Chapter Fifteen

***REMI***

I wake the next morning to the afternoon sun.

The fire is out, and the window curtains are still drawn, letting the cold wind and light seep across my silk sheets like liquid ice.

There’s a certain stillness in the air, the kind of silent peace that’s only present after a horrible and dizzying blizzard.

And at that thought, despite my imprisonment, despite the bruises forming on my ass from where Rhodes whipped me, I stand from the bed and run to the nearest windowsill like a child.

The world is still after the snowstorm, glimmering, frozen, and alive. Everything across the mountaintops is quiet, every hint or cue of a dark palace with a dark king, covered by a thick and fluffy layer of pristine white.

I stay at the window sill for a while, just listening to the pureness of it all. Where I’m from, it’s so far south that it never snows. Never gets quiet. And with three older sisters and a bustling Kingdom to run, quiet is something you learn to treasure, to admire.

So I do just that.

No one bothers me, no one is even in sight. Save for the distant blobs of movement in the city far below. I guess the House of Twilight only comes alive at night, for there were hundreds of people here just hours ago.

Half a dozen females surrounded Kalilas just there, in the snow-coated maze garden.

At the memory of him, I cross and uncross my legs. I can barely sit still at the thrill of him. How he watched me bathe, allowed me to touch him even though Keiran had strictly forbidden it.

Of all the King’s Men, he is by far the nicest.

And then last night…what he called me.

My Remi.

My blush could sear the snow. And then how angry it had made his brother, how Rhodes had entered in such possessive dominance, how he refused to touch me with anything but a–

“Good morning.”

I gasp as Vienna walks into the room, a breakfast tray in one hand, and a teapot in the other. She sets it down on the coffee table before the blue couch and comes over to unchain me.

“Fuck you scared me,” I mutter, rubbing my naked wrists. Much like my older sisters, my fear hardly seems to phase her.

“What happened to you?!” I ask, my eyes wide as I take the pirate in. She has cuts and scrapes on her body and a fucking bloody eye.

“Punishment,” she says casually, popping a raspberry as red as her hair into her mouth, “there was a task Keiran needed to be completed last night by one of us because I stepped out of line, it was assigned to me.”

“They shouldn’t have done that to you,” is all I can think to say.

Vienna laughs. “Do you think I’d let Keiran do this to me?” She references the black eye. “Kerian is a cruel King, but he’s big on freedom, on choice.”

I don’t bother to hide my laugh.

“You should have seen the others, the Heirs of the Fifth Isle are all dead.”

I choke on my coffee. The heirs? Of Fifth Isle?

Vienna pours me more to drink from the teapot. “Well don’t look so surprised, I do run the largest fleet in the realm.”

My expression says it all.

Vienna straightens her back and begins to explain things to me like I’m a child. “I was tasked to murder them for the crime of rape,” she tells me, “Keiran stands for many dark and twisted things, but not rape.”

I'm incredulous. “But you killed multiple male heirs of a High Lord? Aren’t they extremely powerful?”

The pirate laughs. Never have I met a female like her. My older sister Reiyna was strong, yes, but not as cocky and confident. Reiyna is all about order and rules, whereas Vienna is just as wild and arrogant as her brothers.

“Well if you must know, Remi,” I gulp, so she’s learned my name. Great. “I did have help.”

My brow raises. “Go on.”

Vienna puts down her cup. “Have you ever heard of the myths of what lurks beneath our mountains?”

I blink. There’s no way she’s implying what I think she is. That there are really gates below Keiran’s lands that summon demons.

“I brought them into the mountain and let the monsters have them, barely had to do any work.”

I shake my head. What is she even saying right now? She walked under the mountain and fed heirs to a monster? Like it was nothing?!

“And the black eye?!” I ask her.

The pirate leans back into the couch, then extends her hands to my exposed legs. “I could ask the same of you, you know.”

I catch my reflection in the mirror. Disheveled hair and three whip marks down my lower thighs.

The pirate smirks. “Care to explain?”

I stand up from my half-eaten breakfast and travel to the pearl colored vanity. I brush my hair with a little too much force. “Punishment,” is all I reply.

She laughs at this more.

“So Princess,” never have I seen a woman sit so much like a boy, talk so much like one, too, “which one of them is your favorite?”

I whip my head around to shoot her a warning. But nothing about the red head implies she’d care, anyway.

“I don’t have one,” I say through my teeth.

“Living in denial, then” she suggests.

I’d throw my hairbrush at her if it wasn’t so pretty.

“So what do you want to do today? I’m tasked with babysitting.”

Ignoring Vienna, I push my chair back and head to the wardrobe. Gowns of royal blue, my family's blue, all await me, and I sigh. I’d kill to wear something else, anything else.

“We typically take the Offerings into the City on the second day, to show them what they're here for.”

I swallow hard. The idea of visiting the City, the hundreds of thousands of people I’m supposed to willingly sacrifice myself for, makes me want to gouge my eyes out.

“You said Keiran believes in choice, what are my choices?”

The pirate bites her bottom lip, debating if she should cross the King once more, then lists out a few activities that are typical for a princess locked in a castle. Painting, archery, riding.

