"You did what?" Snarls Onyx, his yellow eyes flashing with rage. Stellan holds his hands up in surrender before my brother can wedge a knife between his eyes.
"I'm not going to lie to her! There's something real between the two of them."
"The fuck there is!" Onyx snaps, his arms flexing as he starts rowing harder. "Renna, I sure hope you said no to him."
"Onyx," I sigh, giving him the same look that he gives me when he's angry. "I said yes, and before you say I'm crazy, I know! But when he asked me, I expected my instant reaction to be no, but it wasn't. I followed my gut. For me, there is no doubt. I love him and want to be with him."
"You realise why he's proposed, don't you?"
"Pussywhipped," replies Stellan, helpfully.
Onyx slaps him alarmingly hard, the sound of the impact carrying over the murky waters surrounding us. "Shut your fucking mouth, Stellan. Renna, he wants you because you're a sorceress."
Beneath my annoyance with his words lies a little glimmer of hurt. It splinters beneath my skin, into my chest. Every time anyone has ever shown interest in me, I've been told it's because of how I look, or because I'm Commander, or nowadays because I'm a sorceress. I've never been insecure, but slowly I feel more and more like no one wants the girl beneath all the titles.
"Don't hold back, Onyx, you fat fuck. Want another little jab at her, or are you done? She's funny, she's kind, she's strong, she's beautiful, she has the best tits in Yterras—and I’m saying that as someone who has seen a lot of them.”Oh no. He's making it worse. "It's that inconceivable to you that Rexxan might just want her for her?" Continues Stellan, echoing my thoughts out loud.
My sole piece of advice for people who are confined to a boat and miles away from land? Don’t argue. And we’ve failed, miserably. Onyx snorts. "Yeah, it is, actually. Go and read a fucking book on the lengths that past kings have gone to to get a sorceress in their possession. Holn's great, great-grandfather married a sorceress only to sell her to his friends on their wedding night, and then spend his years using her powers for her own good until she passed away."
"I'm in love with him," I interject, silencing them both as through the fog, the snowy mountain we are rowing to is becoming visible.
Onyx shakes his head. "Ren, you think you are. I just want my sister safe, and Rexxan hasn't treated you well. He imprisoned you. He banished you. Find someone who treats you like you deserve. He's the most powerful man in Yterras and I don't trust his intentions."
"I chained him—“ nope.Nope. Not an appropriate audience for that story. "What I mean is, we're just as bad as each other. I love him, and I know he loves me too."
"Has he actually said that?"
My stomach sinks. "Well…no. But—“
"Rennalya, see this from my point of view. He's playing you here," warns Onyx, and Stellan rolls his eyes.
"O, you miserable old raisin, those two have something. I don't want it to be true either, but I'm not love-blind."
"You're not fucking marrying the bastard," grumbles Onyx. Anger aside, my heart softens with love for him. He's being difficult, but he's being Onyx. I know he's terrified. Terrified that if I marry Rexxan, he won't have a purpose in my life anymore. It breaks my heart that he feels that way, and I know I need to help him through it. He'll be a huge part of my life forever.
"So we get the stone back in the vault," muses Stellan, wisely changing the subject as he tosses and catches the fake River Stone that he had kept the other night. "Then all of this water vanishes?"
"It won't vanish, but it'll start to recede," I reply, relaying the information I'd got from Rexxan. "It'll take a few weeks to recede. If we didn't get it back, eventually the world would just be underwater. No one would survive it."
"Fucking hell," mumbles Stellan, stuffing a piece of bread in his mouth. "Better not fuck it up then, right?"
"Right." The pressure sits heavy on my shoulders. I wish I could feel more like Stellan, who is in the same mood he would be if all he had to do today was eat breakfast and fuck all the King's healers. Onyx is grumpy, but then he is always grumpy.
I, however, feel laden with responsibility, the pleading words of all the small children on the riverbank echoing around my mind. I can't let them down.
After twelve hours of rowing, each of us taking turns for a two-hour sleep, we tie up our boat on a newly formed bank, which last week was a stopping point part of the way up the mountain.
The world is flooded, and a boat is a valuable treasure that people would kill for. That's why we indulge ourselves in an hour of whittling sticks, wrapping long strands of cane around them to form some kind of bear trap. We kick leaves and mud over it until it is all but hidden, an invisible ambuscade for any that try to steal our bags.
No one is taking our boat today.
Stellan holds a rope between his teeth, threading it through a metal loop at his waist as Onyx and I do the same.
"I'll go first," I state, scaling the vertical face of the mountain before Onyx can argue. I have been training daily for fifty years. I'm good at climbing. My small hands reach for divots in the rock, the icy wind making my fingertips numb.
"Foothold on your right," instructs Stellan, sounding quite far down. "A little higher."
My foot finds a solid piece of rock, hauling myself up a few more feet before rolling onto the shelf above me. I tie two knots in the rope around a jagged piece of rock, giving the two men a thumbs up to tell them they can start the climb. From this point, I can see water as far as the eye can see.
