“And I have promised to help you,” Kyran answered calmly. “I will overthrow the king, and I will do all in my power to restore your child to you, lady.”
“No,” Seraphine’s voice came quiet and bitter. “You will not do that. Not unless you can bring her back from the dead.”
Limnoreia gave a tiny gasping sob. Adamaris swam swiftly to Seraphine’s side to stroke her hair in comfort, before turning a face ferocious with pain to Kyran and Posy. “It is true,” she said huskily. “My sister’s daughter was sent beyond the realm of the Kingdom, out of the Plot, and died there. Those who die outside of the Plot never return to it. My sister’s pain is beyond anything you would know. She has lived centuries, lifetimes, knowing no turn of the Plot will bring back her child, knowing no king or king’s son can ever make right the wrong that has been done to us and our people. And we know—we learned long ago—that if you cannot get back what you lost, you may at least let your revenge fall on the heads of those who took it from you.”
“No,” Posy said, her voice sticking in her throat. Yet she had known, somehow, it would come to this, hadn’t she? In her heart she had seen it, though she had denied it. Some hurts don’t heal, Posy thought, and the thought struck something within her like a gong, hard and deep. She felt her eyes burning with the threat of tears, and knew her whole body was shaking.
Kyran reached down to gently extricate his hand from Posy’s tight grip, then he calmly unsheathed his sword. “I have no desire to hurt any of you,” he said, his voice tinged with profound sadness, “but I will find my sister, as you have promised me I would. I must insist you fulfill that promise now. I am sorry in my heart for your loss, but it was none of my doing, and your revenge is not for me.” His face changed as he spoke and he seemed to be lost in his own thoughts, almost speaking to himself now. “I suppose a cruel thing may be done, and its doer never knows the many wrongs and pains that happen because of it, falling one on the other, toppling like an avalanche on a mountainside. Can it only end in the ruin of everything in its path?”
Seraphine looked up suddenly, her eyes fastened on Kyran’s face. “Yes,” her voice was low. “I see you know more of pain than I thought, Prince.” She shook her head. “And that makes what I do even harder for me, but I cannot go back. I will not. Don’t you see?”
“Go back?” Posy finally spoke, her voice unnaturally loud in the hushed palace hall. “What do you mean? What are you going to do to us?”
“Do?” Seraphine gave a weak smile. “I will do nothing to you at all. You are here now, in my palace, and the princess is here as well, just as I told you. You may find her if that is your wish, and take her back to the surface and out of the Glooming. But you must do it alone. I am done with this now. I see what I must do.”
“Seraphine, no!” Limnoreia swam to her sister and seized her arm.
Adamaris had an equally panicked look on her lovely face, but she only cast an anxious glance at her sister and swam to where Kyran and Posy stood. Her voice low and quick, she said to them, “My sister has her own path to follow now, and I do believe she means to do it.”
“Do what?” Posy asked in alarm.
“It does not concern you, little one,” Adamaris said. “What does concern you is finding the princess before it is too late.”
“Before ... it’s too ...!” Posy sputtered, fear gripping her.
“My sister would not do you harm, for all her talk of revenge. She has decided to summon a deep magic and end her imprisonment here once and for all, though at what cost only the Author may say. She will do it soon, I think.” Adamaris threw a glance over her shoulder once again at the solemn face of her sister. “So you must find Evanthe quickly and leave this place. For I believe our little kingdom here will be destroyed.” Her voice held sadness, but Posy noted with surprise that it held a trace of something like relief as well.
“And the garments?” Kyran asked, his voice so calm that Posy stared at him.
“Yes, they are only temporary, as all magical things are,” the mermaid nodded. “If they dissolve, you will no longer be able to breathe and remain under the lake. You must reach the surface before this happens.”
“Where is the surface? How do we leave the Glooming?” Kyran pressed.
Adamaris’ look was distracted; Seraphine and Limnoreia were gliding out of the chamber now. “When you leave the palace, here,” she gestured toward the doors they had just entered, “you must follow the way you are meant to go. No man leaves the Glooming alive if he does not know his own self, his own soul. There is no other way to leave such a dark place than by a light such as this. Words could never show you.” The mermaid leaned forward and kissed Posy’s cheek suddenly, her expression more open now than ever. She grasped Kyran’s strong hand in her own small one. “Do not blame my sister, when you see what she has—” She hesitated, biting her lip, and started over. “Remember, Prince, there is good and bad in everyone. Dark and shadows depend so wholly on light that it is impossible sometimes to see where one begins and one ends. Not a soul in this world or any other is ever completely lost to darkness—not unless they choose to be.”
The palace walls seemed to groan, then, and Adamaris threw an anxious look around her. One last word she gave them, her emerald eyes large with urgency.
