Chapter Twenty-One #2
“That’s why you left the Red Island, isn’t it?” I ask quietly, reverently. “To search for the Relics?”
Killian seems to come awake at this, his posture sharpening, expression guarded as he watches Father with narrowed eyes.
“Part of the reason, yes,” Father answers, tugging at the collar of his shirt.
His expression hardens when he looks down at the map once more, the ghost of a memory glazing his eyes.
“It’s the only way to put an end to the curse,” he says with great effort, as if he were making a promise to end an argument—as if he broke that promise, and it broke him in return.
He drags his gaze from the map to meet my eyes.
“But the map… it isn’t as direct as it seems.” He runs his hands through his hair.
“I spent years of my life chasing clues.”
My eyes narrow. “You’re telling me the Helm isn’t actually in Hellion?”
He sighs. “It could be,” he says, but he doesn’t sound convinced.
“And if it’s just another clue?”
It’s as if the decades he’s spent searching for the Relics weighed on his shoulders, harsh and unforgiving. An unshakable burden. “Welcome to the hunt.”
A heavy silence. And then—
“Morana won’t be after the Elysian Navigator.” It’s Titus who speaks. Throughout our meeting, he’s been quiet—reserved. But now he holds Father’s stare, his voice low and even. “She’s going to let Aster find the Relics first.”
The idea of Morana letting me find anything sets my teeth on edge.
“He’s right,” I say. “The sirens, the bounty… Morana knows she can’t take me by force.
But now she’ll have spies watching our every move—tracking us from place to place.
Then, once we have the Relics, she’ll strike.
” I clench my fists, my nails digging into my palms. “We need to move. We’ve already been here too long. ”
Father nods, his expression pinched. He flicks a glance at my bracelet. “We never wanted you to spend your life on the run.”
My hand strays to the band of braided leather—the enchantment that was supposed to protect me from Underlings, supposed to ensure that I couldn’t be tracked.
The enchantment I voided the day I walked into the Burning Lands of my own free will.
And even though Will can no longer use our connection to locate me, he doesn’t need it—not when he’s placed a bounty on my head.
“You said this was the only way to break the curse,” Lewis says. “If Aster finds the Relics—if she uses them to cross over into Elysia—then what? She just… makes a wish, the Underlings all disappear, and everything is right with the world?”
“I can’t do that.” I’m surprised by how quickly the words leave my mouth, but I know, the moment I say it, that it’s true. “If I wished for all Underlings to disappear—” My voice catches. I clear my throat and try to start again. “If I did that—if I—”
“There could be others out there,” Henry says. “Underlings like Owen, who were forced to serve Morana. Underlings who might wish to be free.” There’s something about the way he says it—the way he refuses to look me in the eye—that makes me think he means Will.
And there’s a part of me that can’t help but remember what Morana said about rescuing Will from his previous master—about how desperate he was to be free.
Could it be that he feels that way, even now? Even after everything he’s done? In playing the role of William Castor, has he truly come to care for his new family and friends?
Morana seemed to think so.
“I could wish for the full power of the Lightbringer,” I say. “With it, I could defeat Morana. I could keep the Underlings at bay.”
“And then what?” Charlie asks. “The Nightweavers will continue to rule. There will continue to be suffering and war and—”
“Why can’t she just wish for peace?” Margaret asks Father, who continues to stare at the map in front of him, a faraway look in his eyes.
“It’s not that simple,” Mother answers, her gaze fixed on the window and the ocean beyond. “There are limits to what you can wish for—a balance that must be preserved. Even the True King must abide by the laws of creation.”
I tap my fingers on the map, and Father stirs at the movement, a crease forming between his brows.
“We were always told that we sought a power we couldn’t control, and we were cursed for our greed,” I say.
“If I can’t wish for power, and I can’t wish for peace, then where does that leave us?
How do we defeat Morana, once and for all? ”
Father pulls his bottom lip between his teeth. Shakes his head. “Wishes are complicated magic,” he says with a heavy sigh. “Truthfully, I never knew what I would wish for, if given the chance. All I knew was that I wanted my family to be safe.”
My hand curls into a fist atop the map, and tears burn the back of my throat. “How can I break the curse if I don’t know what to wish for?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper. A quiet, desperate plea for an answer it seems no one can give me.
When Father meets my eyes, it’s as if my own prayers are mirrored in his gaze, and I already know what he will say. Because while he may have spent years searching for the Relics, in this moment, all I see is a boy setting out on an impossible quest, asking all the same questions.