“I could not ask him for aid. With tensions as they are, Aetherian involvement in Estmere could be the excuse Gyoria needs to declare all-out war.”
“We will find a way to stop him, Issa.”
“I just feel so… helpless. I know this mission is bigger than me, bigger than Hawthorne, but…” I sighed as one particular woman got too close to Mev. Kael stepped between them, but she stopped him. She was weathered, as if the docks were more than her home but the woman’s identity. She fell to Mev’s feet and began to cry.
With a stern glance at Kael to stay away, Mev squatted down, placing her hand on the woman’s back. Mev said nothing as a crowd began to gather.
“Mevlida.” Kael’s voice held a warning that Mev didn’t heed.
“My son,” the woman said finally, looking up to Mev with an expression so filled with anguish that I instinctively moved closer, as if to comfort her. She had seen, perhaps, fifty or so years. A human, for certain. “He was just two years old when I came through… It was my first time away from him since he’d been born. A friend and I took a train to York overnight. It was supposed to be a lark, the whispers about The Crooked Key.” She shook her head. “They were not just rumor. They were real.”
“You were separated from your son when the Gate closed.”
Tears streamed down the woman’s face. Mev took her by the hands and they stood together. Mev whispered something to the woman, who gasped in response, as if attempting to breathe normally from an old wound reopened. Mev pulled her close, allowing the woman to drench her tunic as she cried inconsolably.
I peered at Kael. Not once had I seen such an expression on his face. His typical mask of strength, bordering indifference, had been cracked. No matter it was his father that had separated this woman from her two-year-old son. For years, I had attempted to sway him to the human cause, to no avail. Mev had done what I could not, and he would never be the same.
When the woman finally pulled away, her expression had changed. Her eyes, still glistening with tears, held something more now.
Hope.
She stood back, allowing Mev to drop her hands, but not before squeezing them and nodding. The woman smiled, tears still streaming down her face, as she turned without a word and edged her way through the gathered crowd and sped away.
Springing into action, Kael cleared the crowd, allowing Mev and I to move forward. He said nothing more as the docks appeared before us.
“Your role as Princess of Aetheria suits you, Mev,” I said softly. “Though I am sorry you were thrust into it rather than choosing it for yourself.”
“I still can’t…” She made a sound of frustration. “I don’t see myself as a princess. Sometimes, in the early morning, before I’m fully awake, when I completely forget… I’m surprised to wake up, not in my bed in Boston but”—she shrugged—“here. A princess whose father is a king. Whose partner is a prince. It’s still so surreal. But encounters like that— there’ve only been a handful since I haven’t spent a lot of time among humans yet— are a stark reminder that I’m not the only one at risk of being separated from my family forever. I’ve never been a mother, but I am the daughter of one who was never shy about sharing her love for me and can only imagine the anguish that mother has felt. Doesn’t matter it’s almost thirty years. I’m pretty sure that kind of pain never goes away.”
I could not internalize the kind of anguish that mother had been feeling, being torn away from her young child.
“What did you whisper to her?” I asked, curiosity making me toss decorum to the side. “Of course, you do not have to?—”
“I told her that I would not rest until the Gate is reopened so that she could reunite with her son. And that us being here was tied to that very mission.”
She began walking once again, and I followed, expecting to see Marek already on the ship, preparing her to continue our journey. Instead, he was talking to a woman. A comely one at that. When they embraced, I stiffened.
“You were gone a long time last night,” Mev teased.
I raised my chin, continuing forward and pretending Marek’s philandering didn’t affect me. I knew his reputation with women because he had told me about it himself. Just one of many clues to his character that I ignored.
“It’s so easy to forget,” I admitted.
They finally disentangled, the woman blowing Marek a kiss as she turned toward us. He didn’t even see Mev and me before boarding the ship.
I avoided looking at her as she walked past. She appeared to be either a human, or perhaps a Thalassari, her sun-kissed skin and effervescent beauty bordering unnatural.
“Forget what?” she asked.
He spotted us then.
Marek grinned as if he hadn’t a care in the world. As if he’d not just been embracing a woman who looked as if she’d just climbed up onto the docks from her previous post as a siren of the seas. A vision of that morning, the one after he left, when I’d jumped from my bed, excited to begin the day. Excited to see him. Hopeful that something might actually be budding between us that wasn’t fleeting.
“Forget that he has the ability to break my heart. Again.”
15
MAREK
