36. CHAPTER 36
Aveline
When I finally woke, I was groggy beyond all reason; my head pounding.
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes as I sat up.
The divarica flower had addled my mind, and it was slow to join my body.
When I finally peeled my eyes open, I could see that I was in a small cabin, and the world was moving around me.
Rocking.
I was on a godsforsaken boat.
I went to get up from the narrow cot beneath the window—a storm visible among the seas outside—but my hands were bound together with twine.
I wasn’t simply aboard a boat headed back to Myros. I was a prisoner.
How could Kallias have done this to me?
Hands still bound, I made for the door and wrenched it open, unsteady on my feet. It would be mere moments before the seasickness kicked in, as it had on my journey to Gothryn. I had every intention of finding Kallias before it rendered me a useless puddle of nausea.
“Kallias!” I called, starting down the hallway and banging on each door. “Kallias! Where are you!”
For the first time since I had run out of the tincture in Stormgaard, I didn’t feel the soft hum of magic beneath my skin. I hadn’t known what it was before, but the loss of it now only made it all the more clear.
Kallias had taken me and drugged me. Poisoned me.
He must know I have magic.
By the time I reached the end of the corridor, I determined that this level of the ship was empty.
I retraced my steps, grabbing the railing and pulling myself up the steep, rickety stairs to the deck with my bound hands.
We were on a small ship, less than half the size of the vessel I had boarded to Gothryn.
Kallias was at the bow, his blond hair whipping wildly in the breeze. The salty ocean spray crashed against the sides of the hull, misting the deck and those standing on it.
“Kallias!” My voice boomed with rage as I stormed forward. When I reached him, I held my bound hands up to his face. “What is this? Am I your prisoner now? Tell me what is going on.”
Kallias’s gaze held a sympathy I couldn’t quite understand, given the current circumstances. He gently pressed a hand to my shoulder, but I recoiled from his touch.
“This is for your own safety and protection. I am not sure what occurred in Gothryn that would have you so hesitant to return home—to return to me—but I intend to find out. We will be home by day's end.”
Days’ end. Had I been knocked out for two entire days?
“Why would you take me against my will? Why would you bind my wrists?” I seethed.
Kallias leaned toward me, his voice only loud enough for me to hear above the crashing waves. “Because I can’t very well come back empty-handed. Not with the knowledge my mother attained from our dearest Lavanya.”
My mind was reeling. “My mother? What does she have to do with this? Leave her out of it!”
Kallias’s smile was sad. “I would have loved to. Only—she was the single person who could reveal to us your true parentage. I must agree with what you are about to say. That it wasn’t right for my mother to have captured her and tortured her—”
“Torture?” My mouth was suddenly dry.
“But the ends justify the means. This is good news! You needn’t worry…your mother is safe. And what she revealed to us has allowed mother to embrace our union. She is finally going to let us be together. This is the best possible outcome.”
He was crazy. He had to be…that was the only reasonable explanation.
Had he always been this callous? Or had he been putting on an act the whole time we had been together? I couldn’t fathom that I had fallen for a man so dense. A man who would think torturing my mother made the ends justify the means.
I cleared my throat. “What did she reveal to you?”
Kallias’s throat bobbed. “I think it best if we wait to reveal that bit of information until we are back on Myrosian soil, and you can speak with Lavanya yourself.”
“Tell me!” I reached for him, desperate for the piece of information he dared hold against me.
The answer to where my forbidden magic originated.
Whatever it was that would allow Queen Dyata to finally give us her blessing, though I no longer wanted it.
I threaded my bound hands into the folds of his tunic.
Funny how things could change so much in merely a few weeks.
Kallias shook his head. He reached out, grasping a piece of raven hair that had escaped my braid and tucked it softly behind my ear.
“You should go back below, dearest. Get some rest. I will wake you when it is time to disembark.”
He turned from me, casting his gaze back out to sea without another word.
My chest felt hollow, the space where my heart should be entirely torn open.
Kallias had captured me and forced me back to Myros. Against my will. He left Enora and Quinnick behind. He completely disregarded everything that I wanted in favor of what he thought was best. It was suffocating.
I racked my brain, but I couldn’t remember it always being this way.
As I watched him at the railing, his back turned toward me, I realized with startling clarity that there was a difference between wanting to be with someone and not wanting to lose them.
I hadn’t wanted to lose Kallias, but in truth, I was no longer in love with him. If I ever truly was to begin with. It didn’t feel anything like it did with Sorin.
It never had.
Kallias had taken me from my mate.
I hadn’t believed Sorin at first…but it had to be true. The farther we sailed from Gothryn, the tighter the tug in my chest grew. As if I were being drawn to him from across the sea.
“You aren’t who I thought you were,” I whispered at Kallias’s back, turning from him.
I had thought he was the love of my life.
I had no idea what love was before. It certainly wasn’t this.
Little Dove.
My gaze dropped to my bound hands.
I was caged.
Kallias turned back toward me, expression unreadable. “And neither are you. I thought you loved me, Aveline. But it appears your mind can be easily changed. So fickle. Temperamental and inconsistent. My mother warned me you were too unpredictable…”
He looked…disappointed.
“That is the nature of the tide, is it not?” I sneered as I turned from him, giving him my back as I returned below deck.
With poison running heavy through my blood and my hands bound, I was reduced to a magicless human once more. I was a bird in a cage, just as Sorin had said. I couldn’t even use my newfound magic to break myself free.
I threw myself back down on the cot, unable to find a comfortable position with the twine around my wrists rubbing and burning against my skin.
There were many ways I could wear it down and break free, but where would I go?
I couldn’t very well swim back to Gothryn.
I had to see this through…and I had to speak with my mother.
I needed to know what Kallias and Queen Dyata knew. What my mother had kept from me all these years.
I needed to know what I was.
Who I was.
My mind was racing, sleep evading me. The waves crashed against the hull in a rhythmic beat, though it did nothing to soothe me. I was a raging storm, entirely unmoored.
What if Gothryn was never the enemy at all? What if the evil had been on my own doorstep all this time? In my own bed? What if I had been wrong about everything?
I wasn’t sure I was ready to face that yet.
But worst of all—the question that kept me up as dusk descended and thrust the ship into darkness—was the question of my unknown parentage.
What if the evil one…was me?