by Neha Yazmin
She was taking her warhorse—it was a gift from his father for saving his life; Wyett supposed she’d earned the right to take it with her—and nothing else. Good. She didn’t deserve anything more than that, not after what she’d done. I expressly told her not to—
The Prince shook his head. The anger would do him no good. He had to stay focused, stay strong.
From the window of his father’s private office, he watched the Adgari’s horse trot out of the castle grounds until the light from the torches could reach her no more. Then, just as he was about to look away, she started glowing. No, not glowing; she was probably carrying a candle.
Thanks to the fire angel, she’d have light for the rest of the night if she didn’t lose the candles she’d stowed away in her cloak pockets, if she didn’t run out of matches. Her path, her journey, would never be hampered by darkness. Not when she had eternal fire that would burn and burn and burn.
When the girl got far enough away that he couldn’t see her anymore, Wyett turned his back to the window and left the eastern tower.
The Isle of the Damned was a tiny Island to the northeast of Roshdan. Based on the map she’d seen in Wyett’s room, it would probably take her just under an hour to cross the water from Roshdan’s coastline. If she had a rowboat at her disposal. The chances of there being a boat waiting for her at the shore were minuscule. I’ll have to swim there.
Aaryana wished she’d had a little more time to plan her trip, but time was something Seth didn’t have. She had to find that miracle flower and save him. It was the only way to see him again. And maybe it wouldn’t matter if she never saw him again, as long as she knew that he’d been cured. That the Fresdan curse had been broken.
Wyett would absolutely hate to be indebted to her for this, and that’s what made her certain that he’d refuse to let her return to the Palace. Again, she told herself that it didn’t matter if she’d seen Seth for the last time this afternoon—well, yesterday afternoon; it was past midnight, so it was early Wednesday morning now. If the young Prince got to live a long, healthy life, her heart would find peace with saying goodbye to her life as a member of King Kenyan’s Court.
Besides, her plan had been to leave Roshdan after allowing two months for Vetna’s ship to return to Adgar. She wouldn’t have seen Seth or Jeena ever again, anyway. Even if she’d managed to get Wyett to marry her, and if the two of them had sailed to Adgar and taken the Kingdom from Leesha and Parth, Seth would have remained in the north. In all honesty, Wyett would have left her and returned to Roshdan once he realised that she’d married him to take his name and forge a safe passage back to the land where Aaryana Vijkanti was barred but Aaryana Fresdan was not. Once he realised that she never loved him.
She would have ended up alone in the end. Her Crown would have been her only company.
No, I’d have Myraa, Malin, the boy Princes. Rudro. But she wouldn’t have had a husband that cleaned her wounds and dressed them in soft cloth. A husband that tried to make jokes even when he was worried sick about his little brother. She wouldn’t have Wyett.
I don’t want Wyett, she told herself. She was pretty sure that was true. Wasn’t it? And I can’t have Rudro. Everything the Combat Master had said in her dream was correct. If she and Rudro expressed their intentions to marry, people would assume they were having an affair all along. Rudro would be accused of giving Aaryana preferential treatment in The Contest because of it. It wouldn’t matter that Aaryana had taken the Throne from her sister and not won it via The Contest, Rudro would be thrown into the dungeons for committing treason.
Rudro wouldn’t want to have his honour questioned like that in the first place, so he’d never agree to take her as his wife. Why am I thinking of marrying Rudro? Had she actually loved him? Wanted him? I don’t know… She hadn’t thought about him too often recently. I shouldn’t be thinking about any of this!
She urged her warhorse to go faster, but he kept to his slow trot. How could he run when he couldn’t see more than a yard ahead of him? The flame of her candle might be eternal, but its light wasn’t as far-reaching as she needed it to be right now.
Thankfully, the sun would be waking up soon. She could up the pace then. For Seth’s sake, she hoped she found the cure before it was too late.
