Текст книги "Bound to the shadow prince"

Автор книги: Ruby Dixon

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 30 (всего у книги 40 страниц)

There’s nothing left of my kingdom. Not even a single solitary soul. Nothing but broken bits and torn-apart remnants.

In this moment, I feel as destroyed as the ship that bobs in the harbor down below, the one with the hole in the hull so big that I can see it from up here.

“There’s a body in the hall,” Nemeth tells me, and I hear the rustle of his wings as he approaches. “It’s old, but it’s unpleasant. I covered it with one of the window hangings.”

“Woman or man?” I ask tightly. If someone’s murdered my sister and left her here to rot, so help me…

“A soldier,” Nemeth says, his voice soothing. He moves behind me and puts his hands on my shoulders. “If you are asking if it is your sister, no. My brother is many things but he would not murder a woman in cold blood.”

“Not even if she was the enemy’s queen?”

“Not even then.” He rubs my arm. “Are you…all right?”

It seems a ridiculous question. Am I all right? Of course I’m not all right. I’m very, very far from all right. But I understand what he’s asking. He’s inquiring because this place has been our goal for so long, the answer to all of our problems, and it’s empty and abandoned, just like the rest of my land. “I don’t understand why no one is here,” I say softly. I want to yell and scream. I want to rage at him and every other Fellian that did this to my people, but the truth is that Lios started the war. We’re just as much to blame. If the kingdom was destroyed because we lost the war, that’s on Lionel.

So I can’t be angry with Nemeth. I cover his hand with mine, and then I’m clutching his fingers tightly, as if he’s a lifeline. “I don’t know what to do,” I admit. I’m tired. I’m cold. I’m hungry. I’m out of medicine. None of those things will be changing anytime soon, because Lios is destroyed. There’s no one to help us. No one to feed us.

We’ve left the tower for nothing. We’ve cursed the world because we didn’t want to starve…but it turns out the world has been destroyed anyhow.

He enfolds me in his arms from behind, wrapping me in his solid, supportive presence. I want to scream and rage at him, too, but…I still love him. He’s on my side, and I need to remember that, no matter what I’m feeling right now. “We’ll travel to my people instead,” Nemeth says. “To Darkfell.”

Painful laughter bubbles up out of my chest. “The last place I want to go right now is Darkfell.”

“Do you have a better idea?” he asks quietly.

I don’t. I don’t know what to do at all. “Will they kill me when I arrive? I’m one of Ravendor’s descendants.”

“They will not,” says Nemeth firmly. “Because first and foremost, you are my mate. You carry my bite.” His hand slides to my stomach. “You carry my child. They will not touch you.”

I’m not so sure. But we don’t have many other choices. “How long will it take to reach Darkfell?”

He doesn’t answer. His grip tightens around me, and I suddenly realize the answer. Too long. Too long, and I don’t have any medicine left.

“We’ll stay here tonight,” he tells me. “Look for survivors and supplies. Find a decent room to sleep in. And we’ll take it from there.”

“You should go without me⁠—”

“Never,” he says, sharp. “I’m not leaving you.”

“But you can fly,” I point out. “I cannot. I only slow you down, and without my potion, I’m as good as dead anyhow.”

“I’m not leaving you,” Nemeth says again, and his voice is calm. Steady.

It would be better for him if he did, but I’m still foolishly glad. I turn in his arms and hug him, burying my face against his chest.

My kingdom is gone. My sister is gone. And here we’re deciding to head straight for those that destroyed them.

It feels like a never-ending nightmare.

Chapter

Sixty-Nine

We make the royal library our temporary camp. While it’s been ransacked just like every other room in the palace, the ceiling is whole, the books undamaged by the endless rain. Nemeth makes a fire in the large stone fireplace at the far end of the vast hall, and I spread out our blankets and clothes to dry them.

Wearing nothing but my least-damp chemise, I curl up in the blankets by the fire and watch Nemeth as he picks up book after book. I can tell he’s fascinated with them, turning the pages with near-reverence and a hand so delicate that you’d think he’s touching my cunt instead of one of the many dusty books here. “There’s so much knowledge here.”

Normally I’d roll my eyes at someone fawning over books, but this is my Nemeth. I know how much he loves reading. For some reason, seeing him caress the pages of the book makes me happy. It makes me feel like things are a little more normal. That my world isn’t ending. “Well, since I’m officially the last one in the palace, I declare this entire library to be yours.”

