Chapter 27
“I’m not angry at you, Nylah,” Soulara whispered once Nylah’s connection with Autumn had vanished. Behind Soulara’s neck, Nylah’s physical form peeked out from between strands of her silver hair.
Hope had alighted within Soulara when she saw Nylah slip into the meeting room. By the time they swam out of the room, memories of Autumn’s choice crashed down on her. That choice smothered everything, leaving nothing but destruction in its wake.
The ray bumped her lightly on the cheek before floating back to settle behind Soulara’s hair. It had taken almost no time to get used to the small weight against her neck. So strange for it to feel so natural, as though they had always been this way, when she had never had a familiar or ever dreamed about having one.
Soulara shook her head and focused again on Nylah.
“Keep an eye on her please. I don’t want to see her, but I don’t want her harmed.” Soulara did want to see Autumn, with all her heart. Which was the problem. If she saw Autumn, she had no idea what jeopardy she would put her heart and her people in.
A warm shudder tickled her back, and she couldn’t be sure if Nylah was laughing at her, or scolding her. She didn’t want to reach up and find out.
“Soulara, will you be returning to the meeting?” Honour spoke behind her.
Soulara turned slowly, the weight of the world and more pressing upon her shoulders.
“No. I need to follow up on another matter.”
“Autumn?” Honour looked at Soulara as though she could read her thoughts. And maybe she could. Soulara’s training to be royal had its gaps. She’d always believed she had mastered the ability to hide her thoughts behind a neutral expression. It would seem she had not mastered the skill after all.
“You know what we need for this battle. You know better than I do.”
“No shit.” Honour pursed her lips, a mischievous twinkle in her eyes.
“Thank you,” Soulara said as she swam toward Honour. As she passed, she intentionally brushed their shoulders.
“Soulara.” Honour’s voice was that of her friend, not the fearless general who would stand by her side and fight until her last breath.
“Yes?” Soulara turned around, her fluke curving into a crescent moon so she could gently move her end fins just enough to keep from staying entirely still.
“Be careful, Princess. Reine wouldn’t be the same without you.”
“Nor without you.” Soulara dipped her head once, flipped over again and pushed her fluke down with as much force as she dared while still in the castle walls.
She didn’t like the taste of the lie she’d told Honour. It lingered on her lips, tart and toxic.
“I didn’t lie,” she muttered for the tenth time. She needed to sort out her feelings toward Autumn and what she could do to ensure that when her people went to war, no other thoughts would distract her.
But she didn’t head toward the surface.
She knew the way well enough now, the turns and dips in current that led to her mother’s home.
“Soulara?” Milan met her at the door, concern etched into her fine beautiful features.
“I’m lost. I don’t know what to do.”
“Oh, sweet child.” Milan opened her arms and pulled her daughter into them.
Soulara breathed in the familiar scent, and for a time, too short a time, she allowed herself to be just Soulara, Milan and Pregtox’s daughter. Nothing else. How she wished those two things would be enough for her to save them all. But this time there was no way of getting away from the throne. She’d known it, and yet still she had yearned to be proved wrong.
Milan swam them to a low moss-covered rock, large enough to fit the two of them several times over.
“You’re finally learning how wonderful and how horrible love can truly be.”
“Why?”
“Why are you learning about love?” Milan looked confused.
“No.” Soulara shook her head, trying to find the words. Because this wasn’t about Autumn. Not yet anyway. This was about her parents. “Why did you just walk away? You knew what it would be like before you two got together, but you still did it, only to walk away later. Did you resent him?”
“No.” Milan didn’t look shocked or offended by the question, and while the pain and confusion regarding Autumn all but consumed Soulara, she focused hard on her mother. Did her parents’ relationship hold answers for her own woes with Autumn?
“No what?”
“I don’t resent him. I thought I could adjust, and I thought it would be enough to support him.” Milan smoothed her hand over Soulara’s, clenching their fingers tightly together.
“You were enough,” Soulara whispered. She’d believed that her entire life because if she hadn’t, then she didn’t know or understand who her father was.
“For you I might have been, if I had stayed.” Pain radiated in Milan’s eyes, but she smiled, a smile filled with a sadness that bored a hole through Soulara’s chest.
“But you left.” Why was her voice so close to breaking? Soulara hated dragging up the past. She’d always looked forward, to the future, but away from where she knew she’d end up.
“And it’ll remain the worst mistake of my life.”
Cold washed through Soulara. She’d never heard her mother speak so candidly, so purely about mistakes. When she’d found her mother again, Soulara had simply avoided this pain, worried that diving into it would push them both back to the breaking point that made Milan leave in the first place.
But it hadn’t.
Soulara bushed her hands over her face and closed her eyes. This wasn’t about her parents. This was always about Autumn. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Follow your heart.” Milan ran her fingers through her daughter’s hair, and Soulara remembered when she would go to her as a child, hurt or scared. Her mother would soothe her just as she did now.
“I can’t abandon my people.” Soulara believed that firmly. She would be Queen of Reine, even if that meant sacrificing everything else in her life.
“Then you need to find a way. Nothing is impossible so long as you trust and believe.” Milan’s fingers reached a tangle, and she gently tugged it loose.
“Would you leave again?”
“No. A heart doesn’t heal as easily as you might think. Breaking your own isn’t a path I would wish you to travel down.” Milan sounded so sad, the edges of it folding on itself as if this sadness, this grief, was a giant well she hadn’t ever been able to escape.
