off. “As you wish, My Light.”
He saluted and tucked his fresh cigar into the corner of his mouth.
The room was silent until the door clicked closed behind him.
She glanced at Nova, who returned a raised eyebrow and a look that suggested she knew Yemi was up to something.
Selah seemed to linger, standing rather anxiously in the middle of the room.
“Thank you, Selah. Your continued service is appreciated,” Yemi assured her.
She collected her things with a palpable reluctance and slowed her steps just before she reached the door.
“Helene and I were in love once,” she said in a low voice, her chin raised in a gesture of wounded pride.
“Lifetimes ago. Not unlike the two of you, only for a hundred years and not a paltry dozen. So, understand that when you tell me the love of all of my lives is sick in a place I can’t tread to care for her, and you do it with that face, that smug irreverence, child, the only reason you aren’t a smattering of dust on that rug is a promise. ”
“I promise I’ve endeared myself more to your mother than you did the last time you spoke, so maybe tonight’s not the night to traffic in idle threats,” Yemi retorted. “Good night, Selah.”
Selah chewed her bottom lip long enough for it to appear a swollen, bloody red as she visibly restrained herself. She finally gave a curt nod and backed out of the room.
“Alright, what was that?” Nova asked after a beat.
“Our Selah has not been entirely honest with us,” Yemi said, taking a few unsteady steps to collapse onto the bed. She tipped backward and closed her eyes to the ceiling, grateful for the sensation of dry warmth. “She’s Ursla’s daughter.”
“She’s WHAT?”
“Shh. That fertility stone is an artifact stolen from Ursla. Rather than stick around and face the consequences, she absconded to shore and abandoned Helene, her beloved, to whatever fate awaited her. So she’s a liar, a thief, and disloyal, and I don’t think we can trust her beyond her own goals.
” Yemi said nothing of the revelation that her family’s misery had been Selah’s doing. She was in no mood to be talked down.
“But what does she want?”
“I don’t know. But with the apple not falling far from the tree, I’d like to keep our reliance on her to a minimum.”
In the ensuing silence, Yemi assumed Nova was still wrapping her mind around this new information. “Alright. Other than that, how was the trip?”
“Hostile. Things sort of… fell apart for the Mer when my grandmother left.”
“Shit.”
“Very. The city’s a relic already. Whatever magic the place had once, it’s gone.”
“Sad.” Nova shook her head. “So, what assistance did they offer?”
Yemi yawned again. “I need my family’s stone. With it, I get command of the sea’s forces for a day, which is much longer than we’ll even need if we play this right.”
“You just said the stone was Ursla’s.”
Shit. Yemi cursed herself for the slipup, then Nova for paying so much damned attention.
“It is,” she admitted.
“Is this Helene’s help or hers?” Nova asked, though her tone suggested she knew the answer.
Yemi sighed and struggled to sit back up. “Helene has no power—”
“Come on, Yemi!” Nova shouted, incredulous.
“There is no Mer army!” Yemi insisted. “Helene commands only the loyalty of her house. Everyone else has abandoned her for new sea kingdoms elsewhere.”
“This is the sea witch. There are centuries of stories, none of which ever go the way anyone intends except for her. You were well aware of this until two weeks ago.”
“This betrayal is a large part of the reason she’s the way she is. I set it right for her, she sets this right for me. That’s our exchange. No tricks, no loopholes.”
Nova flexed her hands in a strangling gesture and roared her frustration.
“Nova, they killed Hurand.”
“What? Who killed Hurand?”
Yemi pressed a frustrated hand to her forehead in an attempt to stave off the migraine beginning to form.
She didn’t want to lie to Nova. She didn’t want to get into any of the details that would keep her raging like this, either.
“Something happened. Hurand was at sea when he would have died. Ursla offered him life among the Mer, and presumably he agreed. He was Mer when I saw him. A feral colony down there called the Hollow hunted him. I pursued, but they’d devoured him before I got there.
And there, Nova, is a deep-sea grotto stocked with our sunken ships.
The Clodion. The merchant vessels. Every last one. ”
“What are you saying?”
“It was all Helene. She hated my grandmother so much, she commanded every likeness of her in the city be destroyed. She sent the Hollow to target our ships and consume the people aboard them. The fishing in the north is scant because she wished it to be, to punish Ixia for whatever sins my grandmother committed against her.”
