Heir of Vaashaa: The Lost Child of the Crown (The Lost Child of the Crown Series Book 2)

by Celine Simpson

  Heir of Vaashaa

  Celine L.A. Simpson

  Copyright © 2020 Celine L. A. Simpson

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 979-8-6877-4582-6

  Contents

  Heir of Vaashaa

  Pronunciations

  The World of Vaashaa

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty One

  Twenty Two

  Twenty Three

  Twenty Four

  Twenty Five

  Twenty Six

  Get an exclusive look at our main characters…

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  One

  There was a distant echo of a drip that clanged through my head like a dull bell.

  My senses became less and less sure of themselves as I remained in the dark for longer than I cared to think about, where sometimes I didn’t know if I was awake or in a nightmare. But when I heard the drip, I knew I was alive.

  I wanted to say this place seemed dark and forgotten because of the absence of warmth, of life. All but my own, of course. But this place was not forgotten however hard I prayed to the Gods that it became so.

  I had imagined a time when the world wasn’t full of light. I used to feel so much sorrow and sadness for those that must have had to endure its coldness and keep the company of the creatures that used to dwell in such haunted places, who enjoyed its heaviness and called it home. How I mourned for them. Never did I believe I would find myself among their numbers, their misfortunes.

  I counted myself lucky so many times, to have witnessed light in its purest form. To have seen it reflected in frosted green coloured eyes, to have felt it on a spring breeze as my hair lifted from my neck and my body was cooled. To have seen it in the smiles of children and heard it in their laughter, heard it in my own laughter. A darker sort of brightness that dotted between their innocent sounds. But my favourite light was the scattered sort that trickled down through the canopies of trees. The kind that warmed you to your soul when the sheltered underbrush of the forest carried a bite to its early morning chill. The light that made the breath in your lungs lighter, sweeter. Made the earth beneath your feet firmer, made it warmer.

  I found myself struggling at times to remember that light. To remember the sounds of laughter or the colour of grass covered in morning dew in the winter. Sometimes I thought I remembered those things. I even convinced myself that the colour I conjured behind my eyelids was pure though I knew it should have been brighter and I just couldn’t imagine it in my own mind. It was enough for me to know that these things existed outside of the clinking of chains and the screams that were only choked out by the emptiness of my lungs. Outside of the dripping.

  If they did not, then what was it all for?

  “Terraleise, you are extremely quiet this afternoon. Are you well?” My eyes kept their attention straight ahead, to the opposite side of the table where my uncle sat. A special brace was fitted to my chair. Cuffs were placed on the arms and legs, as well as the upper section of the back to ensure my neck was shackled. I was brought here sometimes to sit with Cander and Ainsley, to watch them eat.

  I had cared about my dignity at the start. Fought off the guards who brought me up and demanded to walk on my own. I allowed the hatred in my heart to fuel my resolve, to fuel the decision I made to give myself up. And when that burnt to dust I pictured the people I loved, and my determination was fuelled by their faces. Their safety.

  Then, I was brought one time while I was unconscious, and woke up to find myself constricted, and instead of in the dark I was in the lavish main hall of Altrey Palace. I wet myself from fear, my screams nothing but a pathetic strain of hoarseness. All that was left of my voice. I had begun to convulse from pure terror before a guard knocked me out. After that I did not so much care for my outward show of dignity. I didn’t care to walk on my own two feet.

  I cannot remember how long I had been in the company of my relatives, in the Kingdom I had grown to love, had promised to save and now found myself needing to remember that it was not the place that brought the terrors that are echoed in my dreams, but a single person. I tucked it away, those feelings, into the very same spot I put the feelings that pressed down on me in my life in Lex. The days spent starving in a boarded room, wasting away. They seemed like the worries of a different person. Someone who had the freedom to at least waste away in peace.

  I could feel his stare burning into my face. My only response to his words was the wet sound of my breathing. The neck cuff was fitted so snug that to speak would mean to lose moments that I could be gasping for air. I learned that the hard way when I used up my air supply on insults and promises that detailed his merciless and pain-filled end and couldn’t replenish my supply fast enough. That wasn’t one of my favourite memories, but as least when I was forced to sit and watch them eat I was offered the opportunity to escape my cell for a brief moment. To confirm that my body was still intact, that all the parts were still attached. Sometimes they forgot about me and I didn’t come up for what I could only imagine was days. I was caught in a mixture of relief and anguish. I hated being in front of them. I knew I was filthy, I knew the sight of me was enough to put anyone off their meal, but I was still out of my cage. Out of the dark.

  “Your ships, they are still close, if you had wondered at all.” Cander went on, pausing briefly to look at me between bites of his meal to see if his mention of the armada we had gathered to counter his plans of conquering the whole of Vaashaa had hit a nerve. To see if his knowledge of them, not only the ships but the people aboard them, would rattle me to any degree. Obviously, it had.

