Chapter 49 The Return
Chapter forty-nine
The Return
-Maris-
The morning was quiet. She stood at the edge of the ship’s gangplank, salt wind tugging at the edges of her cloak her boots planted against the deteriorating black stone dock.
Behind her, the Hollow’s silver-veined temple glimmered faintly in the rising sun.
No longer ancient and asleep, but reborn and watching.
The Argo waited before her, sails half-furled like a creature not quite awake.
She should’ve been proud. Victorious.
Instead, she felt… empty.
The sigil on her hand no longer pulsed. Her magic was calm. A river no longer rushing but simply existing. She should have found comfort in it. But sleep hadn’t come easy. Not with the silence in her chest. Not after the realization that the bond between her and Kael was simply… gone.
Maris’s fingers curled around the railing.
She hadn’t told Alarik. Not Serenya. But she knew and that was enough she felt it in the stillness of her veins, where once his emotions had echoed distantly.
She’d reached for him again last night in a moment of weakness, of ache.
And felt only her own mind. Her own despair. Her own grief.
The words of the sickening creature echoed again, cold and prophetic.
Lose your bonded.
Behind her, the others bustled— crew loaded supplies, Serenya issued clipped commands, Alarik spoke quietly to Vireth and Kastor near the helm. But it all sounded distant, like she stood behind a pane of glass.
Her stomach twisted. A deep grief she didn’t know how to name.
He’d never seen her. Not for what she was. He had loved her as a woman. As a tether. As something warm to press against the chill of his throne. But had he ever bowed to her the way Alarik had in the Hollow? Had Kael ever truly believed in what she might become?
Maris swallowed hard, blinking against the wind.
You were always a conquest in his war. The thought was cruel. But cruel things had a way of ringing truest when whispered in the wake of loss.
“Are you ready?” Serenya’s voice pulled her from the storm of her thoughts. The warrior stood beside her, calm blue eyes scanning her face.
“No,” Maris whispered. “But let’s go anyway.”
Serenya nodded, saying nothing more. Just rested a hand lightly on Maris’s back and guided her toward the ship.
As the Argo moved away from the island, its sails snapped full in the wind, Maris turned back one last time.
The Hollow stood in silent farewell.
And in her heart, something deep and splintered, ached to know if Kael even felt the hole she now carried like a scar.
-Alarik-
She had not been the same since returning from her lone hike to the Temple in the late hours of the night. He had considered offering to accompany her but he thought better of it. He knew well what it was like to desire silence.
The peace given from time spent alone in reflection and thought.
When she descended the steps of the Hollow’s temple, he sensed a change within her presence beyond her new found power.
In the hush of the camp, when the warriors returned to their fire and whispered prayers in her name, Maris had sat apart. Not withdrawn, but inward. Her silence was not out of pride or glory, it was mourning. A reckoning he could not name.
Now, aboard the Argo, her silence persisted.
She trained with Serenya on the deck, booted feet gliding over slick planks with lethal grace.
She had always been nimble, but slightly clumsy.
But now she moved like she had danced with time itself.
Calculated. Intentional. A goddess’s echo embedded in every footfall.
He leaned against the mast, arms crossed, sword belted at his hip, watching her.
Maris feinted left, spun low, and swept Serenya’s legs out from under her. The blonde hit the deck with a grunt and a breathless laugh. Serenya painted. “Gods, you’ve changed.”
Maris offered a hand, her expression unreadable.
Yes, she had changed.
And not just in body.
Her eyes still shimmered faintly, even beneath the cloudy midday sky. Her smile didn’t reach as far. Her silence was heavier. As if she had come to accept something none of them yet knew.
He saw it.
Felt it.
And it stirred something fierce and awful in his chest.
A devotion that made him feel like the fool of every ancient tale. One who’d stolen fire and would burn for it. The one who would unravel kingdoms just to keep her from fraying.
He pressed his hand against the hilt of his blade, grounding himself in steel and truth.
He tilted his face toward the sky, toward the shape of Eiren etched into the clouds in his mind, however distant.
