Chapter 5 #3
“Good to know,” I muttered, going to the trunk to look for a dry nightgown or at least for a towel.
Unlike Kye, I felt the opposite of sleepy.
With my nerves still rattled, my mind wouldn’t quiet.
Alcohol had calmed me a little but not enough to make me want to sleep.
The watery semidarkness of the glass palace unnerved me.
I dreaded the silence that would follow if we stopped talking and Kye fell asleep.
Thankfully, I still had a gazillion questions to keep him talking all night, as long as he was willing to answer them.
“Kye,” I said to his back as he headed toward his bed.
He stopped, tilting his head to turn his ear to me, as if curious to hear his name from me. I assumed not many people called him just by his name. Maybe no one at all. I waited for him to correct me, to insist on his pompous but rightful title, but he didn’t. Instead, he responded to just his name.
“Yes?” He turned around.
I found a dry towel in the trunk and wrapped it around my shoulders. “How does this place exist?”
“Do you mean the palace? The Lyrei Reef? The Olathana Ocean? Or the entire Nerifir?” he clarified.
“Any? All? Frankly, I’m unclear about the difference between them. Until today, I didn’t even know any of them existed.”
“Right, of course.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I’ve heard humans are the most oblivious creatures in all of the worlds of the River of Mists.”
“How many worlds are there?” I asked, trying not to get distracted by the moonlight playing in his hair as he combed his fingers through it.
“Many.” He sat on his bed, and I stood a few steps away from him. “But no one really knows exactly how many, and if some claim they do, they’re lying.”
“No one travelled to all of them then?” I asked.
He laughed, shaking his head, as if I said something incredibly silly. “No one usually travels between the worlds. Not for fun, anyway. It’s a perilous and pointless journey, with no coming back.”
“Why not?” My attention sharpened.
Was he trying to scare me intentionally, to deter me from escaping?
“When crossing the River of Mists,” he explained, “one can never return to the same time and place. Well, a place is usually a little easier, as the River drops you off at least in the vicinity of the area close to your heart in some way. But time? That is the biggest peril. If you try to return to your old world, you may end up a day or a million years either into the past or the future from the time when you left.”
“What are you saying?” I asked softly, hoping I misunderstood.
“I’m saying, my little—”
I lifted a finger to stop him from uttering whatever nickname he was going for this time. “It’s Maren. Or Ms. Blackwell, if you will.”
His eyes narrowed, his jaw flexing. He clearly wasn’t used to push backs like that. After a long calming breath, however, he inclined his head in acquiescence.
“Alright, my dear Maren,” he said with a quiet rumble of displeasure in his deep, velvety voice.
“What I’m saying is that you can never return to what you’ve left behind, no matter how stubbornly you keep insisting on it.
The time you lived in is long gone by now.
Or maybe it hasn’t even started yet. If you went back, you may not find anyone you knew. ”
“May not? Does it mean there is a chance that I may?”
“Oh,” he laughed again, looking amazed more than amused this time. “Clearly, I have underestimated your stubbornness.”
“Just tell me, is there any chance at all to land in my own time?”
He stretched his shoulders, speaking reluctantly, “Well, I guess there is always a slim chance that you may come back to the tiny dot of your lifetime on the long line of your people’s existence.”
A tiny dot. That was my entire life on the line of hundreds of thousands of years of human existence. I didn’t need to be a math genius to figure out that the chance of that happening was very slim indeed.
“Nerifir is our world, connected to the River of Mists just like your world is,” Kye continued as I just stood there, rooted in place by the harrowing realization of everything I had truly, irrevocably lost. “We’re in Lyrei.
It’s the name of this reef and the capital of Olathana Ocean, the kingdom of sirens and the most beautiful place in all of Nerifir.
Even after being practically a prisoner here for an entire century, I still believe it. ”
“How did I get here?” I asked in a hollow voice that sounded foreign even to my own ears.
“You don’t remember?” he wondered.
I shook my head.
“Hm,” he hummed. “I’ve heard the River of Mists can render some people unconscious or even take one’s memories away when they cross it.”
“Or fucking Leslo can punch you in the face and knock you unconscious,” I thought but said nothing. Leslo wasn’t important right now, he never really was.
“There are portals that connect the worlds to the River of Mists wherever its stream touches them,” Kye said.
“Where are they? And what do these portals look like?”
“They’re peppered throughout our world and yours.
Some are more visible and impossible to miss.
Others are just a patch of pink shimmer over a body of water.
Many only open at a specific time of day.
And some eventually disappear altogether.
” He narrowed his eyes at me, a sly smile lifting a corner of his mouth.
“Are you plotting an escape, my little vixen?”
I had no energy to fight him on that newest nickname. “Just trying to understand this world I had no idea even existed a few hours ago.”
He waved a hand dismissively. “As far as I know, there are no portals anywhere around here anyway. The closest one is near the shores of Sarnala, the kingdom of werewolves. It’d take hours to swim to it for a siren. For you...” He paused, as if stumbled on a thought. “Do humans swim?”
