by Starla Night
“How dare you—”
“But that is not your reason for turning away from me. You cannot develop your queen powers, you cannot discover your fins, you cannot embrace the Atlantis Life Tree with your whole heart and soul because you cannot embrace me.”
She didn’t know how to answer him. He was only making half sense.
“I warned you once that my soul was darker than you could ever know.” Balim’s hurt sharpened like a blade honed beyond the edge so it was twisted, nicked, and hard. “When I issued that warning, I believed you would someday synchronize enough with me it would not matter. But that will never happen. Like Nora, who I mistook for Pelan’s bride, I have now mistaken you for mine.”
Her heart cracked. “I’m a mistake for you now?”
“You are,” he snarled, ruthless with pain. “Why else are you so conflicted? Your body rejected the elixir and it rejected Atlantis and it rejects me.”
“How can I ‘embrace’ a city I’m doomed to destroy?” she demanded, fighting to lower her vibrations to keep their argument from leaking to the clusters of warriors across the city. “Of course I feel like splitting in half. And I’ve decided, Balim. I can’t do it. We have to get rid of it.”
“It?”
“The vial.”
His face closed.
She forced him to understand. “How can I live in this beautiful city, make friends with these wonderful people, wave at their adorable children while holding on to something that could hurt—no, kill them?”
“Have you given up on Jonah?”
“How dare you,” she hissed.
“Have you?”
“Never.”
“Then where is your faith, Bella? Where is your determination? Your devotion? Or are you just as confused and manipulated as Nora?”
“How dare you use my child against me?” She jerked back, throwing the most hateful accusations back at him. “This decision is agonizing.”
“Not so agonizing. You have made it.”
“Yes, I have. I can’t wreck a city. I can’t murder people. Orphan children. Even when I was acting as a double agent, I had a backup plan if you were at risk. Plus I was a crap informant. I didn’t feed the Sons of Hercules anything they didn’t already know. Starr made so much progress. But I can’t.”
“Bella, for your son—”
“I would give my own life,” she affirmed. “But not yours. Not anyone else’s. That’s not in me. I have too much humanity. I can’t destroy a city. I can’t kill anyone.”
Behind Balim, in the distance, a strange “pop” echoed across the city as if contents under the intense pressures of the deep sea had burst. Thick glass shattered.
A high-pitched sound emerged. It sounded like screaming.
Like the screaming in her heart. The truth came out. Balim thought she’d abandoned her child. She disgusted even Balim. She horrified herself and him.
Except… Wait a minute…
“Was that…?” Bella clutched her hand to the throat. “The vial?”
He looked back at her with dark eyes ringed black with horror. “It exploded?”
“I don’t know. I mean, anything’s possible. Maybe.”
Elyssa flew out of the sanctuary. “Who’s attacking? Why is the Life Tree screaming?”
“The Life Tree is screaming?”
“Well, it’s a castle, actually.” She searched the city for the source while rallying the rest of the warriors for a fight. “It’s the sound it makes when it’s under attack.”
“There.” Balim pointed grimly at the castle, which shuddered with black streaks of poison. “The castle under attack is mine.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Balim flew after the other warriors to his castle.
“I can’t destroy a city. I can’t kill anyone.”
Bella’s words echoed in his head. He’d collected her instinctively at the sound of danger and now they both flew behind Queen Elyssa and also King Kadir to Balim’s screaming castle.
Bella couldn’t destroy a city or kill anyone.
But he had. He’d done those things.
“I could never live with myself if anyone got hurt because of me,” she moaned, rubbing her chest.
Ice frosted his heart as she drove needle wedges between them with her panicked words. He swallowed the lump of sharp coral.
They hovered in a circle around the shrieking castle. No one knew how to proceed. The entrance was closed up tight.
“Who is inside?” First Lieutenant Soren demanded. “Warriors, to me! Whoever emerges will face their death!”
“But no one’s inside. Just my mistake.” Bella’s face constricted, and she clutched her hands to her chest. “I am death to everyone.”
Her words slapped his heart once more and stung. She was horrified by a murderer.
But Balim was a murderer.
The castle darkened. Black lines spread across the sphere.
Ciran shouted from the back of the sphere. “What is it? What is this attack?”
Balim’s heart thudded hard. Sickness built in his throat. He had to hold it together. Losing his castle and Bella was only the punishment he deserved. He should not feel so tormented.
To speak would be to incriminate Bella. But not to speak would endanger the entire city.
“It is not an attack.” He looked King Kadir right in the eye as he pronounced his own exile. “It is a substance from the surface. A poison.”
King Kadir’s eyes widened. He kicked back from the darkening monstrosity. “What have you done?”
“What I must,” Balim said.
“What substance is this? How do we combat it? How do we heal it?”
Most likely they could not.
King Kadir’s fingers clenched his trident. He wanted to shake Balim until an answer tumbled out.
“We cannot stop it.”
“We must!” King Kadir flew to the black streaks and stabbed them.
The castle continued shrieking. Although his trident punctured and cut, the thick walls puckered away from his attacks. He could not gain entry, and he did not stop the poison.