He had never prayed to the dreaming goddess before. Not even after Elenwe.
But now…
“Guide me,” he said softly. “Show me how to be enough for her. Or make me strong enough to let her go if I am not.”
The wind caught the edge of his coat.
And he swore, just for a breath, the sigil on her hand flickered in response across the deck —an echo of divinity answering back.
The sun dipped low, casting molten light across the deck in fading ribbons of gold and wine. Most of the crew had retired below or to quiet duties. Only the sound of water slapping the hull and the occasional creak of the ship filled the air.
Maris stood at the railing.
Back to him. The silver-stained sigil glowing faintly against her hand as it rested on the worn wood. She didn’t turn when he approached but she didn’t tense either.
“I come bearing apologies,” Alarik said softly, voice low with teasing warmth. “And a bruised ego.”
That earned him a sideways glance, her brow lifted just enough to invite more.
“I once told you,” he continued, stepping beside her, “that you nearly shattered. And then, you reminded me, quite dramatically glow-eyed and terrifying, that you don’t break.”
She huffed a breath that was almost a laugh. “It’s not my fault you made assumptions based on me being conscious and breathing.”
He smirked. “Assumptions were clearly my downfall.”
Maris turned her gaze forward again, into the wind. Her expression softened, but her voice dropped. “You’re not the only one who did.”
The moment shifted.
His amusement faded into something heavier. “I meant it, you know,” he said, quieter now. “I didn’t just kneel for show. You’ve become something the rest of us can only chase.”
She didn’t answer.
And so he added, voice gentler, more reverent, “But that doesn’t mean I think you need to carry it alone.”
She stared out at the sea. A sadness in her eyes.
Then said, too quietly, “I can’t feel him anymore.”
Alarik didn’t respond immediately.
The abrupt change in her mood from her time spent in solitude clicked into place. His heart ached for her, knowing the loss of a betrothal bond with the death of Elenwe. He stood only watching the horizon, the ghost of Nerium’s cliffs still days ahead on the horizon.
“It’s like… he was a kindling inside me,” she continued, voice trembling. “And now it's just dark.”
A pause.
“It was the crown. The Veil terror warned me. “Find your crown, lose your bonded.”
He turned to her slowly, heart aching, jaw tight. “And does that mean you would give it all back? To restore your tether to him.”
Maris finally looked up at him eyes rimmed with old sorrow and new strength. “No,” she whispered. “But it doesn’t mean I don’t miss what I had.”
He nodded. “Even if it was built on half-truths?”
A beat.
She didn’t answer. Not with words.
But her silence said enough.
He cursed himself for speaking so plainly during her pain.
He shifted slightly closer, his knuckles brushing the side of hers on the rail. “You think yourself cruel for what you feel now… for what stirs in your chest when I look at you like this, for the joy you feel at the prospect of freedom.”
She drew a breath as though to deny it, but the lie caught in her throat.
He leaned in, eyes searing her profile, voice rough. “I was in that dream, Maris. Before the goddess gave you your quest to find the crown. That wasn’t your imagination. You called for me.”
She stared at him, wide-eyed. Barely breathing.
“You knelt before me,” she said, voice strained. “You said I was burning, and I — I let you..”
“I would kneel the same before you again,” Alarik interrupted gently. “Even now, if only to ease your sorrows.”
He stepped back just slightly, just enough to offer her the choice to close the distance.
“I meant what I’ve said. You are not a pawn in some war between me and Kael. You are the war’s undoing. A new war, to be unleashed on the cruel gods who cursed our continent.”
Maris turned away again, tears glinting at the corners of her eyes. “You don’t understand, if I admit that, if I let myself feel whatever this is —what does that make me?”
He didn’t hesitate.
“Honest.”
A long silence stretched between them, weighted with memory and fire.
Finally, she whispered, “I don’t want to be anyone’s ruin.”
“You aren't,” Alarik said. “You’re a salvation.”
And with that, he left her.
Because he knew… if he stayed a moment longer, he would have kissed her and whispered promises to her under the stars.
And he wasn’t sure she would’ve stopped him.