“Some of us do,” I replied mechanically, my mind processing what he’d just told me.
“How about you? Can you swim?”
“Yes. But I’ve never swam for hours.”
Even for a strong swimmer like me, I didn’t think it’d be possible to do without years of intense preparation.
“Well, either way, you’re not a siren. It would likely take days for you to swim there,” Kye crushed any hope of that crazy idea.
No, I was not a siren. But neither was Leslo.
“How did Leslo get here then?” I asked.
“The brack? He must’ve come through another portal.”
“What does brack mean? Why do you call him that?”
“Because there is no other word for the creature that he is,” Kye explained.
“Like all bracks, he was born a werewolf, then given in service to Goddess Ghata as a child. She made him her slave and bound him to her with the magic of the body art on his neck and right arm, altering his very being. He’s no longer a werewolf, but a brack.
He no longer worships the Moon Goddess but Ghata, who was supposed to be the embodiment of the moon.
Corrupted by her incessant thirst for power, Ghata was exiled from Nerifir long ago, but she took her bracks with her.
They’re the ones who continue doing her bidding. She owns them, body and soul.”
“She owns them? That’s despicable.” As much as I despised Leslo, he didn’t deserve that fate. No one did.
“There is nothing more cruel than the attention of a corrupt god,” Kye agreed. “Rumor has it the goddess has been defeated in your world by now, but the River of Mists is a capricious entity. It still sends bracks to our time occasionally on Ghata’s errands from the time when she was still alive.”
I tried to focus through the haze of shock and exhaustion.
“How can she send them on an errand when there is such a slim chance they’d ever come back to her?”
“Corrupt or not, Ghata is still a goddess. Or she was a goddess before her demise. A powerful one too. She pulls the bracks back to her own time, defying the unpredictable current of the River of Mists.”
“So, it’s possible to defy the River of Mists then?”
“For those with divine powers, yes, but you have no powers at all, do you, my precious Maren?” he replied smugly, and I wished I could slap that smirk off his face, without turning into glass, of course.
So I just turned my back to the king and wearily stumbled behind the screen to my bed.
“Good night, my dear,” the king wished cheerfully. “I’m looking forward to our time together tomorrow.”
“Fuck you,” I thought, not bothering with an answer out loud. “Fuck this palace with its monsters, and fuck this entire world that became my prison.”
I hoped and prayed to get lucky just once and fall asleep quickly.
But fate clearly intended to beat me down at every turn today.
Sleep didn’t come. Instead, I lay in bed, staring up into the high ceiling where shadows, moonlight, and my imagination re-played the nightmarish scenes of everything that had happened today.
All that Kye had said went through my head over and over again.
I believed there had to be a solution in every situation, but I couldn’t find one in this case.
My only escape was to risk it all and go back, hoping I’d survive crossing the River of Mists one more time and land in the world where I was meant to be—my world.
I never even got to say goodbye to anyone back home...
The thought rushed me with so much sadness, my heart ached and my eyes burned with tears.
As far as everyone I knew was concerned, I’d disappeared from life without a trace or an explanation.
Not entirely true because I’d tried to leave traces like crumbs marking the path of my kidnapping. Liam had Leslo’s picture and driver’s license. Someone could’ve found my purse on the side of the highway at some point too.
But what good would that do?
No one would find me in another fucking dimension, in another world that isn’t on any map back home.
Even if they ever tracked Leslo upon his return to his goddess, what consequences would he face?
Likely none. And he knew it. That was the reason for his acting so unperturbed when he kidnapped me.
He simply didn’t care who saw his picture because he knew his goddess would protect him for as long as she needed him.
I twisted the platinum ring with a rare canary diamond around my finger, the ring that Liam so proudly placed on my finger the day I passed my bar exam, the day he asked me to marry him. Liam might eventually learn that something went horribly wrong with me, but he would never be able to help me.
For the first time in my life, I felt completely and utterly alone. And helpless. Sadness pinched harder in my chest. Pain lodged in my throat. The moonlight shadows above me blurred.
I wasn’t used to crying and couldn’t stop a sob from tearing out of my throat. Mortified, I slapped a hand over my mouth, but that didn’t stop tears from rolling down my cheeks.
Up until now, I’d tried so hard to remain calm, to be strong, to use my brain and find a solution. I’d tried so hard, and all of it proved useless. Everything had failed, as if I hadn’t tried at all. Now I was stuck in a world that made no sense, away from everyone I knew.
And there was no way back.
None.
Even if I ran from here, even if I managed to swim across the ocean, even if I found the portal, I would never come back to those I left behind. I’d never see my fiancé or my parents ever again...
At the end, it just proved too much, and my composure snapped under pressure.
I cried.
Burying my face into the pillow to smother the sobs, I let the tears flow.
Thankfully, all seemed quiet behind the screen separating my bed from the rest of the room. Kye must’ve fallen asleep again already. There was no one to hear my meltdown.
Or so I thought.
Until a sound reached me through the wooden screen.
Quiet as a whisper. Gentle as a hum. Flowing like a current.
A song.