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Not abandoned.
Not unwanted.
Loved!
“My birth mother…” I wiped the back of my hand over my cheeks where a few tears had broken free. “Is she… Is she…?”
“Among the stars, sweet girl,” Marla said, her eyes softening around the edges. “I wasn’t able to see what sent her unkindness to drop out of the sky, but the goddess did show me that, whatever she had fought off, allowed your father to escape.”
“My father?” My heart gave a single whomp against my ribs. By the gods, what if I’d already met him? “Where is he? Did any of your visions show you? At Deepmarsh?”
Now that softness in her eyes turned to pity as she slowly shook her head.
“Is he…” my stomach clenched, “among the stars, too?”
“Yes, dear.”
I glanced up. The night sky overhead suddenly seemed immense, empty yet densely populated with twinkling stars—each one a soul lost. Somewhere in that vast expanse, my parents shined down on me.
I wastrulyalone.
“How did he die?” I asked. “Did you see?”
Marla pushed herself off the wooden post, and that motion alone ripped another cough from her that shook the hand she placed onto my shoulder. “He, too, had been badly injured on his way to Valtaris. That was where they were headed after Lilieth left you in that white cradle. Your father choked on his own blood, and died in the throne room a messenger, with Prince Malyr stroking his forehead when he was but a little boy.”
Bile rose in my throat at the image she painted—my father dying in the comfort of the very hands of the man who’d carved me up. Why him? Why did it have to be him, of all people, and not—
My breath stalled, my mind catching at the sense of familiarity of this story, as if I’d heard it before. Where had I heard it? Who had told me—
“Years before Valtaris fell, a messenger reached my parents,”Malyr’s voice resonated my spinning mind. “Around his neck, he wore the pendant, stained red from his blood. Something or someone must have attacked him or his unkindness on his way to our city. He suffocated on his blood…”
“It is of the girl destined for the younger prince,” I echoed Malyr’s words of that night by the creek when he’d spoken about the pendant, a salt crystal inside a socket ofaerymel.“No. No…”
A strangled sob tore from my lips. No, this couldn’t be. It was too cruel, too menacing, too fucking painful.
“Yes,” Marla said in a hushed voice. “You, Galantia, are Malyr’s fated mate. You were supposed to die together in Valtaris under boulders and shadows, with your little hand clasped inside his the way—”
“No.” It was as if the ground beneath me fell away, the world tilting on its axis as this truth crashed over me with the brutal force of a stormy sea. “Never!”
A shout whipped from my lips, raw and unrestrained, a piercing sound of despair that echoed against the silent ship and the quiet waves. Was this a cruel joke? A terrible twist of fate? A destiny foreseen, yet so utterly, disgustingly wrong? Why him? Why this man who had caused me such pain?
My heart broke all over again.
As the pain of it seeped into my bones, my sorrow slowly gave way to a surging tide of fury, every shredded piece of the organ igniting with a fierce, indignant flame. “Never.” The word hung in the frigid air. “I will not be his. Not in this fated life, nor in any other.”
Behind me, the horn sounded.
“We must leave,” Marla rushed.
I blinked back the last of my tears, for I wouldn’t shed a single one for Malyr ever again. “We?”
“Prince Malyrwilltake Tidestone,” she said. “There will be death, blood, and misery painted across its walls. Stay, and you might die in the attack. Leave, but where will you go? To Ammarett? You belong with us, Galantia. Your mother always wanted you to come home to us.”
I took a deep breath, sucking the sobering chill of briny air into my lungs. Tidestone alone was dangerous enough, but Ammarett would be worse. But going back to the Ravens? To Malyr? I just… I couldn’t.
Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
