Haelo Rising, page 31
The farther Dagger came out of the water, the more apparent it was that he’d been severely injured. My hand pushed open the glass door. The auras of the candeons in the sofas behind me turned their attention to the beach. But still, I remained in the open doorway.
“It’s okay,” Cora said softly from where she stood at the window. “He just wants to know you’re all right.”
I swallowed back the burn in my throat and soon found myself walking through the sand to where my former bodyguard had stopped halfway between the sea and the house.
Ghastly scars marred the left side of his jaw and ran down his neck before hiding beneath a Krypteia battle suit. His left hand was mangled with the same scars.
“You’re here,” I exhaled. “Neo said that you’d left.”
His aura tightened, retreating back. “I did. Lieutenant Day and I are going back to my Dema clan.” He looked to the sea where, sure enough, Lieutenant Will Day was just rising from the surf a few dozen yards out. “I just needed to see with my own eyes that you were okay.”
“I’m not.” The corners of my mouth turned up in a tragic smile. “But I will be, I think.”
His chest rose, then he sighed. “I thought you were gone. You and Griffin, you fell to the ballroom floor. I sensed it. I almost jumped in after you, but then you both were gone.”
“He died.” My eyes crinkled with more tears.
Dagger’s hand reached for me, then dropped back. “I know.”
He didn’t hug me, but I felt it anyway. “Thank you for coming.”
“I won’t stay.”
I nodded. I’d expected it. “Tomorrow”—I wiped the wet from under my eyes—“we’re laying Griffin in the sea. We can’t have a state funeral; it’s not safe. But I’d like you to be there. Will you stay? For that?”
He looked unsure, and then relented.
I led him back up to the main house, Lieutenant Day not far behind, where everyone was relieved to see him.
Despite the reverent meal we’d just had, we couldn’t delay talk of strategy much longer. The phone rang, bringing with it news of an attack at the site of one of the Mediterranean Patrída clans. The Beilstein crew reported evidence of an underwater explosion, and the kryptes with them dove to confirm what they’d all feared: the Nile clan had been annihilated.
I’d seen this possibility inside Massáude’s head, though it hadn’t been his own idea. More would come. It was part of the plan that “Mr. John” helmed, a plan that was snowballing out of Massáude’s control.
Which was why he hunted for Ana. It terrified him to lose the one advantage he had over the human who overshadowed him, just like his own father had lost his power to Massáude, and his father before him. If Massáude lost that power, Mr. John wouldn’t need him anymore. And if Mr. John didn’t need him, he’d lose the connections and resources that Massáude’s entire operation depended on.
The question was, had Massáude lost his earth powers anyway? When Fate had backed away from protecting the binding exchange of magic between the Makole tribe and the candeon race, our magic reverted to its natural state: powers over water and wind to the candeons, and powers over earth and fire to the Makole. Didn’t that mean Massáude had already lost the biggest advantage that kept him in partnership with Mr. John? Sure, he had new water and wind powers, but so did every candeon.
“We need to find the ‘John’ that Haelo heard in Massáude’s mind,” Vernado said from across the afternoon bonfire. “We can’t win against torpedos. Who knows what other technology he has.”
Lieutenant Day nodded his agreement with Vernado.
“He’s powerful. Connected,” Cora said. Despite sitting on a log around a beach bonfire, she still looked like a queen. Dark circles under her eyes and an aura overcome by grief and guilt couldn’t hide the natural regal beauty in her posture. “Torpedos in the Mediterranean would have alerted dozens of human nations. Whoever this ‘John’ is, he must have excused torpedos to the Russians, the United States, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Turkey, Israel, Palestine. . . . One missile and any one of those nations should have been on high alert. Yet nothing happened.”
Hyacinth looked up, an idea shining in her bright eyes. “So we reach out to the secret ambassadors of those nations? We might learn who—”
Cora shook her head. “Those ambassadors worked with Advisor Ben Ames.” The mood turned dark. “We have no way of knowing which, if any, of them are against us.”
