Lilia lowers herself next to him, hand hovering over her sword as if she’s itching to use it. “So how do we break it?”
“We don’t.” Elena’s voice is soft. “Not even death can sever an Elemental’s connection with their element. The only way to keep the king from using this Shaker is—”
“To sever his connection to him. We’ll have to turn him to our side,” Meddie says.
That’s very optimistic. Medalyn makes eye contact with me as though I’ve spoken aloud, and she gives me a regretful look. She knows as well as I that it’s not likely we’ll be able to turn him. As far as I can tell, there are two camps in Egria: those who fall alongside the Underground and those loyal to Langdon.
Sir Liam grunts. “No. We’ll have to kill him.”
Silence falls for a moment. We’ve all taken lives before, but going after a singular person with the intent to kill is something new. I pull in my chin, thinking of the guard I’d slain before we left Egria, and Tregle and Breena dart a glance to me simultaneously, their minds running a similar course.
“He’d destroy all of the Nereid islands without a thought,” she says.
“I know. You’re right.”
The man coughs— ragged and wet. He shivers and when he lifts his head, his cheeks are flushed. Breena’s eyes narrow. “Caden.”
“I see it.” His eyes narrow to slits, just like hers. “He’s ill. That must be why Father’s had him ramp up his efforts. He doesn’t trust that he’ll be around to destroy the islands for much longer.”
The Shaker draws his sleeve across his chin. In front of us, the fire pops loudly.
“Those woods could be anywhere,” Lilia says. “Any ideas?”
“Father would most assuredly be keeping him in Egria. And we can gather that these woods are in the north, as there’s snow on the ground and it’s not quite the season for it. But beyond that…” Caden shakes his head. “I’m afraid I don’t have any ideas.”
The Shaker presses the heels of his hand together and stands. Abruptly, a shower of dirt crashes into the vision, until we’re left staring at nothing but an empty flame.
Tregle sits back as the fire crackles. The tension in the room lightens immediately as we all lean back.
Lady Helen, silent until now, claps her hands to her knees and stands. “Well. That was certainly…illuminating.”
Tregle’s eyes are tired as they turn to me. “I could try again.”
“No,” I say. I put a hand over his and glare around the room as if someone has dared to contradict me. “Perhaps he will light another flame later, but as he just doused this one, it seems unlikely. And that aside, you need rest before you attempt that again. It clearly drains you.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you, young lady.”
Resentment twinges within me. Young lady. Lady Helen still has difficulty referring to me as ‘Aleta.’ I can understand it, but I do wish she’d understand that I know no other name. At any rate, it won’t be an issue for much longer.
“As soon as we can determine where this man is, you must return to Egria.” Her gaze travels over all of us to settle on Breena, who gulps visibly. “And you must end him.”
Fourteen
Bree
I shouldn’t feel relieved at the idea of returning to Egria. I know that.
And yet…somehow, as plans are rapidly made and we prepare to leave Nereidium as quickly as we’d arrived, there it is. An undeniable eagerness. The feeling that the tide inside of me has been trapped, thrashing against a wall, until now. It’s like someone has released a dam and I’m free.
No sitting uncomfortably through a worship. No one expecting my touch to heal. No arguing with the governors. No throne. And no one calling me “Your Majesty” or “Aleta.”
I can just be Bree.
Of course, logically, I know it’s not that easy. There’s the Shaker to take down—before he takes Nereidium down. There’s the obstacle of Ruin’s Reaping. There’s Langdon to slay.
I’ll return one day to Nereidium. But for now, I can lay that part of myself to the side and focus on taking action. Which is what I’ve wanted since I arrived here.
And truth be told, I look forward to the journey. I itch to return to the sea. To drift along the water and forget everything else in Caden’s arms, as I did on the journey here. Before I know it, I find myself on the dock, a ship towering over me in wait. The others have already boarded, but I’d needed a moment to say good-bye.