It would destroy Balim’s castle.
“Is it going to stop?” Queen Elyssa vibrated the question tightly beside them. “We have to cut it off here. The city is interconnected. If that poison kills the roots, it will destroy the other castles and the Life Tree.”
“Sever the stalk,” Balim ordered.
Queen Elyssa looked at him long and hard. “There’s no way to save it?”
He shook his head. Perhaps there was a way, but he could not figure it out before it endangered the entire city.
Queen Elyssa turned and vibrated with a decisive shout. “Cut the anchor!”
Warriors attacked the base where the bulb connected to the stalk.
“Farther down. Down!”
They detached from the base and descended toward the ocean floor to attack the monstrous stalk with daggers. Two warriors flew in with longer serrated swords.
The castle collapsed in on itself like a rotted pumpkin with no interior structure. Black poison lines pooled at the base of the deflated bulb.
The warriors’ sawing made a creaking, shrieking sound as the massive tree-like anchor yawned. Queen Elyssa put her hands on the cut. It glowed as did her hands.
Black poison streaked into the stalk.
King Kadir snarled at Balim. “When we stop this, you will answer for your crimes.”
Balim’s heart cracked. He strove to endure his king’s disapproval with honor.
King Kadir chased the dark poison, slicing his trident at it as though he could force it to yield first.
Queen Aya joined Queen Elyssa and put her hands at the upper stalk. A sharp crack made the stalk jerk away from her as if she’d shoved it back with a white bulldozer.
The warriors rallied around King Kadir and sawed on the reverse side. Would they beat the seeping poison?
First Lieutenant Soren snarled at Balim. “How unfortunate
we never prepared to lay siege to our enemies. We never thought to construct a stalk-cutting saw.”
He bowed his head to endure the warrior’s judgment. Soren was the first warrior he had pledged his allegiance to after drifting from Undine. His fury cut a long wound in Balim’s heart.
The first lieutenant slammed his shoulder into Balim. “Do not leave.”
It pained him.
Of course he would not leave. “I will heal the wounded.”
“They would never let you touch them.” First Lieutenant Soren flew to aid. With a mighty roar, he attacked the stalk. It broke into pieces. The warriors concentrated their daggers on the last filaments.
New realizations filtered into Balim.
Of course First Lieutenant Soren was right. He was a traitor. Bringing poison into Atlantis, regardless of the reason, was dangerous, as he had proved. Such a total lack of wisdom would make many question his motives. He was too smart to be so stupid. Too clever to lack so much judgment.
Finally, he would face consequences for the act he had committed years ago.
Regicide.
“Balim. This wasn’t what I wanted.” Bella’s fingers curled around his, seeking comfort in this disaster. “Your castle… How can we ever explain this so your friends will understand?”
“We cannot.” Balim disconnected their fingers and pulled free. “You can.”
“Me?”
“I must bear the judgment.”
From a distance. He would not wait per Soren’s request to be judged, sterilized, executed, and thrown into a vent. He still had to atone.
He had unleashed the deadly Blue Ring on the old king of Undine. Now, Blue Ring had returned to haunt him.
He could not die now. He was the only one who could understand Healer Dalus’s answers.
And his absence could absolve Bella of the crime of blackmail. She was still pure. He alone had the blackened soul.
“Find the Sons of Hercules,” he ordered, keeping his mind on the immediate task and not allowing the grief of his losses to pile up on top and smother him. “Free your son and live happily.”
She wiggled after him. “Balim. Wait!”
Her cry dissipated in the frantic battle of the warriors as they destroyed his most prestigious and permanent tie to the city of Atlantis.
But her second, more furious cry reached him through the noise. “You said we’re the same sides of a coin.”
He turned on her, fury snapping in his chest. It was welcome after the pain. “But we are not, are we?”
“You’re a healer. You fix things. You don’t destroy them.”
“To atone. I heal to atone because this is who I am, Bella. The one thing you could never be. I am a murderer.”
She jerked as if he’d slapped her in the face. “Don’t brag about it. You had reasons, so don’t lord it over me like it’s something to celebrate.”
Crack. The stalk of his castle broke just as the first tendrils of poison rotted it away. The whole castle collapsed, sizzling, like a broken flower.
“Don’t let it touch the sea floor!” Queen Elyssa shouted. “We can’t let the poison contaminate the ground! We have to drag it to the barren rock.”
“A vent.” King Kadir overrode her orders, and the warriors together kept it from crashing.
The withered husk turned in on itself, the poison continuing to darken its former vibrancy, black streaking across gray and turning it darker and darker. The warriors moved it en masse while the queens used their powers to buffer it, pushing it between the stalks and out of the city.
“You didn’t kill it,” Bella insisted. “This was an accident. And poisoning the king didn’t happen because you’re a murderer. You escaped from an all-powerful ruler who murdered your father and threatened to do the same to you.”
“That is no excuse.” Balim’s vibrations sharpened as his emotions broke. “Remain here. Find your son. Stay pure. And be happy.”
He turned away from her and kicked hard, leaving her in the city far behind.
