Tied to the Crown

by Neha Yazmin

  “No, my mother would never—”

  “She didn’t,” Myraa assured her before Malin became too worked up. “She was faithful to the King. When she became ill, my father said he was trying to summon a sea folk to save her. Your father found out the truth at the trial. Your mother died soon after…”

  “I didn’t know…”

  “Your father ordered everyone to keep quiet about it.”

  Malin nodded. “And you swear that you don’t know any other secret about my mother or her family?”

  “I swear.”

  “That means your family didn’t tell you…”

  “Tell me what?”

  Malin took her mother’s letter from her pocket and handed it to Myraa.

  The beast knew she was on its heels, but it didn’t stop or turn around. It would reach the water soon, and if it was truly a sea folk, Aaryana would have no way of catching up with it once it dived into the sea. She wouldn’t dare follow it too far beneath the surface, not after what happened the last time she’d delved into the ocean. It didn’t matter if she was wearing a sunlight stone around her neck.

  The only way to kill the sea monster was to do it on land, while its back was turned. She just hoped that its scales weren’t as hard as they looked. That she was strong enough to strike her knife through its armour.

  She was grateful to the fire angel for gifting Roshdan with eternal fire. Her candle kept burning as she jogged and jumped and slipped through the dense trees until she reached the creature. She didn’t have the ability of shrinking her body like this sea folk did, but she was small enough to fit through the tree trunks and didn’t need to take a few seconds to manipulate her body. Did all sea folk have the ability to... shape-shift? Was this a higher sea folk?

  Aaryana found the sea-bear in the middle of stretching its shoulders between a particularly small gap and took her opportunity. She drove her knife into its back with an upward motion so that the blade could get under its scales.

  The monster’s ear-splitting roar told her that she’d succeeded in puncturing its flesh. If she’d been armed with a sword, she would have stabbed its heart with that blow.

  As she pulled, her knife refused to dislodge from the wound it had dug. Aaryana reached for another blade from her belt—

  That’s when the beast kicked out at her with its hind leg, its sharp claws tearing through the flesh on her stomach.

  The kick knocked the breath from her lungs, and if there weren’t trees directly behind her, Aaryana would have gone flying several feet through the air. Her body hit a tree trunk and dropped to the forest floor. She fell onto her side, on the arm that was still somehow gripping the candle. Her fingers loosened and the candle fell to the ground a few inches in front of her face.

  The fire went out, and so did the light behind her eyes.

  Myraa swore that she had no idea what Kanona was referring to in her letter. She promised to visit her brothers when she next had a holiday from work to demand what they were supposed to have told her long ago. Malin believed her; she had no other choice. She couldn’t force Myraa to tell her anything that she didn’t want to.

  Quickly, the girl returned to the topic of retrieving the first edition of the Sea Princess book from Parth’s rooms while he was still in the dungeons. Learning that it was meant for her beloved friend, Myraa was more eager to get the book, more invested in this quest.

  Sighing, Malin let the girl go straight to her brother-in-law’s chambers. They would meet outside the castle, at the spot near the secret tunnel, as soon as Myraa had the book. The girl didn’t seem worried about what would happen when she returned to Leesha’s service significantly later than expected.

  Rudro was right: Myraa was brave. Brave and reckless.

  Consciousness came and went countless times, and excruciating pain with it. In those moments of awareness, she didn’t know how long she’d spent lost in the blackness—minutes, hours, days?—or how long the darkness of the Dead Forest pressed on her eyes.

  The sharpness of the pain in her body left her breathless. Bones had been broken. Blood loss was preventing her from staying awake. In the end, it would be the blood loss that slowly killed her, rather than the actual attack by the monstrous sea folk.

  She would have felt grateful that the sea-bear hadn’t eaten her alive—if she could string more than two thoughts together. She would have been grateful that the beast had initially chosen to spare her. She would have wondered why.