I wipe my eyes as I pull from Aunt Helen’s embrace. “I feel so silly.” I laugh at myself, embarrassed at my inability to hold back the swell of emotion. I’m relieved not to have to be a queen, but…I’ve only just met Helen. I’d been enjoying getting to know her and learning more about my birth parents.
On the other hand, it is a relief not to feel the strange sort of guilt that tugs at me when I think of Da amidst that eagerness.
“Emotions are not silly.” She takes my cheeks in her hands and looks at me intently, as though memorizing my features. “They fuel us. Drive us. They can be useful when channeled properly. Let them fuel you, Alee. Not control you.”
Makers, I do wish she’d call me Bree. But other than that, it’s just what I need to hear. I fling myself back into her arms, having only a moment to process her startled expression.
“Oh!” Then, she relaxes and her arms close around me again. She draws back and deposits a gentle kiss on my forehead. “They would be so very proud of you, you know. Your parents.”
Until she said it, I hadn’t realized until she said it what it would mean to me to hear it. I know that Da’s proud—wherever he is in the Great Beyond. But Helen had known my birth parents and it means a great deal to have their tacit approval as well.
Helen’s smile trembles so slightly that I think for a moment I may have imagined it. She scoffs at herself. “And now I am the one who feels foolish. It’s not as though we’ll never see each other again. You shall return when this business in Egria is dealt with. I should not allow otherwise.”
And Aunt Helen’s will is iron. I’ve learned that much about her. I deliver a shaky grin of my own.
It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that she’s behind the governors’ sudden change of heart in allowing us a ship and troops from each of their city-states to sail with us. Helen is also sending Izador with us to lead them, for which I’m grateful. I know that she trusts him, and after so many lessons with him, learning the craft of my power, so do I. It will be useful not only to continue my Water Wielding lessons, but to have a reliable Nereid perspective among our ranks.
My smile dims, thinking of Helen left behind here. Alone, as she has been for so long. “You’ll be all right?” I ask.
How can I ask her to promise me that? Certainly, if the Shaker continues with his work, if the Egrian ships manage to find Nereidium, there are no guarantees.
But she squeezes my hand. “I will. I shall appease the governors and our people by assuming your place on Kyrene’s throne. They accepted that while you were presumed dead. I am certain it will be enough now.”
My place. The words stick in my ears like wax. How can I come back to that? To such a burden hanging over me.
Seeing my discomfort, she gives me another squeeze. “We will deal with it all in stride, little Wielder. And we will deal with it together.”
Fifteen
Caden
We make landfall in Clavins under cover provided by the Nereid Wielders. We’d dropped anchor and rowed ashore as the Wielders—including Bree, brow furrowed in concentration—quietly bent the water into a mist, refracting and reflecting the light. It’s the same method the Nereids have used to hide their country from Egrian ships for so long.
Our oars dip into the water with nary a splash, Elena funneling any sound that manages to emerge toward the clouds.
Finally, we pull ashore onto a vacant landscape. The Wielders release our cover only when they’ve performed a perimeter check and Bree walks beside me. I shudder as I sta
re at the horizon.
The capital of Clavins is distant, but even from this far, I can see the spires of the city. The buildings, scorched and blackened.
“They destroyed it,” Bree says. Her voice is a whisper. My fingers find hers and they intertwine wordlessly.
Clavins is a shell of the country it used to be.
I swallow hard. “I’ll add it to the list of things Father must do penance for.” I don’t need to put my fingers in my pocket to know that my Underground coin heats with the agreement of Kyrene and the Makers.
Elena kicks the ground. What she’s testing for, I couldn’t say, but it appears to meet with her satisfaction. She nods. “We’ll camp here for the night,” she says. “I’ll see if I can’t track down some of my former associates from within the Underground or the Clavish Freedom Fighters.” A troubled look crosses her face as her eyes, too, skitter toward the city. Her expression darkens. “If any of them are yet living.”
The damage from the fires is severe, but it’s clear that it was ordinary fire. Perhaps wielded by Torcher hands, but not a drop of Ruin’s Reaping. If that were the case, there would be no blackened spires there to greet us. Only a coating of ash along the ground.
