Chapter 84 New Room
I dragged my finger down the page, my vision blurring with hot, stinging tears.
The Princess sings, and my ribs fracture. She looks at me with those sea-glass eyes, full of hatred for what I am, not knowing I am the only grave keeping her world alive. I cannot tell her. If she knows the truth, the guilt will break her mind. She must believe I am the butcher. She must hate me.
A tear slipped free, landing on the parchment. It didn't turn into a pearl. It was just salt and bitter water, soaking into the ink, blurring his desperate words.
The Emperor suspects the tether is fraying. He watches me cough. He smiles. He knows that if I die, the sea dies, and the Sirens will have nowhere left to hide. I have to keep her silent. I have to make her stop using the Voice. If I push her away, if I freeze her out, perhaps she will stop singing.
The journal slipped from my hands, landing softly on the rug.
I stood perfectly still in the freezing room. The grey moonlight illuminated the dust motes dancing in the air.
If I push her away... she will stop singing.
He hadn't discarded me because he was bored. He hadn't abandoned me because I was a broken toy.
He had shattered my heart today because a broken heart is a quiet one. He had humiliated me so I would retreat to my tower and lock my jaw. He was trying to buy himself another day, another hour, to keep the ocean from dying and my throat from rotting.
"Oh, gods," I whispered to the empty room.
My legs gave out completely. I collapsed onto the cold stone floor, my charcoal skirts pooling around me in the dark. I curled in on myself, pressing my forehead against the freezing stone.
The physical pain of the revelation was excruciating. It felt as though someone had reached into my chest, grabbed my lungs, and twisted them into a tight, suffocating knot.
I had fought him. I had clawed his face when he showed me the map of the deployment zones. I had called him a monster, an executioner, a coward. I had screamed at him that I wished he had drowned.
And all the while, his chest was rotting from the inside out because of my voice.
I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes, trying to stop the tears, but they came anyway, hot and relentless, slipping down my cheeks and falling onto the dusty stone.
My ancestors were the true monsters. We had paraded through the pristine blue waters of the Sapphire Sea, calling ourselves the rightful rulers, singing our beautiful songs, while a man was chained in the dark, choking on our exhaust. We had built our paradise on the agony of a single, damned soldier.
And now, the chain was snapping.
I remembered the black veins I had seen creeping up his neck. I remembered the heavy, wet rattle in his lungs. He was dying. The immortal Grand Admiral was finally breaking under the weight of my family’s sins.
I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees. My breath came in ragged, hyperventilating gasps. The air in the study felt too thin. I needed to see him. I needed to look at his chest. I needed to know how much time we had left before the curse consumed him entirely and the ocean turned to ash.
I grabbed the heavy brass key from the floor. I didn't bother to clean up the journals. I left the 300 years of evidence scattered across the obsidian desk, the oil lamp casting a flickering, accusatory glow over the ripped parchment of the curse.
I walked back through the tapestry, crossing my own dark room without looking at the dead hearth. I threw open the heavy oak doors leading to the corridor.
The two guards outside jumped, crossing their halberds instantly.
"Arch-Duchess, you are to remain—"
I didn't give them a chance to finish. The fury and the guilt mixed into a volatile, explosive fuel in my blood. I didn't sing. I didn't hum. I simply grabbed the wooden shaft of the nearest halberd, yanking it forward with a sudden, violent leverage that sent the vampire stumbling past me.
"Get out of my way," I hissed, shoving past the second guard before he could recover his footing.
I ran.
I ran through the winding stone corridors of the West Wing, my bare feet slapping against the freezing marble. The shadows seemed to reach for me, the torches flickering as I tore past them. I didn't care who saw me. I didn't care about the Emperor or the High Council or Vespera’s sneering face.
I had to find the East Wing. I had to find his new quarters.
My lungs burned. Every inhalation felt like inhaling ground glass, but I forced myself to keep quiet. I bit my tongue, swallowing the desperate need to hum, terrified that even a single note would be the one to finally snap the rusted chain inside his chest.
I reached the long, vaulted gallery of the East Wing. It was lined with statues of old vampire kings, their stone eyes watching me fly past. At the very end of the hall, flanked by four heavily armored sentries, were double doors of solid black iron.
Klaus’s new rooms.
The sentries lowered their spears as I approached, forming a wall of solid steel.
"Halt," the captain barked, his red eyes narrowing at my disheveled state. "The Admiral has given strict orders. No one is to enter."
I stopped a few feet from the spear tips. My chest was heaving, my dark hair plastered to my face with cold sweat. I looked at the black iron doors. Behind them was the man who had traded his eternity for my ocean.
I looked the captain dead in the eye. I didn't use the Voice. I used the absolute, unyielding desperation of a woman who had just realized she was the villain of the story.
"Open the door," I said, my voice shaking with raw, human emotion. "Or I will start screaming right here in this hallway, and you can explain to the Emperor why your Admiral’s heart just burst."