“No,” Jade said. “Ana is the key. We can use her to lure Massáude into—”
“Ana will not be bait.” My voice rang out with an authority I didn’t know I could summon.
Jade sighed. “What about Massáude’s Família? If we threaten his clan. . . .”
The idea fizzled unanswered.
Galana Cora, whose hair flashed in the red light of the Makole’s fire, asked, “What of the Council? How many . . . are left?”
“We’re not sure, Your Majesty,” her bodyguard answered. “We know of a few survivors from the island, but since we’ve lost all pola magic, communication has been almost impossible. We’ve used the Beilstein’s communication lines to speak with a handful of Krypteia outposts and safe houses, but it’s been difficult. Council delegates could be gathering in small pockets as we speak and we would not know.”
Cora stared into the flames. “Who knows of the Basileus’s death? Of Prince Griffin’s?”
“Rumors abound.”
“What happened to President Specter?” I asked.
Jade scoffed. “He went back to Pankyra. Tried to get to his wife. Didn’t survive, I’d guess.”
“General Stravins,” Cora said, shaking off a moment of reverent respect for the fallen Global Council President. Everyone round the fire stilled with the title now bestowed on Dagger. “Stratos is dead. Will you lead the Krypteia?”
Dagger’s jaw clenched. “What Krypteia?”
“The Krypteia that you swore to honor.”
He bowed his head, tucking his face from the curious eyes of the group. “I need to return to my clan. As chief, I’ve been away for too long.” He looked to her, hoping to convince her with the determined set of his gaze, but her pleading eyes made him hesitate. “I’ll stay for another day. Give me that time to think it over.”
Cora looked to the shoreline, where Penelope and Keli sat quietly together in beach chairs. Princess Penelope hadn’t said a word to anyone since the Beilsteins had rescued her from the bunker where the betrayer Benedict Ames had killed her father and General Stratos. I’d heard that my old friend Sam Legend had been a part of the rescue party.
But when she was alone with Keli, Penelope’s aura brightened. Just by a glimmer, but it was something.
We continued to discuss the state of the empire. I wanted to scream from the top of my lungs that there was no more empire, nor a Krypteia, nor a Global Council. Everything had fallen. When would we all admit that? But I couldn’t bring myself to say the words aloud.
Instead, I listened, watched. I spoke when I felt that I must. But mostly, I imagined a different life. One where I wasn’t going to lay my husband to rest in the morning. A life where Griffin was an incredible emperor. A life where I spent my days learning more about the clans I stewarded and finding ways to help them flourish. A life of different memories. A life of good.
You should be here, Griffin.
A blue tinge draped the world at sunrise; rain had come to pay its respects to a fallen prince. We gathered at the beach before the gently lapping tide.
“He wouldn’t have wanted to be laid to rest here,” I said quietly beneath my umbrella.
Cora put an arm around me. “He would have wanted to be near you.” Though she tried to comfort me, she looked lost in her grief.
The pitter-patter of rain danced on Griffin’s steel casket. “I loved him,” I told her.
“I know.”
Princess Penelope took my hand. From the other side of Cora, Hyacinth threw a handful of plumerias onto the polished black coffin. Behind us, the other candeons bowed their heads. Behind them, the Makole tribe did the same.
“Goodbye, Griffin.” I leaned down, kissed my fingers, and rested them on the cold casket. My wedding ring—drooping sideways on my thin, scratched finger—glinted under rain droplets. The wind picked up and tossed Hyacinth’s plumerias into the sea. My hair blew about, hiding my face in its protection while I made quiet promises to Griffin.
I promised I wouldn’t crumble.
Or wallow.
I wasn’t going to abandon our people.
I’d find a way to overcome the darkness that threatened them and bring our people back into the safety of sunlight.
After, I stepped back. Penelope and then Hyacinth each took a turn bent over the casket. Then Cora, whose bereaved aura broke my heart.