“I’ll go with you,” Lilia says. “In case you require an extra hand. Unless you…?” She trails off, checking with me.
“No. Go,” I say. “But hurry back.” I scan our surroundings, restless.
She gives me a gentle shove. “It’s no more than a day’s ride, Your Worrywart-ness.”
“Losing your touch, Lilia!” I call after her as she and Elena stride off for the city, a smile twitching in the corners of their mouths.
Bree’s fingers spasm on my palm, and she pulls her hand free. Doubt and trouble swim in the depths of her eyes are she stares after them, then turns to me. “What’s our next move?” she asks.
Tregle looks up from where the Wielders and our troops are making camp. Aleta is a stalwart shadow at his side.
“Have you had any luck?” I ask him, without much hope. He’s searched for the Shaker’s whereabouts every night since we began our torturously slow trek across the sea. But we’d yet to find direction.
He hesitates. “Nothing that could rightly be called luck, Your Highness. I've seen him in different places. He’s dined in a pub, but it could be any pub, anywhere. He stared blankly into the fire. Sipped his ale alone. There were no names, no signs to distinguish the place from any other.”
“Damn.” Meddie swears. She curls and uncurls her fingers, as though itching to reach for her weapons. She looks at Liam. “So, what? We go from village to village in the North, asking where we might find a drink? We don’t have that kind of time.”
“Well, much as I think we all could use a drink,” Liam says, “I’m inclined to think we’ll have more success if we let Tregle keep trying.”
“He needs rest,” Aleta pipes up. She looks a bit green around the edges. The elixir Elena had provided her with to ward off her seasickness ran dry the day before we made landfall and it seems she hasn’t quite recovered yet.
“So do you,” Bree says. “So do the rest of us.” With nowhere else to get comfortable, she plops down onto the ground and splays her legs out before her. She looks up at me with a wry expression. “Join me, won’t you?”
Without further hesitation, I crouch beside her and the rest of them follow suit soon after. Aleta settles down, and Tregle, looking exhausted, pillows his head in her lap. She looks startled for a moment and then runs hesitant fingers over his head. He sighs happily and closes his eyes, looking content.
I shiver in the chill of the Clavins air. “It’s a bit…”
Aleta shoots me a look that speaks volumes of her exasperation with me, and a small fire lights on the ground with a wave of her hand.
I smile sheepishly. “Thank you.”
“Kindly just ask me next time instead of complaining.” She’s too tired to put much of a bite into her tone, and frankly, I’m too tired to care if her disdain were to rip me to shreds right now.
Medalyn inches closer to Aleta’s handiwork, eager hands seeking warmth. “No complaints from me, Prin—er, Lettie.”
“That,” Aleta says, raising her nose into the air with a roll of her eyes, “would be, I’m sure, a first.”
Bree coughs to cover a laugh, whereas Liam and I are too startled to hide ours. Aleta speaking in jest is something I haven’t quite adjusted to yet. But it seems that the more time she has to acclimate to her new status, the more she comes into her own. She lays back, relaxing, as the fire pops and crackles its approval and she and Tregle drift into slumber together.
I turn into Bree, letting my hand fall lazily over her hip. “We’ve made it back,” I muse aloud.
Almost imperceptibly, her muscles tighten beneath my palm. “So we have.”
Something’s amiss. I tilt my head toward her, scanning her wrinkled brow. Her bitten lip. Her flickering gaze, as it moves about, unable to rest. I give her a gentle squeeze to catch her attention, smiling when her eyes finally stop on mine. “Are you well?” I ask quietly.
She sighs and bites her lip with a bit more force, looking off to the side. “I suppose I just never thought that once I got away from your da, that I’d turn around and head straight back to him,” she says. Her voice sounds distant. As though, in her mind, she’s somewhere very far away. Perhaps back with her father in the little town she’d lived in. Or back in Nereidium with her aunt. She keeps wherever it is to herself, shaking herself back to the present with a wry grin. “But Nereidium wanted me to be a bit to still for my liking anyway. And here we are.”
