Chapter 41
The wind whipped the washing tides. We were so close to the sea, but bars and stone separated me from it.
Hylos was out there, and he didn’t even know my true identity.
His sister. I should have known who he was, felt it tugging in my blood.
Those eyes were so clearly my mother’s. Now, he headed to slaughter.
Calypstra, the viper, had laid a trap that he was about to fall right into. While I remained imprisoned.
I heard a bump in the distance, a rattling of keys. Shards of ice sank in my stomach. How many children of kings had died in towers such as this? Bothersome loose ends neatly and easily trimmed up.
A figure shifted in the shadows, and I readied myself for the worst. I would kick, and scratch, and fight like Infernum. Just like Nixie taught me. Whoever it was would have to kill me, their flesh gushing blood between my teeth. I would not submit.
Metal creaked through the night, and two figures shuffled to the barred cell door, one carrying a lighted torch.
A familiar face came into view. Cedric.
“Are you alright?” Arlo said, pushing past him.
“No, I’m not alright. I’m in a bloody prison cell,” I snapped, relieved in part to see him, but miserable at his betrayal all at once.
Cedric’s eyes bored into me, disgust gnarling his mouth into a frown, as if he held back bile at the mere sight of me. What treachery did he have planned for me next? Would he drag me to Whiterok? Force me to wed him?
“You know who she is, then?” Cedric asked Arlo.
“I do now,” Arlo sneered, eyeing his brother. “Not some unknown wealthy woman needing safe passage to Whiterok, like you said, but the king’s fucking daughter.”
It stung, for some reason, the bitter way he said it.
“And you know what comes with her care,” Cedric said, his dark-green eyes glowing in the flickering torchlight.
My care?
Arlo was silent.
Cedric continued, “Everything you renounced the day you sailed away on the ship I secured for you.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I said, standing.
Cedric did not look at me as he spoke. “That he has spent the last ten years fleeing from nobility, and now he wishes to be tied to it for the rest of his life.”
To be tied to me.
“We will simply both flee now,” Arlo said, looking at me, hope shining in his eyes.
“Is that what you both want?” Cedric asked.
“Just let her out already.”
Cedric began working a key into the lock.
“You’re letting us go?” I asked.
The lock clicked, and Cedric opened the cell door.
“Yes.” He didn’t even give me a second glance. Just threw the word in my direction.
“Why my ship, Ced?” Arlo asked.
“Do you love her?” Cedric said in a low, severe murmur, ignoring Arlo’s question.
My heart tripped. Love? Sure, we had sex.
Which was fantastic. Incredible even. We clearly enjoyed one another’s company.
But love? I cared for Arlo greatly, admired him fiercely.
At least I did, before his deceit. But I only knew a fraction of him.
Which was so abundantly clear now, in the face of learning his true identity.
“What?” Arlo stammered.
“Do. You. Love. Her?” Cedric repeated.
“I asked you a question first. Why my damned ship? Why send her to yourself on my ship?” Arlo demanded.
Cedric whirled on him quickly, clutching him by the arm and slamming him hard into the stone wall.
Arlo was taller, larger even, but Cedric was clearly much stronger.
“Why do you think?” he hissed.
Arlo stood stunned, eyes racing across his brother’s face. Understanding that I lacked washed over him.
“Exactly. So you better be sure that this is what you want. Once you take on this responsibility, there’s no forsaking it. Because if you do, I swear, brother, I will hunt you down and kill you myself.”
A chill ran down my spine. Cedric meant every word of whatever nonsense he was spewing.
I marched out of the cell and wedged myself between him and Arlo; he was so needlessly barbarous.
“It does not matter if he loves me or not. We care for one another. That is enough.”
Cedric looked down at me. His visage was prettier than Arlo’s; pale and smooth from years spent lurking in the shadows of court. But a slew of feelings twisted his pretty features. Was it disgust? Or was hatred tightening his strong, rounded jaw?
