Fate and Destiny (The Fated Series, #2)

Epilogue - Lance - A Ship Lost At Sea

Now I'm even more confused than I was before.

Two days ago when Fauna walked in on me playing out mother's song on Claritia's piano, I didn't say a word. Not as she talked and talked about an explosion that ended up taking the Ginerva's power and immortality that I somehow missed the day before. Then about mom and her secondary death and funeral I missed and my sister going into the afterlife to talk to her and nearly dying herself. Again.

Then I was silent because she told me what Rose wanted me to know. She wants me to live. Forgive everyone including myself, and live. How am I supposed to live knowing that everything was fake?

Forgiving is hard, but living...I don't have time for that. I'm in charge of a kingdom now - two kingdoms. The Jade Assassins are still mine to command, and Vandaria and Thralia and the refugees from Adaeric now look up to me to lead them. So four kingdoms really. Less than an hour in and I already want to quit and hand the job off to the Lords and Generals who nearly started a riot in the ballroom.

None of them can be trusted though, just as Darius stated when I yelled at both him and my sister for making a decision so reckless as to leave me to deal with the start of a war. For an hour I fought them on it, and I didn't say a word to them the whole ride here. A day and a half of my back aching at my poor posture as we rode the water wolves here nonstop. Everyone's bladder was near exploding when the silhouette of the town came into view, though the Ginerva released their stomach contents more times than once on the journey, motion suddenly a thing that didn't agree with them.

Svenja left before we did, ensuring the ship was here and ready to leave as soon as we arrived. That damn pirate is probably one of the few things that weren't a lie in my life. I told her as much, and she walked onto her ship cackling like a hyena. Pretty sure she was just trying to be funny, but even her first mate doesn't know everything about the Comandante, and I only knew her for three months before I found her six cycles ago.

The Bhaltayr carried the Ginerva onto the floating death trap, each giving dramatic farewells that consisted of smiles and bows that made me want to shove them off the side of the dock. Garrison overheared me complaining to my sister and her claimed fate again and told me that I was a Prince by birthright, and the only one currently of age to carry the title of Regent. In that moment, I saw why my sister had her fights and slight loathing for the man. I drew my line at having to wear a crown, though. I don't want its weight to shove me deeper beneath the surface of everything. At least I didn't get any arguments about that.

They untied the ropes and raised the anchor, and I came up here to watch the ship shrink smaller and smaller against the glare of the still-rising sun. It's nothing more than a small blurry shape of it now, no bigger than the nail of my smallest finger.

I hope my mother was right. That there's someone across the sea that could help us. Breathtaking as it was to see the Fae leap from the drawings in children's books, I've seen the monsters Xaxias can raise, and I'm not sure if all of Ker will be enough. We're fighting the underworld, here. Last I checked, only the worst go down there, which means everyone I've ever killed as the Sinister Fox could rise from their graves and come back to kill me.

It's...a lot.

So much to do, to think about, to oversee...and it's all making me confused and tired and overwhelmed, and my sister to whom I also don't know how to feel about, is sailing away in search of perhaps our last hope.

I close my eyes for a second against the warmth of the sun, once again taking in the peace of the coast and the life it holds. Come a few days or a cycle or a month, this may all be truly silent. I've taken a lot of things for granted in my past. I don't want to be doing that again.