He glances up at me and grins broadly. “I’m not sure you can do that.”

“I can.” I wave a hand at him. “Take as many as you like.”

He sighs and replaces the book on the shelf he took it from. Then, he hesitates and pulls down another. “I wish we could, actually.”

“Why can’t we?” I roll onto my stomach on the bedding and prop my chin up on my hands, watching him.

“Because we can’t waste the time.” Reluctantly, Nemeth abandons his newest book and gives me a sober look. “There’s not enough food or medicine⁠—”

“Don’t give me that line again,” I warn him. “We both know that. But if these books are important to you, they’re important to me, too. Why not take them with us?”

“Candra, are you listening? There’s no medicine and no time to waste⁠—”

“And there still won’t be if we leave the books behind. It’s not going to magically appear.” I shake my head. “Let’s face it, love. We’re doomed with the books or without them. Take the damned books. Maybe something of Lios will remain after all of us are gone.” After all we’ve been through, the grief is hitting me. With it comes acceptance.

I’m not getting out of this alive. We chose poorly, and now we’re being punished by an endless amount of rain from the goddess and the destruction of my people. Really, it’s only right that I die for my selfishness, but I would prefer not to. I would also prefer that Nemeth return to his people, safe. He’s spent his entire life preparing for the tower—he deserves to have something of his own now that his service is done.

As far as I’m concerned, we can take all the damned books.

Nemeth shakes his head. He moves to my side, angry and determined. “You are worth a thousand books.”

I chuckle, because of course I am. I’m amazing. “I know that. You know that. But the books do not expire if they do not get their potion on time. I will.” My hands slide to my stomach, and I sigh wistfully. “I just hate that…”

I can’t say the words aloud. That with my death, I’m taking our child with me. Strangely enough, I hate that thought more than I hate that of my own death. To think that a child is something I never even anticipated, that I never even cared to have. And now that I find myself pregnant, I’m furious that I won’t get to see it born.

Truly, the gods are cruel.

“Do not say it,” Nemeth warns. He moves to my side and thumps down beside me. “We’ll get through this. We’ll go to the Alabaster Citadel. Perhaps the clergy there will have extra supplies. Then we’ll head on to Darkfell.”

I turn on my side, regarding him. He lies next to me on the blankets, but his body is a mass of tension. There’s no fatigue in him like there is in me. Instead, he seems to be brimming with determination, the green set of his eyes hard. If I wasn’t so tired, I’d be climbing all over him in this moment, because there’s nothing sexier than my Fellian when he’s on a mission to protect me. “It’s been a long time since I’ve gone to the Alabaster Citadel,” I confess. “Is it still many days by ship?”

Nemeth nods, his eyes burning bright in his hard face. “We’ll find a craft. I can enchant it with a spell that will pull us toward our destination. We can fish along the way. No matter how much it rains, there will be fish in the sea.”

He’s got a point. “So we’ve got transportation and food. You should be fine.” I give him a little smile. “You can even load the ship full of books.”

“We’ll kill the horse we rode here. He’s not looking well anyhow, and there’s nothing left for him to eat. It’ll be a mercy for him, and a blessing for us. We’ll find some herbs, and we can use his organs as part of your potion⁠—”

“Nemeth,” I say softly, placing my hand on his arm. “Perhaps it’s time for us to accept things⁠—”

“No,” he says, just as swift. “No, Candra. I won’t let you or the baby come to harm.” He turns and wraps his arms around my waist, pressing his head to my stomach. “Our baby.”

A lump of emotion forms in my throat. I stroke my fingers over the sweep of his horns. His sadness is tearing at me, and I have to improve the mood somehow. “The baby we’re not supposed to have,” I tease. “I guess your Fellian blood is more compatible with my cursed, awful blood than we imagined.”

He chuckles against my stomach, his face pressed to my chemise. “It’s because of that drop of Fellian in your ancestry. Maybe that’s what’s cursing your blood. You’ve got too much Fellian in you.”

“Right now I don’t have any Fellian in me,” I purr.

And then pause.

Because…what if he’s right? What if the problem in my blood isn’t a curse from the gods but because I’ve got too much Fellian ancestry, like he says? What if the cure for my curse is Fellian blood?