Finally, he ripped his emerald gaze from me as Arlo spoke.
“Did you know?” His voice cracked. “That Catarina was alive? That my wife—”
It hurt. Hearing him say it. The pain he must be in. Angry with him or not, I felt for him. His world had been flipped upside down. As had mine.
Cedric’s lip twitched in a grimace. “I knew, but she’s not the same girl I watched you marry in the forest in secret. She’s a—”
“Monster,” Arlo said for him.
A single tear traced a path down Arlo’s cheek, navigating past the rugged whiskers cultivated in Naiadon. He’d spent the past few weeks in the same castle as her.
Arlo cuffed that sadness away.
“The queen made her into the monster she is now. As she will make both of you, if you do not flee this instant,” Cedric said swiftly.
“I have a skiff waiting for you,” Cedric called ahead of us, his voice hardly audible over the crushing waves roaring louder as we descended stone step after stone step.
“From there, if you hug the coast south, you will find my men. They will collect you, and by tomorrow evening, you’ll be out of the country. ”
But then what? Anonymity? There was so much left to fix. The sirens, the war, protecting the people of Oakhaven and my brother. We were winding down the steps too fast, whirling toward an uncertain future. Then I heard it. Siren song.
Arlo and Cedric continued ahead, but I stopped and turned to the sound, drawn to it like a moth to flame.
The song was a vision calling to me. The vision and song I already knew. I was a part of it once. Each note inscribed upon my heart.
The song of a woman with eyes like the ocean who loved the king of the sea.
“Don’t go in there,” Cedric cautioned, but he sounded lifetimes away and my hand was already on the sea-sprayed door, pushing it open.
I stepped into the dimly lit, damp room. At its center was a large vessel filled with water, its blown glass warped and rippled, distorting the view, but inside I could make out a figure suspended.
Slowly, I approached it. The song grew. The vision became clearer. I leaned closer, pressing my forehead against the cool glass, needing to discern the person within.
But deep down, I already knew who was inside.
“Clare? My love, Clare, is that you?”
A siren man with a long, scraggly, gray beard and suspended gray locks rushed into view, and his song slammed into my soul.
I could feel my heart crushing under the weight of his words.
He called for my mother.
“No, I am not Clare,” I said out loud, my voice breaking.
His song flooded my senses in fast and frantic drumbeats that felt flat and dull. As if aged and worn from time and suffering.
“Little princess,” he said through his ancient, tired song.
Tears were blurring him. I nodded my head.
“Yes, it’s me,” I whispered.
“She told me so much of you, sweet little Elowyn. I begged her to take you to Naiadon to save you both. But she knew your destiny, your greatness. She knew that one day you would be queen.”
His music painted gossamer colors in my mind, the story in the journal coming to life, but this time through Aegir’s eyes. My mother, a young woman with raven hair dancing in a tavern. Her laughter unrestrained. Her warm smile aglow in the tavern’s candlelight.
They walked the beach, and the ocean echoed in her eyes. Aegir knew a queen stood before him. A low, bitter note intertwined with the imagery. Because destiny ensured she did in fact become a queen, but never his.
Bruises blued her pale flesh. Her smile dimmed, but the crashing sea never faded from her eyes as she met Aegir each night, even as her belly grew.
Aegir’s hand pressed to her stomach, pure joy flooding through him as he felt a baby kick.
The powerful sound of nature radiating from within.
My song. The one I heard under the sea with Hylos.
Naiadon projected into my mind. They walked in the glade, smiling at the birds.
They sat by the hearth in the study, reading books and drinking from warm mugs, as Hylos and I had once.
They swam through the sea on the backs of the sea horses, and the smile of the young woman in the tavern persisted across my mother’s face when she was with Aegir. A smile I never knew. Not until now.
Then a discordant harmony shivered down my spine.
Mother was older. The same as I remembered her last, again with child.
Every dawn Aegir watched the two beings he loved most in this world pass through the opening, into danger.
