Chapter 25 #2
“Apparently, but I’m not sure why you care.” I slowly lowered myself onto the white velvet couch, my legs screaming in protest from the beating they’d taken during my training with Nixie.
His eyes blazed, and he walked to me. “Are you hurt?”
“No, no.” I waved him off. “I was just lifting weights with Nixie and … Never mind.”
He eyed the stairs at first, then me, and then sat beside me. Which I wasn’t prepared for after the other day. Even worse, my heart skipped in my chest.
No. I couldn’t fall into this trap again. He had someone else. I moved over, giving him room on the couch.
“I think I have an answer to …” I looked around the room, searching for the phrasing that wouldn’t tip off the sirens when they swam through his mind, then spotted the virginal. “Fixing the action of the instrument.”
He slowly nodded a yes in understanding.
“Yes, the action, and what is your solution?” he questioned.
“Instead of the other way of fixing it …” I puffed out my cheeks and plugged my nose, pretending to hold my breath underwater and swim to the surface.
He cocked his head to the side in confusion and gave me that perfect, taunting smile that made my heart falter. “What are you doing?”
I rolled my eyes. “Never mind. It seems there is a shortcut I’ve learned of from a book in this library.” He looked around the room.
“They just left the answer, lying around this place? It has to be a trap.” He pursed his lips.
That was actually an incredible point. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
But maybe they didn’t know it was here. There were hundreds of books in this library. It clearly took generations to amass such a collection. What were the odds I would find this one? That when I was near it, for whatever reason, it would glow?
“Well, I guess tell me what this shortcut is. We can weigh our options from there,” he said.
“The thing is, I know what it is.” It was some magical portal, painting, thing. But I couldn’t tell him that. “But I’m not sure exactly where it is and—”
He stood on his feet, taking his warmth with him.
“So, you have nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. It sounds like a very important something.”
He returned to the virginal with a huff, loosening the strings.
“How many days have we been down here?”
I went quickly to his side, drawn to him despite the scorching pain in my thighs and ass.
“It will be a week today,” I answered. Had it really been so long already?
He shook his head to himself. “It feels like years.”
I leaned a hip against the virginal and watched him. “What do you mean?”
“That state they put me in.” He shuddered. “It’s just reliving my memories again and again. It’s maddening.”
“That can’t be all that bad, can it?” I asked.
“There are some things I’d rather forget, and those seem to be the ones that repeat the most often.” He fell silent, golden eyes losing their luster as they narrowed on the work before him.
I reached out and touched his shoulder, momentarily pulling him from whatever haunted his memories. “We’ll find a way,” I reassured him, “to fix the action.”
He smiled, then turned to me.
I held my breath, attempting to prevent myself from indulging in his inebriating scent that was seeping into my thoughts.
“You said you don’t love the man you’re betrothed to,” he said, heavy brow furrowing.
“I don’t,” I answered. In fact, I hated him. The only thought I spared for that bastard was to wonder why he created Whiterok, and how it was tied to Hylos’s missing people.
“Will you not have to …” Marry him if I returned to land.
“I likely will,” I answered.
“Why not flee instead?”
He said it so easily. As if it was an obvious answer. But it wasn’t.
“I will need to tell my father.” About the sirens. “I have a duty to—”
His eyes widened as he understood my meaning. Then he clasped my hand unexpectedly.
“What are you—” My hand seemed so small in his warm, rough palm.
“Elowyn, what has Oakhaven ever done for you?”
It was another good point. This man was full of them today. What had Oakhaven done for me? Besides turn its back on me. Or was that only my father’s crime?
But had no one wondered where the only child of the king had disappeared to? Did no one beseech him to spare my mother’s life?
I wanted to be angry. Bitter, even. But another thought bent my wrathful mind: what about the children in the dilapidated shacks?
What about the little girls like Lumina waiting for an unimaginable life?
What would that life look like if sirens attacked their home?
If their fathers and brothers died in another senseless war.
I pulled my hand from his, despite wanting to keep it there desperately.
“Oakhaven doesn’t have to do anything for me to protect it. That is not how responsibility works.”
His honey-colored eyes searched my face as his jaw set.
“The person waiting for me—”
“It’s fine,” I interrupted. “You don’t owe me an explanation.”
“It’s my daughter.” He grimaced with the words.
Daughter?
“I am not a good man.” He shook his head, looking at his hands as if they had committed unthinkable crimes.
“Why on earth would you ever say that?” I asked. Arlo was a good man. What he did for his men, what he did for Alistar. He was kind and noble. Maybe morose at times, but he had a fine heart.
“I had a wife.”
“You monster,” I said with a little laugh.
“No, you don’t understand.” He looked down at me, pain settling in his features. “I took her as my wife because I was a selfish young fool who thought with his prick instead of his head. As soon she fell pregnant, we wed.”
“And that makes you immoral how?” I asked.
“I forgot my place in this world. My mother … she had plans for me. I knew that. She was always very strict and when she found out I had married, she had my wife murdered.”
The look of devastation on his face made me want to collect him in my arms and save him from that fate. Even though it had already come to pass.
“Your mother murdered your wife?” My stomach soured. What kind of villain would do such a thing?
“Yes. When she died, I couldn’t care for my daughter. I was young and didn’t know the first thing about being a father. I left her with my brother. He loaned me money for my ship, I fled my mother, and became a captain. Like the disgrace I am.”
I took his large face in my hands, lifting his strong chin up. “The only monster in your story is your mother, Arlo.”
“You don’t even know the extent of truth in that statement.
But that’s why I must get back to land. However much I really wish to,” he looked me up and down, “I cannot get distracted by this alchemy between us. I visit Cate only twice a year. She has no mother because of me, and I’ll be damned if she has no father, however useless I am, because I got swept up in this. ”
Gently, I dropped my hands.
“I see.” That was all I would allow myself to say, hoping to fend off the feelings that were burning through me.
Arlo felt this pull between us. He wanted it. He wanted me. But he wouldn’t let it stand between him and getting back to his daughter.
And that made me want him all the more.
Winter 5339 AT
A tempest raged in Aegir’s eyes upon discovering the bruise inflicted on my arm by my husband.
He begged me to stay in Naiadon again. But he’s oblivious to the danger my family would face above if I were to disappear.
My proud husband, capable of unthinkable fury, would release his wrath upon them if I disappeared without a trace.
I can endure a few blows. The safety of those relying on me takes precedence. But there is another matter that I’m afraid Ageir may never understand. One that I’m not sure I have the heart to tell him. But I must find a way. Because I am with child.