Chapter Eleven #2
There, out to sea, three triple-masted merchant vessels race along the waves like gulls in flight.
I hope they have a less violent voyage than the Selkie.
There, in the middle, the floating market, still a mishmash of barges and flatboats.
I wonder if they are moored there permanently or move each day.
And there, fading out of view behind us, the great harbor, not even a smudge of smoke rising off the surface to indicate the ship that sank at its center.
How long will its skeleton rest there before being hauled away?
We are not the only ones enjoying an afternoon stroll atop the walls.
We pass many Ll?rians as we go. Couples strolling arm in arm.
Families with fleet-footed children. Painters with easels, their brushstrokes painstaking as they attempt to capture the precise shade of the cresting sea, an unusually stormy palette.
They are friendly, greeting Soren with the same warmth I witnessed this morning, but do not intrude with more than a wave or head bob.
“Admit it,” he says finally.
“Admit what?”
“You like my shortcut.”
I press my lips together to contain a smile. “It’s not terrible.”
“I’ll take that as a victory.” He pauses, gaze moving past my face to the city sprawling below. “Is it what you expected? Hylios?”
“I did not know what to expect. How could I?”
“If I recall, the book I gave you has an entire chapter dedicated to the Water Court.”
My stomach flips at the mention of the book he gifted me during our first encounter.
The one he’d annotated in the margins, his innermost—and often amusing—thoughts scrawled throughout the chronicle of Remnant lore.
I lost it during the Battle of Fyremas when the castle collapsed, along with just about everything else I’d called my own.
It is one of the few possessions I actually miss.
“Your book is at the bottom of the lake in Caeldera, I’m afraid, buried beneath a ton of stone and rock.”
He heaves a sigh. “This is precisely why you should never lend your books to anyone. You never get them back in the same condition.”
I roll my eyes. “Regardless, reading your informative guide—or your pithy commentary—is no longer an option.”
“That’s okay. I’ll give you something better.”
“Another book?”
“Not quite.”
“What, then?”
“Me.”
“You,” I say, dubious.
“I can’t exactly trust you in my library, given your track record.
You’ll have to ask me directly when you have questions.
Or when you find yourself in need of more…
How did you phrase it? Pithy commentary?
” His lips twist into a mischievous smirk.
“Not only do I have two centuries of knowledge to offer, I can take far more rough handling than any old tome.”
“I think I’d prefer to remain in the dark,” I mutter, tearing my eyes from his.
I quicken my pace along the ramparts as I hear his answering snort.
We are nearly at the royal grounds. The city walls snake behind them, a continuous ring that runs along the back side of the gardens.
There are no guards posted, no signs to warn away the riffraff.
A nondescript gate with a glyphed handle offers entrance into a grove of wide-trunked olive trees, their slender leaves fluttering in the breeze.
Soren unlocks it with a quick pulse of maegic and it swings inward on soundless hinges.
He bows mockingly, allowing me to precede him into the grove.
I breathe deep, pulling in the scent of bark, the fainter notes of honey and floral.
The dirt path slopes sharply upward, then winds around a bend, and soon we are stepping into a familiar courtyard, the earth beneath my feet replaced by the smoothest slate.
As I walk through thick, creeping shrubs of jasmine, my eyes drift past the spring with its glowing water lilies and viridescent frogs to the opalescent bathhouse at the center and, eventually, to Soren’s villa.
It looms against the gathering twilight sky, ethereal and empty.
All I can think of is getting inside, stripping off my dirty clothes, collapsing into the plush bed of my suite, and sleeping for a week straight.
My tunic reeks of smoke and sweat and arachnidae breath.
Sticky silk is snarled in my hair, plastered to the fabric.
With each stride, the adhesive residue tugs at my skin.
My hands skim down my sides, trying to pry the webs loose.
They’re everywhere, covering my shoulders, my waist, my hips.
At my thighs, clinging to the empty holster—
Stopping short on the path, I suck in a severe breath.
“What is it?” Soren asks, hearing it.
I look at him, feeling oddly bereft. “My dagger. I—I lost it on the ship.”
“We have smiths here in Hylios. The finest in the Northlands. I’m happy to have one of them—”
“No.”
His dark brows quirk up toward his hairline.
“It’s not…” I swallow harshly. “You don’t understand. That dagger…it was special to me. It was…a gift.”
“Ah.” His pause is knowing. “From who, pray tell?”
My lips press together.
“Pendefyre,” he guesses, gleaning the answer from my silence. “Of course. That explains the look on your face.”
I bristle. “What look?”
He doesn’t answer. Merely reaches up absentmindedly to peel a particularly sticky tendril of spider silk off the column of my neck. My pulse leaps along with my annoyance. I slap his hand away and backpedal out of reach.
“I am perfectly capable of grooming myself.”
He scans my disheveled frame top to toe, no doubt amused by the contradictory statement.
“And I plan to,” I tack on, glaring back at him. “Just as soon as I’ve located a bathtub.”
“I’d take you to the Kettle, but I think you’ve had enough shocks for one day.”
The Kettle?
“You’re welcome to use my personal bathhouse instead,” he continues before I can ask, gesturing toward the spring. “It’s big enough for two.”
“It’s big enough for ten, but I still have no plans of sharing it with you.”
“Fine by me. I prefer my bathwater sans cobwebs.”
