Page 68 of Across an Endless Sea

Thank the Goddess.

I don’t know if it’s cowardice, rebelliousness, or just plain shock that roots me in place, but I don’t join the other warriors reaching for their weapons. I don’t even respond to my father’s frantic orders.

All I can do is sit there, propped up on my elbows, and watch as the snake wraps Rose up in its coils and darts for the door.

I grimace, because there went her last chance. If she’d ordered her snake to kill Elatha, Rose might have had a shot at surviving, but now… where can they go? It’s not like a tattoo can cross the Endless Sea.

“After her!” Elatha roars. “Follow that snake and bring the queen back to me alive!”

Around half of the warriors rush to obey his command, and I push to my feet, intending to follow.

“You.” Elatha rounds on me, freezing me to the spot. “Youwere in charge of ensuring she was properly chained. Instead, you allowed her to come here knowing she still had access to her powers? You dare putmylife at risk?”

“I had no idea that would happen!” I retort. “It’s not even her magic. Her damned púca—”

“Spare me your excuses,” he bellows. “Lock my useless weakling of a son in the cells. I want him beaten until he can’t remember his own name. Maybe pain and time in the dark will remind my treacherous bastard that he owes me his miserable existence!”

A warrior runs into the room, eyes wide. “My king, she’s gone.”

“Gone!” Elatha’s yell has escalated into a full-blown screech, and I take a step back, glancing nervously at the ceiling out of habit. “She’s trapped inmymountain! How can she begone?”

The female shakes under the weight of her king’s displeasure. “The snake… it dissipated at the base of the waterfall… We were going to grab her, but she just jumped…”

Into the Deep Caves.

My heart lodges in my throat.

Rose chose certain death over recapture. Elatha knows it too, because he swipes out, grabbing the warrior by the throat and ripping her head from her neck with his bare hands.

Rough hands grab my shoulders, and I don’t resist as the guards yank me towards the door. Like me, they’re keenly aware that being far away from my father is our safest bet right now.

“Find Praedra,” Elatha roars, the angry sound echoing down the hallway after us. “Tell her to get her ass on a ship. I want the Nicnevin recaptured and brought back hereimmediately.”

* * *

The cellI’m left to rot in is buried in the farthest depths of Fellgotha. A familiar relic from the old caves, before the cavern was hollowed out and the great fortress was built. I’ve been here many times before but never as a prisoner. The guards slap heavy chains on my wrists with grim faces, but they hesitate when it comes to the second part of their orders, probably afraid that I might strike back. The reprieve doesn’t last. They’re more afraid of what Elatha will do to them if they don’t obey than they are of dying by my magic.

A boot catches me in the face, the first in a hail of leather and fists. My bones crack, my teeth are kicked loose. Blood is all I can taste. All I can smell.

I surrender to it all without a fight.

Perhaps that’s why I freefall into unconsciousness so easily.

Only, instead of the oblivion I crave, I dream of wind chimes and a darkness so thick it consumes me.

“So it has come to this, as I feared it would.”

The female voice floats out of the blackness, discordant and familiar.

“You have disappointed me, my son. I chose you and your brothers to mend the rifts between our people, and yet here you are, making them worse.”

Shit. I’m dreaming. This can’t be…

“I am your mother’s Goddess,” the voice confirms, answering my thoughts.

Can I speak in this darkness? I can’t feel my own body, so it seems like a long shot, but I give it a try, anyway.

“Well, I don’t know what the fuck you were expecting, Goddess, but it seems all I’m good for is disappointment,” I retort. “Better luck with the next idiot.”

---