Chapter 33
Arlo would never smile again. Not on his own.
Maybe if the sirens lulled him, or if he forced himself to for others, but never from true happiness.
I knew it in my bones. He was too strong.
Too proud. Too righteous. Too Guardians-damned perfect to ever allow himself to feel anything but at fault for this atrocity.
When it wasn’t his fault at all. It was Hylos’s.
My heart broke for Arlo and the loss of those already-rare smiles. This would be the death blow to his happiness. He had already lost so much. A wife. A child. Now his crew.
But the ache in my heart was twisting and gnarling into something more potent. When the tears stopped and ire replaced sorrow, I demanded to be taken to the prisons. Hylos didn’t argue. Likely because he was so desperate for my support. The idiot. I would never support him.
Nixie led me to a distant, disfigured tower in Naiadon. I would never have found the prisons on my own. Not even if I had one hundred years to wander Naiadon freely.
This part of the castle wasn’t sparkling white, like a lie. It was all nightmare. Black, bleak, and best forgotten. The cells, carved out of existing sea caves, were damp and dribbling. Reeking of brine, sweat, and blood.
I wanted to weep with joy when I saw Arlo, standing there at the center of the cell among a sea of murderous bloodshed, lulled by one of the two sirens standing guard.
“Did you kill them?” I snapped at the guards, who were unshaken.
“They were just ordered here to protect Arlo,” Nixie said.
“So, you left them here unguarded before?” My blood was boiling.
“There shouldn’t have been a need to protect them. Hylos’s orders were—”
“Obviously there was a fucking need!” I turned on the guard nearest me. “Get him out of there. Now,” I demanded.
Nixie nodded at my side, approving the order. The guard clunked the barred door open.
I hardly remembered the march back to my chambers, drowning in thought. Why kill Arlo’s crew? What good did that do for anyone? And why spare Arlo?
I’d be the one to tell him. I owed him the truth, because this was my fault. I’d failed them.
The sirens were fascinating, and kind. Hylos even believed I could rule.
An offer I fought, but it was tantalizing nonetheless.
Naively, I thought that there was a way for everyone to win.
To help Hylos discover the true cause of the sirens’ disappearances and end all talk of war against Oakhaven.
What a tremendous waste of time. I had my answer.
The one I had all along. My father was taking Hylos’s people.
The thought sank like a stone in my gut. But did it even matter? Maybe my father had his reasons? Maybe he knew how cruel and violent the sirens could be. A lesson that had taken the carnage of Arlo’s men for me to learn.
I remembered their faces, glittering in candlelight as they laughed over mugs of warm ale, enjoying the comfortable companionship of one another. Were they gathered around a table in death now? The head of the table set, yet empty, waiting for their captain.
Nixie lead Arlo into my bedchamber and shut the door gently, looking me over in concern. Fuck her and her concern.
The morning light was beaming through Naiadon’s glass walls, forcing everything stark white and too bright, burning my tired eyes.
I needed sleep, but my mind would never let me rest. Not even if I drank three bottles of bourbon dry. Not with this on my conscience.
“When you’re ready, I will lift the lull,” she said.
I could hear the tinkling of her song like thousands of crystalline chimes behind the bedchamber door, wrapping around Arlo’s mind.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to be there with you?” she asked.
“No.” I would do it alone.
I turned to enter my room, but Nixie stopped me. “Elowyn.” She reached out, taking my hand in hers and squeezing it softly. “Your anger is entirely just.” She looked me over, worry furrowing her pink brow. “And I will find out who did this. I promise.”
“And what if you find out it was on Hylos’s orders?
What then, Nixie? What will you do? Blindly follow his whims as you do now?
Make excuses? It’s all fine if it leads to saving your people, right?
” I let out a bitter laugh. Fire licked my heart.
“But my people died today. Do you understand that? Thirty Oakhaven men who swore to see me safely across the sea until you took their ship!” The words shattered down the hall.
I rubbed at my eyes and lowered my voice. “You took them and now they’re all fucking dead. So stop pretending to care about me or them or any human. You have chosen your side. As have I.”
Hurt welled in her sharp, pretty features, at odds with one another, just like her soul. Both warrior and nurturer. Fighter and lover. But she would have to pick who she would become in this rapidly approaching war.
I turned from her again, not wanting to see the hurt I’d inflicted. Nixie was kind to me, but there was only so much that kindness could excuse.
“Whoever killed those men,” she whispered, “will be punished. I swear it.”
I wanted to believe her, but she had assured me once that the men were safe here. So instead, I slammed the door in her face, unable to hear any more empty promises.