I scoff.
Grinning, he tugs a lock of my hair. I reach up, fully prepared to slap his hand away again, until his grip changes from playful to…
something else. As do his eyes. They shift over my face and an altogether different emotion moves in their depths as he tucks the tendril gently behind my ear, his fingers a fleeting brush against its pointed tip.
His voice pitches down an octave. “Perhaps I could make an exception. This once.”
My mouth parches. Undeterred, I bluster on, “I’m surprised you’d allow me alone in the bathhouse at all. You seem determined to delay my leaving Hylios. How do you know I won’t slip through the portal at the first possible opportunity?”
His lips press together. For some reason, I get the sense he is trying not to laugh. What is amusing about this particular situation, I have no idea, and Soren does not seem inclined to share. Without another word, he turns and walks away.
Fighting the bubble of annoyance expanding inside me, I trail after him in resolute silence. I swear, the man’s moods are more mercurial than the tides he commands. And far less predictable.
My stride falters when he does not climb the stairs onto the terrace but, instead, turns down a narrow side path that snakes out of view.
I’m not sure he means for me to follow until he pauses to hold aside a large palm frond that blocks the way forward.
His lips twitch as I slink past, careful not to invade his space.
Just around a bend, we come to a tall glass enclosure tucked beneath an arbor of creeping wisteria.
I think it’s a greenhouse at first, but the ceiling is open to the sky and in lieu of garden beds or potted plants there are several scarred wooden perches, along with elevated feeding troughs and water bowls.
An aviary.
As I watch, a bird of the deepest blue-black sweeps down from the boughs and settles onto one of the perches, its talons scoring deeply.
Another raven, this one the darkest shade of scarlet, is already inside, its elegantly plumed beak tucked under one wing.
It pauses its preening as we approach, cocking its head in tandem with the more recent arrival.
Two sets of canny eyes never shift from Soren as he strides into the enclosure.
I hang back, watching as he gently removes the thin scrolls of parchment tied to the birds’ proffered legs.
My eyes fix intently on the scarlet raven. I have seen that unique coloring before. A breed distinct to Dyved. An emissary of the Fire Court. I wonder who sent it here, and what the small roll of parchment it ferried all this way contains.
A response from Pendefyre?
One about me, even?
Whatever the missive, it makes Soren’s face ripple with displeasure and his shoulders go stiff. His gait is hesitant as he makes his way back to me.
I wait for him to speak. To share, though he has no real cause to do so. His private correspondence is no business of mine. Still, my fingers twitch with the effort to keep from snatching the scroll from his grip. My lips press together to contain my curiosity.
Such efforts at self-discipline are rendered ridiculous only seconds later when Soren reaches down, grabs my hand, and presses the parchment into it.
My eyes jerk up to his, startled.
“This was sent to me, but it’s you who should answer,” he says softly. Almost solemnly. “It’s your reply he wants.”
With that, he takes his other scroll and disappears down the path, leaving me alone with only the rainbow-hued fyrewisps and glossy-eyed ravens for company.
The paper in my hand feels like it weighs a thousand pounds as I raise it to my eyes.
Only a few sentences are scrawled across it in messy, hurried handwriting.
Penn’s handwriting.
The sight of it makes my foolish heart vault straight up into my throat.
Soren,
What do you mean, Rhya is in Hylios with you?
I expect a more thorough explanation is forthcoming—more than the three scribbled lines of snark you were benevolent enough to send last night.
Though, frankly, I am less concerned with how she came to be there than why she remains after a full day in your company. I cannot think of a single good reason she would choose to stay there.
Not of her own volition.
When she entered the portal yesterday at Blister Bight, her intentions were to return to Caeldera. Until I hear otherwise, I will assume those intentions have not changed.
I swear to the gods, if you are in some way preventing her return to me—
There is a dark blot of ink where the words abruptly taper off. As though his quill rested on the parchment for a long stretch while he gathered his thoughts. As though he had not quite known how to ask for a favor from his oldest enemy without resorting to threats.
In the end, he did not.
Only a handful more words stain the page, tacked on near the very bottom, just above the official seal of Dyved.
Just…send her back here.
Give her back to me.
Please.
It is the please that breaks me. The formidable Pendefyre of Dyved, begging. Begging Soren, no less, a man he loathes.
Begging for me.
I know what that plea cost him. I know the weight of it.
I feel the weight of it, too, behind my eyes.
A burning precursor that couples with the bone-deep exhaustion already eroding my composure.
I cannot hold it back, not for long. Sorrow swamps me along with a hot flood of tears that blur my vision, rendering the page unreadable.
All the feelings I’ve been suppressing since I stepped into that portal yesterday return with a merciless vengeance.
Pendefyre.
Blister Bight.
The fight in the rain.
Our broken potential.
Our precarious future.
I cannot even think of crafting a coherent response to the letter.
Not now. Not yet.
I am grateful Soren possessed enough compassion to leave me alone. Losing the battle against my melancholy is horrendous enough without him here to witness it.
Clutching the scroll tight to my aching chest, I run back to my dark, cozy suite inside the villa and bolt the door.
But even the heavy wood paneling cannot keep out the sound of the storm that splits the skies outside my balcony windows, nor of the torrential downpour that pelts the tiled roof overhead as I sink down onto the veined marble floor and press my forehead to my knees to muffle my sobs.