Page 24 of Hearts Lost

I close my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose. Here, we have food, water, and shelter. Somehow this woman has managed to avoid the void beasts and survive for five days. And, some little part of my mind pipes up, she also managed to keep me hidden from the beasts. Whatever mission King Grathgore gave her when he ordered her to accompany Princess Elanerill into the Lands Below, it could not possibly have involved defending a member of King Galan’s Royal Guard.

I open my eyes and watch the woman through the cage of my fingers. She’s a fighter from the kingdom of our oldest enemies. She should have left me to die. Hells, she should have called the void beasts over and then watched them devour me. That’s what I would have done in her position, right?

Something inside my chest twists painfully, and I exhale in a long, low sigh. We have everything we need right here. It’s possible we could survive in this field for weeks. Months, even. My eyes trace the blue grass and the violet sky. Somewhere in the distance, I hear a dull, thudding roar.

Voids below, I would hate it. I already hate this field, this horrible violet sky, and the shifting shadows in the forest that might, at any moment, pull themselves together into a monster straight out of my nightmares. I can’t imagine doing nothing, just staying in this field and waiting for the void beasts to pick us off or for the food to run out and starvation to sink its long, slow claws into us. Or waiting for this woman to remember her mission and murder me.

No, the woman is right. Even if she just wants me to lead her out of the void so she can fulfill her mission of betraying my kingdom, we can’t just do nothing. I can’t just do nothing.

But, by all the hidden stars above, I’m going to watch her. I’m going to watch her very closely.

* * *

“What did you call this?”Ithronel asks as she turns to me. The wind tosses her curls over her shoulder, and she’s almost shouting to be heard above the roar of the strange, inky waves. “The void beach? The dark beach?”

“The black shores,” I answer.

Ithronel lifts an eyebrow, then turns back to the thundering waves.

“It looks almost like the ocean,” she says.

I nod, although honestly, I have no idea if this is like the ocean or not. I’ve only ever seen paintings of the ocean, that vast, mythical body of water that supposedly stretches to the horizon. Most of those paintings also featured sinking ships and people dying horrible, horrible deaths, so I have to say, I’m not excessively fond of the whole concept of oceans.

But, yes, I suppose this fits the bill. Opaque, inky darkness stretches before us in all directions, blending with the indigo horizon somewhere in the far, far distance. Curls of white foam appear and then vanish as waves crash over themselves to slam into the smooth ebony stones at our feet.

I’ve seen stones like this before. My father has several in his collection, each lovingly mounted inside its own glass display case. They’d sell for thousands of gold coins each, or so he claims to the visitors who come through our estate to ogle his collection as part of their business deals. I kick at the stones under my feet and, for a moment, I pretend it’s piles of gold coins that I’m sending into the darkness of the waves.

“Well,” Ithronel says, “what now?”

I cross my arms over my chest. The breeze coming off the waves does nothing to cool the steamy air around us. I’m almost considering cutting off my sleeves like Ithronel. The strange violet light of the void plays across the muscular curves of her bare arms and the contours of her face, her lips and cheekbones, the way she’s almost smiling at the undulating darkness before us.

Smiling? How could she be standing on the actual black shores of the void and smiling? I shift slightly, adjusting the weight of my cloak, which we’d filled with those disgusting but edible fruits and then tied into a rough backpack. Heat presses down all around us, and sweat trickles between my shoulder blades. I feel exhausted, although we’ve only been walking for half the day, and some part of me wonders if perhaps those inky-black waves would be cool.

“I don’t think it much matters,” I say. “We’re doomed either way.”

Ithronel’s grin widens. “You’re a real optimist, aren’t you?”

I rub my fingers across my mouth to stamp out my own smile. Smiling at this woman from the Kingdom of the Summer is not an appropriate reaction.

“I’m just being realistic,” I reply.

Ithronel rests a fist on her hip and raises an eyebrow. “Well, we could give up now, I suppose. Shall we just call it a day and walk into those waves, then? See if we can drown in whatever that black stuff is?”

I wrap my hand around my chin, covering my lips. Damned if I don’t appreciate her sarcasm. So many people in the Royal Guard are so painfully serious about everything. My meager attempts at humor usually fall flat on the ground and then lay there, convulsing and drooling, complicating all of my conversations.

“Or,” Ithronel continues, her eyes sparkling in the strange light, “we could walk to the river and eat something before we give up entirely.”

I clear my throat and try to look dignified. I’m still a member of the Royal Guard, after all, even if I am drenched in sweat and hopelessly lost in the void.

“I suppose it would be tragic to abandon all hope on an empty stomach,” I reply.

Ithronel laughs. It’s a sudden, joyful sound, and for a heartbeat I’m back in the captains’ mess, sharing spiked tea with her in the middle of the night and feeling all sorts of things that I shouldn’t be feeling at all, with anyone, let alone with a spy from the Worlds Above.

I give her a mock bow to avoid making eye contact.

“I’ll follow your lead,” I declare, waving my hand in her general direction with a little flourish.

“Onward!” Ithronel declares, in a sort of whooping cry that I should not find at all endearing. “Let’s face this terrifying dark beach!”

“Black shore,” I mutter under my breath, but by then she’s already too far away to hear me.