“I am grateful to Aaleia and Mutrien for bringing me back to my family,” Ember would say with a smile.
“Omanox Dragon Matron has been my biggest supporter. I hope to be as loving to my people as she is.” Ember would lie with a smile.
“I aim to understand our history and use that to guide my policies,” Ember replied during a scribemaster visitation. Ember was able to add in, “the wisdom of the scribes are welcome in my reign,” before Oma pulled her away with a tight grip on her arm.
“This is your only warning, granddaughter. Use that phrase again and there will be consequences,” Oma hissed. Ember didn’t want to know what those consequences would be. She behaved after that, saving her rebellion for their plan. Well, behaved may be a strong word. She did not speak out of turn, which would be more accurate.
Another tower, another balcony, yet so far away from where she wanted to be. Ember thought of the bed she never expected she’d miss, the small hard mattress of her home in Firetop. She wished she could have seen the province one more time. But she had to choose. She chose the side of the kingdom that would lead her to Amic Scribemaster. It brought her back to Hasley. Ember wondered what Karwyn thought of Firetop. Did she have enough awareness to know when they passed through the province that she was riding through where her daughter was found? Did they visit the site of the First Fating?
A knock sounded at the tower door. Noor did not move from his spot on the bed. He had gone deeper into himself. Ember stood from her writing desk, holding a few small bound pieces of parchment in her hand.
“Dinner,” Zhieve said as he opened the door. He handed a tray of goods to Ember. She accepted it and dropped the curled papers into his hand. He nodded and left without commentary, pocketing the notes.
Ember closed the door and carefully placed the steaming cups of soup on the writing desk.
“Get up, Noor. Food is here,” Ember said firmly.
“I’m not hungry,” he said, voice muffled in the pillow. It had been like this for days: food would come in, messages would go out, and he was too stubborn to even notice. But she was always able to get him to eat, eventually.
“Yes, you are. You can’t hide your grumbling stomach from me,” Ember said with an attempt at humor.
She sat on the bed beside him and brushed a curl from his face. His eyes trailed up to her, the emptiness in them scared her.
“I need you,” Ember whispered, hating herself for saying it. She knew that was what pairs were for, to work together to find and accomplish potential. She finally understood it. Seeing how it broke Cindrea and Jedoriah, when they both ascended to powers but never agreed on the reasons for it. They hadn’t planned on an out. Ember wasn’t going to let that mutual destruction happen to her and her Knight.
“Is everything okay?” he asked out of habit. They both knew it was not. She didn’t answer the question.
“Tomorrow is the ball,” Ember said instead, “and I need you to do something for me.”
She outlined the parts of the plan he would agree with, the parts she had designed to keep him out of the way and help aid in his purpose. He would save his sister, and she would help him save the Fateless—her own mother included.
“Thank you,” Ember whispered in the dim light of the hall. She rubbed her hands down her dress, regretting when the sweat didn’t wipe off and instead her palm scratched against sequins.
“You only have ten minutes, then they’ll be back to get her ready for the ball,” Zhieve warned as he unlocked the door in front of them. He backed away and pocketed the key, guarding the end of the hall. No one was due to check on her until that ten-minute mark. That didn’t leave her much time, but she knew it would be enough.
Ember tapped hesitantly on the door before turning its long gold handle. It stood out in the glimmering dark, as bright as her fear.
“Is it time?” Karwyn whispered, turning from a chair in the corner of the room and standing in a flourish. Her long black nightgown reflecting back purple and blue light with the movement.
Taken aback, Ember asked, “Time for what?”
“To leave, of course,” Karwyn answered as if Ember should be the one who knew this. Karwyn walked to the bed, putting on her robe and pocketing a small notebook from the desk as if that was all she needed to leave.
“And go where?” Ember asked. She fidgeted with her dress, walking further into the room. Was this where her mom slept while visiting her grandmother as a child? Or did they change her to the smaller and more isolated room after she was commanded under guard?
“To the sea,” she replied back matter of factly.