Myraa was blindfolded when she and Malin neared the Palace and were in the vicinity of the secret tunnel that led to the Princess’s chambers. It was at this spot that Malin had removed the fabric from Myraa’s eyes on their way out earlier. After taking the passage into the Princess’s apartment, Myraa had to spin around until she was dizzy before Malin half-carried her to the lounge room. Only then did Malin remove the blindfold.
Myraa had no idea where in the Princess’s quarters the secret door was or where the tunnel led to on the other side, so the procedure had served its purpose well. At least this time, she was able to change back into her nightgown in the candlelit lounge and not in the dark, dank tunnel like she had on their way out of the castle.
“Good luck,” Malin said as Myraa was about to slip out of her room to go to the library.
It was getting light outside. She needed to make the trip to the stacks before the early risers of the Palace started bustling around. Myraa nodded at the Princess and left promptly. She had no trouble making her way to the library and gaining entry—all she had to do was tell the guards outside that she was running an errand for the Queen—and felt little guilt about going against Malin’s wishes and seeking out the Head Librarian. The woman wouldn’t betray her to Parth, and she’d be there now because she usually took the night shift. The librarian that hassled Malin the other night might also be on duty now… I’ll just have to be careful.
Luckily, Myraa didn’t meet anyone as she hurried to the Head Librarian’s tiny office and found the woman sitting at her desk, writing by candlelight.
“Lady Myraa, what brings you here so late?” the woman asked as she rose from her chair.
“Hello, Subrata,” Myraa said with a smile. “How are you?” She shut the door behind her.
“I’m well, thank you. You?”
“I’m fine for the moment, but I might not be in a few hours’ time. You see, I only just remembered that Her Majesty had asked me to come here. I was supposed to have done this days ago.” She shook her head at herself in disapproval.
Subrata smiled sympathetically. “What do you need?”
“The Queen wanted to show her husband all the historical artefacts we have,” Myraa said with as much confidence as she could muster. “And apparently, we have a very old book from Roshdan.” She rolled her eyes. The other woman smiled. “I think she was just trying to remind me where my old mistress has been exiled to…”
Myraa suppressed her grin. It was a nice touch to remind the Head Librarian of who was responsible for the banishment of the Island’s beloved Princess. Subrata pursed her lips, a hint of irritation flashing across her face.
“No, she wasn’t trying to… We did have the original copy of the Tale of the Sea Princess that came from Roshdan, but—”
“What do you mean by ‘we did’? Don’t you have it here anymore?” Myraa bit her lip; she’d sounded too eager, too alarmed.
“Not in the library, no.”
Myraa’s heart sank. “What happened to it?”
“Nothing,” replied Subrata. “Not that I know of, anyway.” The woman shrugged. Before Myraa could ask her to explain herself, the Head Librarian said, “Queen Kanona took it to keep in her personal collection.”
“Queen Kanona?” Myraa gasped.
Subrata nodded. “Yes, I gave it to her myself. Well, I saw her as she was leaving the library with it, and she explained that she wanted to keep it in her personal library. I wasn’t going to stop her, was I? She was the Queen!
“You remember that she was very fond of anything to do with the creatures of the sea? She had all those paintings of the sea folk in her rooms…” She smiled indulgently. “Of course, after her death, all her things were moved
to—”
“The shrine,” Myraa whispered. “That’s what Princess Aaryana called it. Her mother’s shrine.”
“Yes, and that’s where you’ll find the controversial first edition of the Sea Princess’s story.”
Myraa leaped to her feet. “Thank you so much, Subrata. I’ll tell Her Majesty that she can take her husband to her mother’s shrine and show him the book there. If I don’t forget, that is.” She rolled her eyes. “And you won’t mention my late-night visit to anyone, will you? I’ll get into so much trouble if the Queen finds out that I forgot to look into this for her sooner?”
The librarian smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry, Lady Myraa, your secret is safe with me.”
