The Seer Queen nodded, as if she already knew that the entire Kaulish Navy was mobilized against Urka. She was a seer, after all. “Then we must sail around them.”
He touched his neck that was no longer bruised. “It isn’t safe for the queen.”
“It isn’t safe for anyone,” Aris said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a small, triangular black stone. No bigger than an inch and a half in all directions. She held it out for him to take. Reluctantly he accepted the stone from her. It felt shockingly hot, burning the inside of his palm. He wanted to hand it back to her. But he didn’t think that he could. It wasn’t heavy, but he felt the weight of the stone from his head to his feet. It was as if the stone was seared against his skin.
“Close your eyes. What do you see?”
Gerard obeyed her. “The same thing I see in my dreams. . . . Three stone mounds that look to be some sort of dwellings. There’s a door with a golden trigon symbol on it, but every time I try to enter it in my dream, I fall into darkness.”
He opened his eyes, relieved that this time he didn’t see his birth mother with a sword through her chest or Princess Nora’s torture and death.
Elea reached out her good arm toward him. She didn’t say any words, but he knew that she wanted the stone. It took all of his resolution to give it to her. Somehow it felt like it was his. Her hand closed over it, gripping it tightly in her fist. She closed her eyes. He watched her with baited breath for over a minute until her eyes popped open.
“What did you see?” he asked.
She shook her wet hair and droplets fell onto the deck. “Nothing.”
“Is it hot?”
“No. It feels as cold as the water.” Elea turned it over in her hand and he saw the trigon symbol on it. The symbol on the necklace that he’d sold. The one link to his birth mother. The woman he was destined to kill.
“You recognize the symbol,” Aris said to him.
It wasn’t a question but a statement.
Gerard nodded. “I used to have a golden medallion of it on a chain. I sold it to purchase this sloop.”
“Did you purchase the medallion on one of your sails?” the Seer Queen asked.
He shook his head, his heart filling with shame. “It was from my mother. I never knew her, but when she abandoned me at my father’s palace, it was around my neck.”
Aris laughed loudly, as if she’d been let in on a private joke. “Yourfather is the King of Kaul?”
Gerard stiffened as shame covered him like goosebumps. He could only nod.
“Does that mean that his mother was Urkan?” Elea asked, her sharp gaze on her grandmother. “That we are related?!”
The Seer Queen smirked. “I believe the blood of Urka runs in his veins, specifically the blood of Aine. Our greatest seer,” she said, then added with a laugh, “You need not worry, Elea, five hundred years ago is not a close family connection.”
Gerard shook his head in patent disbelief. “That cannot be. I am Kaulish.”
Aris pointed to Elea. “Give him back the stone.”
Elea passed the stone back with reluctance. It burned against Gerard’s hand and his ears filled with the sound of singing, high and distant. Foreign yet beautiful. He was not sure that he would be able to give it away a second time. It felt as if it was a part of him.
He looked at the older woman.
Aris smiled at him. “Aine’s seer stone is rightfully yours.”
She closed his fingers over the burning stone.
“What does that mean?” Gerard asked.
“That you are a seer and the third person in the Holy Trigon,” Aris said. “You will help my granddaughters fulfill the last prophecy given by Aine.”
“Did you see him in a vision?” Elea asked.
Aris lowered her head and shook it slightly, her emerald eyes not meeting either his or her granddaughter’s gaze.