Page 71 of Beneath the Veil of Tides
Silence followed as everyone tried to put together the pieces.
“So, it’ll sever our Blood Tie?” I questioned.
I used to loathe our connection, but now it lingered like something I couldn’t quite sever–quiet, constant, and impossible to ignore, steadying me in ways I didn’t want to admit, as if my emotions were no longer entirely my own but justified by what I could feel of him within me.
“It should. Its main job is to destroy the tether between two persons. Whatever the tie may be. In your case, the Blood Tie,” Jun answered, tripping over his words.
Noctis didn’t look away from him.
“Tell me how to retrieve it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Noctis sat with Jun for hours, ravenous for every bit of textbook knowledge the healer knew of the Sunder Coin. They poured over a parchment, detailing each tidbit of information through dinner, even while Jun jumped into the ocean’s water to clean up quickly before heading back to Zahara. She wouldn’t leave the captain’s quarters, and it’d been days since she allowed anyone aside from Jun around her.
I cursed my broken body—my memories, the poison pouring through my blood, the empty depths of power I couldn’t muster.
There’s nothing I can do to fix myself.
It was infuriating when the world pushed for something I couldn’t produce… as if I needed more reason to detest myself.
When I got too frustrated working with Laziel on my powers, we began to discuss the plan to retrieve the final trident piece. It would take us both as a team to retrieve it and to ensure we both escaped alive.
“Each corner, every cell, is guarded bytroops, not just one guard here or there. We have to be very careful when we get inside,” Laziel instructed.
In the days we practiced magic, I began to notice the wrinkles that marred his face and the slight limp he walked against on the right side. And although age and injuryprominently wracked his body, he offered to help at every chance he received.
“There are trapdoors with secret entrances and exits. Always watch your back. I’ll have yours if you have mine,” he went on. “And if our plans change unexpectedly, we get out of there… alive.”
I merely nodded, taking in the information and working to digest it without delving deeper into panic. I wanted to protect him, understanding the torment of a sibling in enemy hands, but if I couldn’t even use my powers—
“Aye!” Jun called from the helm as he steered the ship into the harbor’s dock at Brigg Isle.
The crew set to work securing it. Noctis readied the lines and bumpers to protect the hull. Calvin threw the anchor overboard with a splash that covered his front side, in turn eliciting strewn curses. I furled the sails to steady the ship, and Laziel tied them to the posts.
The wind blew through my ears—the only sound interrupting the stillness. In the distance, hawks circled an animal, tearing flesh from its body in chunks. I shivered. Sometimes silence brings peace. And sometimes it becomes the echo that fear festers within.
“Time to find nobody,” Calvin whispered as we lined up on the main deck.
“There has to be someone here that could tell us what is happening,” I countered, sure we were going to walk into a quiet port filled with villagers at rest.
Our steps resounded through the island, from the gangplank and across the barren land. The road into the village was still intact, but it all felt wrong, too clean to have been used in some time, yet too overgrown already to have been tended to. Houses and shops lined the narrow path in quiet rows toward the market stalls, windows cracked open as if someone left in a hurry… or intended to return.
Calvin, Noctis, Laziel, and I walked the market and village streets, yet not a single soul met us, only empty stalls and the uneasy sense of being watched by nothing at all.
Homes were left as if interrupted mid-meal, fishing poles left on shores like they were dropped suddenly, and even coins left unattended on market stall counters.
I was so, so wrong.
There were no signs of struggle. No scattered belongings, broken glass, or blood. Everything was orderly, and that made it all even worse.
“Has anything like this ever happened before?” I asked shakily.
“Not in my hundreds of years alive,” Noctis replied. “I’ve seen towns massacred but never this.”
Chills swept across my body thinking of the brutality and gore Noctis had witnessed in his life, and I prayed the villagers were safe. I found solace in the prayers to the celestial gods, even though I lived amongst two. Even knowing the Ocean Mother’s evil schemes, the reflex to send my begs to the goddess became difficult to halt. So, instead, I sent them to no one in particular, spread scarce along the threads to the gods and goddesses above, and hoped they met approving ears.
The silence of the island pressed in, not the peaceful kind, but the kind that urged and carried weight, as if the village held its breath with us all.
