CHAPTER 3
OUT AT SEA
Present Day
Midday, there is a knock at my door. When I open it, I’m not surprised to find Vakesh standing outside with a sly smile on his face, a tray of cured meats and cheese in hand. He said he would join me for my meals, and in all the years I have known the man he’s never once gone back on his word.
He shoulders the door open and saunters into the room, dragging a small wooden chair behind him.
Most of the space is already taken up in my cramped quarters, but I don’t complain when he sets the chair across from the bed before moving the small table in between the two.
I smile, glad for his company, and settle myself on the cot, his chair directly across from me, the small tray of food between us.
“Do we know how many ladies have traveled from La’tari to A’kori for the season?” I ask around a mouth full of cheese.
“The last report we received said no more than thirty-five,” he says, taking a seat.
“Thirty-five,” I repeat under my breath. “So many.”
He laughs and when I look up, he is examining me incredulously.
“You have absolutely nothing to worry about, Vari. Despite what Leanna drilled into you; the king would be out of his mind not to notice you.”
I snort my disbelief and Vakesh rolls his eyes with a shake of his head. I don’t need the king to notice me in that way, not really, but it could make it easier to get close. Leanna’s beauties are known for nothing if not for completing their missions by less obvious means.
My stomach knots as I wonder how so many women can think themselves tempting enough to entice such a male. It pits further when I imagine the quality of women I will be surrounded by. Each of them competing for those attentions.
I’ve never been confident in my beauty, not growing up alongside the Fea Dien, boasting the golden honey toned hair that claims purity of blood in La’tari. Though I can’t help but wonder if a feyn king might be more partial to the black locks that spiral down my back.
“I’ve never understood why any woman would throw herself at someone who could bend her will,” I admit.
Vakesh leans his chair against the wall and laces his fingers behind his head, popping his elbows out on either side, and he shrugs. “Power, money, security, family influence, desperation. I suppose they do it for all the same reasons anyone has for doing anything dangerous.”
No matter their reasons, I am surprised any of them still try.
It’s no secret that despite the growing number of ladies willing to sacrifice their maidenhead to the king he hasn’t had a consort since long before the war.
A fact I argued when Leanna first suggested his assassination would be simplest by means of seduction.
I was born into that war, four years old by the time the treaty was signed, far too young to remember it myself.
My only memories from then, the brutal visions that haunt my sleep.
A woman falling to the floor in a bloody heap, tears streaming down her face as she reaches toward me.
A man’s voice screaming in anguish and the gurgling sputter of that voice as he drowns in a torrent of his own blood.
These were the atrocities of the A’kori kingdom, of the feyn, and the violence they rained down on my people had been for nothing more than greed.
“It only takes one death to change a course set by the fates, Vari,” Vakesh says softly, as if he too is witnessing the histories that play in my mind.
I smile grimly. “Have you forgotten one of the first lessons you ever taught me?”
“Remind me.”
“Death is never sated.”
The corner of his mouth quirks up at the edge and he stands, grabbing his sack from the ground and slinging it over his shoulder.
“Then make sure the souls you send to haliel are souls upon which he can feast.”
With a promise to join me for dinner he leaves me alone with only my thoughts for company.
Thoughts that shift from the bloody woman reaching for me to Leanna.
She was traveling with an armed force the night she pulled me from the burning wreckage of my home.
The luckiest families were slaughtered in their sleep, before the fires had been set.
But not everyone was so lucky, and many perished by flame, or worse.
A single line of gifted males has ruled the feyn, far longer than our written history, and always favoring those born gifted.
Those who draw power from our world, the power of Terr.
To the feyn those of us born without that connection have no value aside from what we can produce by labor.
Durah, they call us, and though I have never taken the time I should to learn their tongue, every La’tari child born understands the meaning of the word. Worthless.
Leanna took me in the night the war ended. She pulled me from the blood-soaked floor of my home and brought me back to the keep, raising me the only way she knew.
Per the treaty, the southern territory across the sea was cleaved off and given to the La’tari to be ruled by the mortals of our world. Now a safe haven for those who would otherwise be oppressed, our laws keep La’tari safe for all who choose to seek refuge here—or so it was intended.
With the end of the war, and the departure of the feyn across the sea, an ever-growing blight began to spread across our land.
First, the forests began to die, followed by the fields.
Vast rivers became trickling streams, and even well-tended soil will never yield enough harvest to feed the families that labor over it.
While the rest of Terr remains free of the blight, our people continue to starve, with no question as to why.
It was agreed that if the La’tari ever left their homeland, it would once again fall under feyn rule.
What might have seemed a small requirement of the treaty at the time had surely been the excuse they needed to finally end every mortal life on the continent.
Now our only hope of survival, a small caveat written by our leaders.
Should the ruling line end, the treaty installs the La’tari king to rule over A’kori.
The one man alive who will set the continents on a path toward true peace.
Through the years tensions continue to lessen.
Trade is reestablished, and though rare, I’ve even heard of unions and children born of them.
