But now…swimming in doubt and hurting. Alone. I wonder if I have endangered them more by not being able to keep my promise. When I was taken to the Enduares, I learned about the magic behind their matehood.
That magic has failed me.
But there is magic enough in this world to move mountains. To explode the earth itself—to bring back the dead and build a city. Surely there is something that can make one otherwise healthy woman bear a child to a king. I grit my teeth, holding to the idea with staunch resolve.
I am a fixer. I can figure things out. Solve problems. When I get to Shvathemar, I will find a healer in secret. I will promise them riches beyond their wildest dreams. They will find a way for me to get pregnant.
Yes.
It will work. I willensure it.
And then, glimmers of doubt creep in. What if I am not clever or charismatic enough to bribe someone? I’ve never done it before…
Fuck, I just wish I had someone to talk to instead of constantly running through my own mind.
There were moments at the end of our acquaintance where I felt like Cursed One was speaking to me personally. Whatever that being was controlled by Arion, sure, but it also seemed to have a bit of a mind of its own. Hell, it attacked the elven soldiers outside of Dragonsreach.
For weeks, it pushed me to violence. It made me fear myself and my sleep, and now? Nothing. Perhaps, since it has fulfilled its purpose, it no longer finds the need to acknowledge me at all.
Fragments of memory push at the gates of my mind, reminding me just how truly marvelous my life was, with all its imperfections and dangers, just a little while ago.
“Are you there?” I whisper, putting the healing things to the side and lying back on the bed, hands over my midsection. No response. While it does give me relief, it also makes the anxiety mount once again. The darkness swirls around my head, pressing against my skull. For a moment, everything becomes unbearable.
My future, the one I’ve chosen, looms over me, promising hell and pain till the day I die.
Forcing my breath into a slow, deep pattern, I focus on the wood grain above me. It’s like my body is floating away, and I’m desperate for something, anything, to tie me down.
Which,again, is not easy when I am effectively being ignored like the crates of cargo under the ship. Not when I have memories of a certain Enduar actually tying me down with the sweetest gentleness I’d ever experienced.
But those memories need to stay far from my mind. So I think of the elven guards. But they only bring me meals with harsh, hushed, limited contact, always cut off by a bow and a quick exit.
Thorne has come to visit more than once, but he leaves soon after he realizes I have no interest in speaking with traitors.
I exist in a strained state between anxiety and infuriating isolation.The way the boat creaks causes me to jump, as do the normal sounds of men and sailors manning the boat.
I try to find small things to keep me sane. The passing of the light through the porthole. The gentle rocking. The way the air changes as we cross the ocean.
Soon, we will reach the shore. Soon, I will be off this boat.
I won’t be out of danger, but at least I will finally be free to take action.
Chapter 3
VANN
Iam cold—practically frozen. It’s strange, knowing that the world around me had been so warm before. The dying song of my Fuegorra is also gone, though voices around me fade in and out.
“La sangre no deja de salir,” a woman says. My mind hangs on the edges of her words, trying to parse them out. The human tongue.
“¿Probaste un hechizo de coagulación?”
That voice I recognize—I’m still on the island. The one with the witches. Upon blinking my eyes open, I am greeted only by light. I can’t see around it—can’t seem to make out shapes.
“Dos veces. Nada va a detener esto sin su estúpido corazón. Va a morir.”
The words start to take form in my consciousness. I’m bleeding out. They can’t seem to heal me without my heart.
I suppose it makes sense. I’ve never been hurt this badly, and a heart might help the blood flow properly.