“You found my spear,” I rasp, dropping my items onto the dark wooden coffee table nestled between two sapphire-blue couches and matching armchairs.
“Are you crying?”
“Absolutely not.” I clear my throat, fighting the urge to hug the spear to my chest when she hands it to me. “Are you alright?”
“Completely fine, other than dealing with my cranky brother.”
I snort as I lean against the chair and take in the rest of the sitting room. Much like the official king’s room, it’s spacious and contains multiple bookcases, each one packed to the brim. Double glass doors lead out to a balcony, a sheer white curtain drawn over them to filter out some of the sun’s light. There are three other doors, one of them opened and revealing a bedroom.
Jahlee follows my gaze and points to one of the closed doors farthest to the left. “Extra bedroom.” She moves her finger to the closed door centered in the middle. “Bathroom. And then that one is Kai’s room.” I nod, taking a step towards the bathroom. I want to take the hottest shower possible and burn the memories of the dungeon from my skin. “All I ask is that when you and Kai fuck, you keep it quiet.”
“There will be none of that, Jahlee.”
This time, it’s her who snorts, her watchful gaze taking in every detail of my movement. “I’ll have Lana out here waiting for you. I’m really glad that you’re alive.Andthat you didn’t leave.”
I smile, leaning against the door to the bathroom as I look at her. “And miss all the fun? That would be boring.” She beams at me, light coming back into her eyes in recognition of the play on her words from when we first met.
The shower is a welcome reprieve. Enough so that I finally do cry, letting everything out under the safety and privacy of the steaming water. When I exit the bathroom, Lana is sitting with Jahlee, the old female practically crowing from whateverinjuries of mine she can see. Within ten minutes, she’s covered every wound and cut with a foul-smelling poultice, all while chastising me to eat more food.
When she leaves, Jahlee and I sit across from each other on the couches. “He’s going to try to do everything alone,” Jahlee muses, sipping on dark red wine from a stemless glass.
“I’m sure he can handle it,” I respond, taking a sip of my own drink.
“You can drop the act, Bahira. You don’t have to pretend with me.”
I lower my glass to look at her. “And what act might that be?”
“The one where you pretend that you don’t care about him. That you don’t care about what we need to do to help our kingdom.”
“It’s not my kingdom,” I retort soundly—hoping if I say the words forcefully enough, it will make them feel more true.
“Maybe not, but it’shis, regardless of who might try to take it from him. I don’t believe for one moment that you want to see him suffer.”
I avoid her gaze and stare out one of the windows. “You don’t know anything about what I want.” I don’t even know ifIdo anymore.
I had come to the Shifter Kingdom with the hope that I could advance my knowledge of magic, that I could have another breakthrough. I suppose that I did to a degree—learning how the blood of those with magic might be a solution to the magical blight—but there is still so much I don’t understand about it. I have no answers for the shifters here, no answers for my own kingdom or myself. Soon, I will be heading home, only to lose my best friend when I decline his marriage proposal.
“I know he cares about you. That’s why the truth hurt him so much, even if it’s hypocritical for him to hold it against you.And, I want to reiterate, itishypocritical of him. But he’ll come around.”
“Maybe, with everything going on, itwouldbe better for me to leave the island early.”
Jahlee’s eyes narrow on me, her perceptive gaze piercing right to my bones. “I didn’t take you for a coward.” I stiffen at her words, and though I want to refute them, I can’t—even as anger licks at my heart. Jahlee stands, finishing off what’s left in her glass before setting it down roughly on the table between us. “I’m going to figure out a way to support Kai. To help him take a stand against the rebels. Leave or don’t.Helpor don’t. I just hope that you can live with yourself, whatever choice youdomake.” She glares at me before stomping off to the spare bedroom, the door slamming closed behind her.
Sighing, I place my glass next to hers on the table and curl on my side on the soft velvet couch, my entire body tender and aching. “I hope I can too,” I whisper.
Chapter Seventy-Two: Aria
It takes two moredays before the city of Lumen comes into view. In that time, I had minimized my stops as much as possible. Stopping means remembering who isn’t here with me. Stopping means I have to restart with a momentum that I don’t think I have.
Stopping means reliving my failures.
It’s early morning, the sun not quite breaking through the surface of the water yet. I know that I should go straight to my mother and give her the rings, but there is a tugging at my gutthat leads me to the seamounts instead. They loom ahead of me, a dark horizon in the water that grows larger as I near.
An ominous quiet washes over me as I swim through the valley cut between the mounts. My chest rattles with the beat of my heart, my ears straining to hear any sound or movement from the sirens that live here. From the offspring. However, as I move into the heart of the mounts, sunlight finally casting it in a subtle glow, I find them completely empty.
I poke my head in and out of the caves carved into the dark rock, finding evidence that suggests the sirens did not just pick up and move. Theirhomesremain intact and full of items. Food caught long ago rots on tables, and items from woven eel grass bags to jewelry are scattered all over. It’s as if they had to abandon this place in a hurry.
“Or like they were ambushed,” I say quietly with bitter cold realization. My body begins to tremble, shockwaves of sadness and regret drowning me as if I wasn’t a being made to live beneath the water. “No,” I whisper, shaking my head as my hands fly up to cradle it.I am too late. All those lives, young and old… They all died because ofme. “No!” I scream, pounding my hands into the rock, my braids floating around my head and blocking out the rest of the world.