Nemeth sits up suddenly, staring down at me with wide eyes.

“Are you thinking what I am thinking?” he asks.

I nod, a little stunned. “I’ve never heard of something like this working,” I confess. “But we were told the Fellian blood is a rumor. Then again, I was also told that those with cursed blood cannot get pregnant.”

“Maybe you can’t from a human man.” He puts a large hand over my stomach, his two blunted claws strange and short against the others, his shorn ones marking him as mated. “But I am Fellian. Perhaps it’s my blood you need.” He looks up, casting his gaze around the room. “Do you have medical texts here?”

“As if I would know?”

“I just want to be certain before we try it,” he says. “I don’t want to inject you with something your body might consider poison.”

There’s no time to look through the enormous library for answers. It could take weeks, and we don’t have weeks. “I say we try it. What have we got to lose?”

“Everything, Candra. We stand to lose everything.” The look he gives me is pure anguish.

“You’re wrong.” I shake my head. “We have a few days at most. By tomorrow, I’ll be violently ill. By the day after, I won’t be able to stand. I’d rather not wait that long.” I take his hand from my stomach and kiss his knuckles. “I trust you.”

“This isn’t about trust,” he tells me, exasperated. “This is about science.”

For him, maybe. For me, it’s about faith. I might have lost my faith in the gods, but not in Nemeth. I give him an impish smile. “Let’s try it anyhow.”

He groans, and I know I’ve won the argument.

Nemeth’s blood could be my salvation or my doom. It seems strangely fitting, I think. I’m calm as I carefully plunge the needle into Nemeth’s arm and pull back the lever, taking just enough of his blood to fill the syringe. Nemeth wanted to do this part himself—he wants to spare me any of the trouble—but I can handle this.

If it works, Nemeth is the answer to my sickness. The thought that all I need is him and his blood is oddly freeing. I imagine I’d still need a dose daily, but the thought of being bound to Nemeth instead of a daily concoction of boiled animal pancreas and a mixture of herbs feels easy and right.

In my eyes, this is just another facet of our love.

Of course, if I’m wrong…I won’t think about that. I’ll focus on the positive instead. I wipe the needle carefully once I remove it from his arm, watching him from the corner of my eye as he folds his arm up, pressing a bit of fabric at the pinprick of blood to staunch the flow. “How are you feeling?”

“Nervous,” he grumbles. “What if we’re wrong and this makes you sicker?”

“Then it speeds up the inevitable and makes it easier for you to travel, since you won’t have me dragging you down.” He growls, and I pat his knee. “We’re out of options, love. This is the only choice we have left.”

“I don’t like it when you’re right,” he mutters. “You gloat.”

“Let’s just do it before we talk ourselves out of even trying it.” And before I’m far too sick to fight off any bad side effects. I’m confident, but at the same time, I’m well aware that I’m being effortlessly positive because we’ve got no other choices. Besides, Nemeth is doing enough worrying for both of us.

He tenderly takes my arm in his grip and hesitates. His eyes close and I can tell he’s agonizing. He doesn’t want to do this. He doesn’t want to risk me. I wait patiently. He braces himself, lifts my hand to his lips and kisses my knuckles, and then picks up a towel and wipes the bend of my arm clean. When he puts the needle to my skin, he looks at me again. “I love you.”

“I love you, too. It’s going to be all right,” I reassure him. “Maybe this is what the gods wanted for me all along. Don’t you think?”

Nemeth shakes his head. “I don’t feel like the gods are watching us at all.”

And with that cryptic statement, he pushes the needle in.

Chapter

Seventy

The mood is strange as we wait for the medication—Nemeth’s blood—to take effect.

He holds me for hours. It’s like he’s afraid that if he lets me go, the worst will happen. Even though it’s damp and humid in the old library, I remain locked in his arms, tucked against his chest. We’re both quiet, as if speaking will somehow set things in motion. I don’t tell Nemeth that when his blood enters my veins, it feels hot and a little itchy, and very different from the potion itself.

We wait. And wait.

At some point, I fall asleep in his arms. When I wake up, I can see sunlight streaming through one of the doors into the palace, and the air smells crisp and dewy.

And I feel…good. Surprisingly good.

I sit up in Nemeth’s arms. He immediately straightens, coming out of a deep slumber of his own, and panic is etched across his face. “Are you all right? How do you feel?”

