Even as the words escaped her, she knew them to no longer be entirely true. But she had acted on reflex, according to how they’d always spoken to one another. Biting, caustic, enemies.
Niya was still unsure how to navigate being allies with Alōs, despite beginning to care about completing this mission for entirely different reasons than acquiring her freedom. She could not allow the people of Esrom to suffer such a fate, could not allow Ariōn to be at the mercy of the wicked creatures that filled the upper parts of Aadilor. Niya herself could be grouped into that lot, as well as Alōs.
Every world deserved a sanctuary. What would Aadilor become without theirs?
“I do not argue you that point,” said Alōs, tone hardening. “Yes, I have done horrible acts, and I will still. But there are . . . reasons my life was set on this path, a path I have accepted.”
“And pray tell, what were those?”
“Ariōn.”
Gooseflesh danced along her arms at hearing him speak his brother’s name. Would he finally share what she had been wondering since Esrom? Niya waited, quiet, despite sensing the bubbles in her bath thinning.
“Ariōn was born in the spring, during a moon letting,” said Alōs, gaze growing cloudy with memories as he looked to a corner of the room. “A day that was said to be a blessed time to bring new life into our kingdom. But he was born weak and thin, carrying a sickness, our healers said. Yet he was alive, breathing in my mother’s arms. As soon as I saw him, I loved him fiercely. He was my younger brother, and I knew in that moment my role, more important than the king I was meant to become, was to protect him. Ariōn . . .” A wistful smile fell to Alōs’s lips then. One Niya had never seen mar his features before. “Well, if you believe me to be stubborn, Ariōn beat me there tenfold. I was surprised our healers did not catch on sooner that whatever they told him he should not do, he would. Ariōn loved to swim and would pull me to our private beach almost daily to float in the waves. He was so curious about Aadilor, too, then. We’d look up at the sky, knowing despite the clouds there was an entire ocean between us and the rest of the world. He loved to ask me what I thought was up there. What was so scary and bad that Esrom kept hidden and afraid in our bubble. I admitted that I did not know, but our parents and the High Surbs were wise and had their reasons. Little did I know then how many threats truly lurked topside. That one day I would become one of them.” Alōs grew quiet, Niya watching him idly rub the area where his pinkie ring had once sat. Her heart ached at his story, knowing in a way what came next. “He was eleven when we learned of his rare blood disease,” said Alōs, his voice coming out rough. “Pulxa, it’s called. By the time real symptoms arise, it is too late, or so my family was told. ‘Nothing can be done.’ ‘We’re sorry.’ That’s all our medics said. Useless,” Alōs bit out with a frown. “But I couldn’t accept that. Ariōn was so good, filled with such compassion and joy for life; how could he be the one meant for the Fade over me?” He looked at Niya then, his burning gaze imploring her to answer a question that seemed to have haunted him for years. A wash of helplessness ran through her. “Ixō in the end is the one who told me the way to possibly save my brother,” Alōs went on to explain. “What would allow both of us to live. I had to commit such a traitorous crime that I would be eradicated from Esrom’s history, removed from the royal line as the next king. This would force the High Surbs to call upon ancient and forbidden magic to save my brother. Pause death so he could then be king, the Karēk line saved and all the spells that are so tightly wound to Esrom from the centuries of our family’s rule intact. I hardly had to think about my options. That very night I stole one of the most important things in Esrom. I took the heart of Esrom and left. It wouldn’t be until years later, after the Prism Stone had been divided and sold for some time, that I would learn the price for cheating the Fade of a soul it desired.”
“Esrom’s magic was fading,” said Niya in a whisper.
He met her eyes and nodded. “Yes, and now it’s not just my brother’s life that is threatened but all of our people’s and those who seek the sanctuary of our shores. So you see, while I do not deny the monster I have become, none of us enter into this world meaning to be bad.”
Niya held the pirate’s gaze, taking in what he had just shared. The water in her bath had grown cold, but she hardly noticed as her mind spun along with her thumping heart.
Despite how she fought against it, she did feel for Alōs.
He’d been barely a young man when he had decided to steal the stone to save his brother. Everything since that moment had been about survival. Survive so his brother could live. Sin so his homeland could be saved. Take so he was not left with nothing, again.
These were convictions Niya understood, actions she would have mirrored if any of her sisters’ lives were in danger, behavior she most likely had already done at one time or another for her family, for her king. For love and loyalty very rarely could be separated. Not for her.
But even as she let all these thoughts settle deep into the missing grooves of who she had always believed Alōs to be, a buzz of frustration, of warning, swam to the surface.
He has spoken such pretty lies before, a dark voice said in the back of her mind. He has tricked you into trusting him, just as he is now. Trust him for more leverage over you. Trust him so he can take what he needs and leave you bare and exposed. Look how he has approached you in your dressing room, when you’re most vulnerable. Tricks, the voice hissed. Tricks.
Yes, she thought, her breathing growing quick at her sudden anger. Even though she knew his story to be true, what did that matter? He wanted her to trust him, but why? She already had agreed to help. What would trust do except allow him to betray her as he had before? Go to this Hallowed Island and help him find the last piece of the stone, only for him to then leave her to the cannibals when she least expected? All for reveling in perpetually having the upper hand. Tricks, tricks, tricks. Niya was no longer that naive girl. No longer easily swayed by a sob story. She had seen her fair share of thieves employing beggars in the streets, drawing in innocents so they could pick pockets for more silver. Look this way so you cannot see me attack from behind.
No! she silently shouted. She had been doing just fine as she was, keeping those aboard the Crying Queen at arm’s length, the captain especially. Only fools repeated mistakes of the past.
Tricks. Triiiiiicks.
“Damn you,” Niya bit out, unable to contain any more of her thoughts. “I will not let you manipulate me. Not again.”
Alōs blinked, as though this was the last response he had expected. “I am not trying to manipu—”
“Of course you are, and the worst part is you can’t even tell anymore. You come here, ready to intimidate me when I’m most vulnerable, then you spout your good deeds so I trust you enough, care enough, to risk my life for your goals. I will help you find the final piece of the Prism Stone, Alōs, but know it is only so I can get rid of this”—Niya lifted her wrist from the water, baring the mark of their binding bet—“and be free of you and the entire lot on the Crying Queen. I will cooperate because that was our agreement, nothing more.”
An odd look passed over Alōs’s face, and if Niya hadn’t known better, she’d have thought it was sorrow. “I truly did a number on you.”
Niya’s rage burned higher. “Don’t flatter yourself,” she scoffed. “I am what I am because of what I know this world to be. You were merely my first lesson.”
“So there is truly nothing I can do to remedy the past?”
She laughed, cold and hard. “Why try? Like you said, we could never be friends. Let us remain what our destinies have handed to us: companionable enemies.”
He watched her a long moment. “How extraordinary.”
“What?”
“You’re scared.”
Her chin jutted out. “I certainly am not!”