“What would she need with ships? Why would she speak to you instead of kill you? Or imprison you, at least? You’re Arielle’s offspring. You have a claim to the throne.”
“I don’t know. Didn’t want to risk a war with no military?”
“She knows you didn’t have a military to avenge you, either, though.”
“She’s completely mad, Nova. I can’t put reason to it. I eventually confronted her with Selah’s token, and she had a raging fit. Maybe she would have killed me, but I didn’t stay long enough to find out.”
Nova took a seat on the bench across from her.
Her hunched shoulders and downward gaze as if she were searching for a solution somewhere in the golden rug spoke of profound disquiet, of worries she didn’t know how to voice, or that she had voiced and been ignored.
She was dressed in a white grandfather shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, and dark trousers tucked into tall boots.
Nothing but the shoulder harness bearing her iron fans against her back indicated she was in the business of warriors.
In her plain dress amid this bare room, Yemi thought she could glimpse the alternate, simpler life Nova so often spoke of.
She knew how she sounded. She knew Nova was waiting for a reason to believe.
Just a while longer, and Yemi would give it to her.
“You should know the others came up with a plan while you were gone,” Nova told her. “Luzon, Cutter, Selah. Something that is absolutely less certain to be a complete fucking disaster.”
Yemi felt a pang of annoyance. Of course Cutter had so little faith in her that he’d taken it upon himself to fix a plan for her. “What is it?” she asked.
Nova scoffed. “Oh no, you can bite someone else’s head off for this one. I’m not signing up for any more of that.”
Yemi flinched. She’d seen too much literal biting off heads as of late. She wondered if Nova would be able to put it together, the secret she was keeping.
“I won’t trust anything Selah’s signed off on,” she protested.
“Well, obviously they don’t know what you know, but, Yemi, it’s a good plan. Minimal bloodshed, no recklessness, no devil required. Luzon will be back soon. Just… wait. Hear them out. Please.”
Yemi rolled the little satchel of Ursla’s magic in her hand.
It was hard to deny the allure of such power literally at her fingertips.
She was already capable of great horrors on her own, but the marriage of her might with the sea’s would make a statement.
One that would unify the Kept under her rule and make promises of failure to any nation and any traitor who might seek to try her in the future.
What she had in mind would be a holy spectacle.
But standing before her was Nova. Her love and her protector, who would agree to nothing that might bring Yemi harm. She was worthy of some peace, a good night’s sleep after days of what her rigid body language indicated had been agonizing worry.
“Of course,” Yemi agreed. “What kind of queen would I be if I couldn’t be swayed by reason?”
“The one you’ve been so far?” Nova raised an eyebrow.
“Funny,” Yemi replied, relieved at least for a bright moment between them. She dropped the small satchel in a back pocket of her trousers. She was only hours into the three-day deadline Ursla had given her. There was time.
“Thank you.” Nova kissed her hand and sighed in calm even as the setting of her jaw and the sheen of her eyes imparted stress. “Get some sleep. I’ll fetch you when Luzon’s back. If you go out, don’t wander beyond the lower gardens. Only a fraction of the palace knows we’re here.”
“Since when do you ‘fetch’ things?” Yemi lay back on the bed and closed her eyes as Nova headed toward the door.
“Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m amazing at everything.”
Yemi smiled and grunted in agreement as sleep took her. She heard the door open, caught Nova’s “I love you, but there’s a toothbrush on the chest in the corner.” And with the click of the doorknob, she was out.
The lower gardens of Muris’s palace consisted of dark, hardy greens and stark drop-blossom trees that draped over well-manicured walkways, perfect for strolling while remaining unseen.
The country’s capital city was as red as the mountains it was built into, dotted with blue cypress trees and the odd smokestack.
It was impossible to see from the grounds to which Yemi had been confined, but at least she was out of the way of the country’s sharp, arid spring winds.
What she could see of the ocean through pockets of hardy trees to the east was strange.
The sky was clear and blue, and yet the waters were choppy and storm dark, churning not into powerful waves, but inwardly on itself somehow.
It was as if the currents were circular and static. There was no flow to it anymore.
Was this her doing?
Yemi chewed her lip and scratched idly at her ribs. Ixia’s navy was the most powerful on this side of the world. What if she’d just diminished her own power by granting Helene’s to Ursla?