“I think I’m fine?”

“Get up,” he says. “Move around. Let us see if you are dizzy.” There’s a note of tension in his voice. “I do not think we should celebrate too soon.”

Even before I get to my feet, though, I know. After years of living with my blood curse, I know what it feels like when my potion isn’t strong enough. I know the waves of nausea that hit when I miss a dose. I know how it feels when things are off. And it doesn’t feel off right now. I feel good. Amazing.

It feels as if some strange puzzle piece inside me has suddenly locked into place.

I push off of him and bounce to my feet. Gathering up the skirts of my chemise, I laugh and race across the library, kicking books out of the way as I do. Who cares about books at a time like this anyhow? I feel good. I’m not tired. Not drained. Not dizzy. Not feeling as if I’m going to vomit at any moment. Is this how healthy people feel every day? Like they could just run straight to the horizon and keep running?

Lucky bastards.

“Careful, Candra,” Nemeth warns, following after me. “Don’t hurt yourself⁠—”

I surge back toward him, running as fast as I can, and fling my arms around him. The momentum of my jump knocks us both to the ground, and I laugh and laugh and laugh.

I laugh so hard I want to fling myself on the floor and kick my legs like a child. “I’m free,” I whisper, and my voice breaks on a sob. “I’m free.”

“Are you well, love?” He rolls us over, his hands skimming over my body. “Does anything hurt?”

“Mmm,” I say, my arms raised up behind my head in a sensual stretch. I feel as if I can take on the world now. I want to both laugh hysterically and sob like a child for all that this means. “I do have one particular nagging ache.”

“Gods,” he murmurs, running his hands over one of my calves. “Where? Your arm? Your leg? How bad is the ache?”

“Higher,” I tell him, helpfully pulling my skirts up a bit. When he reaches my knee, I sigh. “Keep going higher.”

“Candra,” he growls, and he looks utterly furious. “Do not make light of this.”

“You don’t understand, Nemeth,” I say giddily. I squeeze my folded arms against my chest and shiver all over like a happy puppy. “I feel good! I feel good without the medicine! Do you know how much I’ve hated every dose? How much the scent turns my stomach sometimes? Do you know what this means? It means I’m free!” I choke on the word this time. “I’m bloody free.”

Nemeth grunts, and I can’t tell if he’s pleased along with me or still mad over my joke. “If by free you mean bound to me, because now you must have my blood.”

“Oh, pish-tosh. Being bound to you isn’t a chore. I love you. I want to spend every day with you. Now I have an excuse.” I beam at him. “It’s the best of all worlds.”

He doesn’t beam back. His wings flick and then settle against his back. “You say that now, but what if you grow sick of me like Ravendor did her mate?”

Sick of him? When he’s been the only thing keeping me going for so long? I shake my head and get to my knees, crawling over to him. I put a hand on his chest, pushing him back to the floor again. “I will never, ever be sick of you for as long as I live,” I tell him. “You and I are in this together. There is nothing that will separate us.”

“Nothing?” He arches a brow at me.

“Not even the gods.” I grab the belt of his kilt and tug it off. “Now come and kiss your wife.”

“Is it kissing that’s on your mind, then?” he jokes, even as my hands steal under his kilt and cup his shaft. I tease the knot at the base of his cock, loving the hiss of breath between his teeth. “That’s not my mouth, Candra.”

“I can kiss you in other places,” I tell him, words coy. “But only if you ask me nicely.”

Nemeth sinks a hand into my hair, his fingers curling in my mane. He holds my head pinned, and I gaze down at him, curious at the pause. But he only gazes up at me with stormy green eyes, his expression full of emotion. “This might be the best moment of my life,” he tells me. “Seeing you healthy and happy.”

“You’re not saying that just because we’re surrounded by books?”

“We’re surrounded by death,” he corrects. “On all sides. And yet somehow, as long as it doesn’t touch you, I find I can manage it. I can manage anything as long as I have you, Candra.”

The look on his face is intense, vulnerable. I want to shower him with kisses and make him laugh so he’ll stop looking so concerned. “Then it’s lucky for you that you’re stuck with me, hmm?”

“I am lucky,” he agrees.

“So lucky.”

He lowers me toward his face and his lips brush against mine, just barely. “You can kiss me,” he murmurs. “Or you can ride me. Your choice.”

