Page 10 of Ship of Shadows
“How could you, Gabrielle?” My mother paced back and forth in her private chambers, chambers that were filled with my furniture. I was supposed to officially move into the queen’s chambers today, after the ceremony and celebration.
Now I’d gone and ruined that. The guards had taken Bastian away to the prison cells while he screamed at me to think about his offer.
“You know I can find them, love. If anyone can navigate the shadow court, it’s me.”
Meanwhile, everyone else screamed for an explanation, which my mother and I had finally been forced to give, divulging the full, horrifying truth to everybody about what had happened, and now they knew of my involvement, my guilt.
“This is truly the worst thing you’ve ever done,” my mother said.
I winced. “I know it was stupid.”
My mother stopped and stared at me where I sat on the chair tucked into the corner of the room. A breeze whispered through the open windows, fluttering the thin white curtains.
“Stupid?” my mother repeated. “Stupid is you and your brothers sneaking out for a midnight swim in the ocean. Stupid is sparring with Leoni without any armor. Stupid is staying up late drinking too much wine and gossiping with your ladies-in-waiting. Not falling in love with the most notorious pirate to ever sail the Dark Seas. This was not stupid, it was reckless, dangerous, selfish?—”
“I never said I was in love.” I curled my knees up to my chest, looking out the window to the endless ocean, wishing I was out there right now.
“How did you even meet him?” she asked. “How could you even entertain speaking to him?” She glared at me with those light brown eyes, the exact same shade as mine.
I thought back to the first time I’d met Bastian. I’d been on the northern shores, walking and collecting seashells when I’d seen him lounging on the beach, on my beach. I’d marched over to him, ready to question this stranger, but he’d blinked up at me, smiled that charming smile of his, and then we spent the rest of the day lying in the soft sand and talking. As the sun set, he’d confessed his true identity, and I wanted to hate him, but it had been too late. I’d already fallen for him, fallen for his wild, easy nature, the way he craved adventure as much as I did, the way he made me laugh, the way conversation just flowed between us as seamless as a river.
“And a human, Gabrielle,” my mother continued. “What was your plan, exactly? Did you really think you could have a human by your side as king of the water court? That our people would accept someone with no magic? Would accept heirs with a diluted bloodline?”
I winced. I hadn’t been planning on becoming queen, but I couldn’t exactly confess that to my mother.
“Was it the sex?” she asked. “Is he hung like a?—”
I straightened. “Mother!”
My mother had never been shy talking about sex, preparing me for what was to come when I took lovers, but I had no interest in speaking with her about this.
She threw out her arms. “I’m not blind. I always knew you liked your adventures, knew you could be reckless, knew you envied your brothers and their freedom. But I never thought... I never imagined... He steals dark magic and sells it to desperate people. Dark magic that is made in abhorrent ways.”
I knew all too well how dark magic was made. Sorrengard, the shadow court, was full of it. Long ago, all seven elemental courts agreed to never use their magic for darker purposes. The shadow court could manipulate shadows, bend them to their will, but they also had the power to steal shadows, to rip away a person’s shadow. That had been expressly forbidden. Somewhere along the way, the shadow court grew bitter about the restrictions on their powers. In secret, they’d begun kidnapping people, taking their shadows, and eventually it led to a war that had cost so much, in the end. That had been long ago, before I was born. They’d lost the war and been severely weakened, most of their people dead, including the king and queen. The rest had been exiled to their island, and they’d sunk into obscurity.
Until now.
I couldn’t imagine what they wanted with our boys, why they’d targeted us specifically, and how Bastian was connected to it all. He’d only told me about the magical items he stole—not that he was kidnapping people and delivering them to the shadow court so they could steal their shadows.
Magic always had a cost, and the price depended on how much of the magic was being used and what the magic was being used for. Using shadow magic for dark purposes had a horrible price, it turned out. Every time a shadow person usedtheir magic to rip someone’s shadow from their body, a new item appeared on their island. Dangerous items with dark powers.
I’d never visited the shadow court, but I’d heard rumors that the island was full of these objects: tantalizing magic. Since Sorrengard’s exile, many foolish individuals made the journey to the island, hoping to steal the items, either to use the magic themselves or sell it. Few of them ever returned, except the pirate lord, who’d somehow learned the secrets of the shadow court and capitalized on those secrets, creating a booming business from selling the dark magic. As usual, the other courts had ignored the dangers of the shadow court over the years, convinced Sorrengard was so weakened after their exile that we needn’t worry about them.
Now they were at play again, and we could no longer brush them aside.
“What would your father say?” My mother was still speaking.
I sank deeper into my chair. I knew what he’d say, had thought about it many times since Bastian’s betrayal. He’d lecture me about Spirit Water, how I’d let the spirit who granted us our powers down, how I hadn’t lived in her image as I was expected to in all areas of life. My father was the most stringent of all the rulers on Arathia, expecting his court to live by ancient rules in ancient books written by ancient people who worshipped the same spirits as we did. His insistence on following some of these rituals and rites felt archaic, but my father was convinced that if he did everything right, he’d be rewarded by Spirit Water, that the water court would be rewarded. I still didn’t know what that reward was, and it certainly hadn’t been granted yet. Quite the opposite, given everything that had happened.
I shrank into myself against my mother’s searing stare. “I’m sorry.” I didn’t know how many more times I could apologize. I’d probably spend the rest of my life apologizing for this.
She tugged the crown off her head, unentangling it from her gray strands, then set it on my navy blue dresser.
“The pirate lord.” She rubbed her forehead. “You had a dalliance with the pirate every court has been trying to catch and imprison for years. Do you know how many dangerous items he’s responsible for selling? The chaos that’s ensued from his dark dealings?”
I knew it well. He’d told me about many of them, the lengths he’d gone to to steal them from the shadow court.
She looked so, so tired in this moment. The last month had been nice. I’d seen a renewed sense of hope in her, and I’d doused that hope with my actions.
