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“You’ll do fine, daughter,” he said.
I took his hand.
“I’m more worried about you,” I replied. “Stay strong for me, Your Majesty.”
He chuckled with a rasp. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be here when you’re ready to return to me.”
There was a small glint in his eye even though his skin was pale. Luc stepped in beside me, bowing his head to the king.
“It seems you’re tested time and time again, son,” King Melchior added, looking at Luc. “But the test is to make you stronger. Remember that.”
Luc chewed his lip and nodded, then took me by my free hand. I squeezed it, signaling that I was ready to go. Touching the king’s hand with a gentle goodbye, I turned to Luc and he picked me up into his arms. He unfolded his wings, bursting from the ground and flying us out of the king’s room.
Luc was silent, but I could tell that he was lost to his thoughts. There was no doubt in my mind that he was thinking about his task: to protect the humans he had intended to persecute.
“I really hated them,” I said.
Luc raised an eyebrow.
“The humans,” I continued. “It’s strange to look back on how much I hated them.”
“It’s weird to see you defend them,” Luc added.
I smiled. “But you always did. You always had a passionate interest in them.”
He shrugged, holding on to me. “I never fit in with the sirens, really. The humans had such wonderful stories, inventions…possibilities. Freedoms we never had.”
He flew us toward the other side of the caverns. We looked over the den, an eerie stillness to it. There wasn’t a siren to be seen. The place had gone oddly quiet, the ones not helping in capturing Henrik or protecting the cavern most likely hiding in their rooms. It didn’t look like anyone was daring to venture out on their own.
“Do you remember all your lives now?” Luc asked.
I shook my head. “Only my first life and this one.”
“So you remember us now?”
I leaned against him, squeezing my arms around his neck. “I remember you, Rhys.”
He didn’t say anything, but I felt his arms tighten around me.
“What happened to the others?” I asked. “Have they returned?”
There was a long silence. “Honestly, I was too scared to ask. I only know that—”
He stopped. I brought my head up to look at him. He didn’t look me in the eye.
“Renaldo hasn’t returned, has he?” I asked.
Luc slowly shook his head. My heart sank a little, but I already knew it.
“The king saw a deep darkness in him, I think,” I said. “Perhaps it was too dark. I never saw it, but I could have been blind to it. But you never liked him, did you?”
Luc sighed. “It wasn’t that.”
He glanced at me from the corner of his eye, then looked back down at the ground below us.
“Where do you think Henrik would be?” Luc asked, changing the subject.
He seemed uncomfortable, so I followed along.