As if that’s much of a choice at all? “Why can’t I do both?”

“You can, if you’re feeling greedy.” His other hand steals up underneath my chemise, skimming up my thigh. “I won’t judge you.”

“You just want me on your knot,” I tease. “Lucky for you, I’m feeling good enough to ride you for hours.”

“Hours, you say?” He arches a brow at me, even as his fingers slide between my thighs. “You truly think you can last that long?”

“Is that a challenge, my mate?”

“It is.”

I do so love a challenge.

I confess that we’re shamelessly wasteful with the day. I know we should be focused on finding a boat to take us to the Alabaster Citadel. I know I should be hunting for my sister and the survivors of the sacked city. But we’ve got a bit of horse meat left and our stomachs are full. We’ve got medicine for me, and for the first time in a long time, the pressing need for survival is not quite so pressing as it usually is.

Instead of focusing on survival, we spend the day in bed.

Well…the floor counts as a bed. Most of the bedding that’s left in the palace is soaked and moldy, but when I wake up from a delicious nap, Nemeth has found blankets for us. I don’t ask what room they’ve come from—I don’t want to know. We curl up in them, eat our horse jerky, and we spend the day together, touching and kissing and loving.

I adore every moment of it, and I refuse to feel guilt. That will return soon enough. For one day, it’s nothing but pleasure.

The next morning, we wake up early and head out to the deserted stable, where the sad, lone horse waits. He’s skinny, searching the stalls for grass or hay, even though there’s nothing to be found. The constant, incessant rain means that everything is muck, and any plants drowned out long ago.

Even so, I rub the poor horse’s nose and hug his neck. “I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I’m sorry that it has to be you or us, friend.” To think that I’m feeling guilty over the slaughter of a horse. It’s just that…he’s carried me when I was too tired to walk. He’s seen the destruction of Lios and carried me this far. He’s survived until now. It feels wrong to kill him.

“Remember that this is a mercy, Candra,” Nemeth reminds me when I hug the horse’s neck again. “We can’t take him on the ship. Turning him loose here would just kill him slowly instead of quickly. There’s nothing for him to eat. Better to let his death nourish us.”

“I know.” I do. It’s just hard to watch. I bite my lip, hating that I’m so weak, but I’ve never been around death. It’s always been hidden from me, and I don’t think I can watch Nemeth slaughter the horse as it gazes on me. “Is it all right with you if I come back later? Once it’s done?”

Nemeth moves to my side. He presses a kiss to my damp forehead. “Why don’t you go search for mementos in the palace? Perhaps there will be something you can bring to your sister.”

He’s sending me away, but I’m so grateful I don’t even care. I give him a quick hug and then grab my skirts, hauling them clear of the calf-high muck at the entrance to the stable, and head back for the palace itself.

I spend most of the morning digging around in empty rooms, trying very hard to ignore all the destruction. I pointedly look away from tears in the tapestries, from dark stains on the rugs. I don’t find anything my sister would want, I think. Whatever treasures Lios had have been taken by the conquerors, and all that are left are scraps and memories. I head down to the library instead, determined to tuck away a few books for Nemeth. After all, if we’re going to be taking a boat, we can surely take a trunk full of books. I’m sure he’ll fight me on this, but I’m good at winning fights. I pick a few of the rarer-seeming books, the ones at the top of his pile that he can’t resist pawing every now and then. We don’t have the luxury of staying here long enough so he can read them all, and I’m desperately glad for that.

It feels as if I’m roosting in the graveyard of my people, and that if I remain here long enough, I’m going to be swallowed up by the dead.

Not that there have been a lot of dead. Other than a few scattered bodies, there’s been nothing. I’m relieved, of course, but I’m also confused. There was a battle clearly fought here. Someone would have been killed, and the dead would have had to go somewhere. Nemeth explained to me that the Fellians burn their dead so they can be returned to the skies as ash and smoke, but that doesn’t explain where the Liosian dead are.

Maybe they’ve all been taken captive and are currently at Darkfell. Maybe I’ll see a sea of familiar faces when we get there.

Maybe.