I choose one, then command of Vienna, “Get me new clothes,” and the woman laughs, truly laughs, in the way that I imagine friends would do.

—-

Riding was definitely the right decision.

For more than one reason.

For the exercise, yes, the strength training, fun, and distraction, but mostly for the view of the castle.

For my knowledge of where to go when I escape.
Vienna was kind enough to spare me from the misery of inviting anyone else along. We’ve been riding for hours, on two white horses up and up and up the snow-coated mountains, my horse just as eager to be free as I.

“Remind me of the other Isle’s,” I say to her once we’re above the clouds and looking onwards.

Vienna’s red hair whips at her face, and she almost needs to shout to answer me. “There are Seven Isles in the Lands Once Lost. Moon, Sun, Night, Star, Mountain, Ocean, and Dawn.”

“And last night, you murdered the heirs to the Mountain Isle?”

The pirate's face remains looking forward, but I catch a flash of guilt, despite the horrors she claimed they committed. “Yes. The men from there... they're not good men. They are a power hungry bloodline, even more so than Keiran's. They have a history of taking more than they're given, making power plays. They once did to me what they did...to the others. They tried, as they have before, to abduct daughters from Moon Isle and..."

I give her a second to find the words, to find the air.

"They attempted to gain power by forcing a marriage, forcing an heir."

Rape, she had said earlier in my room. The males she murdered had stolen a woman and raped her.

And Vienna says the same thing happened to her.

My voice is weak, inexperienced in this subject. "Is the young woman from Moon Court alive?"

Vienna shakes her head. "She died during childbirth. Our spies reported it to us a few days ago. They left her body to rot on the bed, her and the--"

I place my hand over hers. Helping her carry the burden of what she was about to say, about what could have happened to her. "You avenged her," I say to Vienna, my voice having more strength than normal. "You helped save her soul."

Vienna, to my surprise, wipes a tear from her face.

Seeking to alleviate her pain, I say. “I would have thought this the Mountain Isle."

A hint of a smile crosses Vienna's face. “Believe it or not," she begins, no tears in sight, "their land is all mountain tops, like everything. We on the other hand have several ranges, we have the city, and the forests beyond, with fields of flowers and groves of fruits. Keiran’s ancestors are just self-righteous pricks who choose to build his palace on the highest lands.”

A break in the clouds passes before us, showing the city beyond.

“You’re saying it’s warm down there?” I ask.

Vienna nods. "Well it's winter now, but we have four seasons, just like the human lands."

Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall. That means trees are coming, and there are forests. Flowers.

Something new clicks into place.

“My ancestors, did they steal the flower Keiran seeks from this land?”

Vienna meets my gaze. Her freckles are like licks of blood against her pale face, only heightened by the white cloud and snow.

She nods slowly, “the flower was pulled from somewhere on the border between Night, Star, and Mountain. From one of the large unclaimed islands, we dare not touch. It’s an area our people do not touch, or do not dare to claim. The space in the ocean is referred to by some as Twilight or Dawn, it’s a haven for animals, plants, monsters, anything that wishes to grow and live naturally.”

A free and wicked world. Something left to decide if it’s good or evil on its own.

Something about the way Vienna holds herself makes me think she'd say that a world left unsupervised is destined to turn evil and rotten.

“The lands no one dares to claim, Twilight…Dawn, they turned evil, didn’t they? The curse began there once the flower was picked and...” I trail off, unsure of what to say. Unsure of what monsters or issues or pain the lost flower has truly inflicted.

Vienna nods again. “Whatever began there…” her gaze grows distant, recalling horrors I can’t even imagine. “My men do not cross into those oceans, we sail around, always, no matter what it takes.”

I gulp. “Has anyone ever been…inside the land?” Meaning, has anyone ever come out?

Vienna straightens her back. Our horses are growing restless, and soon we will have to return.

“Only one man has ever made it out alive,” she says.

Not in and out. But just out. Meaning that whoever is among us now…

“Keiran?” I dare to whisper.

"Keiran, despite what you think, is not as evil as he comes across. He wears a mask, as his father did, and his father before him, to protect his people."

"Your brothers then? Are they from that wicked Island?"

Vienna laughs even harder. "Rhodes and Kallias? Fuck no. They are funny, and kind. Well, Kallias more than Rhodes, but Rhodes is sweet too, once you earn his trust."

"And I imagine a spymaster trust is hard to earn."

Vienna winks, "Rhodes is interested in pretty things, and typically whatever Rhodes wants, Kallias wants, and vice versa."

I blush at the compliment.

"And compared to the rest of the Offerings," she shoots me that amused look again, the one that implies we're friends, "you're going to destroy this castle from the inside out."

Lighting in the distance flashes, followed by heavy rain. Whatever spell that was holding our horses' attention captive finally breaks. Without looking if I'm following, Vienna bolts back to the stables.

"Wait!" I shout after her, kicking my horse into a sprint. "Who is from the Twilight Island?!"

“Xaden,” she answers over the wind and rain, “Xaden was born there.”