  Once, she thought she saw and smelled fire, and had told herself it must have been her candle that started the fire, that she’d be responsible for killing this forest once and for all. Another time, she became distinctly aware of her sword arm draped over her stomach, felt the blood leaking from her wounds. The creature had torn off the bottom half of her bodice when it lashed out with its claws, leaving just a strip of black leather across her breasts.

  She thought that she could have covered herself up with her cloak if she’d brought it to the Isle. By the time she reminded herself that there was no one around to see her in this state, she’d been taken by the dark again.

  There were times when she could hear someone calling her name, quite frantically, too. These were the moments when she was certain that she was unconscious and dreaming. At first, when the voice had sounded faraway, it seemed possible that someone may have come looking for her. Maybe they were calling for her from across the water? But when it got louder and more panicked, when it sounded like there was a person right beside her, urging her to wake up, she knew it couldn’t be real. No one knew she was here.

  No one but the person that had sent her here.

  The person that had faked that letter. Who had been friendly and flirtatious with her just so she wouldn’t suspect that they’d overheard her discussing Seth’s illness with Rozlene on the night of the harvest festival.

  Wyett.

  The Crown Prince was behind all this.

  Seth probably wasn’t as ill as she’d been made to believe; Wyett had done everything he could to make her feel the urgency to find the miracle cure in this forest. When he found out that she’d trained with Seth, Wyett threw her out of the Palace knowing that she’d come straight here. This was punishing for going against his orders.

  He didn’t want her dead. He was a lot of things, but he wasn’t evil. Aaryana had hurt him and he wanted to hurt her back. Teach her a lesson.

  When he eventually realised that he’d sent Aaryana to her death, he would hate himself for the rest of his life. Never forgive himself. She didn’t want that. Wyett didn’t deserve to live with that guilt and self-loathing forever. How was he to know that there really were dangerous creatures in this forest? He may have been aware of the legends, but he didn’t know for sure that deadly sea folk patrolled this Isle.

  So, was that why she tried to fight the smothering fog in her head—to spare Wyett the torture? Why she urged her body to fight? To wake up—just like that frightened voice was begging her to? The frightened voice that sounded like Wyett’s?

  Of course, it resembled Wyett’s voice—she was thinking about him, wasn’t she? Fighting for her life to spare him a lifetime of agony.

  “Aaryana, Aaryana! Wake up, wake up. Please,” pleaded that same voice. “Aaryana, please, open your eyes. Open them. I order you to open your eyes. Now. Aaryana!”

  This man really wanted her to wake up.

  Well, she was awake. A little bit. Her eyelids were too heavy to lift—or she didn’t have the strength to pull them apart—but she was becoming more aware now. She heard his words clearly, heard the desperation in them, and thought that maybe he really was here with her. That pressure on her stomach—was that him trying to ebb the blood flow by pressing his hands on her wounds?

  He continued to beg her to wake up and she tried her best to push aside the mist behind her eyes. Will herself to full consciousness.

  Aaryana didn’t know that her eyelids had finally cracked apart until she heard Wyett breathe out the
words, “Oh, thank the fire angel!”

  Then, his face was clear as day; the forest was bright as day. The forest was… gone.

  The afternoon sun was shining brighter than it ever had since she’d set foot in Roshdan. The knitted branches above her had miraculously disappeared. Sunlight forced her to close her eyes again. It was too bright. It was not real. She was dreaming.

  “You’re not dreaming,” Wyett told her.

  Had she spoken out loud without realising it? Maybe she’d mouthed the word?

  It seemed as though she’d be able to speak if she tried harder. “The forest—”

  “I burned it down,” he told her, tone hard.

  Now she knew that her eyes had opened wide.

  “I killed the beast,” he explained, talking fast. “And set its body on fire. The fire spread. I let it. It’s cleared our way to the water.”

