It wasn’t long until the night’s ocean breeze found us. This was the same journey I had taken what felt like a lifetime ago. Highthorn to Gyldmare, then to Whiterok. Part would be by land, the other by sea. A small hope sang through me. When we crossed the ocean, maybe the sirens would find me. Return me to what I’d abandoned. Take me back to my brother.
My gut knotted. Nymphaea brought those to the sea to be saved, and I had rejected that salvation. Fate, the Guardians, whoever, had hand-delivered me to my brother, and I left him.
The carriage stopped. Instead of a boat across the Holy Mother’s body, the sight that greeted us was a burly man throwing open the carriage doors. A glow of red-orange light radiated high in the black night sky, flickering off a metal surface toward the crashing waves. It was a lighthouse. Without a word, the man hauled us out, slapped shackles on our wrists, and dragged us inside.
Chapter 41
The wind whipped the washing tides. We were so close to the sea, but bars and stone separated me from it. Hylos was out there, and he didn’t even know my true identity. His sister. I should have known who he was, felt it tugging in my blood. Those eyes were so clearly my mother’s. Now, he headed to slaughter. Calypstra, the viper, had laid a trap that he was about to fall right into. While I remained imprisoned.
I heard a bump in the distance, a rattling of keys. Shards of ice sank in my stomach. How many children of kings had died in towers such as this? Bothersome loose ends neatly and easily trimmed up.
A figure shifted in the shadows, and I readied myself for the worst. I would kick, and scratch, and fight like Infernum. Just like Nixie taught me. Whoever it was would have to kill me, their flesh gushing blood between my teeth. I would not submit.
Metal creaked through the night, and two figures shuffled to the barred cell door, one carrying a lighted torch.
A familiar face came into view. Cedric.
“Are you alright?” Arlo said, pushing past him.
“No, I’m not alright. I’m in a bloody prison cell,” I snapped, relieved in part to see him, but miserable at his betrayal all at once.
Cedric’s eyes bored into me, disgust gnarling his mouth into a frown, as if he held back bile at the mere sight of me. What treachery did he haveplanned for me next? Would he drag me to Whiterok? Force me to wed him?
“You know who she is, then?” Cedric asked Arlo.
“I do now,” Arlo sneered, eyeing his brother. “Not some unknown wealthy woman needing safe passage to Whiterok, like you said, but the king’s fucking daughter.”
It stung, for some reason, the bitter way he said it.
“And you know what comes with her care,” Cedric said, his dark-green eyes glowing in the flickering torchlight.
My care?
Arlo was silent.
Cedric continued, “Everything you renounced the day you sailed away on the ship I secured for you.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I said, standing.
Cedric did not look at me as he spoke. “That he has spent the last ten years fleeing from nobility, and now he wishes to be tied to it for the rest of his life.”
To be tied to me.
“We will simply both flee now,” Arlo said, looking at me, hope shining in his eyes.
“Is that what youbothwant?” Cedric asked.
“Just let her out already.”
Cedric began working a key into the lock.
“You’re letting us go?” I asked.
The lock clicked, and Cedric opened the cell door.
“Yes.” He didn’t even give me a second glance. Just threw the word in my direction.
“Why my ship, Ced?” Arlo asked.