Then, one by one, the Krypteia soldiers held a hand to the black-stained steel and spoke the same dedication. May your aura join the wheels of candeon destiny.
Dagger was the last kryptes to touch the cold metal of the casket; his hand lingered longer than the others. He bent in what looked like prayer. When he was done, each of the four combat soldiers took up a corner of the weight and, in freshly pressed suits, walked the casket into the water.
Zeta had explained to me the night before that she and Dagger would carry Griffin’s coffin far out to sea, then sink it to the depths.
Someday, Griffin, when this is all over, I’ll find your grave and tell you how it all ended.
I was the last one left on the beach. Mortimer stayed with me.
Cora, Penelope, and Hyacinth prepared to leave after Griffin’s funeral. They were going to set Basileus Alcaeus’s body to sea off the Almafi coast near a secret family villa that Cora’s family had purchased a century before. Fia would accompany them. Cora invited me, but in the same breath assured me that she understood why I might want to stay here.
“I’ve failed my people,” she said. We were standing together at the shore, staring out at the gentle waves. “I’m not the one meant to rally them.”
I shook my head. “But you are their empress.”
“Not anymore. The empire is gone.” Her eyes sparkled with unshed tears. “But our people remain in need of a leader. Stay here. Plan with Dagger, Vernado, and Zeta. Gather the clans.”
“Dagger is leaving.”
“If anyone can convince him to stay, it’s you.”
“I don’t know how to gather the clans. I don’t know them.”
“You are fated to this work.”
“So are you.”
“I was. And I failed.”
“But you did what you thought was best.”
She kissed me on the cheek. “Shine, Haelo. I’ll help where I can. But I can sense it in the air around you: you were meant for this.”
She smiled tearfully, then left for the car that waited up at the main house. I headed back to the lanai, where Hyacinth found me.
“I brought you something,” she said. “Someone found it in the ruins of the palace. I thought you might want it back.”
In her hands, she offered the solid gold crown I’d worn on my wedding day. A crack ran at an angle across the front, almost slicing it in two. It looked fragile.
The etched facets across the upper edges still glittered when it moved in her hands. “Take it,” she said. “It’s yours.” She waited, but I didn’t move for it. “The empire might be unrecognizable, but you will always be the Galana you were born to be. So take it.”
Tentatively, I picked it up with two hands, careful not to let it bend at its thinnest point. “Thank you, Hyacinth.”
She hugged me and then left to the car that would take her and her sister and mother to the docks where they would get on a private yacht.
Outside the car, Keli’s chieftess-marked arms held Princess Penelope in a tight hug. “Promise to call me?” she said into her friend’s shoulder.
Penelope nodded. She still wasn’t talking in front of adults.
My new family waved goodbye as the car drove away.
Later, my father found me on the beach. “You know, after your mom and Tilly died, I didn’t want to do anything. I spent days sitting on the beach just like you’re doing now.”
“It’s not like that. I . . . never mind.”
“It helped to be in the ocean. Out on the waves.”
“Are you asking me to surf?”
“Why not? It might help.”
I laughed humorlessly. “You say that like I know how.”
“It’s like riding a bike. It’ll come back to you.”
My mouth turned up a little, smiling of its own accord while I remembered the freedom of the wind and spray on my face as we flew across the surface of the rolling ocean over ten years ago. Dry-diving, he used to call it. “Remember that orange surfboard you used to have?”
He tipped his head back with the nostalgia in that memory. “I still have that one. Or I used to anyway. I loaned it to Olesa.”
We both sobered a little. “I wish so much that things had turned out differently for her. If only she could have felt safe enough to share with us she had a daughter.”
“Yeah. I thought the same thing. Your mom would have loved having a niece.”
My heart lightened. “I think you’re right.” And then a thought crossed my mind. I took my time thinking it over, replaying back a very particular moment in time.
“Lo? What is it?”
My eyes narrowed. “You loaned your orange surfboard to Olesa?” Could it be that simple? My instincts said yes.
“Lo?”