The Isle of the Damned was too small to be thought of as an Island proper, to be inhabited by people and be ruled by a King or Queen. That’s why it was under Roshdan’s rule, considered to be a part of the Island itself. It wasn’t drawn on maps of the world, wasn’t a worthy mention in sailors’ tales. It was just a small patch of land with dead trees, a forest that had most likely been a part of Roshdan and broken away from the northeastern coast. Easily reached but preferably forgotten. Why? Three reasons:
Number one: Its gruesome history. The Isle had been used as a prison of sorts for the evilest criminals. If you were sentenced to the Isle of the Damned, you truly were damned. You begged the authorities to let you rot in the dungeons instead. You wished you hadn’t committed such a terrible felony to deserve this punishment.
Most convicts died at the claws of deadly beasts or to the venom of snakes, and the blood of those that attempted to flee the Isle via sea would dye the water red. Yes, it was a quick swim to the mainland, but the sea-dwelling wardens swam fast and ate even faster.
Dawn had broken by the time Aaryana reached the forest that edged the coast of Roshdan. When she made it past the trees and finally arrived at the sea, the sun was quite high in the sky. Dismounting her horse, she secured the animal to a tree and walked up to the water.
She saw the Dead Forest in the distance—trees with bare branches. No green leaves, no grass, as far as she could tell. No boat, either. Of course, she’d have to swim to the Isle of the Damned. Now that she was staring at the sea, the memory of her near-drowning experience sent a prickle of fear down her spine. The way the water had grabbed her like a giant fist, rendered her immobile. How possessive it had been...
The sea wanted to take me. Not like a lover would want to embrace you and keep you safe, yet not like an enemy that wanted to torture and kill you. She hadn’t felt safe in the water. Knowing what she knew now about who she was—what she was—it didn’t make sense. Or maybe it did make sense. She had sea folk blood in her; perhaps the sea wanted her back.
You can’t have me, she told it, just as she had on the day that she’d done once before. The sea didn’t respond. The water was so still, so dark, as if it had never been touched.
Sucking in a breath, she took off her cloak and dropped it on the rocks after removing the sunlight stone from its pocket. She wore the gold chain around her neck and the weight of the large pearly-white stone felt comforting. People all over the world believed that sunlight stone kept you safe from the sea folk—she’d be finding out for certain soon enough.
Myraa hadn’t returned to Malin’s room from the library last night. It meant that she hadn’t found the book. They wouldn’t speak until she did. Or until she thought she’d searched all the shelves of the library to no avail. But Malin really wanted to know what the girl had gotten up to. She didn’t like the fact that this investigation was out of her hands for the moment.
Annoyingly, it was a dry day, and she’d have to remain in her room. She could visit Leesha’s room after breakfast, try to read Myraa’s expression… No, going to see her sister twice in a row would raise questions that she didn’t want raised. What if Parth was there this time?
A few hours later, once she’d eaten the lunch that her ladies had left for her in the front room, she decided to lie down on her bed. That’s when she saw it. A little slip of parchment, folded in half, a couple of inches from her front door. It hadn’t been there before she’d sat down to eat… Someone had slid this note under her door.
It took her less than two heartbeats to cross the distance and pick up the note. Less than a heartbeat to straighten out the parchment. Her breath caught when she read the short message, undoubtedly from Myraa.
‘What you seek lies in your mother’s shrine.’
It was too easy. Too quick. Aaryana wasn’t even breathing hard when she got out of the water and set foot on the Isle of the Damned. Honestly, she could have swum several laps to and from the coast without breaking a sweat. It was hardly a swim at all.
Her sunlight stone glowed bright whenever it dropped beneath the surface of the dark water, brighter than it had in the darkness of the ship that brought her to Roshdan. She was certain it would have lit the way for her if she’d needed to search for anything deep in the ocean. But today, her treasure was on land, not in the water.
