Chapter 26
Knees pulled up to her chest, Jenyfer sat on the kitchen floor of her old cottage. She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting there. She was still wet, and she wasn’t sure if it was the ocean or her tears that clung to her cheeks and stung her eyes.
Hazy light stole into the room. She wiped her face, squeezed the water from her hair, then got up and went into her old room where she hunted in the wardrobe for something to wear.
She would not be returning to The Excalibur, so whatever her sister and aunt had left behind was all Jenyfer would have.
She found a dress, pulled it on then returned to the kitchen, where she stared at the empty table until her eyes blurred.
Ordes would come for her. She could feel him, as surely as she could feel the rage that was slowly building inside her, that had been building inside her from the moment she’d opened her mouth and lied about why she was out at night on the beach.
From the moment her sister had been tied to that stake.
If the Konsel weren’t already dead, she’d march down the hill and sing them into the ground.
The Singing Stone around her neck thrummed in agreement.
Jenyfer wanted to tear the thing from her body and throw it into the sea but at the same time, she wanted to unleash it, set the magic of the Treasure free, even if she didn’t know how to use it or what would happen.
She could feel it – its will, its desire to compel and control, to hurt and devour and rip the world to pieces.
She could feel the darkness of her father’s magic inside her, and instead of frightening her like it usually would, she wanted to embrace it.
Be the monster.
Be the daughter of a god who breathed cruelty and malice, who delighted in chaos, like the swirling depths of the fiercest ocean storm.
Why was it Ordes who had to die for this world?
Why not her?
Jenyfer sank into a seat and put her head in her hands.
‘Jen.’ Ordes’ voice was a whisper, a scratch in the horrible bleakness of her mind and the broken pieces of her heart. She reached for him, letting him pull her into his arms and lift her from her seat. She wound her arms around his neck and pressed herself against the familiar warmth of him.
Jenyfer didn’t remember falling asleep, but when she woke, it was in her aunt’s bed, the covers tucked around her chest and a warm body at her back, gentle fingers against her scalp. Neither of them spoke for a long time. Ordes pressed a kiss to her shoulder and rolled her gently onto her back.
‘Whatever time I have left, I’m spending it with you.’
‘Time…’ Jenyfer mumbled. ‘What if we don’t go back?’
‘How do you outrun fate, Jen?’
‘I don’t know,’ she whispered, kissing him fiercely, speaking against his lips. ‘But I’ll work it out. I promise.’
He smoothed the hair from her forehead. ‘Arthur would have told Katarin the truth by now.’ His smile was sad. ‘I told him. I had to tell someone, and I felt that if someone would truly understand, it would be Arthur.’
Jenyfer tucked herself against the curve of Ordes’ chest. ‘If we don’t return, he’ll never be king. None of it will happen.’
‘I know.’
‘I’ve spent my whole life in fear, Ordes. I am tired of it, of being afraid and of rearranging my life and who I was to suit what others needed or what the world was telling me I had to be – I don’t want to do that anymore,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t want to go back.’
Ordes said nothing.
‘What do you want?’
‘To not be torn in two,’ he mumbled.
Jenyfer put her arms around him. ‘Then you won’t be. I won’t let that happen.’
There was no one on the beach. Jenyfer was alone in the pre-dawn, and for the first time in her life, she was not afraid of discovery, of being somewhere she should not be. No one would ever tell her that the beach, the ocean, was not her place ever again.
She curled her bare toes into the sand in one last act of defiance before turning to face Kernou – the place that had been the source of torment and pain and such fear that it was branded on her insides and would never fade away – a scar she would carry forever.
Jenyfer closed her eyes. She might have a place in the world now, but she couldn’t shake the sense that her true fate was to have nothing.
To be left with nothing to hold onto in the darkness.
Was she always to be alone? Always trapped back here, in this town, with no way to escape?
Her fingers toyed with the Singing Stone around her neck.
The magic of the Treasure beat alongside her heart, alongside Ordes’.
She’d left him sleeping, sneaking from the cottage and throwing herself into the sea.
Why had she come here? She and Ordes had made no plans – nothing other than get off that ship. Jenyfer had swum here, of all the places in Teyath, she’d been drawn back to Kernou.
Why?
Because it’s a symbol, a voice whispered. A symbol of everything terrible that had ever happened to you, to women like you, even to your sister, who had lost the girl she once was. To your aunt, who had to leave her home in order to survive.