  Half of the Isle had been burned to ashes. While she’d been in and out of consciousness. A lot of time must have passed since she was struck by the sea folk. Wyett was right about the fire clearing their way out of here. It would have been some mission for her to navigate the jungle in the state she was in.

  “Seth...”

  “He’s alright,” he assured her.

  She closed her eyes for a moment, relieved. He put one arm under her neck and the other under her knees and cradled her to him as he stood up.

  “We need to get you to a healer. I need you to stay awake as we swim—”

  “Take me to the water,” she choked out.

  With the surprise of the Dead Forest being truly dead—half of it, anyway—wearing off, the stinging pain of the gashes on her stomach was making her breathless again.

  “Yes, that’s where we’re going,” Wyett told her as he hurried towards the sea. “Just stay with me, alright? Keep your eyes open.”

  Oh, her eyes had closed again. But her mind was not.

  “No, I need the sea,” Aaryana managed to say. “I need—”

  “Yes, we’re going to the sea.” He was moving faster.

  Pain shot through her and she gasped.

  “I need to stay in the sea,” she whispered. “I need—let me—put me down in the water. You can stay on land while I lie there for a bit.”

  “Why?”

  He was running now, most likely assuming that she was becoming delirious and needed urgent care. The movement shook the life out of her. So much pain...

  “The sea water,” she panted through the throbbing, “will clean my wounds—”

  “It won’t disinfect it, so why—”

  “Trust me, please.”

  “Alright.”

  And when they reached the water, he walked into the sea with her still cradled in his arms and submerged her body in the water. He moved one hand to the back of her head to keep it above the surface and stayed by her side as the water slowly began to heal her.

  Slowly wasn’t going to do, though. Aaryana had lost too much blood; she had to heal those gashes faster. Make it quick, she told the sea. It was the same as telling it that it couldn’t have her. Heal me, now.

  The water obeyed. She could already feel the pain becoming bearable. Heal me as fast as you can.

  The sunshine was bright beyond her closed lids and she thought they felt less heavy. Still, she kept them shut and focused on telling the water—and her body—to knit her flesh, muscles, and skin back together, to mend her cracked bones.

  The water soaked into her body through her wounds and through every pore on her skin, and it felt as though sunshine was soaring through her veins. Make me brand new, she told the sea, and it did.

  Myraa had never been in Parth’s study. It was mainly his bedchamber that he wanted her to tend to. The study was right at the rear of his apartment and she headed straight there. The drapes were understandably shut. The sun was too bright and hot on the dry days to open the curtains. She took a match from her girdle and lit one of the candles on the wooden desk.

  It wouldn’t take long to find this old book seen as there was only one bookcase in Parth’s study. Did she want to read it straightaway or wait until she met Princess Malin? The girl wouldn’t be happy if she read it first, so Myraa would have to act as though she hadn’t sneaked a peek. Would she be able to lie convincingly enough?

  Yes, she thought she would. She was very good at that sort of thing.

  Aaryana pushed away from Wyett’s arm and let her perfectly healed body float a little ways away from him across the surface of the water. She opened her eyes and felt as though she’d been reborn. The sky was very blue and very beautiful today. It was great to be alive. Healthy. Ripples collided with her flesh as Wyett walked up to her.

  She spun onto her front and kicked away from him. “I’ll race you to Roshdan,” she said and swam away.

  They raced in silence and reached the shore at the same time. When they rose to their feet, Wyett turned to her with an awed expression on his face.

  “Your wounds… they’ve healed.”

  He reached out to touch her stomach, the skin flawlessly smooth and warm under his fingers. Aaryana looked down at herself. There weren’t even scars. She felt her throat. That cut had disappeared, too—it would have healed long ago if she’d let it come into contact with water. That’s why she’d kept it dry.

  “How can that be?” Wyett blinked several times, his fingers still moving over her abdomen.

  “Sea water has healing properties, Your Highness,” she whispered.

  He glanced at her face for a second before looking back at her torso. “I’ve never heard of that before.”