Until one day, only Hylos arrived below her portrait, the ocean echoing in his eyes.
I knew her fate. Executed on Highthorn’s steps for betraying the king.
But now I knew her crime. Loving another man and giving birth to his child.
Tears streamed down my face in rivers of bittersweet pain.
Aegir gave her life purpose, and for that, my father sentenced her to death. Executed for daring to find joy.
Aegir searched for her. Even though he knew in his heart that she was gone.
Even when he heard it from the foul mouth of a peasant, a rotten-toothed smile gleefully declaring the death of the Highthorn Whore.
But he didn’t give up. He needed to return her body to where it belonged.
To allow her to finally rest in the sea.
After years of searching, he went desperately into the lion’s den; Highthorn Castle.
Where he was captured, but not by my father.
No, it was a courtier who stumbled upon him, keen enough to know his power.
A woman with eyes like a hawk’s. Jessal.
She tricked him with promises of being united with my mother.
Foolishly, he believed her. Then she captured him.
With time, the courtier became the new queen of Oakhaven, taking my mother’s place, all while using Aegir’s power.
Black shapes passed through the warped glass, the figures bending over a massive object beside him.
Then torturous pain clawed at his skin, but I felt as if his skin was my own.
The pain twisted the threads of his song, inverting his lulling notes into something darker.
I felt the split as fragments of him were pulled away, siphoned into the waiting vessel.
When they left him, he was weak and hollow, abandoned in the dark until the full moon swelled and restored his strength again.
Then they returned, and the ritual repeated: carve into his song, rip it from him, and feed it to the object that Aegir showed me.
It looked like a pipe organ, but with markings like those on the obelisks in the Womb of Nymphaea.
Did it work like the structure? Taking song and echoing it somehow?
Five long years of this—five years of his song being turned against his people.
Because they used it to capture them. Agony sank Aegir to unfathomable depths of despair.
He watched sirens arrive with songs strong and defiant, only to hear them falter, fade, and fall silent over time before they vanished, replaced by others.
He knew their magic was being drained, but the method was unclear to him from his prison.
What was the point of it all? Why were they doing this?
It remained an unanswered question that gnawed at what remained of his mind.
Nymphaea take my power, please. Aegir’s prayer surfed on his song. A prayer he made every minute of every hour. Repeatedly driving him mad. But the Holy Mother did not answer his prayers. He kept his power. He charged the mysterious object against his will. And they captured his people.
The song’s vision ripped from my mind, slamming me back to the present. Back to the prison I stood before now. “I hear your mother,” Ageir’s song flooded into my mind. “I hear her song blended into your own. The song of my queen.”
“Get away from there!” Cedric shouted, and pulled me back hard, breaking the spell. Aegir looked at him, anger marking his worn features. “Do not trust him, Princess. He helped her. Never trust him. Defend your land with Hylos by sea. Take the crown. That is what your mother wanted.”
“What have you done to him?” I looked up at Cedric, tears streaming down my face. He dragged me, his hand gripping my arm hard as a vise. I slammed my fist into his back. Hard as Nixie taught me, muscle memory centering me in the stance she made me repeat. Cedric stopped, stunned.
He turned to me, letting go.
“It’s the only way to help our people.”
“He is a person, Cedric.” My voice shattered.
Cedric’s heavy gaze searched me, something skulking in the thickets of his eyes.
Then we heard it, boots clacking down the steps. Guards were coming.
“Elowyn,” Arlo called from the hall, “we have to go. Now.”
My stomach sank and twisted. How was I to leave? To allow this to continue? To allow the people who showed me love and beauty and respect to suffer at the hands of the crown.
To allow my father to continue to inflict suffering on so many. I was leaving them all behind to fend for themselves.
“Go, little princess. Find your brother,” Aegir sang on the end of a single note, weak and fading.
And from my heart, with my song, I sang back to Aegir, “I already have.”