My knees sink into the soft, silty bottom, where I droop and sway like seaweed. The sand cradles my face like a pillow, and as my vision blurs, my parents appear in the rippling waves. They gaze at me from across the music room, their sorrowful faces begging me to lift my voice and sing.Sing, Ghoa!But there’s no music in this place. And singing will help nothing.
I see Enebish, too, with black pearl eyes and seafoam scars. I hate her and love her. I miss her and despise her. She is my greatest accomplishment and biggest failure.
It doesn’t have to end like this,her voice swirls and gurgles.
How else can it end? I’m trapped beneath the sea. Don’t pretend you care.
You could ask for help….
From who?I snap. Though, of course I know the answer.
Enebish and her fool gods.
Those old stories may comfort her, but I refuse to believe some nebulous lady of clouds and sunlight will swoop down from the heavens and rescue me. What’s more, I don’t want her to. I don’t want anything from anyone.
The burning in my chest and the pressure in my head disagree, and as the agony mounts, the raw, primal part of me takes over. The most vital, inner self that refuses to die a failure. To leave my parents in humiliation and disgrace. To let my honorless warriors defeat me like this.
“Please.”The word slips out—the last bubble of air in my lungs.
As it rises to the surface, just before I’m sucked into oblivion, a hand clamps around my bicep and drags me upward.
I wake to sand beneath my fingers, water in my nose, and lips on my mouth. Cold, thin lips that are as slimy as a dead fish.
When my eyes pop open, and I see the ashen face hovering a hairsbreadth from mine, I wish it were a fish.
I vomit up a bucketful of seawater straight into the Zemyan prince’s lap.
“Honestly? You couldn’t have retched in the other direction?” Ivandar gags as he crawls away from me, his woven shirt now plastered to his chest with waterandvomit.
“What are youdoing?” I demand.
“What does it look like? Would you rather I didn’t resuscitate you?”
“Yes!”
His dripping face twists with outrage. “Are you really going to disparage me? I could have swum directly to shore and let you drown, but instead I tugged you three leagues through rough seas so you wouldn’t be found.” He gestures to the long stretch of beach surrounding us. It’s completely deserted, hemmed in with gnarled foliage that creeps up to a distant mountain peak. “What were you thinking, destroying the prison like that? You were never going to escape.”
“Maybe I wasn’t trying to escape.” I peel tentacles of seaweed off the side of my face and spit sand from my teeth. The only thing worse, the only thing more horrifying, than being betrayed by my warriors, captured by Zemyans, and dying in a sea I couldn’t freeze, is not dying and being saved by the Zemyan heir.
Of course this would be the outcome of my first prayer.
Technically, itwasanswered, was it not? You survived.
I close my eyes and groan. If the gods do exist, they’re clearly punishing me for having the audacity to call on them. If they don’t exist, the universe is ridiculing me for considering the possibility.
“What were you doing if you weren’t trying to escape?” Ivandar demands.
“Reclaiming my honor. If I had managed to kill you and the generál supreme, I would have died with glory. I’d be revered in Ashkar for generations to come. But thanks to your senseless heroics, I now owe a life debt to the Zemyan heir and must live in a world where I failed my king and country.”
The weight of it hits me then, pummeling me even more violently than the sea. I may be free from Kartok’s prison, but I have nowhere to go. No battalion to command. Even if my power rebuilds, I could never contend with the entire Kalima to reclaim my position. And without my position, I can’t show my face in Ashkar—especially not after my failures in the treasury. I can’t even go home; I won’t smear my parents with my disgrace—assuming they’re still alive.
Which leaves only one option: I fall back on the gritty sand, spread my arms wide, and beg the buzzards to devour me.
“You can’t just lie there and give up!” Ivandar says. “Not after I risked everything for you. You’re indebted to me. You said so yourself.”
“I didn’t ask you to save me. And I honestly can’t fathom why you did. If you’re trying to convince your mother to trust you over Kartok, cavorting with the commander of the Kalima warriors isn’t the way to go about it.”
Ivandar waves a dismissive hand, but I see the furrows between his brows, the tightness in his jaw. “She may be disappointed initially, but she’ll thank me when I uncover Kartok’s true motives. Despite his noble claims, I know he’s scheming and vying for power. Which is precisely why I saved you.Youknow his plans,” he adds when I stare at him dubiously.