  “Well, now you have.” She flashed him a lazy smile when he gaped at her. He was still feeling her stomach with his hand, bewildered and mesmerised. She watched the fingers that were caressing her skin and said, “That feels good.”

  It was also unbearable. Tingling, tickling sensations skittered over her skin, a pleasant experience yet difficult to tolerate. The water dripping down her body wasn’t helping, either.

  Wyett nodded, his hand still feeling her flesh, searching. “You’re as good as new.” There was wonder in his voice.

  “No,” she whispered without meaning to, “I meant your hand, your touch.” That’s what feels good.

  He dropped his hand and took a step back as though he’d been unaware that he was touching her.

  She stepped forward. “Thank you for coming to find me. I thought I was going to die.”

  She had never owed a life debt to anyone; it somehow seemed fitting that it was the Crown Prince of Roshdan that she’d forever be grateful to. Wyett closed his eyes tight, as though to blot out a bright light trained on his face.

  Those wide jaws locked, he said, “We should get out of here.”

  He headed towards the two warhorses waiting by the tree line. One was Aaryana’s, one was Wyett’s. Aaryana grabbed his arm so he would stop and look at her. He seemed startled by her assertiveness.

  “You called me by my name,” she said and he looked even more surprised.

  For some reason, this was what she wanted to talk about, him using her name for the first time today.

  “Earlier, when I wasn’t fully awake. You said my name. I’ve never heard you say my name before.”

  “I’ve never said your name out loud before,” he told her, his eyes dropping to her stomach.

  Was he remembering the lacerations that had miraculously healed or the healing process itself? She hoped it was neither of those things, but rather the longing to touch her again. She knew she was craving the feel of his fingertips on her stomach. On her.

  “I don’t think I’ve used your name in my thoughts, either,” Wyett added, shaking his head.

  “It felt good, hearing it,” she told him.

  “It felt good, saying it.” He closed his eyes briefly, shook his head. “Despite the state I’d found you in, it felt like a relief, saying your name. That must sound terrible.”

  “Not at all.” Aaryana closed the distance between them
and said, “Say it again. Say my name.”

  Wyett didn’t back away, didn’t turn around, even when she moved closer, their noses almost touching. Their lips would graze each other’s if one of them spoke.

  He swallowed and whispered, “Aaryana.”

  His lips did graze hers, made them quiver.

  “Aaryana,” he repeated under his breath. “Aaryana.” It was barely audible.

  He opened his mouth to say her name for the fourth time and Aaryana covered it with her own before he could make the sound, kissing him with shaking lips.

  And then he was taking control of the kiss, leading it like he was leading her in a dance, and she was glad and grateful for it. She relaxed and leaned into the embrace. One of Wyett’s hands went to her waist and the other to the bend where her neck met her shoulder. She savoured the warmth of his mouth and the closeness of his body.

  He wasn’t rough or fierce, he wasn’t gentle or slow. He was perfect. The kiss was perfect. Even if they were both dripping wet.

  This was sending her heart into another state of being. It wasn’t racing, it wasn’t beating; it was melting and boiling and spilling out of her like water from a overfilled glass. It should have been frightening, but she’d never felt braver, and she didn’t want to break away from his mouth.

  But it felt like she was holding her breath, like she couldn’t breathe, so she broke free from his lips to take in some air. She rested her forehead on his chest and urged her breathing to calm.

  Wyett was breathless, too. He tightened his grip on her. It felt reassuring. “Are you alright?” he asked, the words half-whispered, half-choked out.

  “Is it like this for everyone, their first kiss?” Aaryana asked.

  She took the hand he had on her waist to her chest so he could feel her heartbeat. Wyett sucked in a ragged breath. Her heart was beating again, racing. Its speed must have surprised him, that’s why he was gulping and swallowing hard.

  “You did that,” she told him, glancing down at their hands over her heart. “You’re making this happen.”