Epilogue
Kamari
After what felt like days in the dark, a few slivers of sun cut through the overhead planks. The ship Desmond had ushered them to was smaller than those in Vargah but Kamari hadn’t had a chance to see much of it since she was immediately stuffed into a tiny cabin.
“Can you at least tell me where we’re going?” Desmond shook his head, a lock of dark hair falling into his face, burning a memory behind Kamari’s eyes. She could recall his hair falling similarly the first time they kissed. Recalled how it felt to push it back and run her fingers down his face.
In so many ways, he looked the same as when she saw him last. His dark hair, while longer than usual, still fell in waves, barely brushing the top of his shoulders.
Hazel eyes, speckled with hints of gold and green, framed around thick dark brows and lashes.
The patterns that marked his bronze skin were displayed on his forearms where his shirt was pushed up.
So much of him was the same, and yet so much had changed.
Scars nicked his lips and nose. The shirt he wore was missing buttons, threadbare holes on either elbow. Desmond cleared his throat and Kamari realized she had been staring.
“You have a lot of questions,” he said, “and I promise, Kamari, I will tell you everything.” He squeezed her hand. “I’m just so relieved you’re here.”
Her fingers warmed from his touch. “I thought you were dead, Desmond. For weeks I thought I’d never see you again.”
The ship jolted to the left, sending her sliding across her seat. Desmond moved across to the bench and pulled her close to his side. “I was dead.”
“What do you mean?” She kept her eyes forward, focusing on the wooden planks that lined the walls. The small porthole that for a moment had let in such abrasive light had blotted out, leaving the small cabin murky with diluted light.
A deep sigh rumbled in his chest. “The voices in my head have been with me since I was a child, only growing louder and louder each year I aged. I never listened to them before, always pushed them away. But recently, they have been telling me things.” She moved out of his grip enough to look up at him.
“What kind of things?”
“Things about Ravki. About water and astra. They told me the only way to keep you safe was to leave, to find this place and I know I shouldn’t have gone without you Kamari. I know that now, but I thought I was doing the right thing.”
There it was. What she’d feared and dreaded.
He left you.
She snapped her gaze to him and hoped he could feel the fire burning through her eyes. Through her heart. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”
Desmond shook his head. “I thought I was protecting you. Saving you from whatever was pulling me under.”
“And that was your first mistake, Desmond.” She crossed her arms, narrowed her gaze. “Assuming that if you were being dragged down, I wouldn’t want to be dragged down with you.”
“Kamari.” Her name was broken on his lips.
“What happened when you left?”
Desmond cleared his throat, she could feel his eyes on her as she studied the wall across from them, tried to make out the blurry shapes through the porthole window.
“I didn’t make it far, the voices stopped outside the Citadel. I didn’t have a clear path. I got hung up just outside the Outpost, thought for certain I’d meet the end, and that’s when they saved me.”
“They?”
Desmond’s hand moved over her spine, wrapping her closer into him and her breath hitched. “The rebels.”
Kamari sat straight looking at him again. “The rebels found you and saved you?”
He nodded, his eyes snagging on her mouth. “It’s complicated.”
“It seems we have time.” She waved around the mostly empty cabin.
His lips quirked up. “I missed you so much.”
“Desmond, tell me why the rebels saved you. How they found you.”
He rested his head against the wall and closed his eyes. “The voices in my head were never just in my head, Kamari.” He kept his eyes closed, like he didn’t want to see her face as he spoke. Like he was afraid of how she’d react.
Did she not prove her boundless affection before?
Did she not sit with him night after night when he couldn’t sleep?
“These”— he opened his eyes and ran his finger over the unusual markings on his forearms—“are not just birthmarks. They’re symbols, linking me to my people.
My actual people, not those in Vargah that claim I’m one of them. ”
“I don’t understand.”
“Ravkians, Kamari. These runes link me to my ancestors from Ravki. It was their voices I heard. It was them who told me of the astra. Of Ravki. Of the lies that have plagued Vargah. They’ve been waiting for years and years for someone to finally listen.
” When she said nothing, defeat slumped his shoulders. “I still sound mad.”
“I’m just overwhelmed.” She looked around the small cabin.
To the porthole filled with darkness. “It’s all so much.
” He pinched his eyes shut again and he looked so broken, so lost, that she couldn’t help but slide toward him and wrap her hand around his.
His breath hitched, and she knew he felt it too.
That lightning connection that had always been instant between them.
He took it a step further and wrapped his arms around her again and her body relaxed against his.