I shot up from the sand and ran up the shore to the cottage courtyard where Neo and Zeta were sitting in quiet conversation, heads bent toward each other. Jade trailed behind me.
They looked up, eyes curious.
“I hope you two are up for a day trip tomorrow,” I said.
Neo’s brow furrowed. “Why? What’s going on?”
“I think I know where Ana is.”
Neo and Zeta shot up from their chairs. “What do you mean?” Neo asked. Jade looked just as shocked. Zeta, however, narrowed her eyes in suspicion.
“I’ve seen her. On Oahu.”
“Hold on.” Jade held up his hands. “When? How do you know it’s her?”
“Dagger and I saw her surfing at Waimea Bay. On your surfboard. Think about it; it makes sense. Olesa came here of all places, but refused to live at the Yellow Plumeria. She’d be gone for days at a time.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
But it felt right. Everything about it felt very right. “Only one way to find out.”
Jade, Neo, and Zeta exchanged glances. Zeta was the first one to speak. “I’ll tell Vernado. We’ll leave in the morning.”
26
The Blessing Of The Sea
Every breath she takes is a breath she doesn’t deserve. I’m going to take her life with my own hands just to feel her aura disintegrate as I watch the light extinguish from her emerald eyes. And then I’m going to bury her and her blue mosaic where the sea can never find her.
“Master?”
“What is it, Raul?”
“The Nile clan is taken care of. The Vaku clan as well. The humans claim there are no survivors.”
“Good.”
“Master?”
“Yes?”
“They told me to get you. They said Mr. John is coming aboard. He wants to speak with you.”
“Thank you, Raul.” I will wash my hands of that human. My powers want to rip open the earth and crush him beneath it as much as I do. I’ll be careful. Fast. And once he’s gone, Miriam will watch as I end every single worthless person she loves. And then I’ll feel each beat of her heart as it slows to a stop in my hands. . . .
I jerked upright in the bed, sweating through my shirt. I’d been in his head. It was so real, like I was Massáude. I’d felt his confidence, his fear, his hatred. I’d felt the power that still coursed through his veins. I’d seen his twisted daydreams. My connection to him hadn’t disappeared at all.
He still believed he could break apart stone, earth, even mountains. I’d seen it in his head.
I couldn’t breathe. I threw back the quilt and raced out of the suffocating bedroom. Breathe . . . breathe.
The lanai doors hung open in the gentle breeze. “Haelo?”
I jumped. “Malia?”
“Haelo, what’s wrong? What are you doing out of bed?
“I . . . I had a nightmare.”
Her shoulders slumped in understanding. She patted the seat next to her. “Come. Sit.”
The cushion caved with my weight. My head fell forward into my hands. “He’s evil, Malia. I tried fighting it, and I lost.”
She hummed. “Maybe you just need to fight differently.”
“If I get near him again, I’ll break. I hate him. I honestly hate him. There is not a single redeeming speck of light in his entire soul.”
“You can’t fight hate with hate.”
Hadn’t I told myself the same thing already?
“Then with what?”
“Courage.”
My heart raced with the memory of stalking Massáude to the upper room of the palace. Of taunting him. Of the power that had surged through my soul at the mere sight of him. “Hate feels an awful lot like courage when you’re facing the man that ruined your family.”
“Then beat him with light.”
“I don’t have any light left.”
“You do, Haelo. You certainly do.”
Griffin’s voice whispered in my head. A memory. Thoughts marred by evil will leave us feeling empty of light. And you, my dear, are filled with light.
“You can’t do it alone, Haelo.”
I shook my head. “I can’t put anyone else at risk.”
“They’re already at risk. You need help.”
“From who?”
“Well, from your people, for starters. And mine. And I can think of a few humans that would fight for your cause as well.” She took a sip from the cup of tea in her hands.
“I . . .” I thought through every option I could think of. Statistically, the more people I had fighting for my cause, the more skills, the more resources, the more auras devoted to winning, the higher our chances. “I can’t ask that of them.”
