Chapter 32 #2
Orlith steps forward now, his quiet presence breaking into the conversation like the slow rise of a tide. He is thoughtful, his silver eyes assessing me, contemplating something in the depths of his mind. When he finally speaks, his voice is soft.
“And what if they do not let him go?”
I do not blink. “Then I kill them.”
A sharp silence.
Soren exhales, his patience thinning. “You will march into their stronghold alone, offer yourself up, and expect them to accept you in place of Jude? You believe they will see you as an equal trade?”
“No,” I admit, tilting my head slightly. “I believe they will see me as something far more valuable.”
Varyon scoffs. “They hate us.”
“They hate you,” I correct. “They do not hate me—not yet.”
Soren’s lips press into a thin line. “You overestimate your worth to them.”
I smile at him, slow and razor-edged. “Do I?”
Soren is quiet, watching me, watching the certainty settle in my bones like an anchor dragging me down.
“They took Jude because they wanted him,” I continue, voice low, measured.
“They chose him, pulled him from our grasp, made a claim on something that they think is theirs. This was not random. This was not a whim. They need the magic bound in Jude to achieve something, and now we must work out what they want.”
I step forward, past Orlith, past Varyon, my fingers trailing over the cracked surface of the war table. The break in the stone is jagged beneath my touch, fractured and raw.
“They want power. They want control. They want his magic,” I say, barely above a whisper. “And I am going to give them what they want.”
Soren watches me with an expression I can’t quite name, his silver gaze unreadable. But Varyon looks at me like he is seeing something monstrous unfold before him.
And he is.
He should.
Because there is no part of me that will not become a monster to bring Jude back.
I will bend. I will break. I will crawl into the belly of the beast and carve my way out from the inside, if that is what it takes.
I will drown a thousand times before I let them keep him.
I will tear my own ribs open and offer my bones to the sea if it demands a price.
I will let the salt carve through my skin, let the darkness drag me under, and I will still rise. I will still take him back.
Because I am not made to lose. I am not made to surrender. They can strip me bare; they can bleed me dry, but I will haunt the ocean itself before I let him go.
Jude is mine, and I will not leave him in the dark.
Orlith speaks first. “When do we leave?”
I turn to him, meeting his steady gaze. “By the next tide.”
Varyon swears under his breath, but he does not argue. He only turns away, dragging a hand through his hair as if trying to compose himself, as if preparing for the madness to come.
His shoulders are rigid, the muscles in his jaw flexing as he fights whatever words he truly wants to say.
He is a soldier, forged in blood and steel, but even he does not know how to prepare for this.
I see it in the way he exhales, slow and measured, as if trying to tether himself to something solid.
As if trying to remind himself that I am still his king. That I am still rational.
But we both know that is a lie.
Because I am in love, and love is a lunacy that does not care if I wear a crown or kneel in the dirt.
It is a delirium that crowns beggars and humbles kings alike, and it is a storm that drowns both the foolish and the mighty without mercy.
I am in love with Jude, and love is a force older than thrones, wiser than reason, and crueler than fate.
“Give us three tides, Lorien,” he says finally. “Time to prepare. Time to scour the library and see if we can uncover what the kelpies want.”
The idea of waiting is unbearable. Every second that passes is another second that Jude is in their hands, another second they twist their claws deeper into him.
My body is already moving, already preparing for war, but logic drags its teeth through my fury, slowing me just enough.
Just enough to know that charging in blind will only end one way.
I clench my jaw, forcing the words through my teeth like a blade being honed.
“Three tides.” A pause, a breath. “No more.”
Soren remains silent for a long moment.
Then, finally, he says, “If you do this, you may not come back.”
I lift my chin.
“I will come back,” I say simply.
He does not believe me.
He doesn’t have to. None of them do.
But the ocean does.
It hums with it, an ancient, knowing thing. It shifts around me, whispering through its currents, calling me deeper, calling me home. To him.
The deep has always belonged to the gods and the drowned, to those who sink beneath its weight and those who rise against it.
But I am neither.
I am something else entirely. I am a storm with no master. A tide that does not retreat. A king who will not be denied. A lover whose heart will not be broken. A man who will not yield.
And when I take back what is mine—when I pull him from the depths—the sea itself will know my name.