The smell of the ocean has changed again. I can detect smoke from somewhere nearby, and there’s an earthiness I missed when we were sailing over the deep. As I step out of my room, the men follow behind me, grabbing the trunk filled with the gowns and jewels I was gifted shortly after coming aboard.
We move through the narrow hallway and up the even narrower set of stairs that will take us to the deck. Once the hatch is opened, my hand flies up to cover my eyes from the burning light. After at least a week without direct sunlight, the unobstructed rays make my eyes burn and water. Late springtime has effectively banished the snow that still littered parts of the land.
Snow was always a welcome sight, as it reminded me of the Enduar Mountains. But the sun banishes that now too, leaving behind a hollow ache that grips me fiercely.
Thorne comes into view wearing a deeper shade of green, one playing just along the line of grayish-black. His short white hair iscombed back neatly, though it still bears quite a bit more volume than the long, perpetually perfect, and straight styles of the other elves.
His green eyes shine in the intense sunlight, glittering with a cold, calculating intelligence. There’s a tension bracketing his mouth that causes the corners of his lips to dip down ever so slightly.
I flinch away from him. I can remember what it was like when he grabbed me—when he shoved me onto a table and cut my leg open to release the magic he had infected me with. I had always known him as distant but respectful when he worked as an emissary between the Sisterhood and the Enduares. Perhaps a little sly, but not malicious.
I had been wrong.
“Take her over there and wait for us to dock,” he says solemnly, showing he feels no need to address me with any sort of fake pleasantries.
I don’t bother trying to catch his eye as I pass. Once, I could’ve prided myself on my ability to understand many different types of people. I viewed empathy as a strength, perhaps one of the greatest I could nurture.
Knowing that Thorne saw everything we had done and accomplished under the mountain and still felt justified to ruin all of that, to put so many people at risk—for what? For power? I couldn’t understand that.
Selling your soul for power will never be worth it to me. I will never concede that it might be “understandable.” It is a weak thing that weak men do to give themselves an imaginary foot up against all those he was meant to help.
When I was a slave in Zlosa, some of my fellow humans were content with being given a higher status. They turned a blind eye to the disgusting conditions in the slave pens because they had fine clothes and a meal every night.
I suppose that all races could be like that. They found contentment in knowing that someone else had it worse. But a wise person understands that slightly comfortable hell is still hell, and my eyes seek heaven.
I wasn’t completely sure what happened in the life to come, but I hoped Thorne would rot for eternity.
Something inside me stirs, and I freeze. It’s the familiar and unfamiliar darkness that hasn’t touched me since I stopped running from the Elf King, the cursed presence that caused me to awaken, to cut, and slash, and demand blood. A tremor ripples up my spine and my hands begin to sweat. Will it demand blood? Am I to kill again?
I fucking thought that it would leave me alone now that I am doing what it wanted.
Despite bracing myself for a bloodthirsty demand, I hear,What good is the life to come if injustices are not healed in this one?
The unexpected challenging words slice through me, causing me to shiver more in the salty breeze, which blows harder as one of the men throws a rope over the side of the mid-sized boat to draw us close to the dock. The bob and lurch of the ship is familiar to my legs, but I still reach out to steady myself. The wound at my ankle throbs, as it still refuses to fully heal, but the pain is not so acute that I limp.
It’s not Arion’s voice I hear in my head.
Cursed One?I think. Immediately, it feels wrong. I’ve never spoken to the presence before. I have only ever feared it.
They remain silent.
The words float through my head, working a few notes through my soul that seem to strike a chord in my chest.
It was a good thought.
Why should I wait for another life for cruel people to be brought to justice?
For the first time, I glance back at Thorne, knowing one thing in the depths of my soul. I will do what I can to make him pay for all of this. The twisted bits of my heart, the ones that have already been put through the gruesome task of killing, shredding, and ripping apart, remind me that it isn’t easy to hurt another, but it isn’t impossible.
Thorne’s green eyes find mine, and I can’t quite read what I see there. It almost looks like…recognition.
Good.
Let him know the darkness in me. Let him see what he put inside of me, and perhaps he might fear me in the back of his mind.
But then the clatter of the wooden planks draws me away, and I am brought back to the reality that it’s time to leave this damned boat.
My stomach clenches up again, and the momentary strength that came from my dark thoughts starts to ebb away, replaced by the chilled, sun-bleached reality that my next destination will be the Elf King’s palace.