Of course, my own life is evidence that such unions existed throughout our history.
The tell-tale black or white hair paired with the brightest of blue eyes being a clear marker of feyn blood.
While peace seems tenuous at times, it works, for the most part. Though in the years leading up to this moment it has become clear to us all that we can’t afford to wait to end the line of their succession. One life to save thousands.
I lay back on my cot and sigh, trying to imagine a world in which being born powerless does not mean you spend your life fighting off starvation.
My day is consumed by a maddening spiral of dark thoughts of the life I am soon to end, until Vakesh arrives with two small bowls of bland soup and fresh bread for supper.
He puffs out a breath, pushing past me to set a tray on the table.
“You’d do well to leave those thoughts on the ship when you disembark. That look on your face screams of vengeance. Leanna may have been overconfident in your ability to mask your true feelings.”
I bristle at the assumption. “I like you enough not to suggest to Leanna that you are second guessing her choices.”
“Thank foc for that,” he laughs, tearing off a piece of bread and shoving it in his mouth as he motions for me to take a seat opposite him. “All jesting aside, I have no doubts about your abilities. There is no one in all of Terr better suited to accomplish this task than you.”
“So I have been told.” And I have been, my entire life I have heard exactly that from every soul that had a hand in my training. “Care to expound on that?” I ask dryly.
“No,” he replies flatly.
No one ever has.
We eat our rations in silence, likely each pondering the future and the many possible outcomes of the next few weeks.
I wonder about the mission Vakesh is on, knowing it will do no good to ask him about it.
Such things are never discussed. Vakesh, however, is privy to all missions under his purview, including mine.
My eyes wander to the daggers sitting at the head of my cot.
His eyes track my gaze to the dark obsidian blades, and he sighs. “I shouldn’t have given them back to you. They are a crutch. One you are soon to be without.”
“Then why did you leave them for me?” I ask curiously.
“Maybe I like watching you fight against the darkness inside you.” He shrugs and looks up with a sad smile.
I can’t help but wonder about his own personal demons. Demons he keeps from me, secreted away beneath his tranquil surface. I lift the blades, turn them over in my hands once more, then offer them to him.
“Don’t ever give me a crutch again,” I say, trying to temper the anger in my voice. “What good are you to me if you have nothing left to teach me?”
His head shifts back as if I have struck him, and he raises an eyebrow thoughtfully. He has only ever encouraged me to be completely honest with him, unfiltered and raw. I’ve always wondered how he endures it.
Still, I can’t bring myself to tell him that his friendship means more to me than any lesson he will ever teach me. That even when there is nothing left for me to learn, he will always be valuable to me, simply because of the man he is.
“Tell me about them. Your dreams,” he says around a mouthful of bread.
He’s never asked before and I can’t help but debate just how much I want to share. I know he won’t push if I tell him I don’t want to talk about it. Vakesh always made it abundantly clear that he will respect whatever boundaries I choose to set between us.
Sighing, I sit back in my chair. “The dreams have always been the same.”
I tell him of the woman who reaches for me and the man who mourns her before following her into the afterlife. I conveniently leave out that the dreams have begun to worsen, occasionally spilling over into my waking life.
As I tell the tale, the loss of the blades beneath my pillow nags like an itch on a booted foot.
I know I can’t take them with me when I leave the ship.
That knowledge continues to haunt me more than any other part of my mission.
Though I know they cannot fend off the terrors that plague my mind, they have always been an anchor when I fear my demon might pull me out to sea in a torrent and crush me beneath the raging waves.
“These people in your dreams, do you know them?”
“It feels like I do,” I admit, “Like with each of their deaths a piece of me is torn away and I’ll never be whole again. Then I wake and every bit of that emptiness fills with a growing darkness that I can barely contain.”
It is the closest I will allow myself to get to telling the full truth of it.
“But you do keep it contained.” He tries and fails to sound comforting.
I nod my head, a reassuring lie, though I am sure it is a rhetorical question.
“And the daggers calm you down?” he asks, puzzled.
I shake my head again. “Not really. I just feel better when I have them. Sparring helps. It takes off the edge and burns off a bit of the lingering darkness.”
He huffs a throaty laugh and leans forward, scratching the back of his neck, hesitating to say all that is on his mind.
“Out with it,” I encourage him.
“It may be hisht advice, but you’ll never outrun whatever haunts you. So, fight or drink or foc. Do whatever it is you need to do to keep it under control. If you let it get away from you, you’re as likely to be the cause of your own ending as you are someone else’s.”
“You are right,” I say with a sarcastic smile, “That advice is hisht.”
“I did say that.” He smiles as he stands, slipping my daggers into his sack as he heads toward the door. “I’ll see you for breakfast.”
As soon as his footsteps fade, I stride across the room and pull the small rope that hangs by the door, ringing the service bell. The captain appears shortly after, his face twisted in annoyance due to the hour.
“Ale,” I say through a crack in the door, “Lots of it.”