“Oh... no, not yet time to go to the sea,” Ember said, unsure what to answer.
Ember sat down on the edge of the Queen’s bed, gazing around her. She didn’t even know what she wanted to ask or say. She just felt she had to see her, alone, before she did what she had to do that night. She had never been alone with the Queen. It hadn’t been allowed. Guards and maids followed her everywhere, and like today, the Queen’s room was always locked.
The space suited her. Dark grey walls with sprinkles of gold and shadows on the paper. The Queen had drawn on the walls, silhouettes of what she presumed were waves based on her reading. Some were swirls of black waves, dark and tremulous in the corner of the room. Others were beautiful simplistic lines, waves with tumbling white fluffs on top. Ember saw a painting once of a wave in a school book, an example of the dangers of water and drowning taught to children. but these were different. This was drawn by someone that had seen many waves up close and understood what they represented. It must be difficult to have seen such beauty, to only have it ripped from you. From the top of Ember’s balcony, she could only see the far away still-sea. Nothing like what was depicted here. This must have been her old room, Ember decided, she couldn’t have done all this in the few nights they were here.
The Queen’s balcony was locked shut. Every piece of furniture was black. The bed held soul-thread sheets and furs like Ember’s, but there was also tall winding banisters to hold up gossamer curtains around it. If they were privacy curtains, they would do little to hide anything. They were see-through and breezy, loosely tied at the end of each post. In the dark, with little lamplight, the furniture must look like tall shadowed creatures.
“I wanted to talk to you,” Ember began, remembering her limited time. She pulled on the ends of her short hair, unsure where to start.
“Then are you here for the truth?” Karwyn asked hopefully. She sat in front of Ember on the floor, eagerness shown through her eyes and smile.
“The truth?” Ember repeated nervously. She tried to calm herself, remembering what Jedoriah had said to her. Karwyn was indeed fateless. While Ember certainly wanted to know what the Queen knew, she was anticipating having to deal with riddles.
“You feel it, right? That things aren’t right?”
Numbly, Ember nodded, scared of what her mother would say next.
“You must feel his loss too...” Karwyn said absentmindedly. She looked down at floor as if an answer lay there.
“What loss?” Ember asked.
“The loss of your father,” Karwyn replied.
“Do you mean Jedoriah?” Ember asked, wondering if her mother was confused by the lie told to their people. After so many years in this state, maybe Karwyn grew to believe it as well.
Karwyn titled her head. “Your father, not Jedoriah,” she laughed softly as if the idea were preposterous.
“I don’t have a father,” Ember said. The nervousness leaked from her as other feelings started to settle in. She was not going to get the answers she had hoped for after all. Her mom was too far gone. Ember stood, disappointed to not have this chance to discuss her moms before it was too late.
Karwyn laughed outright at the movement, a melodious irony in her tone.
“Meerandus is your father, not Jedoriah,” She scoffed at the last word, as if it were indeed Ember that was fateless for thinking such a thing.
Ember looked back at her, her breath halted and body frozen. A rushing sound echoed in her, starting from her ears and moving through her body. She turned and stared at the wall of waves, connecting what she saw with the pull and tug in her heart.
“Who is Meerandus?” she asked, a small voice that felt not like her own.
“My fated pair, of course. He’s down there!” she pointed to the locked balcony.
Ember felt near fainting, her breath pulling in and out of her in uncontrollable gasps.
“In the city?” Ember asked, hoping for an easier answer, something to stop the fear and panic. This wasn’t her mother’s madness. This was a clue.
“No, silly Embrence. He is where merfolk live. The sea. Can we go there now?”
Merfolk. Merfolk? Why would she say that? Ember couldn’t hold the rushing in her any longer, she fell to the floor, curling herself inward. The sea... The sea? Conversations from the past few months cycling through her brain.
“Always listen to your father!” Karwyn had said after her fight with Jedoriah about the wall. That was before Ember knew, before Ember questioned Jedoriah as her father. She didn’t think about that moment again, not after she knew the truth. What other moments were hiding information? That was also the day of their first fight, the day she decided never to listen to his guidance over that of her own heart and mind.
