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I only hoped I’d be able to enact retribution on behalf of not only myself but also the poor elf at my feet before the sorcerer realized the “magic” I’d gifted him was merely an illusion.

Forty-Four

Rivven

Icouldn’t recall a time since childhood when I’d been unable to control my magic. Even when tortured, my restraint had barely waivered. Even when the woman I loved disappeared before my eyes, I hadn’t combusted. My heart had burst. My soul had shattered. But my magic hadn’t taken over. Now, however, whether the result of pure exhaustion, constant emotional and physical strain, or some unknown force, the flames inside burst forth untethered.

Sharlyne kept the others away for their own safety because, for whatever reason, my self-control was shot. The flames consuming my body would have incinerated any non-fire wielders in the cabin. As it was, she was putting out the fires around me as fast as she could, and the strain showed on her face. All except the body of Fiorge. It was his melting face that I focused my rage on as it turned to ash.

Whoever took the princess assassinated the only man who could tell us what happened. And they’d killed the pirate I had planned to subject to a far slower, more painful death.

Sanity returned minutes later, though it felt like an eternity. My magic was spent, and I dropped to my knees near the toppled table and buried my head in my hands. A gut-wrenching sob escaped, though based on the rawness of my throat, I’d been screaming all along, though I hadn’t heard it over the flames roaring in my ears.

Sharlyne was there in an instant, cradling my head against her as my entire body shook with an avalanche of sorrow and pain. It was too much. I’d lost her again, and I hadn’t a fucking clue where to start looking.

“We’ll find her,” Sharlyne said softly when I quieted. Her fingers passed through my tangled hair in a soothing motion.

“I want to believe that. But how?” I asked, blinking up at her. “Or is that a prophecy? Because truthfully, sister, your prophecies have been shit, lately.”

“Have they?” she asked idly, then she dropped down beside me and picked through the ash that used to be Fiorge. She extracted the dagger that had been imbedded in his head and held it out to me. Onyx with elven runes carved on it.

My brow furrowed. It was the one that had disappeared from my sleeve the night I’d hired the crew. The one she’d said would be needed.

“It was what saved her,” Sharlyne whispered. “If it hadn’t been there…”

“Are you saying she—Leuruna killed him?”

Sharlyne nodded, wide-eyed.

“Then you saw it?” Renewed energy of hope flowed through my limbs, and I climbed to my feet, pulling her along with me and grasping her by the arms. “Then who took her?”

“Who took the princess? Or who took Nyah?” she asked, a small smirk forcing a dimple onto her cheek.

I released her, backing up. This made no sense.

Sharlyne marched over to where one of the wooden chairs lay on its side and righted it. “Sit,” she commanded.

It wasn’t hard to convince me since I trembled with the effort of not collapsing, every muscle too heavy to support me. I dropped into the seat, fighting the draw of pure exhaustion. I refused to succumb. Not while Nyah was in some unknown danger. I ran both hands down my face in an attempt to stay focused.

“There are things I have known but haven’t been able to make sense of yet,” Sharlyne began, righting another seat for herself.

“What sort of things? And if they involved me or Nye, why didn’t you tell me anyway?” I tried to withhold my ire when it came to Sharlyne, but in the state I was in, the words came out clipped and filled with resentment. I fisted my hands on my knees in an attempt to lessen the trembling.

Sharlyne lay her hands over mine and leaned in. “Being a seer is not as easy as you’d imagine, brother. I see threads of fate, but they change all the time. Few are solid, and even those branch off in frayed edges depending on the course we choose. And sometimes, when we think we understand something, that something is not at all as we imagined.”

I opened my mouth, intent on cutting her off and forcing her to get to the point, but she continued speaking over me.

“Sometimes, simply telling someone the future causes it to change. Mother taught me what she could, but there was one truth she emphasized above all others. It’s a truth I’ve seen myself, and one I wish I didn’t have to bear witness to. I would rather not know it.”

Was she going to make me beg for it?

“The thread of fate for the human races has only one possible future in which it continues strong and uncut, Rivven. And it is inexorably tied to both yours and Nyah’s.”

She stopped, leaning back and watching me with her big dark eyes as I tried to digest this information.

“Us?” was all I managed to say.

Nodding, Sharlyne dropped into the chair, sinking down as though she, too, had reached a point of utter exhaustion. She rubbed her temples. “I didn’t know it was Nyah. Not until you brought her back to Tromodia. Now I see it clearly. Her thread is no longer tied to the princess.”