I stack the books I want Nemeth to have into an unwieldy pile, and then grimace at the mud I’ve tracked in. My shoes don’t protect my feet inasmuch as they simply seem to gather mud, and I’ve trailed a lot of it into the library. If it gets on the books, Nemeth will fuss, and while I find his fussing adorable, it does make sense to protect the books somehow. I think of a trunk my sister had in her quarters that was yet untouched. The lid’s jewels were pried off but it seemed otherwise intact, and the perfect size to hold a variety of tomes for my Nemeth.

I head upstairs for my sister’s quarters, and as I do, the sun comes out from behind the clouds and shines in through one of the broken windows. It’s such a rare occurrence that I pause in front of the windows, sighing with pleasure at the sunbeams…

…and that’s when I see them.

The graves.

There’s not many of them, but it’s the size of each one that makes me clench the windowsill. Shards of glass embed themselves into my hands, but I don’t pull away. I can’t, because I have to take in the sight below.

The palace had gardens once. I never cared for them much, because my medicine made me sensitive to heat and it always felt too warm to spend much time outside, but I remember my sister loved Lios’s gardens. She loved the flowers that filled the beds, the vines that crept along the walls and the scents of the herbs that flooded Nurse’s herb gardens. I remember there was a maze, and a sundial, and a statue of the goddess herself, holding the moon above one shoulder like she was carrying a pot of water.

The statue of the goddess remains, but everything else is gone. The maze is gone. The hedges gone. The herb garden, gone. What remains are five sunken pits in the muck, each one headed with the eye symbol of the Absent One, hastily carved out of wood. Each sunken pit is nightmarishly big, bigger than my sister’s entire suite of rooms, and I wonder just how many people were buried in each large grave.

Each one is far, far too big for just one body. Or even ten bodies.

This is what has happened to Lios. Tears prick my eyes and I lean over the broken window, as if pushing my face out into the light will somehow enable me to see more. I stare with sick horror at the mass graves, praying that my sister and her children aren’t in any of them. That both Nurse and Riza are safe. That those I love somehow made it away from this place.

I want to leave. I need to leave.

Now.

Something flutters in the breeze. There’s a heap of rags at the feet of the goddess, with a pair of swords sticking upright, the ends shoved through the rags and into the ground below. I wonder why these particular rags…and then I see a leg bone. And the tiny bones that make up a hand, shattered and scattered in the mud. It takes me a moment longer to see the skull, and for me to realize one of the swords pierces it through the eye.

And resting upon that particular sword’s hilt is a tarnished crown.

I recognize that crown. Recognize the spot where a fat, garish ruby sat on Lionel’s brow like a giant red wart. It looked ridiculous against his pale skin and pale hair, and I’d spent many a night at court wishing the crown was upon any head but his.

That body…those remains must be his.

Gods. I cannot even celebrate this death. I hated Lionel, but his death fills me with fear for my sister and their children.

“Nemeth,” I cry out, turning away from the window and racing down the stairs. “Nemeth!” I fling myself down the hall, ignoring the skid of my feet on the perpetually damp floors. “Nemeth!”

The shadows coalesce in front of me, and then my mate is there, grabbing my arms and shaking me. There’s a look of fright in his gaze. “Candra? What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Graves,” I choke. “I found the graves.”

And then I fall into his arms, weeping.

We don’t bury Lionel. After the initial horror fades, I’m left with a deep, burning anger in my gut.

This is his fault. These deaths are upon him. Lios and Darkfell have co-existed in an uneasy truce for ages. He was the one that pushed for the war. He was the one that insisted I go to the tower, and quickly, so he could set off to conquer the mountains of the Fellians.

These deaths are on him.

While the meat from the horse smokes on racks in the kitchen (we burn the broken frame of a once-elegant poster bed), we head down to the shore and look for a ship. There are several wrecked vessels, but we manage to find a small craft with a broken mast. It’s terrifyingly small for an ocean journey, perhaps the size of two horse-lengths, but Nemeth assures me we don’t need more than that.

We spend the rest of the day working on making her seaworthy. Nemeth replaces the mast with wreckage from another ship and I sew a large piece of fabric that will act as a sail. As if the goddess likes the idea of us fleeing this place, the sun remains out, the rains temporarily banished. We erect a small tent-like shelter at one end of the ship that we can rest under when the sun is high, and Nemeth will cast a spell in the morning to enchant the sail itself. As long as it’s on the ship, it will steer us toward the Alabaster Citadel.

And from there, to Darkfell itself.

I’m ready. I want answers, and all signs point that Darkfell will have them.