“You look like him.” Karwyn told her the day of her debut and the Aaleia ball.
“Dear starlight, don’t be upset.” Karwyn said, kneeling above her and petting Ember’s short hair.
“How?” Ember managed to croak out.
“Oh, there is always a how isn’t there. Don’t worry. The why is more important.”
Ember didn’t want to play games. She needed straight answers. She blurted “Why?” and rubbed her arms, hoping to stop the spreading numbness of her panic.
“Because my mother hates merfolk, of course.”
And little moments began to click together as they did before.
“How did you become fated to a merman?” Ember whispered.
Karwyn bent closer, helping Ember uncurl herself from the ball she was so tightly wound into.
“I’ve always been one with the sea. Then I met the sea and he was there too.” Karwyn ran a delicate hand on Ember’s scales.
Karwyn continued to pet her, from her hair to her scales, in a rhythmic motion, and it oddly calmed her. The rushing began to calm into a crashing wave instead of a waterfall, echoing her heart beat as it slowed down.
“Am I a mermaid?” Ember asked, already knowing the answer. Scales she believed were from dragons, but Ember knew the truth just as clearly as the words that came from Karwyn’s mouth.
Karwyn sighed as if talking to a child. “My dear, here you go. Other me will explain.”
Karwyn reached into her robe pocket and pulled out a small book. Ember moved up from her sprawled position. Curious and hopeful, she accepted the small book. It fit into her palm, green velvet brushed against her skin. She pulled her knees under her and opened the first page.
Dearest Embrence,
I write this to you with tears strolling down my face and shaking hands. I can’t do this. I know I must.
On a diplomatic mission to Grydagia, our ship was turned over by a storm. Myself and the crew were sinking, drowning. I could feel that it was over, that I was losing my light. But that wasn’t my end. Aaleia wouldn’t let it be. I heard a rushing through my body and bubbles surrounded me. And then, silence. The water quieted, and he was there. My pair. My heart.
Thinking back on it now, it was a little funny. Where did I meet my Knight but as I’m falling into the sea? Gold glowed around us, sparks not apparent in the salt water. He smiled at me, his long green hair a halo around his face. I tried to smile back. The happiness I felt was bigger than I had ever experienced, but there was no breath left in my body. He saw this and saved me, kissing me and pushing air into my lungs. He wrapped his arms around me, breathing for me as he swam upward. My legs dimly felt his scales rubbing against them, the kick of his tale, but it didn’t totally register to me what he was until we broke the top of the water, and I saw my shipmates.
Every single person was carried up by another one of the merfolk. We were saved. Aaleia had warned them we needed help, and they came for us. Meerandus came for me.
Mother was not happy. Her guards attacked us, separating me from him, and she convinced a Gryffin of Grydagia to fly me home. I was locked away from the sea, confined to my tower. It was the worst moment of my life, tortured, kept from my other half by force. If Pa had been alive, this wouldn’t have happened.
Mother would not accept another beast co-ruling the kingdom. She refused, feeling as if Aaleia herself were taking away her crown and giving it to a monster. She was always that way, worried someone would take her power. It was why she hated me for so long, she knew I would take it from her one day. But she didn’t anticipate my partner would be a threat too. A merman ruling a dragon kingdom was unacceptable.
Meerandus came for me, like I knew he would. I felt a pull, an unexplainable tug that grew tighter the longer we were apart, and one morning I knew he was here - it was as if I snapped back into place. I looked out from my balcony window, and there he was. I could see him, standing with legs on the walkway of the palace. I wanted to go to him, but I had already been confined to my tower for weeks. The doors were locked and guards stood at my door, but it didn’t matter. We glowed purple, sparks erupting around me and from my middle. Aaleia blessed us on our second sighting, from hundreds of feet away.
The guards tackled him, all twenty of the men and women guarding the palace were ordered to capture him as a threat from a foreign land. They tried to kill him with my mother leading the cry.