“Go,” she said, pushing them toward the depths of the palace. Before Posy could take it all in, Adamaris had darted away after her sisters through the water, leaving only a rush of sparkling froth behind her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Through the Water
Kyran did not hesitate a single moment, and Posy could see the fierce light of determination behind his dark eyes. He swam to the stone pillars between which the mermaids had disappeared, Posy close behind him. The sisters were nowhere to be seen. Posy knew they would not see them again. She looked about her and seemed to feel the chill of water a bit more, pushing on her body like a coldness that would seep into her bones. The palace was a place of darkness, and a place of despair. How could it be anything else? It had been created by Seraphine, who had lived lifetimes in regret and sorrow for her child, in anger, amidst thoughts of vengeance for those who had wronged her. What an anguished place to live in, Posy thought. She turned and saw Kyran watching her and, as had become their habit, knew her eyes spoke to him at that moment more than her mouth could have. He nodded, a look of sorrow still on his face.
“Yes, Posy, I feel it. I see it. Yet this is not the time to dwell on these thoughts. Be strong against them. We must find Evanthe.” He crossed to her and reached up a hand to cup her chin. He leaned forward and kissed her, hard and quick, and when he pulled back, his face was set. “We must separate.”
“What?” Posy cried. “Separate?”
“It’s the only way we can find her with so little time.” His brows furrowed. “The only question is, how will one of us let the other know if we have found her?”
“Separate?” Posy repeated. “Not in this place, Kyran, please!” The coldness of the water lapped around her, mocking.
“You will be safe in the palace, though it holds such horrible things. The things that lurk here cannot harm your body, I think,” he said wryly. “We have no time to discuss it. I will go this way, you go that. Stay to that side of the palace, search every floor and room and corner. If you don’t find her, leave the palace and wait for me near where we entered. Don’t linger here.”
“I ... Kyran, I ...” Posy heard her own voice choke. “I can’t ...”
“Yes, you can. Because you must. Be brave, little one.” He kissed her forehead briskly, gave her one last piercing look, and was gone.
* * *
Posy didn’t know when she had last been so frightened. Never, she admitted to herself with a shudder. Darkness and emptiness, it seemed, terrified her more than a danger standing solidly before her. She knew she had to move before the seeping coldness she felt made her incapable of any movement at all. So she pushed her arms through the water and began.
The palace kept groaning as it had just before Adamaris left them. It sounded like a great creature in the throes of a terrible pain. Posy knew, in the depths of those endless empty rooms, that it had held its sorrows closely for too long, and it was ready to drive them out forever. She suddenly understood the fleeting look of relief on Adamaris’ face before she had gone. The strong stone walls shuddered, and the furniture trembled, and Posy’s searching became frenzied. She swam from rooms to hallways to towering balconies overlooking the darkened floor of the lake, and saw nothing, and no one. She began to feel a creeping suspicion that Kyran was not here at all; she felt certain he must have gone from the palace, and left her alone. No one could feel so alone as this, so alone you begin to question the thoughts in your own mind. She was the only person in the world—or so it felt—and though she was the only person, she didn’t know who she was.
She didn’t know when she had started crying, but Posy’s sobs seemed to be a part of her and she barely regarded them as she searched and searched through the emptiness. At last, she reached the top of the palace, a spiraling tower wending its way upward, folded into the mountainside. Before she opened the door to the small room at the top of the tower, she knew that it was empty, too. With a feeling like falling into nothing she stepped across the threshold. She knew she must truly be alone in this horrible place—aloneness so deep that even she did not seem to be there. Then the emptiness pushed on her, invaded her being and pierced her skin, with a coldness like icy death.
* * *
Kyran had felt pain when leaving Posy and seeing the look of childlike fear she cast at him. He had felt that something was tearing off him, when he had to leave her. This is the first time we have been apart on this journey, crossed his mind with a jolt as he swam swiftly away from her. But his determination to find his sister overcame everything else, and with a warrior’s single-minded purpose began searching his half of the palace.
As far as he could tell, as he performed his swift and methodical exploration, it appeared to be a normal palace. It was, in fact, startlingly like his father’s castle in the Kingdom. He wondered, with a feeling of unease, if the similarities were deliberate. He didn’t know what it could mean, but something within him became wary at the thought.
The first room in which he saw people was like all the others, richly decorated and comfortable. And that was the troubling thing; for they were people—not merpeople at all. As he swam slowly into the room, he gazed about him guardedly. No one seemed to notice him; they all were preoccupied with what they did. Two people were sitting at a small marble table playing a game of chess, laughing and pointing at the stone pieces as they moved them. Two ladies were sitting on a couch; one reclining slightly and seeming to drowse, the other intently reading a book. A man was sitting in a chair across from the ladies them and was raptly conversing with the one who held the book. Kyran stared at them a moment. Why would the lady not look up from her book, and pay the man some attention? And why, yet, would the man not seem to notice that she ignored him so completely?
Kyran shook his head as if to clear it, and walked carefully past them, his eyes alert. Nothing changed, and no one seemed to see him, or even notice anyone else in the room. Kyran opened the door at the far side of the room to enter the next chamber, and was met with a scene disturbingly similar to the one before. A roomful of people, all absorbed in what they did, but no one seeming to notice anything else. Kyran attempted to speak with a few of them, but it was no good. He even touched a few of them, and once or twice someone would glance at him. He got an unfocused gaze from one man, a nod from another, a slight smile from a woman; but nothing more. He began to feel a coldness creep under his skin as he entered room after room down the long corridor and was met by only different renditions of the same thing.
