CHAPTER TWENTY
All I’d ever craved was to see my parents healed—to be loved again by the beings I couldn’t see myself ever hating.
I tried to hate them, but the moments between the torture, the flashes of what lay beneath the addiction, would always reel me back into their grasps.
Sometimes it felt like my parents’ trauma was always meant to be mine.
Like my life was destined to inherit pure heartache.
If death would find me, I wanted to meet the reaper at the gates without the chains of their trauma.
But as I covered my face to shield from the shards that blasted across the room, I’d lost that opportunity forever.
“Did you really think you’d beat me?”
I recognized the voice, the harshness in the tone, and my spinning head rushed with fury. My scowling gaze lifted over my tattered arm to find Noctis, his councilmen… and the brutish woman from the first trial.
“We have to get you to a healer.” Noctis spoke with clarity I couldn’t grasp in my fuzzy mind, words that ordered and shook with rage—or worry.
He grasped my face between his hands, and I nearly sank into him.
“Where are they?” I barely managed to murmur.
“Who? Your parents?” Finnegan asked. “They were never real. Only a vision we placed into your mind. Some things real, some not.”
“How?”
“The Aetherkin magic is powerful. Finnegan's magic in particular is one my kind would kill for,” Noctis answered slowly, shuffling to my side. “The struggle was real, and so was the hurt, but where you were, and most of what you fought, wasn’t.”
He wrapped his arm around my waist to steady me. I didn’t realize how much stability I needed.
“And you?” I gestured toward the woman, the words leaving on a breath.
“Lucine,” she quipped with a smirk. “The third member of the Aetherkin Bound’s Council.”
“Well, Lucine,” I snarled. “I should have let you fall.”
“You could have tried.”
She laughed, childlike, and my blood boiled, festering in me and ready to erupt. Then, the councilwoman leaped into the air, but her feet did not return back to land. She hovered above ground and looked down at me, beaming ear to ear.
“All a ploy. Honestly, the stabbing wasn’t a part of the plan, but I do feel a little bit better now.”
Definitely should have used the imbued blade on her.
My face heated, fists ready to pummel into Lucine.
Finnegan cut through the raging tension.
“Lucine, that’s enough.”
The woman lowered back to the ground, inspecting her nails as if unbothered. My fists clenched, teeth baring against each other until they hurt nearly as bad as the blade wound slashed through my arm.
She was about to be very bothered, though, when I—
“You lost,” Finnegan declared, then paused. “Yet somehow, you did everything we hoped you would in the trials.”
“The Maerjko trials are complete. And we cannot relinquish the trident piece from our company,” Bru said, his eyes averting away from the god that stood before him, his words lighter than prior the trials.
The realms will fall, and it’s all my fault.
I dipped my head, thinking of everyone I’d failed, every life that’d be lost to the Oricaans, the Royal Vanguard, or the scheming Ocean Mother.
“Give me another chance…” I beseeched. If they wanted me to beg, then I would get on my knees and bow. I’d live the rest of my grueling life behind bars if it would secure the trident piece.
The council formed a line, eyes flickering between the hazy white luminosity and back to their original color.
Lucine was serious when she recited, “The trials were never meant to test your strength of body, but your strength of heart and mind.”
Finnegan cut in. “Because battles may be won with might, but wars are survived with trust and sacrifice.”
I froze. Were they saying I won and represented myself well? The entire encounter seemed odd—rehearsed even.
“Then why can the trident piece not be given?” I asked, confused by the logic.
“Because one of our prisoners, the Writherbought, has escaped the Aeyronox Seal, and he is drawn to power. The trident fragment is dormant now, but if it is extracted from its tomb and used in battle, the Writherbought will hunt it down. Its fury will destroy the Aetherkin Bound—its people,” Finnegan said as if he had recited the words over and over.
As if nightmares plagued his sleep of the creature depleting the life from his realm.
“We care more about our people—and the people in other realms—than you give us credit for, merfolk. This creature will not stop when it’s destroyed our home,” Lucine shot at me.
I realized it, then. I knew what the council was about to ask Noctis and I to do in order to guarantee the trident piece and the safety of his people.
“Noctis is aware of the danger imposed by the creature. It’s why we imprisoned it centuries ago,” Finnegan added. “Put it back behind bars, and the trident piece is yours. Then when it's in use, we will not have to fear its return.”
My head spun violently, and Noctis’s grip tightened around my waist, steadying my stumbling feet as we stood in place.