Here we are. The lot of us battered, worse for the wear. We’d once been running from something and now we run toward it. Toward a resolution. A culmination.
An ending. One way or another.
I plunge a hand into a pocket to toy with my Underground token, praying that Kyrene and her Makers will ensure all of us live to see this story’s conclusion.
Tregle wakes with a start as the fire snaps loudly.
“All right, Adept Tregle?” Liam calls.
“Yes,” he says, pushing himself to a sitting position. He looks distracted, eyes wild and bewildered. “I—yes.” He eyes Aleta as though afraid he’ll wake her by turning toward the fire. “I thought perhaps I’d try again.”
Meddie gestures toward the flames. “Can’t see what good it’ll do, but by all means, have at it.”
My eyes narrow on him. He attempts to sound casual. And perhaps…perhaps he is, but I remain unconvinced. It is a bit odd that he should wake and immediately turn to scrying for our Shaker friend. Nervously, I turn the Maker’s coin over my fingers. I wonder if perhaps…
As though answering my unspoken question, the token heats minutely in my palm and my pulse quickens. That’s that question answered. I remove my hand from Bree’s side and sit up, at attention. Eyeing me, she follows my lead, pulling her knees into her chest, as Tregle’s eyes get further and further away and he closes them.
By now, we’re accustomed to the fire surging higher, whooshing into the silence like a hot wind. Accustomed to images taking shapes among the flames, first as shadows, and then, as Tregle finds his way deeper into the call of his Element, to a picture so clear that we may as well be there ourselves.
Our vantage point is different this time. In the past, when Tregle has managed to call forth the Shaker’s presence, we’d been level with his image. He’d sat before the fire, the same as we had. Huddling into himself, he’d stared vacantly into it. He and the flames were a party of two; it was his stalwart, faithful companion. We’d held our vigil on the other side, waiting breathlessly, hoping for him to make a move that would betray his position.
Now, though… Now, we gaze at the top of his head, as though we hover above him.
He staggers from an exit as a door swings shut behind him, the same ragged cough tearing from his lungs that we’d first heard when viewing him through the flames. A pair of boots wallops into
his form and throws him back another couple of paces.
A boy scowls around the wooden door. “That’s the last I want to hear from you, Everett. You want a meal? Fine. You come on back. But there’s no drink or bed for you here. None of us—not my da, my ma, or my brother—will complain if we’ve smelled the last of your whiskey-soaked breath.”
Everett. I suck in a breath. At last, we have a name for the Shaker. It’s not much, but it’s—
Bree frowns, leaning closer and interrupting my line of thought. “He looks so…” She trails off.
“Bree?” I glance from the fire and back to her, squinting at the flames, trying to see what she sees. “What is it?”
“…familiar,” she finishes to herself in a whisper. “He looks so familiar.”
The child strikes me as utterly unremarkable, bearing no resemblance to anyone that I know. I can’t think what it could be that strikes her so.
“Whiskey-soaked breath, have I?” The Shaker—Everett—spits. Blood speckles his spittle. Even in the vision, amidst the crackling and popping fire, we can hear how he slurs his words. “Bit hypocritical of that drunkard you call a fath—”
The boy pops him in the nose, and Meddie and Liam grunt approvingly in the same breath. Aleta stirs, rubbing her eyes and awakening. Holding my finger to my lips, I warn her to keep her silence. It wouldn’t do to interrupt Tregle now.
“A drunk father…” Bree’s breath whistles between her teeth as she sucks in air with a sudden realization. “Sweet Makers.”
The Shaker’s expression darkens, and the wood of the pub’s door wavers, undulating like an ocean. I watch in horror. Makers save us, he’s going to use his abilities on that innocent boy—
But no. The wood stills, flattening and returning to its original state. Either the Shaker’s thought the better of it, or he’s too inebriated to properly wield his abilities. It’s stayed any action he may take against the boy. For now.
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