  My gut turned, like someone had ripped me open and rearranged my insides with scissors and left some of the important parts out altogether. I chose in that moment not to believe him, to not hold onto such hope that I would be lucky enough to see the people aboard those ships again. If I tucked that hope into my heart, it was only a matter of time until it was taken from me and he watched as I fell apart. Only another way for him to try to break me when he had yet to be so successful.

  “Terra, really I know we’re not on great terms, but you will see, this could all end very quickly if you just shared what you know. I would even give you your mother’s old room, as a token of good will. A peace offering, really. We are family after all, why not help us. We could do this together.” Cander’s face remained pleasant, as if he wasn’t discussing the impending doom of the entirety of our world.

  Gods did I wanted to wrap vines around his throat and pull him so far beneath the marble floor he sat upon that no one would remember his name, that he even existed.

  Most of the time when I sat across from my uncle I looked through him, not at him. I knew that if I were to look at him any longer I would have thrown up the bile in my stomach. I had already committed his face to memory. It was engraved in my mind, on my bones. There would never come a day when I wouldn’t be able to tell you of every line and wrinkle on his face. I would remember his face for the sole purpose to never forget that I would be the one to kill him. So, I did
n’t need to look at it anymore. I wished to think of different things, things that I needed to remember everyday so that I didn’t forget them, so that the quality and clarity of them didn’t dwindle away like a painting left in the sun. Those were the things that I wished I could recount with ease, but when your body was so broken and only patched back together in the name of your enemy, the softer things, the brighter things, they were pushed aside to allow for space to latch onto the closest thing to keep you from fracturing. That thing was not love, not here, not in this place. Maybe once when wildflowers had bloomed on the walls and people had danced and drank and eaten. Maybe then, but not now.

  I refused to speak back to him. With every sentence, every attempted conversation he threw at me while I sat chained to this table. While Ainsley, my cousin – his daughter – sat silently and stared at her food. Her face so blank it was as if she had no soul. Her eyes were bottomless pits, black and empty. I learned that ignoring him, ignoring them both made him talk more. I had also learned that when someone was forced to make conversation with themselves, they often said things that maybe should be kept quiet. Like my uncle did, for example.

  Cander was yet to make a move, and I knew that because he was unsure of what we had planned. This knowledge told me two things. Firstly, that whoever was feeding him information before was no longer doing so, and secondly his footing was unsteady and he didn’t know for certain that he would come out on top if he attacked now.

  My lips were cracked and dry. I couldn’t remember the last time I had a sip of water, which I found hard to believe myself, considering the amount that was sitting in my lungs. Cander loved this particular aspect of his power, his affinity of water, to be able to draw all the water into my lungs and watch as I drowned from the inside, providing releif only when I was moments from death.

  I felt the pain as my lips split open, my mouth curving into a smile that I’m sure looked as feral as it felt before the hysterical laughter started. It didn’t sound like me, but I was glad for that. I didn’t want to imagine myself being kept in the dark, I didn’t want to imagine what my body looked like or imagine it was me who was having the thoughts I sometimes had, when I wished it all would end. When oblivion would call my name like a siren and every part of me ached to answer.

  The laugh was dark and cruel. On the inside, though, I knew that there was still time to break down the man in front of me. I knew it was still possible, for my uncle just made his move, and it was executed poorly.

  Two

  Silas

  Three, almost four weeks had passed.

  I had promised her, promised myself no later than the next day. She should be here. The memories flashed behind my eyes, no matter if I were asleep or awake, I could always see them.

  The shift in her eyes when she had made her decision. I could still feel her wrist in my grasp as I silently pleaded with her not to do it. The deafening crack of marble as it split from the force of the earth she summoned, the vines like barbed wire thrust towards her uncle. My own power that whipped at her cage of water. Every ounce of power I had, I had thrown at the orb of water that drowned her right before my eyes. The hoarseness of my own throat as I screamed for her, when I could do nothing but be dragged away. The helplessness of trying to reach for her, as she did for me. There was nothing I could have done that didn’t risk her life as well as mine. And so, I turned to walk away. Ramoan trailed close behind me as we had walked wordlessly through the shadows.

  I had set my mind on getting her back without delay, even if I had to do it on my own. I would suck the air from the lungs of anyone who stood between her and I. I would have held them down and savoured every scream and struggle for what they had taken. I would reduce Altrey to rubble if that’s what it took. I wanted to reduce that city to nothing but dust.

  My father grabbed my arm as I was about to leave the ship.

  I saw the guards, I noted how they lined every inch of the coast, every street of the city. I wasn’t stupid, though I didn’t think anyone thought that I was. Perhaps they thought I was mad, but not stupid.