Chapter Thirty
Be happy? Be happy!
Balim’s last insult played in Bella’s head over and over long after he had left her behind.
Of course the selfish, damaged healer had left her to deal with the inquiry. Was she supposed to be happy about that too? Just because he’d claimed responsibility before he’d run off didn’t mean the kind, trusting, generous families who’d welcomed her to Atlantis would consider her an innocent victim and move on.
The stump where the hopes of one of their most important members had once rested now reminded them of what they’d lost, like a missing leg. And Bella didn’t think this limb would grow back.
It was gone.
Just like Balim.
“Betrayal.” King Kadir swished back and forth in front of her in his castle while his closest elite warriors and advisers listened. “You have betrayed the ideals of trust, openness, and exchange that founded Atlantis.”
Bella prepared her rebuttal speech while King Kadir ranted.
“You accepted a mystery substance from deadly terrorists to steal a Life Tree blossom and destroy the city, and you told no one. What do you say for yourself?”
“I’m sorry. I saw no other way to save my son.”
“We would have moved the oceans and the earth to help you.”
“I didn’t know who I could trust.”
“You could trust me.” King Kadir’s eyes flashed with silver threads. “Do you know how close you came to destroying our city? To sickening our warriors and queens? Our young fry?”
Torun juggled their sleeping twins. Elyssa pressed Kael to her cheek.
Bella felt like throwing up. “I never intended to release the poison.”
“But you did not know how the poison could be released. And instead of consulting with one of our warriors to assist you, you hid it away. You betrayed us.”
She endured his anger, his fear, his hurt. He wasn’t wrong, and she didn’t take his words lightly. But her mind kept returning to Balim’s parting words.
“Find your son and be happy.”
Something was wrong. Very wrong. Just like when she’d run through the hospital seeking Jonah after the Sons of Hercules had kidnapped him, she felt the same sense that someone was about to commit an unforgivable act that could never be reversed.
Maybe it was because Balim had left with such a look so stony that it sent fear streaking into her heart.
Since the first moment, she’d known in her soul they matched. Balim was hers. They were the same. And yet when he’d left, she’d felt uncertainty. He’d met her assertion that his soul was not so dark with ridicule.
She felt they were still the same. He did not. That fundamental difference made her twitchy, impatient, and needing to do something.
Bella did not handle helplessness well.
“Queen Bella.” King Kadir jolted her back by using a title that was the least fitting after everything that had happened. “You have been with us a short time. We were happy to unite bride and husband for a long future. But that possibility is gone now.”
She averted her gaze.
“Balim is an exile. His name must never be spoken. If he is found within our city…” King Kadir’s jaw flexed, and he forced himself to continue while Elyssa floated close, stroking his shoulder and hugging their sleeping son. “…he will be judged, exiled, and executed.”
Exiled and then executed seemed like overkill, but she didn’t see the point in objecting.
The sharp burning pain in Balim’s eyes and vibrations as he’d snarled at her to stay and have a happy life made her chest ache.
He’d tried to take sole responsibility and also thrown her distress back in her face by saying he couldn’t stand to see her ever again.
She’d always thought this day would come. He’d insisted they were the same. She’d believed him.
And while leaving, he’d used her most painful mistake against her.
She hadn’t loved J
onah enough, and that was why he got sick. She didn’t love Jonah enough, and that was why he couldn’t get well.
It was possible, right? The mystical Sea Opals and Life Tree activated on emotions. The problem was her. Always her.
If she’d noticed Jonah was sick earlier… If she’d insisted they do more during the first treatment… If she’d loved him more, he wouldn’t have gotten leukemia. He would have responded to the treatments. He would have gotten better after drinking the Sea Opal elixir instead of stopping at the same low count for weeks after they’d used up the liquid and returned to traditional treatments.
If only she’d loved him more, none of this would have happened.
And Balim knew how she felt. He was her soul mate. That was why he’d emphasized it so many times. “Be happy. Find your son.” As if she’d given up. She would never give up. How dare he?
“Queen Bella.” King Kadir jolted her out of her memories again. “Answer.”
She had no idea what he had asked her. “Will you repeat the question?”
“I asked if you are prepared to surface and never return?”
“Because I…okay. I can understand why you can’t trust me. But you have to let me stay. Assign extra guards.”
“We do not guard females in Atlantis as if they are prisoners.”
“I don’t mind.”
He shook his head. “You have committed an unforgivable crime, Queen Bella. The warriors will struggle to remain friendly. It is safer for you to surface.”
No! “The Sons of Hercules are expecting me to stay in Atlantis.”
“You will explain that their poison ended this privilege.”
“Jonah—”
“We will find your young fry.” He rested his arm around Elyssa’s shoulder and held his son close. “But we cannot trust you in this city. You are exiled to the surface for all eternity. Go with Queen Aya to the cable and prepare to rise.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Balim flew out of Atlantis with the same edge of darkness and anger that had followed him out of Undine.
Queen Elyssa and the warriors had saved the Life Tree. That was all that mattered. No one had died during the attack.
