Chapter 26 #2
“Well, it was bothersome when I would train.” She shook her head, her pink curls coiling.
“But also to show the great Mother that I understand it is not what makes me feminine. It is my heart. My soul. My feminine strength gifted to me by the Nymphaea herself that does so. With or without my hair, or my beauty, or my fertility.” A rose-colored smile blossomed on her face. “I am as strong as she is.”
For some strange reason, my hand clasped around hers. “I hope to be as strong as you one day.” The words suddenly popped from my lips again.
“Thank you, Elowyn,” Nixie answered, a bit bewildered but also genuinely grateful for the compliment.
We were next in line when another thought shadowed my mind. “Hylos should not start a war against Oakhaven.” The words flew from my lips entirely against my will.
“Elowyn, I know that’s how you feel, but now is not really the time for that conversation. Not here,” Nixie said under her breath, her mauve eyes searching me.
“You may die and I don’t want you to die at my dreadful father’s hands. I don’t want anyone to.”
“What did the terra girl say?” a dark-green siren said with a scowl.
I tried to keep my lips sealed, but my mind could only focus on the truth, swirling round and round like the swallow itself.
“You all would be fools to go against Oakhaven,” I said loudly. “Even if you are all strong, the war would not be won without a fight.” I clasped a hand over my mouth, desperate to stop the words from flying out.
“Elowyn, be quiet,” Nixie said in a tight-lipped whisper.
“Today is a time of offering,” I heard Calypstra say at Hylos’s side. They stood atop the platform watching the offerings of his people. “Why not offer the truth, terra?”
Something was wrong.
Despite how hard I tried, I could not stop the words in my mind from brimming over, the truth from spilling out.
It was there, on the edge of my thoughts.
But I couldn’t touch it. No, I could not say—“I will never agree to fight with Hylos, no matter how much he tries to persuade me. No matter how beautiful this place and you people are.” The words belted from me.
Hylos appeared wounded. “Elowyn, please make your offering and leave. We can discuss this at another time.”
“Your eyes are like a memory,” I said to him, because every thought became words instantly. “They are sad and empty, but proud. The only thing about you I trust.”
“What are you talking about?” Hylos asked, this time concerned.
Then I realized, before my mind could trace the words, where they headed next.
My hand slammed over my mouth again. My lips moved with the thoughts in my mind.
That no, I was not okay. I wanted to leave Naiadon desperately and plotted to do so with Arlo.
I would find a way out of here. And I would never stop. Never be content.
My hand was shaking. It seemed to have a mind of its own too, and fought to pry from my lips, threatening to expose the truth behind it that would not stop rushing out of me.
I prodded at a familiar wound, right when my palm flew back to my side. “I am nothing to my father, and no use to you in a war. I have no power. No title. I am a terrible ally to you in this foolish war that will end in only bloodshed and death.”
Hylos’s finned blue hand covered my mouth now. He sniffed at me. “You smell of eelgrass.” He cut a hard look at Nixie. “Did she ingest anything strange?”
“Only a glass of champagne given to her by a servant.”
The deep void below swirled and swirled below, pulling me, calling me, swallowing my soul.
“Elowyn, someone has poisoned you,” Hylos said carefully. A gasp shuddered through the crowd as murmurs spread like a brushfire. “The effects start with truth telling.”
Calypstra watched beside him, her black eyes swirling like the dark pool below.
“Then hallucinations.”
My eyes flared and my pulse quickened. Hallucinations?
“You should be okay.”
Should be?
“Elowyn, listen. You must not think of anything you do not wish to say. You have control over this. Over your thoughts. But you will share anything that comes to mind.” His words washed over me like the tide on a beach. “Avoid what you are not ready to say.”
The room spun around at a dizzying speed, blood whooshing in my ears with thoughts that threatened to tell all.
There is a journal under the pillow in my chambers.
His mother’s journal. In it is the secret of how to escape Naiadon.
Which I plan to do. Escape. With Arlo. With his men.
My lips moved with the thoughts against my will under Hylos’s blue hand, the only thing keeping my secrets concealed.
“The captain,” Nixie said at my side, her voice clamoring like a thousand church bells. But with the captain only came thoughts of escape, of plotting. How we worked together each day in the library.
My lips ran with betraying words.
“I’ve seen how you look at him, you think he’s handsome. Think of that,” Nixie declared. My thoughts wound around Arlo, the sweet warmth in his eyes. Of his body. And instead of shoving them down, like I often did, I allowed them to unfold.
Nixie was right, that was a truth I could tell.
How his sea-sharpened body made mine feel hot and alive.
How his perfect, slender fingers would play the virginal so well, and I longed for them inside me, curling just right with his beautiful mouth doing the rest of the job.
How I knew it when they first touched me.
Even if it was to force me in that damned room, the bastard. The domineering, glorious bastard.
“Will that work? Do you have him in your mind?” Hylos asked.
When he spoke, his eyes morphed into something else. Someone else. Truth. He was the truth.
I nodded yes.
“Good. Nixie, take her to her room immediately. This will only get worse. Stay by her side. I’ll send Lumina to help, maybe she knows of a cure.”
Hylos finally removed his hand, and the words were like a deluge: “Captain Arlo Fynn is so bloody handsome, it is absurd. Even if he is an overbearing asshole. He is exquisite. Resplendent.”
“Come on, let’s get you out of here,” Nixie said as she ushered me through the sea of words spinning around me, the world tilted on a bizarre axis.
“And when that handsome, annoying man looks at me, for the first time in all of my life, I feel seen. I believe he sees me. For once someone sees me.”