Next on my list, speak to Ocealia.
"Rexxan!" She speaks first, her voice shaking heavily. "What in the gods' names is going on? Espan's Kingdom is flooding!"
A stone sits heavy in my stomach. Espan's Kingdom is riddled with rivers. Ocealia’s kingdom will remain untouched. Forty percent of mine will flood, and seventy of Hela’s. The River Kingdom will be obliterated already. The Golden Kingdom will be submerged before the week is out. "Kelen has taken the River Stone."
There is stunned silence for a while before she speaks. "Kelen?" She whispers, eventually, her voice laden with sheer disbelief.
"Yes. Clearly letting only seven people in Yterras access the vault is still too many. I haven’t found him yet, so enact your rescue operation."
Her voice wobbles, rocked by unshed tears. "Why on this good earth would he do such a thing?"
This earth isn’t good, it’s diseased. Riddled and plagued by evil down to its beating heart, but I don’t say that aloud. “Yet to be determined. I have three hundred people searching for him. Will your floodgates hold?"
"They'll hold. My people will come to no harm," she says, with the same quiet confidence she has always had since we were children.
"Espan's people?"
She sniffs, crying now. "The fields are underwater. Hundreds, if not thousands are missing, and all the crops too. The river dams have burst. He's loading his people onto boats now, sending them in both mine and your direction."
I’m listening not properly. There's one thing on my mind. "Siddie?" I ask, selfishly.
"I...I don't know, Rexxan."
"Fuck, Ocealia! What do you mean you don't know?"
I can hear her sobbing, and I realise now that this is why she's been crying all along. She thinks my son is dead. "Where is he?"
"I don't know," she cries. "If he stuck true to his course, he should be on the Westerly Banks by now."
My heart flips into my mouth. The Westerly Banks. An expanse of marshland that would, by now, be flooded with water that covers even the tops of the tallest buildings there. "Tell me you've seen him!" I yell, overcome with a fear unlike one I've ever felt. "Tell me he never left!"
"I haven't seen him. He left two weeks ago!" She says, crying harder. "I'm so, so sorry. I don't know where he is and I haven't heard from him."
"Try and get hold of Espan and ask him!" I say, gripping the edge of the fountain as if I might faint.
"I will, Rexxan. I really will." She replies, and I leave without saying goodbye. My burns are killing me, so much that my vision is blurring.
I want to be out looking for Kelen, but for the King to leave his kingdom at a time like this would not fill my people with hope. I have to be here to coordinate the rescue efforts. All I can do is trust in mine and Renna's scouts to do their jobs and find him before the floods hit us and before Kelen is washed away and the stone is lost in a sea of water. If we lose the stone, life as we know it is over.
Ironically, it's the River Cities that will be destroyed by his actions. I dread to imagine the number of innocent people who have already lost their lives to his betrayal.
"Where is the Shadow Commander?" I ask a guard, as I begin to draw up a plan to accommodate the thousands of refugees that will be arriving from Kelen, Hela, and Espan's kingdoms.
"She's been leading the search in the forest since yesterday, my lord."
If something happens to Renna now, I think it'll kill me. I hope she's being safe, but this is Renna; she's never being safe.
* * *
I standon the roof of the palace with a migraine from sleep deprivation and hunger, looking out over the trees of my forest.
What once were hills and fields now just look like the sea, the whole world flooded. It spreads to the edge of the forest, and soon it will flood parts of my woodlands too. The first bodies are beginning to wash up on the edges of my kingdom. It's a horrific sight. People across the kingdom are distraught. It’s been several days since I even went near my bedroom. I’m fuckingtired.
I curse Kelen. I hope he burns in flames until the end of time.
"Rex, I have Lana," comes a soft voice. I look down to see Renna standing on the palace walls, a few feet below me. Her pretty face is smudged with dirt and blood. She looksexhausted. "She doesn't have the stone, but Onyx found her hiding in a troll cave."
I drop down off the roof, nodding. I can't bring myself to speak to her, or anyone. Everything else in my life seems so minor now. I can't find it in me to speak to her when all I can think about is Siddie and the scorching flames that batter the right side of my body.