But he would not die. Our purple sparks surrounded him, a shield of Aaleia’s creation. He ran on shaking human legs. The servants passed on the message to me that he would be back. That he said he would bring help. The merfolk were coming to Ashkadance; they were coming for me.
They were coming for you, my sweet Embrence.
But mother would not take that. She ordered a halt to all travel, brought in all the construction crews Ashkadance had, and killed those that knew the truth. She claimed they were inflicted with a disease from the merfolk. Little did she know, she named her punishment from the gods. Soon, she would be ruler of the unwell.
My mother renamed the sailors, tradesmen, and everyone involved in leaving our kingdom to a new purpose. She told them lies, that the merfolk brought upon the Fateless and they were going to attack again. If anyone resisted the wall, they were killed, thrown and burned in a ditch. She scrubbed their homes and businesses for anything that would help the cause. She spread the lie. I was the biggest lie and the harshest truth.
“This is what they do!” She would cry. “This is how it kills you!” She would tell our people. Her murders explained away by the yet to be named illness.
War and plague. Death on our horizon. An eclipsing loveless death. Build, build, build, build little men and women. Build your cage. Build your ruin.
Build, build, build...
I’m sorry, it’s taking me, and I don’t know what to do.
I wasn’t the same. I am not the same. Being isolated, away from him, it’s changing me. And the wall? It’s changing others. She predicted our demise. She built our death with beautiful white stone. A stone no flame could take down, only a dragon could get through this brick. Sickness did come. It started with me.
Aaleia had given us all pairs. And we trapped people without the means to find them. We are called fateless but our fates are waiting for us. They are out there. They are waiting. They are suffering. They can’t get better, not while the wall stands.
She built our curse. Claimed a sickness had come when there wasn’t one. Then it was real, so real. It started with me. May the gods forgive us.
And Jedoriah became my Knight, a fool’s Knight, a facade. Mother controls everything, controls
him, controls the guards and the servants. If you don’t bend, she breaks you. I couldn’t let them break you too. Forgive me.
Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive. Forgive...
They are taking you now. Safe. Safety with them. I promise. She won’t have you. Safety. Forgiveness.
My remembrance. My fire. You’ll be what is left of me. I won’t forget you. I promise I won’t forget you. Remembrance, my Embrence. Please forgive me.
Tears streamed down Ember’s face as she took in the rest of the small book. It was just scrawls of words. “Forgive” was a common one. As was “build”. But in the mess, there were snippets of other content, names, her parent’s names, Meerandus, flames and waves.
She looked up to see a smiling Karwyn blinking at her. “You see?” she asked, tilting her head like a child waiting to get an answer, hopeful of what was coming next.
“I see,” Ember responded, standing up and pulling her mother with her. Hugging her as she did on that first day they met.
“You don’t belong here,” Karwyn whispered, tears crazing Ember’s shoulders. The words didn’t hurt now. Ember took them for what they actually were.
Karwyn Dragon Queen, her mother, was telling her that she saved her. That she wasn’t safe here and because of that, she had let her go. Her mother was saying, “I love you.”
Thirty-Three
A Destiny Her Own
Ember knew that speaking with her mother would be a difficult conversation, but she was not anticipating to learn that another facet of her existence was a lie.
“I am not just dragon-born, I am part of the sea…” Ember whispered to herself, staring into the mirror. Part of a sea she had never touched, only glimpsed. Candles were lit all around the space, illuminating the features she felt she didn’t know anymore. Her black hair was her mother’s, but was the rainbow appearance in certain light a merfolk trait? With much of her history now brought to light, would that understanding lead her to a better life? She was unsure. But one thing was certain, the moms that raised her, Echoris and Julimore, had been good people. She felt more free than she had since their deaths.
Royalty Fantasy Boxset: Ember Dragon Daughter & Hasley Fateless (Fated Tales Series 1 & 1.5) (The Fated Tales Series: YA Royalty Fantasy) Page 25
