The News
DALI
Kisernia Docks
The ship had started in Gyarin. Now it was a day or two from Veynar when the messenger ran onto the dock at Kisernia.
“Queen Asharin is dead.”
Dali surfaced the moment the words landed. She would have smiled had it not offended everyone around her.
The death of Asharin made her neither happy nor sad. But it would make Maridale sad, which would make her weak. A weak Maridale meant that Dali could feed and spend time with Eravic.
If, of course, he was not displeased with her.
He had been cross with her lately, ever since the small Gyarin incident.
He had been trying to get his precious Asharin to safety, to Alarna, when Dali had a terrible bout of hunger.
Maridale had left Veynar almost as soon as Asharin had.
King Sevrin had become unhinged. Moreover, Dali’s connections had told her that Teorin Rathmor was on the same ship as Asharin.
It seemed smartest to get as close to Alarna as possible. Gyarin was good for that.
Dali had made the decision herself. In truth, when her precious Asharin was harmed, Maridale was devastated. She had gone somewhere very quiet and very dark inside herself, and Dali had simply taken over because that was what devastation invited.
Devastation always made Dali hungry, but she did not mind. In fact, she loved to feed. She loved very few things, but Eravic was one of them. Feeding was certainly another.
He had asked both of them to look after Asharin carefully. They had failed. He was not happy about it, and his unhappiness was the one thing in the world that Dali found genuinely inconvenient.
So back to Gyarin they went. The small house along the northern shoreline. They would lay low, then return to Veynar once the king calmed down.
She walked into the cottage and all was fine until she saw the calendar.
It would have been her child's origin day.
Maridale’s child, that is. Dali did not particularly care about the dead child. Perhaps it would have more appeal if it had ever been born, or if it perhaps had not been the offspring of that weakling Tamal.
Nonetheless, the date was a trigger, and Maridale became inconsolable. Under normal circumstances that would have been manageable. But this, combined with whatever the assault on Asharin may have cost Maridale’s pregnancy, seemed to push Maridale somewhere new entirely.
A depth of grief Dali had not seen before.
Which meant Dali was absolutely ravenous.
And then a Yorali ship docked nearby for rest and trade.
Yorali. The cause of all their troubles.
It would have been unnatural to let it pass. She was hungry. Moreover, she was ridding the world of something rotten.
Anything belonging to King Orsin of Yorali was most certainly rotten.
She drained the men on the ship but left them half alive. Technically they were still breathing. Killing them felt like unnecessary effort, and the thought of slow, painful death was something Dali found appealing.
She had no way of knowing a Thren ship would come along, see the bodies, feed on her leftovers, and create thousands of undead that proceeded to sack several villages.
Maridale briefly awakened. She saw the massacre and became sad again.
Dali became hungry. And so it continued until she was…sated.
So, Eravic had been cross with her. Had even made her stay and help rebuild.
Several months, as it turned out.
She had lost count after the third village. There had been a fourth and then something that was less a village and more a collection of people who had decided to live near each other and call it something, and Eravic had made her help with that one too.
She had developed calluses on her hands.
Her hands. She looked at them periodically and felt genuine offense.
She was not some simple Saren, she was a fucking Siren.
Sirens had royal blood and were not meant to have callouses.
She was meant to be in water, her skin salt-smooth and perfect, not cracked at the knuckles from carrying roof beams for people whose villages she had accidentally destroyed.
Eravic had said it built character.
She had not spoken to him for two days after that.
The worst of it was his watchfulness. He always seemed to be keeping tally of the human lives around them, which made feeding extraordinarily difficult.
She would identify a candidate and he would simply appear nearby doing something entirely unrelated and yet somehow making it impossible.
She did not know how he did it. She suspected it was intentional.
Her Vaelor and Saren sides had split at birth, giving her access to power that most half-breeds only gained after accepting their duty to Sarenal.
Dali had accepted no such duty. Fortunately, Sarenal was unreachable now anyway, sealed behind wards no one could cross. She had no desire to belong to anyone or anything. Which made sharing a body with Maridale quite inconvenient at times.
Eravic had been born differently. His Saren powers had remained sealed with Sarenal, and he had simply accepted being human.
In truth, she sometimes wondered if he preferred it.
At any rate, she was not content with Eravic's displeasure. That was the problem she kept arriving back at no matter how many villages she helped rebuild.
He would not say why they were finally leaving. Word had traveled that Asharin and Colsar had returned to Veynar. He knew where she was now. Which meant he could finally give her whatever it was he and Maridale had spent years conspiring to give her.
Whatever it was he had risked his life these past several months to retrieve.
Dali was not entirely sure how she felt about that.
She looked at her calluses one more time.
She was sure how she felt about those.
Eravic's face when he heard the news had been disconcerting enough.
He turned pale and stumbled backward and the look in his eyes frightened Dali. It frightened Junis too, who heard the same words and looked like he might fold in half.
It did not seem to bother the short fat man Junis had decided to bring back to Veynar with them.
The Baron, they called him. Asharin's father.
He smiled with joy.
No one else noticed. But Dali noticed. That was the advantage of not caring about much. When things happened you kept your wits about you while everyone else lost theirs.
She was moving toward Eravic, because she could not stand that look on his face, that pain, when she smelled smoke and heard a loud crack and a thud that shook the deck. A man with silver hair slicked back dropped from a giant firebird and asked to speak with Eravic in private.
When Eravic emerged from the captain's quarters he was no longer pale. He looked determined, which was a different thing entirely and considerably more useful.
He found her quietly, away from the others.
He needed her help, he said.
Because it was him, she said yes.
She felt Maridale try to get out, try to find out what was happening.
The devastation, Dali decided, would distract Eravic. Better to tell her once they were already there. They would head straight to Darkway, which is likely where Asharin was.
Dali had never been to Morrath, but she knew it well. She had memorized its map thoroughly. She had been planning to get there for years because it had exactly what she needed.
However, it was not the sort of thing she could get alone. She wondered who had brought Asharin to Morrath.
She hoped it was a Rathmor king. That would be splendid.
Morrath’s magic was unstable, which made it dangerous for any human who planned on rejoining the living. Eravic would stay on the shoreline, he promised Dali. That was likely as far as his Vaelor blood would allow. Dali would need to bring Asharin to him.
Dali was a Siren. Her blood was royal. She did not escort anyone anywhere. But for Eravic she decided she would do it once, whenever Asharin awakened.
But only once. Eravic had nodded in agreement.
Less than a day later another Vaelor ship arrived. She and Eravic boarded it and left Junis and the others to return to Veynar without them.
They were headed to Morrath.