Nothing we’ve done has been enough.
“It’ll prepare you for receiving the last Oceanwrought piece as well,” Lucine shot over her shoulder as she turned to walk away.
“What does—” My voice cracked, weary and confused, eyes meeting the dripping blood and exposed flesh along my arm like a river carved within the appendage. I leaned sluggishly into Noctis.
I didn’t understand what she meant, but the words refused to form in my fuzzy mind. The council left in sync, leaving me falling limp into Noctis’s arms.
My eyes flitted uncontrollably. In a rush, wind whipped through my hair, but I could barely see anything beyond the daze that clouded my fading vision.
“I have you, darling. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry,” Noctis whispered in my ear.
I couldn’t piece together the words to ask why he was sorry—or why his voice sounded so pained. Instead, I sunk deep into his embrace.
And welcomed the darkness that followed.
An herby blend of musk and dumpling soup drifted into my senses, sharp enough to tingle. I stirred and lifted my groggy head, only for a warm hand to ease it back onto the soft pillow supporting my neck.
“She will still have full range?” Noctis asked, the words spilling out too fast and fraying at the edges as panic bled through every syllable.
An older woman’s hum drifted in from my right, and I jolted, eyes snapping open as I scrambled away. The cot lurched beneath me, tipping as I lost my balance, but a pair of arms steadied me just in time.
Frosted glass, like the kingdom’s castle walls, sealed us inside the small room as the setting sun bled through the panels, staining everything a dim, pale yellow.
Noctis’s breathy whisper caressed my ear. “Your fight response, love, is admirable, but we need you to rest.”
“If you were so worried about my safety, you wouldn’t have let me do those trials alone,” I snapped, drawing myself back upright.
Noctis reared back, his eyebrows arched toward his hairline. Red curls fell across his forehead, sheen as if soaked in sweat.
“Two things, darling.” He leaned back in. “One. I couldn’t interfere. It isn’t physically possible for me, even a god, to disconnect the thread in Finnegan’s magic. I could have killed him, yes, but my council are honorable people.”
I huffed. “Honorable people who force others into deadly trials to earn a relic that could save all of the realms? They’re cowards.”
“Not in the slightest. They’re cautious. I’ve broken their trust. Don’t forget that this said ‘relic’ could also be the key to destroying the entire realm if in the wrong hands.”
“And what is the second thing?”
Noctis swallowed before continuing, his nose nearly grazing mine.
His breath slid across my chin, eyes roaming over my mouth.
I pressed my lips together to stifle a reaction, my stomach twisting in knots that I tried to unravel and breathe through.
His smirk proved I couldn’t mask the internal struggle well.
Damn.
“I’ve told you this before, darling, but you are far from being powerless. You did not need me. They wanted to see if you are worthy, because they now deem me as unfit. It is the cost I’ll pay every day as long as I can stay by your side.”
My frustration didn’t fade, but neither did the growing sense that he was right.
“Will you show me your realm?”
A grin radiant with victory lifted Noctis’s mouth. His head cocked to the side. He was so close to me, I could count the multitude of copper freckles that kissed his skin in stunning patterns.
Noctis’s palm brushed my cheek, lingering as it slid across the warmth radiating through me—comforting, yet something about it unsettled me. “I will show you the entire world if it means I get to be the one to share it with you.”
The woman in the room cleared her throat.
“You will be sore, dear, but your travels can proceed,” she said, her voice soft with tenderness and warmth.
I shuffled to look at the woman, graying wavy hair flowing along the elder’s back and across her bronzed face. She was right. The dull pain in my arm pulsed through the appendage, but there were no marks, not even a scar that proved I was pierced by a blade.
Just like Jun’s healing.
“I’m sorry to interrupt your moment, but our god has informed me of your task at hand. I worked as quickly as I could.”
“Thank you,” I exhaled, stretching my fingers on my healed arm.
“This, here, is one of our most powerful sorceresses. She could probably heal even the dead,” Noctis bragged.
The woman chuckled. “That’s not true, but thank you anyway. It is my honor to heal our realm’s goddess.”
My breath hitched. What did she just say?
“Goddess?” I stammered, looking between the god and sorceress.
“A god’s Blood Tie, whether mortal or not, gains the power and status of a goddess,” the sorceress answered as if unfazed.
What the woman revealed shook me to the core. My breathing quickened, hands glistening already in moisture, eyes trailing to the god.