Chapter 66
Being on the ocean feels never-ending. My moods waver from good to bad to worse. Happy to ecstatic to angry with the world. Some days I want to dive off the ship and swim to some other land, and other days I just want to be home in Erleya again. I’m frightened by the unknown of what awaits me.
Just as I’m frightened by what is right in front of me. Odgar and I don’t sleep together again. We don’t even kiss. To prevent winding up in bed with him again, I avoid being with him alone. I’m just not ready to give my heart away to someone when I barely know how to love myself.
And sadly, I’m not sure if or when that will ever change.
Odgar is almost never without his knitting, or nalbinding, or whatever. Clearly trying to distract himself. I train with Valdis whenever I get the chance. It helps me remain in the present more often than not.
The closer we get to Erleya, the more nauseated and tense I feel, but I try my best to relax.
As I’m dozing off beneath the uncannily hot sunlight, Briony speaks up out of nowhere, and I damn near jump off the boat. I straighten from where I’d fallen asleep leaning against the mast, and Briony’s brows rise.
“Apologies,” she says. “But you are clearly not getting enough sleep.”
“You are as obvious as ever, Briony.”
She smiles and I sink down against the mast, leaning my head back. My body craves sleep, but my mind cannot be still. The anxieties eat away at me.
“What’s on your mind?” Briony asks.
I open one eye and peer at her. It’s sometimes still so odd speaking to her as a friend when she played a role in my torture nearly four months ago. Even now that I know it was for show, sometimes it still triggers me.
“What isn’t on my mind?” I retort.
“What happened between you and the Uldaran prince?” She sets a knowing gaze on me. For a woman only in her late twenties, her eyes hold the maturity of someone much older.
I sigh and lower my voice, trying to make my language as delicate as possible for the priestess. “We …” I grapple for a mild word. “Slept together.”
Briony titters. “I am not offended by the word sex or others you might care to use, but I appreciate your censorship.”
“Fine, we had sex. Then we didn’t. Nothing really happened.” I shrug and hug my arms around my frame. If nothing happened, why do I feel so out of sorts about him now? Why do I want to get closer to him as much as I want to get farther away?
Then again, when have any of my thought processes ever made sense?
“Land!” Someone calls out from the distance, and activity bursts on deck.
I swallow and rise, following Briony to where everyone gathers to look at the stretch of dark green on the horizon.
Valdis and Odgar appear on deck, Odgar smiling at me from a distance before stuffing a ball of wool and his work in progress into his trouser pocket.
He begins calling out orders and exchanging quiet instructions with other crew members.
As we get closer to the land laden with trees, another larger landmass looms behind it. That is Erleya.
“Do you think it would be wise to touch down on the Outer Isles and perhaps then sail across under a guise to Erleya?” Odgar asks.
The Royal Brigade was not heavily active in the Outer Isles when my mother was on the throne, but I’m not sure what’s become of military affairs since then.
“Perhaps,” I say at last. “Getting into Erleya in a small boat may not be as easy as you’d think.
You lot don’t exactly … fit in.” I eye his thick leather armor and battle-axe over his shoulder.
At least he’s shed the fur as we arrived near warmer shores than Uldarvik.
It takes hours still before we are close enough to see the port of the Outer Isles.
As we draw near, a high-pitched sound cuts through the air before an arrow embeds in the ship wall behind me. I shriek and duck as another arrow nearly lodges in my forehead. My heart rate soars, my body immediately growing hot and cold at once.
Everyone scrambles to gather weapons. Guilt rolls through me—I was wrong about the Outer Isles.
I was wrong. More arrows rain down, striking some of the crew.
Valdis drops beside me on the deck, shoving leather armor onto me, cinching the belts so tight they hurt, then pressing a bow and quiver into my hands.
Briony dons leathers as well, but she doesn’t take up a weapon.
Instead, her hands are glowing, prepared to blast whatever powers she can at the enemies.
Odgar appears at my side, his axe clutched in his hands, while I think of the best solution given the map. “Sail north,” I whisper to Odgar beside me.
“What?” he shouts over the clatter of arrows.
“Evade and sail north!”
To my horror, small boats are sailing toward us, and even more terrifying, several men clad in dark blue uniforms and black masks over their eyes appear on our deck. Everyone shifts into battle mode as wind, water, and fire whip around our ship.
Fuck, these are all Wielders. How in Lugda’s hells …
? I scream as a man appears entirely too close to me.
Briony blasts him with blue light, but it never hits him.
He disappears only to reappear directly in front of me, and I slice my hand through the air, sending a blade of fire carving through him.
Odgar tugs me away as the man falls hard to his knees, his hands trying and failing to keep his innards where they belong.
One by one, crew members start to fall. My chest aches from the loss all around me. My heart thunders then slows as a terrifyingly familiar power builds hot and dark within me. I want to push away the voice, but more boats are coming, more reinforcement, more Wielders.
After the kindness that these Uldarans have shown me, after everything they’ve done for me and been willing to do, I cannot let them go down this way. I know what my fire can do if I let it. If I embrace it rather than be afraid of it.
I grab Odgar’s hand, squeezing it hard. His sunburst, golden-blue eyes focus frantically on me.
“Don’t try to save me,” I tell him. He clings to my hand, a protest on his lips, but I pull away and race toward the front of the ship.
Breathing in deeply, I reach for all my pent-up magic and rampant emotions.
My hands grow blazing hot as I nock an arrow into my bow and call to my powers.
As I allow that dark voice within me to unleash herself, to funnel directly into me.
I send a flaming arrow forth and reach for another as Enidwen’s voice booms in my head: You are the weapon! Let me in!
Enidwen’s power purrs like a housecat, then roars like a dragon.
It blasts through the wall between our minds and fills me to the brim with more exuberant vigor than I know what to do with.
I drop the bow and channel the power into my hands, crossing them over my chest before thrusting them outward with a bellow of rage and pain.
Orange and black flames fill my vision. Screams assault my ears.
I inhale and repeat the motion. Again. And again.
The world around me slows and blurs. I’m nothing but flame and shadow and power.
I burn and burn and burn, until I feel myself burning out.
Until the cries around me die down to whimpers, and the clattering of weapons ceases.
My body feels like a raw conflagration instead of flesh and bones.
At last, my flames flicker out. A distorted voice calls to me, and that power within me winks out in a heartbeat. I drop, but I feel no pain.
I’m overheated.
Perhaps for the last time.
Flames. Pain. Fear. Annoyance. Darkness.
I wake repeatedly, only to fall back under. My body is buoyant, drifting between awareness and oblivion, and I long for the awareness to stop returning. I long to feel nothing. I hope to have saved my friends from a terrible fate, and I don’t want to know if I’ve failed.
I hope they sail to Siad Nahar and meet up with Durvla and the others. That they help put her on the throne rather than me.
I hope they save the kingdom.
That Odgar finds true love in someone who can actually grasp the concept.
Perhaps Briony will help raise a magical army to war against the same people she once fought for.
Perhaps everyone will find redemption.
It’s too late for me.
My time is over. And with it, Enidwen’s reign is at an end. There will be no heir. No continuation of her tainted bloodline.
No more curse of embers.