One room, though, was different. He felt it as he opened the door, and instead of nothingness, like all the others, there was a vibration in the air, a feeling, and a cry. He rushed frantically into the room, disregarding the two or three people who looked up long enough to give him a look of annoyance as the door swung open and hit the wall with a loud crack. He searched everyone’s face, looking for his sister, but he didn’t see her. He had felt it; he knew he had. His shoulders drooped, and he sat on a settee next to a woman who rocked a baby in her arms. “Well, really!” she breathed crossly, and turned her back on him, continuing to coo quietly to the sleeping child.
Kyran leaned forward to put his face in his hands, covering his eyes from the emptiness around him. “Where are you?” he spoke aloud. “Evanthe, you are here, but you must help me! Where are you?”
Here, Kyran! Here!
Kyran shot from his seat as his gaze swept frantically across the room.
“Evanthe?” his voice faltered.
Here, the faint voice came again, and this time he saw where it had come from. He ran to the darkened corner of the room where his sister sat, huddled on the floor, hugging her knees like a lost child, her tangle of golden hair falling over her knees and onto the floor around her.
“Evanthe, Evanthe,” Kyran sobbed, crushing her in a wild embrace. But she didn’t embrace him in return. She didn’t even look at him. Her body was limp in his arms.
“I thought I heard him,” she said aloud, shaking her head as he released her. “I thought ... but I was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong .... Kyran, why don’t you come for me?” Tears streamed down her pale face.
Kyran drew back from her, a dawning horror flooding his mind. “Evanthe?” he said slowly. “I am here. Don’t you hear me? Don’t you see me?”
The princess hugged her knees closer to her and shivered, her violet eyes staring across the room, the endless tears dropping from her face to the floor. She has cried those tears for so long, Kyran thought suddenly, that she does not even bother to wipe them away.
His mind stopped, then, as if hitting a solid wall. He did not know what else to do. He did not know how to help her. “Posy,” he said, “I need Posy.” He turned as if to run and find her, then turned back to Evanthe. He could not leave her here, like this. He felt the palace walls heave and it seemed the very foundation rumbled beneath him; there was no time. He did the only thing he knew to do. He leaned down and scooped up his sister, light as a flower, and held her against him.
“I can’t get to your mind, Evanthe,” Kyran breathed in her ear. “I suspect it is no one’s choice but your own to come back to me. But I will save your body and take you from this horrible place.” He held her fiercely to him and buried his face in her shoulder, stilling the anguish that fought to burst out of him.
He lifted his wearied eyes and gazed about the glittering room, the people smiling at what was before them. He shook his head slowly, grief like a stone sitting in his chest. He saw only a waking sleep here; a living death. Holding to his sister like a lifeline, he hastened from there without a backward glance.
* * *
Posy was alone. Her search had halted, because she didn’t have the heart or strength to swim anymore. She floated, frozen as a statue, before one of the great windows atop the tower room, staring sightlessly across the barren sea floor. The surrounding yellow-green water seemed to reverberate and ripple with anticipation, and Posy saw tiny waves beginning to spread outward from the palace. The waves seemed to speak of a doom, in Posy’s mind. After a fleeting glance around the chamber, seeing it was empty, she had become mysteriously calm. The weight of emptiness and sadness was still on her, but she no longer fought it. She felt how easy it would be to give in to it,
to let it overtake and drown her. How blissful just to let it pull her down, to stop her frenzied struggle. She knew this must be the end of the journey for her, and she almost laughed. So close to the goal, but not to reach it. Was it tragic ... or pathetic?
A shaft of light shone suddenly on a hidden part of her mind, and she remembered her parents and her sister, as if they were fairytale creatures from another world. She knew she would miss them—if only she could feel anything at all.
Her eyes finally recognized something moving on the sea floor, far below her. A person had come out of the palace doors and was swiftly moving away from it. Kyran? So he had left her, after all. The thought of that was like a hammer hitting a numb spot. The pain was there—she just waited to feel it. Then she saw that he carried something—a person! Posy’s mind worked sluggishly ... it was—it had to be—the princess! He had found her.
Slowly, so slowly Posy almost thought something else must have been guiding her hands—she reached for the latch of the window before her. It sprang open almost before she touched it. She pushed her fingertips on the screening of seaweed and it swung open for her, inviting. But she needed no invitation. She climbed over the sill and prepared to jump, her heart giving a horrible flutter. There was no time to leave the castle the way she had entered it. This was surely the only way. Perhaps she would die in the fall, but her only other choice was to remain in this place, and she would not do that.
Only as she pushed herself off the ledge, the decision made, did she remember, feeling foolish, that she was swimming, and could come to no harm doing this. She had thought the escape from such emptiness would be a difficult one—she had been prepared for it to be so, for the pain and more that may have come of it. And it was as simple was pulling a latch ... opening a window and stepping out.
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