Kingdom's Vice Series: A Voyage of Vengeance ( #2 2015)

Chapter Twenty-Four

The hull is dank and reeks of moulding wood. I feel something tug at the back of my throat and something clamp down over my mouth as I bend over to scream. I look to my right and Duhamas is there, his hair slicked back with salt water, his lips closed. He presses finger to his lips as he removes his hand from my mouth, his eyes set on the ceiling above us.

I nod. Where are they taking us?

He looks to me, "I don't know," he whispers, "the waves give us no guidance." He attempts to find a peep hole in the wood, to no avail. "I can only hear feint sounds," he says, "nothing solid. We could be a thousand leagues from Alleria now, and they won't find us."

Faranel, I suggest.

He shakes his head, "Faranel has endured many battles. I doubt the king will risk Faranel bringing down the entire kingdom."

How do you imagine that happening?

He moves around me, his hands memorizing the lines in the wood. "Faranel is not just a horse. They say he is the embodiment of Alleria—a vessel. The Light lives within him as it does in us, only if he dies, so does the kingdom."

Can't you just summon something?

He shoots me a look. "This space is too confined," he snaps, "but if you have any better ideas, by all means, speak up. I did warn you! I told you I had a bad feeling about this. They betrayed us! I want my sister back."

My eyes burn from the water and my heart pounds inside my chest, "Dont you think I want to see my brother too? I know Gweyntarr was close to you once, we will find her. I won't stop until all of them are safe, Garsef too."

He sighs and thrusts his fist against the wood, the splinters latching onto his skin, breaking through the first layer of his flesh. I see the blood drip along his fingers in a web, a trail of his pain—but then it vanishes. He turns to me.

"Keep that on," he motions to the shawl that is draped lazily across my shoulders, "it's going to be a long night ahead of us."

In this moment, in the cold and the dark where the shadows prey on our flesh and mind, I think back to the days of old, when Alec and I sailed for Alleria alone. A storm was upon us. Death was near. But this time I fear that my ending may not be the lucky one I had been afforded then.

"They will not harm you, Skaya." He says after a long pause, as if sensing my fear. "I'll see to that."

I sigh, "I'm sorry, about Gweyntarr."

He rests his hand against the wood again, but strokes it in apology for his violent outburst. "We know nothing of her fate yet, or Redermarke's. There is still hope." Then he turns to me. "The Light still shines on us, this day or the next, whether we be behind our walls or trapped beneath the deck of hundreds of bloodthirsty pirates...I still believe. And so should you."

I smile and pull the shrawl tighter around me, "Your faith does not falter," I remark, "I always admired that." I meet his eyes and swallow. "Seriously though, were we really planning on giving them up?"

He takes a seat beside me on a length of a battered barrel. "I should think that your uncle knew what we was doing when he struck the deal with de Susa. But this," he gestures to our confinement, "I daresay he did not plan for."

"Faeore," I breathe—

He cuts me off, as if he knew what I'm am going to say, "I cannot say with certainty whether she had foreseen it or not. I would like to think she did not and that she had no hand in this. But I have been wrong before,"

"You and me both,"

"Do not worry yourself, Alec is strong. He is not the coward I remember. He is the finest in all of Alleria now. He will find a way to get us out of this. Have faith, Skaya. See the Light that lingers, even when the shadows come for us. There is always Light."

I see it in his kind eyes: The Light. It grows and swells.