Nixie’s song faded, and with it, so did Arlo’s listless smile. His face flattened and those gold-hazel eyes flickered into focus.
“Elowyn?” He scanned the room. “Where are we?” he asked.
“We’re in my bedchamber.”
“Why?” He hadn’t noticed the pain in my voice, not yet.
He was too busy eyeing the room. Gaining his bearings.
“This is where you’ve been staying?” He let out a small, breathy laugh that I wanted to cling to.
“I don’t know what our prisons look like, but based on the stench that lingers on me when I’m awake, I could only imagi—”
“Arlo.”
His gaze snapped to meet mine.
“What is it?” In two swift steps he was before me, searching my eyes, his hands ready to reach out to me, but hesitating. Guardians, how I wanted them on me.
“Arlo,” I repeated, voice cracking as I tried to gather the courage to tell him. “Your crew … The others …” The words splintered, catching on the jagged edges of the break in my voice. I wasn’t ready for the pain I was about to inflict at the other end of my sentence.
“What about them?”
Brown, dense facial hair crawled across his hard jaw and cheeks, almost a proper beard now. We’d been here for so long. Too long. Because I’d failed him.
“I’m so sorry, Arlo.”
“What do you mean?” His features hardened. “Where are they? What happened?” he demanded, retreating into the comfort of authority to calm his captain’s mind.
I swallowed my sadness. It was cruel to let his mind wander to hopeful answers when only the worst was true.
“They are all dead.”
“They can’t be.” He shook his head. “We were going to get them out of here. You found the portal and … No. No. They can’t all be de—” He stopped himself, then shoved past me and stormed to the door, shaking its handle.
“It’s locked,” I said, trying to hold back the tears that were welling in my eyes.
“Let me out of here!” His fist slammed into the door, the sound jolting me. “Let me the fuck out of here!” he roared.
“Arlo.” I walked across the room to him, reaching for his broad shoulders, his shirt spattered in ruby-red droplets. My stomach churned. He wore the blood of his men.
He whirled on me. “They did this! They fucking did this, those monsters! I’ll kill them all! Every one of them.”
“I’m so sorry you lost your men, Arlo—”
“Those were not just my men!” he spat, tears rapidly filling his eyes, spilling down his cheeks.
“Those were my brothers. My family. Just like Catarina and Cate. All under my fucking protection. I failed! They trusted me and I led them to their deaths!” He screamed with everything he had left.
Then collapsed to his knees, looking at his palms. “They didn’t deserve this,” he said through sobs.
It was setting in. Panic coursed through his features as his breath ran ragged.
“This is all my fault. I agreed to go to Whiterok. So desperate to repay Ced that I ignored the rumors. I let this happen.” He choked on words and tears.
I wanted to fall into his arms and sob with him. But I kept my emotions at bay. There was only room for one of us to crumble today. Instead, I kneeled to his level and placed a hand on his chest. He flinched at first, ready to fight.
“Breathe, Arlo. Come on, in.” His strong, good heart pounded fiercely under my palm. “Now out.”
He was unraveling beneath my touch, fraying at the edges. He didn’t deserve this amount of agony; he’d already endured far too much before. He deserved happiness.
“Breathe in …” I repeated, inhaling too. He tried to do the same through tremors that coursed through his body. “Good, good. Now out.”
I would get us out of Naiadon. Alive. Then I would go straight to Highthorn and warn my father of the sirens. They would be stopped.
“Come on.” I hoisted Arlo to his feet and to my bed.
As he sat on the edge, I peeled off his leather boots.
His skin was chapped and dirty under his yellowed stockings.
It had been weeks since he’d last bathed.
I worked off the other boot and walked to the bathroom, taking a basin of rose-scented water and a washcloth.
He stared out the window as I washed his face, his chest, and worked him out of his bloodstained shirt. He was lost at sea with his men, trying his best to guide their ship home. But he never would.
Autumn 5343 AT
When Aegir dusted off this little journal and brought it to me, it transported me to another time, to when my biggest fear was simply being apart from Aegir during the day. How I would long for such trivial worries now.
Looking back at the pages, I’ve realized just how much has changed in these three years that have raced past me. How ironic my last entry about motherhood was. Its beauty. I needed to read those words today. Because I’m sick with nerves about being with child once again.
We assumed it couldn’t happen, that something went wrong in the last birth that made me infertile.
My husband had all but given up on the subject and wandered to other beds.
For that I was thankful. He spent his nights with whomever he chose and so did I.
But that’s exactly what places me in such a precarious situation.
I am past the quickening, and my stomach has rounded. My husband’s dark eye lingers too long on me. He has come to the same conclusion as I.
I’m pregnant and the child is not his.