The trees of the Dead Forest were tall and densely packed together. Because they had no leaves, the sight before her was a mass of grey and brown. And even though the morning sun was bright, everything ahead of her was shadowy and grim. It was as though the rays of the sun preferred to stay clear of this place—it was damned, after all. The branches near the tops of these trees were probably closely knit-together, blocking out most of the daylight.
The ground was uneven and dry, and her footsteps kicked up dust as she delved into the trees. Once in the thick of the forest, she stopped to light the candle that she’d managed to squeeze into one of the pockets of her leather pants. She hoped that the matches in her other pocket hadn’t come in contact with the water and become soggy, therefore useless.
She knew how to build a fire from twigs and branches, and the fire angel would take care of the rest, but she didn’t want to draw any attention to herself as she went about making a fire. In case the Dead Forest was home to dangerous creatures that were very much alive.
Something about this place reminded her of the Old Forest in Adgar, made her think that the deadly beasts that were thought to keep the sea folk away from Adgar’s Royal Palace could be lurking in the shadows of these leafless trees.
No, this place couldn’t possibly sustain any form of life, not when it had no food for animals to live on. There was plenty of water, but who could live on water alone?
The sunlight stone around her neck only glowed softly in the darkness and didn’t provide enough light to navigate by. Holding her breath, she took out a match and tried to light it.
She failed.
The second reason that the people of Roshdan spoke nothing of the Isle of the Damned was because they feared it. If they didn’t think about it and refrained from discussing it, they could forget that it was so close by. Forget that it existed.
What frightened them most wasn’t the legends of the lethal man-eating sea folk that had—for all intents and purposes—guarded the Isle or the vicious animals that ripped men to shreds on land, but how the Dead Forest had actually died.
Once, it had been a beautiful jungle, as vibrant as it was fearful. But it had witnessed so much death, the soil had soaked up too much blood, that the grass died and the trees died and nothing could grow on it again.
As for the hungry sea creatures that lurked in the waters around it… People said that they’d eaten too much human flesh, spilled too much blood into the sea, that they’d ended up poisoning themselves to extinction.
According to fishermen, the waters in that region homed no fish at all. The sea in that region was as dead as the Dead Forest it surrounded.
She ran out of matches. They weren’t wet or soggy but none of them worked. Aaryana contemplated navigating the forest without any light, but it would slow her down. Seth couldn’t afford for her to move at that pace, when she couldn’t see beyond each step. I’ll have to light a fire…
It’s not here. Mali
n had spent the last hour searching every nook and cranny of her mother’s shrine, but the Sea Princess’s tale was nowhere to be seen. She had gone through the paintings, looked for secret compartments in desk drawers, under the furniture. No luck.
When she thought there weren’t any more places left to search, she returned to the bookcase. There was nothing on top of it, nothing hidden between it and the wall behind it. She tried but couldn’t fit her entire hand underneath the case as there wasn’t enough room—it couldn’t fit a book.
Just as she was about to pull her hand out, she thought she felt something sharp with the very tip of her middle finger. For a moment, Malin thought about stretching and straining to reach for the mysterious object before realising that she could simply push the case aside to see what was under it. She was definitely strong enough .
As gently and as quietly as possible, she pushed the bookshelf away from the wall. There was something underneath it and it looked very interesting indeed.
The third reason that no one enjoyed thinking about the Isle of the Damned was because it was still a place that no one returned from. Long after it was deemed unsuitable to be a prison, the people that had gone there over the centuries to investigate it had never come back.
The waters around it might be deadly quiet, but dangerous animals and poisonous snakes were thought to roam the forest. No one knew how these creatures managed to survive on barren land, but the disappearance of the explorers was evidence of their existence.
After all, people didn’t just vanish into thin air, did they?
‘For my darling Aaryana,
‘I want you to have this, now that you are Queen. Don’t look so surprised. I always knew you’d be Queen. You fought so hard to come into this world and I know you must have fought even harder in The Contest for the Throne.
