Chapter 46 – Isolde #2
I took the potion, uncorked it, and drank half, tasting the salty, herby liquid as it went down my throat. “Not bad.”
Thyra chuckled. “Here.”
She’d extracted the Fr?r Crown from the bag and held it out to me. I took the Hallow, the metal cold against my fingers, and placed it on my head.
“Just ask, right?” I settled into a spindly wooden chair that creaked beneath my weight.
Saga nodded. “Ask the Crown to show you a possible future. We’ll see if anything happens.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, allowing the potion a bit longer to weave through my veins.
Show me what will happen if we choose to go to Avaldenn. If we march as we planned and leave House Virtoris to fight on their own.
My stomach twisted at the words. I hated them but thought it was better to be exact. A second passed. Two. Three. I was beginning to think this was all going to turn out to be nothing when the darkness behind my eyes vanished.
Water sprayed across my face, cold and hard as pebbles. Wind whipped; the sound of the air screaming punctuated only by cries of pain. Pleas. Sounds of the dying.
My heart hammered. I stood on the ship’s deck, dozens of other vessels around me. As the boat lunged and swayed, I slid and caught myself by slamming my belly into the railing.
I groaned, but the sound came out as a whisper compared to the bellow that rang through the night air. Spinning, I saw Vale emerge from behind a mast and piled up supplies on the far side of the deck. My heart leapt, and I yelled out his name, but he didn’t turn.
Because I wasn’t on the ship. I was seeing how things would unfold, like when Thyra had viewed the past as an observer.
Nothing I could do or say would change what I saw, and as Vale fought five sailors wearing Virtoris colors, I hated that limitation.
Hated that I knew Vale was fighting against our side because he had no free will.
That he was slicing and stabbing at those sailors on Rhistel’s orders.
I hated it even more when a swell rushed up, unseen by any of those on the far deck, and tried to sweep us overboard.
“No!” I screamed right before the water collided with me, shoving me back against the railing. I grabbed on, the force of the water working against me, trying to drag me to the deep. Water filled my mouth, went down my throat, and then air saved me as the wave abated.
I couldn’t die here, but stars, it had felt like I might. And as I ran across the ship, to where Vale and the others had vanished, I felt as though I was still fighting for my life.
I gripped the opposite rail and peered overboard.
The Shivering Sea thrashed and churned, the water a dangerous gray.
The clouds above hung dark and ominous. Three ships carrying the banner of the sea serpent were actively sinking and many more had caught flame.
Torches on the sea. Fates, what had we done by asking House Virtoris to hold off the king?
Another massive swell rose up before I found Vale clinging to the railing, and I braced, fighting against the water once more. Once it was gone, I wiped the salty water from my eyes and looked for him again. But Vale was gone.
I leapt. Wind caught in my wings, but I pushed forward, searching, seeking.
Hundreds of bodies dotted the water, none of them Vale. Many were already dead. Cold dread gripped me at that thought. Vale could swim, but he had a terrible fear of water. Would he still with Rhistel controlling his mind?
I lowered and circled, trying to keep out of the reach of the water that undulated. Another ship approached, and I rose again.
I wished I had not. From higher up I spotted my friends on a different ship. Vidar and Sayyida had made it north in time to fight, and the pair stood back-to-back, twelve shadow figures closing in on them.
“No!” I tugged at my shadow magic.
But I wasn’t there. I was in a chair in Bitra. Safe and warm and not on the ship! Not present when those same shadows speared through my friend’s bodies and they slumped to the deck. Dead in an instant.
My wings failed me, and I plummeted into the sea.
Into a tangle of bodies. Flailing, I pushed off the bodies.
Blood pounding in my ears, I heaved myself up onto a barrel that had washed off the deck of a ship.
I’d situated myself over the wet wood, and was stretching my wings, feeling for an injury, when I spotted him.
Vale’s hair spread out around his head, his dark wings wide as though he was stretching them. He was face down in the water. Unmoving. And as another massive wave crashed over him.
When the wave was gone, so was he.
A scream tore out of me, so powerful it hurt my throat. I flung myself off the barrel and swam. Swam for my mate. Swam—a stinging sensation radiated across my face.
I was back in the workshop. Thyra stood before me, hand out, terror bulging in her eyes.
“You’re here! You’re safe!” She threw her arm around me and held me tight. “I’m sorry I slapped you, but we took the Crown off, and you didn’t come out, and I panicked. I—by the stars, you’re soaked.”
I was, but not from water. From sweat.
My spine straightened, and I caught sight of the Crown on the floor. Thank the stars.
Unlike the only other vision I’d been given, I did not think I would have been able to rip myself out of that one. It had felt far more real, more visceral, than the first. Was it? Or was that just the Crown manipulating me?
“I saw Vale drown. Saw the sea take him.” I swallowed.
I could almost smell the sea water still, and I’d never forget the vision of Vale slipping beneath the waves.
Manipulation or not, I couldn’t take the chance that the events I’d seen would come true.
“And House Virtoris wasn’t winning either. They were sinking. Dying.”
Saga clapped both hands over her mouth, and my sister’s breath caught.
“We’re not going to Avaldenn.” I pushed Thyra away and stood. “We’re going north.”