  Trying to rip my arm from his grasp only made him hold onto me tighter.

  “Silas, to attack now, even a single member of that army, you will be starting something you alone cannot handle or finish. You are a prince, and not just any but a crown prince – you will jeopardize this war and your kingdom. The soldiers upon this ship and the innocent people in that city will suffer.” There was no accusation in his words just cold fact. A king commanding his subject.

  “This war will not happen if she remains within his reach, we will have no chance if he has her.” The words ripping from me with a growl. “He will kill her. Do you understand?”

  His gaze was sorrowful - my sadness that was bound to my anger - the sadness he saw was the only emotion that was reflected in his own eyes. It made it hard to hold his stare. The brokenness that looked back at me I knew did not belong to him.

  “I understand, Silas. You forget who you are speaking to.” His words were not angry but laced with lethal calm. It was rare we came head to head like that. It was odd, to be on opposite sides of a line when we were both so used to being side by side.

  “You must remember, Silas, she is now to be a queen of her kingdom. There was a decision to make and she made it. Do not disregard her choice or belittle her sacrifice. Have faith in her. It is love, my son, that is causing you to act so rashly. Think of her now as a queen, not a girl.”

  The sting of his words intertwined with a truth I already knew but couldn’t – wouldn’t – see it as a justification for our situation, for what now lay ahead, what this might mean.

  “She will come back to us, Silas. Until then we must move forward, we must move to save Vaashaa. There is hope, no matter the days that pass.”

  The wind picked up around us in a fevered frenzy. The scent of the sea breeze only causing my stomach to turn where it had once soothed me; where it had once made me happy to feel it brush against my skin. A cousin to the spring breeze that was me. If my father had not been holding my arm, he too would have had to brace the ship for support, like the soldiers around us did. The horror of the situation burned behind my eyes, the decision I knew I had to make.

  I knew I would never forgive myself for walking away, as long as I’d live, I’d carry it. Perhaps it was worse, to have my own two feet carry me away than it was to be dragged by the captain of Cander’s army the first time. A punishment for not being strong enough when it had counted the most. A punishment for being too cowardly to believe in her sacrifice, that it was worth it.

  Walking away from my father, walking back down the slight staircase, the narrow hallways where I declared my selfishness and prayed for forgiveness for what may happen if it was Terra that returned here without me. How could I have been so foolish to not know she would do the same. She, who always took it upon herself to give and give and give. How could I have been so stupid not to have seen her own resolve, the promises she too made, but made for me.

  I kept my eyes to the floor because to look upon any part of this hallway…I knew I would not have been able to fight the weakness that was fatiguing my limbs. So, I blocked it out. I walked through the door to my quarters, refusing to remember the last time the bed was used. The sheets still bunched and crinkled.

  I held my breath and closed my eyes because she was everywhere but next to me.

  The weeks had quickly become months with life coming to stop altogether, or so it had seemed.

  Brooding was for men without hope, at least that was the advice of a crewman who passed me by, offering his words of comfort. I had intended on smiling at him, nodding my thanks and moving on. I did not want or require pity. I had already ignored every piece of advice I had given to others in the past myself, along with every rational thought that entered my mind.

  What I wanted and needed were one and the same, there was little that would change that.

  It was second nature to thank the soldiers and the crewm
en and women who were brave enough to offer me their words. It was worse to give my thanks to those who were so quick to offer me their condolences. I wanted to scream at them.

  This crewman though, he was different. His words sat for a moment, lingering in my mind. They were different to the words that jumped from the tongues of the others and then so quickly fell from my thoughts like water from a cliff. This man’s words remained and then proceeded to sink down, getting under my skin and coating my bones. Like a forest parched of moisture, the first drops of water to touch the soil and spark the plants to life; my heart thrummed. As if - for some time - the beating had all but stopped.

  Hope. How could a word with only four letters hold so much power? How could it mean so much to have it, or not to have it?

  I would always have hope in my heart, until the end. And so, my breathing came easier, my knees forgot their quiver and for the first time in days my stomach let out a protesting roar of hunger that was turning more to the side of nausea as the seconds passed. I wanted food, the simple notion of it made me want to laugh – I had not wanted anything but to go back in time for what seemed like a very long time.

  I bathed, and dressed into my fighting leathers, once again feeling and looking like myself before I walked above deck and requested to Tashka quietly to gather the people of title and importance – those in charge upon our vessel - to the meeting room. The looks I received from everyone were those of surprise and shock, dressed in my fighting leathers and clean, I could only imagine it was a relief not to have to politely smile when the sight of me would have made even a gentlewoman hurl her guts on the deck of the ship - perhaps not expecting me to return from my gloom as soon as I did, if at all. It did, after all, run in the family.