“I can’t save her and save the rest of us.”
“Are you certain about that?”
“Yes. Her people are here to take our water and our lives. If I protect her, I won’t be able to win this war.” Soulara’s chest tightened at the thought. This was all assuming Autumn allowed Soulara to protect her in the first place, and hadn’t the fight on land proved that she wouldn’t? Hadn’t that told the both of them that they weren’t made for each other, that love wasn’t enough?
“Soulara.” Milan put her hand gently beneath Soulara’s chin and lifted it until their eyes met. “Are you certain she needs you to save her? Are you certain she isn’t able to save herself?”
Soulara opened her mouth and closed it again.
She hadn’t considered Autumn’s ability to save herself. The woman she loved, because yes, she did love her, was a force to be reckoned with. Soulara hadn’t truly realized that until she had to stand up to Autumn in that room with those humans. The civilians who weren’t soldiers. Autumn had taken a stand.
She’d made a choice.
And she had protected the innocent, which was exactly what Soulara would have done. It had been why she’d walked away without killing everyone in that room. It was why she’d stopped. Had they made the same choice?
“I can see your mind is now thinking beyond the rules of your throne.” Milan smiled and gently moved her hands from beneath Soulara’s chin.
Soulara nodded and pushed herself off the moss covered stone. She was thinking. Thinking far too many things that all fought to be the one she followed.
But despite the clamor in her mind, it sparked ideas inside her. It sparked hope and energy. The energy to fight back, to forget the rules that bound her and contained the limits that would leave them dying in defeat.
These ideas weren’t appearing out of thin air. She found small seeds of them pushed back behind her fire and fear. Fire to protect her people and fear about being a good enough leader to be able to do so.
Autumn wasn’t weak. Autumn wasn’t cruel or evil.
She was unique and wonderful and special. Could it be that some of the humans on her planet thought the same as Autumn? Would they share her disgust at learning the truth about their leaders? Would they continue to follow if they all knew the genocide they caused when they stole from other planets, leaving them devoid of all resources?
She didn’t know. There was so much to do, even more than she had already filled her hands with. It might not work, it might do nothing to save the lives of her people. But she would follow this line. If even one person could be saved who might otherwise have perished, the path was worth following.
“Soulara?”
“Huh?” Soulara turned toward her mother. She had been swimming back and forth in front of the moss-covered stone where Milan still sat.
“You’re a brave and wonderful person.”
“I’m not.” Soulara shook her head. “But I’m working on becoming one.”
“Have they asked for the soul stones yet?”
Soulara stopped moving, stopped breathing as she stared at her mother.
“Don’t forget I lived in the castle with your father for many years before I left.” Milan seemed to choke on the last word.
Soulara had never asked openly. She had never been told exactly what had happened the day her mother left and never returned. It had never seemed to matter to her before, the details.
“Why did you leave?”
“I told you, I couldn’t adjust to the different ways of living within Reine.” Milan toyed with the moss on the stone, playing her fingers through it.
“But why that day? What made you decide that it was time?”
“It doesn’t matter, Soulara.” Milan smiled. To an untrained eye, it might have even seemed genuine. But, despite the years of estrangement between her mother’s leaving and when they began to see each other again, Soulara knew her mother too well.
“Of course it matters.”
“It wasn’t my choice.”
Soulara had expected to feel shock, hurt, outrage. Anything with the revelation. Instead she felt a numb confirmation of a fact she had always known but never acknowledged.
“Please, what happened?” Soulara floated to the sandy floor in front of her mother. She curled up her tail and rested along her side, one elbow holding her head up. “Will you tell me?”
Soulara didn’t miss the parallel between this position and how she would beg for stories as a child.
“Your father knew I struggled with many things in the city. But one day he decided he couldn’t wait until I hated him for making me stay by his side. He decided it was time for me to leave, while we still loved each other, and your other mother Kolista. That to live happy lives instead of what he feared we would become if I stayed, I needed to separate from our family.”
“He didn’t ask you?” Soulara’s question was a whisper, and the pain in her chest made her breathing come short and sharp. “He made the choice without you, decided he knew better, and you resent him more now than you ever could have had you stayed.”
“I don’t know.” Milan’s voice was louder than Soulara’s but not by much. “But I should’ve been given the chance to choose my own life.”
“I’m too much like him.”
“You are like him in such wonderful ways.” Milan smiled as Soulara looked up at her words. “But make sure you also remember your heart is just as important. And so is hers.”
Soulara’s neck burned.
“What?” She reached up her hand. Before her fingers brushed against Nylah, she realized the burning hadn’t come from within her, but from the ray pressed against her skin.
“Nylah,” Milan said with a softness Soulara could still only begin to understand.
“What’s wrong?” Soulara pushed away any more questions she had about her parents and focused on the small ray. They vibrated in the water in front of her.
The ray moved closer and brushed a fin gently over Soulara’s cheek.
Soulara closed her eyes and fear and panic washed over her long before a single thought came into focus in her mind.
“Autumn.” Soulara spoke her name as though it were a prayer on her lips. “She’s activated the soul stone again.”
“Then you have to make a choice, Soulara. Perhaps many more before this war is over.”
“Thank you.” Soulara brushed her lips along her mother’s cheek.
She didn’t look back. She didn’t wait to see if her mother had any more words for her.
With strong strokes of her fluke, Soulara left Milan’s and swam straight for the surface.