Jenyfer turned to face the town. It was filled with ghosts now, and it couldn’t hurt her, but its memory still could. The shadows of this tiny innocuous place bordered by the mountains in one direction and glittering sand and the thunder of the ocean in the other… a cage.
Kernou was nothing more than a cage, with sand covered bars and a roof made of the sky. It wasn’t surrounded by walls or fences, but it had been a cage all the same.
This hated, hateful place. One of the men she hated most of all was onboard the ship and the other… she had no idea where he was. With Mordred no doubt, if what Denny said was true.
Denny. Jenyfer snorted a laugh. If anyone should hate this place it should be him.
It should be all of them. All tools, all playthings for a man bent on building his own little empire and corrupting those around him in the process.
And the ones he couldn’t corrupt, like Aunt Tamora, spent their days looking over their shoulders, fear an ever-constant companion.
Fear Jenyfer understood too well. The sort of fear that you needed to survive in a place like this. It kept her alive for years. But the problem with living in fear was you let yourself get comfortable. When the stakes didn’t shift any higher, you believe you’ve already seen the worst it could be.
But she hadn’t. She wasn’t sure any one of them had.
Her eyes blurred. She wiped them furiously. Kernou and everyone in it didn’t deserve her tears.
They deserved her anger, the rage that she thought she’d buried – that Ordes had helped bury. But now…. Now it was different.
Now she could be angry again and it would be this place, the source of her torment, her pain and the pain of countless women before her, that would bear it. If it could.
Jenyfer smiled, her thoughts shifting back to Ulrian Tregarthen.
For a moment she could see him, red cloak flapping in the breeze as Lamorna was bound to the stake.
Jenyfer could see that red cloak flapping as she was pulled to the sand by rough hands and she could see his face – the triumph on it – as she opened her mouth and showed them all what she was.
She hoped whatever had happened to Ulrian Tregarthen had been slow and painful. He deserved to be hurt.
The Singing Stone thrummed in agreement against her breastbone as the waves kissed her ankles.
Jenyfer frowned. She glanced over her shoulder in time to see the waves pause and a silver head break the surface of the water, then another.
Syhrens. A chill crept along Jenyfer’s spine as the scattered memory of a dream rose in her mind.
Two syhrens became three, then four, more, until the sea faeries were standing like a silent army, their eyes on Kernou.
None of them said a word and they wouldn’t even look at Jenyfer, not even when she yelled at them to go away.
Far out to sea, the ocean rippled as the seabed trembled beneath Jenyfer’s feet and a wave rose like a hand, moving closer to shore.
On the crest of that wave, like the god he was, perched Melodias.
The wave deposited him on the sand in front of Jenyfer.
Water streamed from her father’s hair and clothes.
Dozens more silvery heads emerged from the water behind him.
Jenyfer folded her arms. ‘What are you doing here?’
His lips curled. ‘What are you? Where’s the boyfriend?’
‘Not far,’ Jenyfer said.
‘Of course,’ her father replied. Silence stretched between them. ‘I can only guess by the look on your face that you know the truth.’
‘You knew, and you didn’t say anything,’ Jenyfer snapped. ‘Why?’
‘Because I didn’t want to interfere.’
She laughed in disbelief. ‘Interfere? You’ve done nothing but interfere!’
He shrugged. ‘That’s one way to look at it, I suppose, but my interference is nothing compared to Niniane and Merlin’s. And let’s not forget the puppet mistress herself. Ereshki played us all.’
Jenyfer scowled. She didn’t want to talk about Old Ones and their games, not now, not when she and Ordes were preparing to spend the rest of their lives running from the gods. ‘What did you offer Mordred?’
‘My help,’ Melodias said simply. At her raised eyebrows, he rolled his eyes. ‘That’s what allies do, isn’t it? Help one another.’
‘And you want something in return, I assume?’
‘Nothing of consequence.’
Jenyfer snorted.
‘I want the world the way it should be,’ her father said. ‘I want to avoid war, Jenyfer, not start it. I gave you a chance. I wanted to protect you.’
She shook her head. ‘You don’t want to lose your power.’
A smile. ‘My dear, of course not, but I can tell you this – you and your pirate and this future king have made a mistake in making an enemy of Niniane. I like power, but my sister breathes it. She will crush you all.’
‘Go away,’ Jenyfer snarled.
Melodias sighed. ‘Are you going to do something about this wretched stain on the map, or would you like me to?’
‘What are you talking about?’