Page 142 of Bound to the Shadow Prince

And their words had made no sense. “Two years?” I’d questioned Nemeth. “How can they blame us for two years? We left the tower less than a month ago.”

Nemeth had no answers, either. “Perhaps they’ve been hit by misfortune since the beginning of the war and we are an easy target to blame. We did leave the tower, after all.”

He’s not wrong…but must we be blamed for everything?

We’d sailed on from there, a tiny ship in the middle of an endless sea. We saw no other craft on the water, and when we ventured close to land, we saw no people, either.

And now we are nearing Darkfell and I am just as unsettled as the day we left the tower. I lean forward in my seat, fanning myself with the pages. “Do you ever wonder if the gods are playing tricks on us?”

“Tricks?” Nemeth asks, rotating one powerful arm as he regards me. “How so?”

I gesture at our surroundings. “That when we left the tower, we stepped into some upside-down world and that’s why nothing makes sense? Why everyone is gone?”

Nemeth eyes me. “How does it not make sense that they are gone? They lost the war. Or is it that part that is so inconceivable?”

I shake my head, because I don’t want to pick a fight with Nemeth. “You know that’s not it. It just feels so…odd. Like when we left the tower, we left our world behind, too. This doesn’t feel like our home. Not anymore.”

He takes my hand in his. “Your home will be with me, Candra, and mine with you. Don’t worry over things we cannot change.”

Easy for him to say. We’re sailing to his homeland because mine has been decimated. Still, I can’t help but wonder what the archbishop meant when he blamed us for two years of misfortune. The goddess is angry at us, of course, but surely we cannot be blamed for the time we were faithfully locked in the tower? That’s the part that gnaws at me and keeps me up at night.

That, and the endless swaying of our damned ship.

Nemeth lifts my hand to his lips, giving it a peck. “I’m going to scout some more. Do you need anything? How is the babe today?”

I put a hand on my rounded belly. Somewhere in the last month, it’s swollen to double its size. It makes sense that I would have a large belly given that Nemeth is rather gargantuan instature, but it’s not comfortable, and I worry what I’m going to look like when I get closer to my due date. The baby is calm now at least and not kicking my bladder. “Sleeping, I think. And I’m good. Though if you see shore, look for berries?”

I’ve had the most ridiculous cravings for fruit recently. Never mind that there’s no food anywhere on Lios’s shores, and here I am asking for berries. But my mate gives me a wink, kisses my knuckles again, and then surges into the air with another powerful thrust of his legs. The boat rocks back and forth and I clutch at the side, steadying myself.

Nemeth’s flying has grown better during our travels. He’s constantly in the air, scouting or just looking for fish he can dive and catch. I imagine that now that he’s free of the tower, he has no desire to be tied down to our crappy little boat. I can’t blame him. If I could leave the boat behind myself, I would in a heartbeat. The damned thing leaks and every twitch makes it rock, and it’s just a wretched form of travel, especially for someone that can fly.

Sometimes I worry Nemeth will just fly away and abandon me. On my crankier days, when the baby’s kicking me and the smell of raw fish makes me want to punch something, I think I’d leave me behind, too. But he always comes back, and he’s always patient and gentle with me.

I sit up on the trunk that’s been my seat for the last six weeks, the trunk full of books and our meager supplies. I cast out my fishing line after baiting it with the head of a minnow and ease the line into the water. Might as well fish for my lunch. I eye the mountains that have been growing increasingly dominant on the horizon with every day that passes.

I’ve always known that Lios is a land of rolling hills and plains and that Darkfell’s people live under the mountains, but I’ve never really visualized the differences in the land until now. The Fellian continent looks as if it is hewn directly from rock, thecliffs steep and forbidding as the rock itself climbs so high that the clouds cover the tops. I can’t imagine how anyone can live here. There’s no place for a farm or for livestock on the outside, and it makes me wonder what the interior looks like.

I don’t tell Nemeth that I’m nervous. Of course I’m nervous. After seeing what’s left of Lios, it makes me wonder if my head will be on a pike before the next day. How do I know they won’t spear me with a dozen swords like they did Lionel? I abandoned my sacred duty in the tower, after all. Being Nemeth’s wife might not be enough to keep me safe.

My line tugs with a bite, and I jerk on it, trying to snag the fish. It goes still and I relax, gazing up at the forbidding, looming mountains once more.

Nemeth will protect me, I remind myself. You carry his child. He loves you.

A shadow soars overhead, and I shield my eyes, glancing up as Nemeth sails through the skies, his wings outstretched, his form as powerful as it is dark. He’s beautiful, and he looks at home here among the menacing, mountainous land. He’s growing in strength by the day, and I feel as if I’m…not weaker, but more dependent.

Is this how Ravendor felt when she left the tower? That everything she’d thought she knew felt different?

But Ravendor killed her mate, if the stories are to be believed. I don’t think I could ever harm Nemeth.

He soars overhead again and I wave at him, smiling brightly to hide my troubled thoughts.

Close to dark,Nemeth drops into the ship again, a worried expression on his face. “We’re close enough that someone should have come out to see us.”

He voices aloud one of my fears. I raise my hand to my brow, shielding my eyes as I gaze at the mountains. I’ve been sailing towards them all day and they look no closer, but I’ve also never traveled much. I have no idea how close or far away they’re supposed to look, nor do I have a clue if we should be seeing people. I don’t even see a beach, just endless craggy mountains right up to the edge of the sea. “All of Lios seemed to be deserted. Do you think the same has happened to your people?”

The thought makes my stomach clench uncomfortably. If there’s no safe haven for us here, either, what is left? There’s a flutter in my belly that reminds me that there’s more at stake than just myself and Nemeth—our child needs a home, too.

“I don’t know,” Nemeth tells me. “I want to keep scouting and see. Will you…will you be all right here?” He hesitates, clearly torn between protecting me and finding out what he can. “It’ll be dark soon and I don’t want you to be afraid.”

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