CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Posy reached for Kyran’s hand, its familiar grip strange and slick in its watery skin. Kyran said, his face unchanging, “You will take us to my sister now. We have waited long enough.”
“Long enough?” Seraphine stared at him, her eyes bottomless dark pools. “You do not know what it is to be separated from someone long. How long have you been separated from your sister, Prince? A few days or weeks? Even many years would not come close to comparing to what I have lost, and the time I have waited to hold my little one again. This enchanted lake keeps my sisters and me prisoners in unending pain. We have been here many lifetimes ... too many.”
“And I have promised to help you,” Kyran answered calmly. “I will overthrow the king, and I will do all in my power to restore your child to you, lady.”
“No,” Seraphine’s voice came quiet and bitter. “You will not do that. Not unless you can bring her back from the dead.”
Limnoreia gave a tiny gasping sob. Adamaris swam swiftly to Seraphine’s side to stroke her hair in comfort, before turning a face ferocious with pain to Kyran and Posy. “It is true,” she said huskily. “My sister’s daughter was sent beyond the realm of the Kingdom, out of the Plot, and died there. Those who die outside of the Plot never return to it. My sister’s pain is beyond anything you would know. She has lived centuries, lifetimes, knowing no turn of the Plot will bring back her child, knowing no king or king’s son can ever make right the wrong that has been done to us and our people. And we know—we learned long ago—that if you cannot get back what you lost, you may at least let your revenge fall on the heads of those who took it from you.”
“No,” Posy said, her voice sticking in her throat. Yet she had known, somehow, it would come to this, hadn’t she? In her heart she had seen it, though she had denied it. Some hurts don’t heal, Posy thought, and the thought struck something within her like a gong, hard and deep. She felt her eyes burning with the threat of tears, and knew her whole body was shaking.
Kyran reached down to gently extricate his hand from Posy’s tight grip, then he calmly unsheathed his sword. “I have no desire to hurt any of you,” he said, his voice tinged with profound sadness, “but I will find my sister, as you have promised me I would. I must insist you fulfill that promise now. I am sorry in my heart for your loss, but it was none of my doing, and your revenge is not for me.” His face changed as he spoke and he seemed to be lost in his own thoughts, almost speaking to himself now. “I suppose a cruel thing may be done, and its doer never knows the many wrongs and pains that happen because of it, falling one on the other, toppling like an avalanche on a mountainside. Can it only end in the ruin of everything in its path?”
Seraphine looked up suddenly, her eyes fastened on Kyran’s face. “Yes,” her voice was low. “I see you know more of pain than I thought, Prince.” She shook her head. “And that makes what I do even harder for me, but I cannot go back. I will not. Don’t you see?”
“Go back?” Posy finally spoke, her voice unnaturally loud in the hushed palace hall. “What do you mean? What are you going to do to us?”
“Do?” Seraphine gave a weak smile. “I will do nothing to you at all. You are here now, in my palace, and the princess is here as well, just as I told you. You may find her if that is your wish, and take her back to the surface and out of the Glooming. But you must do it alone. I am done with this now. I see what I must do.”
“Seraphine, no!” Limnoreia swam to her sister and seized her arm.
Adamaris had an equally panicked look on her lovely face, but she only cast an anxious glance at her sister and swam to where Kyran and Posy stood. Her voice low and quick, she said to them, “My sister has her own path to follow now, and I do believe she means to do it.”
“Do what?” Posy asked in alarm.
“It does not concern you, little one,” Adamaris said. “What does concern you is finding the princess before it is too late.”
“Before ... it’s too ...!” Posy sputtered, fear gripping her.
“My sister would not do you harm, for all her talk of revenge. She has decided to summon a deep magic and end her imprisonment here once and for all, though at what cost only the Author may say. She will do it soon, I think.” Adamaris threw a glance over her shoulder once again at the solemn face of her sister. “So you must find Evanthe quickly and leave this place. For I believe our little kingdom here will be destroyed.” Her voice held sadness, but Posy noted with surprise that it held a trace of something like relief as well.
“And the garments?” Kyran asked, his voice so calm that Posy stared at him.
“Yes, they are only temporary, as all magical things are,” the mermaid nodded. “If they dissolve, you will no longer be able to breathe and remain under the lake. You must reach the surface before this happens.”
“Where is the surface? How do we leave the Glooming?” Kyran pressed.
Adamaris’ look was distracted; Seraphine and Limnoreia were gliding out of the chamber now. “When you leave the palace, here,” she gestured toward the doors they had just entered, “you must follow the way you are meant to go. No man leaves the Glooming alive if he does not know his own self, his own soul. There is no other way to leave such a dark place than by a light such as this. Words could never show you.” The mermaid leaned forward and kissed Posy’s cheek suddenly, her expression more open now than ever. She grasped Kyran’s strong hand in her own small one. “Do not blame my sister, when you see what she has—” She hesitated, biting her lip, and started over. “Remember, Prince, there is good and bad in everyone. Dark and shadows depend so wholly on light that it is impossible sometimes to see where one begins and one ends. Not a soul in this world or any other is ever completely lost to darkness—not unless they choose to be.”
The palace walls seemed to groan, then, and Adamaris threw an anxious look around her. One last word she gave them, her emerald eyes large with urgency.
“Go,” she said, pushing them toward the depths of the palace. Before Posy could take it all in, Adamaris had darted away after her sisters through the water, leaving only a rush of sparkling froth behind her.