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“I see…”
“And when he tells me where a suitable male is, you all will take me to him. And I will take you up on your offer to become a part of your… chosen family. Along with my future partner.”
Ooph.
In my peripheral vision, I could see Rayne was already mounting his horse.
Vesper’s eyes trailed him as he rode off, her expression tense but determined.
“Ahla’toa?”Vesper pressed, speaking Kahlohani to me.
Agreed?
Very few people knew my language, and it made me wonder where she had learned it, no matter how little. Who had taught her? Did I know them? It was possible. Not many of us remained. Though by some miracle, much of my Mother’s family and closest friends had survived.
And our people were not quite on the cusp of extinction like hers.
My heart sank, feeling as though I were betraying Rayne, but I didn’t need to reach out to my Knowingness to confirm that things wouldn’t quite go as she envisioned. It would be a temporary thing, this endeavor to find a mimicryx male. She couldn’t resist hersoulboundany more than she could resist breathing air.
“Ahlei.” Agreed.
Chapter
Thirty-Nine
NAKOA
Mareina offered Vesper her horse for the time being, incidentally endowing me with the gift of being able to still hold Mareina’s body firmly against mine. Since we’d left, her body had been… Particularly rigid.
“We will succeed,lohane thili. My Knowingness tells me this. It is never wrong.”
Several moments passed, and eventually, I thought she wouldn’t respond.
“… And if we succeed? You’re truly ready to be a King?”
The stark whites of a male’s eyes broaden in recognition of his rapidly approaching death and the sword I’ve buried in his belly. He’s dressed in silver and grey armor bearing an insignia I’ve never seen before. A bloody grin parts his lips on his last words.
“What we do in this realm follows us into the next, Demon King… What will you tell her then, I wonder?”
I wiped my face absently at the phantom spittle from the soldier’s mouth. Though the vision had faded, it left a deeply unsettling gnawing sensation in my bones. It was also the first time I’d heard that moniker…Demon King…It only further served to increase my unease. I knew mytransformationwas on the horizon, but… I wasn’t exactly looking forward to it. I was already different enough with my tail, wings, and black eyes… I didn’t even have the capacity to wonder about who ‘her’could be.
And the visions, as of late, had increased in frequency… Before Mareina, I’d perhaps receive one or two a week… Now, it had become one or two a day... The threads between past, present, and future… The very fabric of reality that wove my consciousness and sanity into place was…Fraying, to say the least.
At my silence, Mareina twisted in her seat as she continued. “I can assure you there isn’t a soul on her council that…”
Her words drifted as she took in my paled expression.
“Are you alright?”
My slackened jaw snapped shut, and I straightened, slipping my mask of sanity back into place.
What was she asking?My mind grasped at the wisps of recent memory, trying to recall her question…
Ready to be King…
“… I am prepared to do whatever it takes to liberate the Kahlohani Islands so we can return home as a free people. Ruling Atratus to prevent another war overaetrais one of those things. I’d never had any desire to rule over Atratus until that became clear to me during the war. Unfortunately, whoever rules Atratus will want to monopolize control overaetraharvesting and distribution, and because it can only be grown on the Kahlohani Islands… It would only be a short matter of time for history to repeat itself. Since I was a boy and started having that premonition, I have known that I am destined to be King… Andyou, lohane thili,are at my side. So I believe the more appropriate question iswhenwe succeed… Areyouready to becomeQueen?”
Mareina stared into the distance, heaving a great sigh, and through our tether, I could feel the palpable weight of it.