“And so it’s true? Astra grows in Ravki? ”
“When the rebels found me, nursed me back to health, they told me the truth. That a long time ago, Vargah harvested astra and have been growing it under the city. They keep reservoirs of water they siphon directly from the mountains, only refilling them on Naming Day, giving the illusion that the goddess has blessed them. It keeps the people loyal. Hardworking. Scared.”
With each word his voice grew more and grew dark, more hoarse. More hateful. “They use Celestria as a weapon. A threat to keep people in line, when really, they have more than enough astra to keep the kingdom cool and powered year round. Have more than enough water for anyone to ever go thirsty.”
His arms tightened around her as her mind raced through all the new information.
The rebels.
Astra.
Water.
A lump grew in her throat.
Celestria.
“I would have followed you, Desmond,” she said, her voice rasping and tired. “I would have followed you anywhere.”
He kissed the top of her head. “That’s what I feared, my love. I knew you’d insist on coming with me and I couldn’t take that risk. I didn’t know what was happening inside my head.” He cast his eyes away. “Didn’t know what I was capable of.”
The ship rocked again, a slapping sound hitting either side. “You would never hurt me, Desmond.”
He shook his head. “I tried to get to you as soon as I could. Tried to have them bring you to me.”
“The women who tried to kidnap me?” she asked. He nodded, his hand finding hers. “Why didn't you come for me yourself?”
“I wasn’t well for a long time.” He turned to her, tucking his thumb under her chin.
“From the moment I left the Citadel, all of my thoughts have been only of you. How to get you out. How to save you from them.” He swiped a tear from her face, then kissed the wet stains on her cheeks.
“Whatever they put you through, I promise I’ll make sure the punishment is fit. ”
Silence stretched between them, other than the odd, foreign noises of the ship as it sailed and so much of Kamari was relieved to be in his arms. And another part of her hated that he didn’t trust her enough to tell her of the voices. Tell her that he was leaving.
“Aesira found it, you know.”
“Hm?”
“Ravki, from your journals.” She peeled herself away so she could see him. “The place of your ancestors.”
“That isn’t possible.”
“Well she did. She wrote to me.” She dug into her dress pocket and pulled out the crumpled paper, her heart stinging when she caught sight of Aesira’s penmanship.
Desmond scanned the paper, his brows furrowing deeper and deeper until he sighed and his face smoothed.
“This isn’t Ravki.” He handed her the letter.
“What she found is likely the encampment Ravki used during the Great War over the Whispering Mountains. It’s been abandoned for decades.
” The ship skidded to a stop and shouting above the deck trickled down the cracks of where they were hidden.
“We’ll talk about this more later. We're here.”
Desmond pulled Kamari to her feet, running his fingers through her hair, touching lightly along the redness of her neck where the rope had bitten her skin.
“I owe you so much.” Before she could say anything, he was pulling them up a small, wooden ladder.
Her legs were weak from days being cramped in the bottom of the ship but with Desmond's help, she made it to the top.
She shielded her eyes from the sun, salt and open air rushed her as she stepped onto the deck.
“Come,” Desmond said, guiding her to the ship’s edge.
A gasp tore up her throat, her eyes stinging from the light of the sun, the unfamiliar rush of cold wind and what she saw over the edge–
She’d expected to see a dock atop sand, like those in Vargah or Novaria but instead, the ship sat in an unending pool of water. She clutched Desmond’s arm, her mouth dropped open.
“It’s an ocean,” Desmond said. “Water as far as the eye can see.”
Tears pricked Kamari’s eyes and she spun every which way, looking for land. Looking for sand. For any sign of the desolate world, the only one she’d ever known. Her throat was dry, closing in on her, leaving room for only one broken word to slip through her lips. “How?”
Desmond wrapped his arms around her as they watched the blue water of the ocean move with the breeze and overhead the roar of ancient beasts–dragons–not one but many, as they swooped and dotted out the brightness of the sun.
“I told you there are secrets Kamari, some buried so deep even the gods can’t find them. This is only one of them.”
He tilted her chin and kissed her lightly on the forehead.
Her body, her mind, all weightless and free of thought.
She could not comprehend what she was seeing.
Could not fathom how one moment she was set to die in the sand and in another, she was here, surrounded by the most precious resource her kingdom had ever known with her husband she thought to be dead.
In the distance she could hear faint whispering, like voices caught on the wind, and through it all only two words rose to the surface.
Rebel King.
“This way.” Desmond led her by the hand to the end of the ship, where a smaller boat sat in the water with several people seemingly waiting for them inside. They glanced at each other, the whispering louder than before.
Rebel King.
Desmond squeezed her hand, pulling her attention. “Let me show you the real Ravki.”