48
Araton guided us through the winding alleys of eastern Rubra.
Leaving the towering date palms behind, we reached a dark beach, distant from the noisy, crackling fires of the foul harbor.
Two lifeboats were waiting on the shore.
I began to board one with Amlach, but my brother quickly grabbed my elbow and pulled me toward the other boat.
My gaze stayed fixed on Amlach’s the entire time as the soldiers rowed toward the schooner anchored offshore.
I was the first to climb the pilot ladder, then I went over the parapet and landed on deck, where the crew awaited us.
Once he was on board, Araton instructed the sailors to assist the soldiers in hoisting the lifeboats. He then immediately moved to my side as Amlach stepped onto the deck. His unreasonable and overbearing protective instinct was increasingly irritating me.
I took an exhausted breath, and finally, with a nice smile, I tried to introduce Amlach to him officially.
But suddenly, Araton ordered, “Take the human to the cell.”
“What?” I snapped. “ No!”
My brother stared at me in astonishment.
“We have lived in chains for months, Araton. Months,” I growled, facing him as if ready to attack. “I won’t let you lock him behind bars like a beast.”
His eyebrows sloped menacingly downward, and, as always, he made to argue back.
“It’s fine, Elf,” Amlach said, in a seraphic tone.
I whipped my head toward him. “He wants to put you in prison,” I explained to him in his language, because if he understood ours, he wouldn’t be standing there so calmly.
“Yes . . .” Amlach cast sideways glances at the two soldiers who had neared him to escort him to the hold. “I figured as much.”
“And he likely intends to throw away the key and sink the ship a few miles off the coast of our kingdom,” I added, glowering at Araton.
“I wish I could,” he muttered in Elvish.
I pierced him with my stare, ready to respond through gritted teeth.
“Nauriel,” Amlach said in a powerful voice.
All the elves on the schooner froze, surprised not only by his firmness but also by how confidently he, a human, had just spoken to their princess.
Amlach ignored them. His eyes, so intense in the moonlight, were focused solely on me.
As if we were still chained to each other.
As if we were still just a breath apart.
“Your brother is right to act like this,” he said sternly. “Remember what I planned to do to your people, if we had reached Aegel.”
Those words reopened a wound in my heart, and pain crept across my face. “Amlach—”
“Good night, Your Highnesses,” he said as he respectfully bowed.
Before I could protest again with renewed fervor, Amlach turned on his heel and went below deck, closely followed by the two soldiers.
Araton exhaled sharply through his nostrils. “Let’s set sail!” he ordered.
I stayed in place, watching the small door that Amlach had gone through as the anchor was raised and the crew skillfully moved from one side of the deck to the other. The sails unfurled, and the night breeze instantly filled them. The ship started to move.
And all I wanted was to go to Amlach.
To say goodbye to him in private.
To tell him to jump off this damn ship together, swim back to the Lands of the West, and find a small desert oasis beyond Rubra to spend the rest of our lives in.
But I didn’t. Instead, as the schooner started to pick up speed, I reached Araton at the bow.
“How did you find us?” I asked him abruptly.
Unfamiliar with the weakness of elves beyond the Lands of the East, he felt the sting of the cold and wrapped himself in his copper-colored cloak. His eyes stayed fixed on the path ahead as the wind tousled his hair.
“The voices of the elf princess fighting alongside a human in the Lands of the West have reached our port,” he explained flatly.
My brow pulled. “That’s impossible. Rubra has no contact with the Lands of the West.” Except for the smugglers—who, however, operated along the coasts of the Kingdom of Men, far from ours. “Nothing about it comes out of its gulf, let alone the existence of the Games in the arena.”
My brother huffed a sarcastic half-laugh. “Then it must have been that bastard’s doing.”
I rested one hand on the parapet, caught by surprise. Why would Amlach spread a rumor about us for it to reach my family if he had already planned our escape?
You know why.
I took in the stabbing pain I felt in my chest and lifted my eyes to the stars studding the black sky. “He is not our enemy, Araton,” I said in a low voice. “Not anymore.”
And, honestly, maybe he never had been. His king was just searching desperately for a solution to save his dying farmlands.
“Nauriel,” my brother said in a warning tone.
I faced him with a fierce expression. “He’s been fighting by my side all this time. He protected me in ways you don’t even imagine.”
Araton studied me with a dark look. “I see he just protected himself, sister.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I retorted.
Araton chose not to answer me, eyeing me up with extreme disappointment. “Go remove all that stuff from your face. And change, for Spirits’ sake. You look so—”
“Human?” I said, glaring at him.
He barely suppressed a disgusted curl of his lip and turned away, heading toward the stem without saying anything further.
Plagued with doubt and anger, I marched below deck and locked myself in one of the two largest cabins. I stood before the cabinet, which had a white ceramic bowl on its shelf, with an oval mirror above it.
I ran my fingers roughly across my lips, smudging the red pigment on my cheek as if it were blood.
I looked at myself in anger and helplessness.
Tears caught the black dust spread between my eyelashes, leaving dark streaks down my cheeks.
My brother had finally come to rescue me from slavery and was taking me home. Soon, I would see the forests of the Aroron Mountains and the beauty of Aegel, and I would hug my parents again.
Why wasn’t I happy?