Page 14 of Fate of Echoes and Embers (Heirs of Elydor #3)

ISSA

An antique shop. Its owner was a human. Not surprising since we were still in Estmere. But what did surprise me was his greeting to Marek. He looked as if the Spirit of the Tides had just walked into his shop.

“Uh,” he stammered, clearly nervous. The older man moved with the careful precision of one who had spent his life handling delicate and dangerous things. His fingers were smudged with ink.

“Relax, Bram. I’m not here to collect payment.”

So the two knew each other. Was that the reason for Marek’s hesitancy coming here?

“You’re… not?”

“Payment for what?” Kael asked.

“We’re here for an item.” Marek looked around the dusty shop.

Every corner was filled. From books to stopwatches, to tarnished silver goblets and ornate dagger hilts…

the artifacts peeked out of wooden crates and crowded the countertops.

The scent of old parchment, polished wood, and something faintly metallic filled the space.

“An item,” Kael repeated. “Procured legally, I’m certain.”

I was equally as certain it was not. The owner stared at Mev, no doubt wondering if the rumors were true, likely having guessed her identity.

“Are you…” Bram began, without finishing.

“Princess Mevlida,” she said.

Bram immediately bowed, nearly slamming his head on the counter in his haste. When he stood, his gaze fell on Kael. “Which means you must be Prince Kael of Gyoria?”

“No bow for me?” Kael taunted in his typical, gruff, Gyorian manner.

“Gyorians have not been kind to Valmyr, or Estmere. Your father’s policies have made it more difficult to conduct business these past years.”

“And precisely what sort of business are you in, Master Bram?”

“Kael,” Mev warned.

“You are an antiques dealer.” Kael’s voice softened, but not by much.

“Bram is the antiques dealer. Human or otherwise,” I said.

“What can I do for you, captain?” he asked Marek, still wary.

“You’ve procured an item with extraordinary magical properties.”

The man might be an experienced shopkeeper, but he was not as proficient at hiding his true emotions. Eyes wide, he all but announced the truth of Marek’s words.

“How do you?—”

“It would please me very much, if you might show us the item, good sir.”

I had never heard Mev speak so firmly, and eloquently, before. That was a princess’s request, and not simply a woman who’d fallen through the Aetherian Gate.

The shopkeeper stood straighter, his shoulders back, head held high. “Of course, your grace. It would be an honor.”

I caught Kael’s eye roll and nearly giggled.

Disappearing into a back room, Master Bram left the four of us alone.

I had questions.

“The two of you know each other well, it seems?”

“Well enough,” Marek said good-naturedly enough, but there was a hesitancy to him not normally evident.

A good thing we have witnesses, sereia.

I wanted to get him alone to ask what Marek had meant by that. Or at least, part of me wanted to know. Part of me knew already. And another part of me wanted nothing to do with the conversation.

I held a hand over my heart, listening, not even needing to block out my surroundings. “It is close.”

“Remarkable,” Kael said. “I’ve not seen a human do that before.”

“My father had the same ability. And harnessed it in the same way. He is the only other I know who did as much.”

The shopkeeper emerged with a water-stained, leather-bound book. “I bought it from a Thalassarian.”

“May I?” Mev asked, perhaps sensing he would trust her with the book.

Indeed, he handed it to her without question.

“It doesn’t appear magical to me.” She began flipping through the pages.

“I thought the same and would have turned him away if it weren’t for another patron who sensed its magic.”

My ability wasn’t rare but neither was it common. I exchanged a glance with Marek, who was likely thinking the same.

“This is why I kept it,” he said, reaching forward and opening to a page. Kael looked over Mev’s shoulder and read.

“She called upon the sea, but it answered in hunger. Not offering the tide its due. The Depths demand more than courage. They demand a heart willing to break.”

At “The Depths,” my stomach flipped. The reality of what Marek was attempting to do sometimes felt as if it were just another of his adventures, many of which he had told me about.

While dangerous, Marek’s command of the sea kept him safe.

The Maelstrom Depths were different. There was a real possibility he would not make it out of them alive, and despite everything, I did not want him to die.

The thought of it, in fact, left me in a constant state of unsettledness whenever we were faced with the reality of the situation.

“What is this?” Marek demanded, his tone losing all of its typical, teasing qualities.

“Supposedly, a journal kept by a sailor who perished in the Maelstrom Depths. As you can see, there is nothing inherently magical about it. But if it truly has been to the Depths and back…”

“Its magic will be felt,” Marek finished. “Comes from the same one that created the Depths in the first place.”

“I don’t get it.” Mev flipped through the book once more. “How is it intact if it was in the water? And what magic created the Maelstrom Depths? I thought it was just a dangerous patch of sea?”

Kael took the book from her and held it under the candlelight on the counter in front of us. Master Bram looked as if he wanted to take it back from him, but the shopkeeper didn’t dare.

“The legend varies, depending on who’s telling it.

” Marek exhaled, looking at the journal intently.

“Some say the Depths were born from the anger of a god. Others, that a sorcerer sought to control the winds and failed, drowning the sea itself in cursed magic. But the oldest story—the one that was whispered long before the clans of Elydor carved their names into maps—speaks of a living force that does not forget. Does not forgive.”

I leaned forward, as if understanding the words in the journal I was looking at, which I did not.

“Doesn’t forget what? What does it want?” I asked.

It was Bram who answered. “Balance. Not unlike Elydor itself.”

“They say nothing taken from the sea is truly free,” Marek said. “It must be earned or returned. If not, the Depths will claim their due.”

Mev frowned. “A soul for a soul.”

“Or worse,” Bram muttered, “a fate for a fate.”

I looked up. “You know much about the Depths for a human living so far away from them?”

The shopkeeper was hiding something. I had the sense that, beneath his affable demeanor was an astute mind, one that weighed every word and every deal.

Master Bram coughed, apparently not willing to respond. It was as if… as if he deferred to Marek. My eyes narrowed. There was much more to this journal than appeared on the surface.

“I will take it,” Marek said. “And consider my debt paid.”

Though Master Bram appeared anything but pleased, he did not argue.

* * *

It wasn’t until later, when we were seated at The Drowned Oath, an inn and tavern where we would spend the evening, that I called out Marek on the deal he’d made.

“What did you not tell us back there?”

Kael had escorted Mev to the privy chamber, despite her insistence on being able to do so alone.

I understood his concern. When we’d asked Marek where we would stay the night, he’d said, “A place where the ale is strong, the card games cut-throat and rumors whispered in dark corners often prove more valuable than gold.”

“I don’t know what you?—”

“Please, stop.”

Marek’s hand froze halfway to his mouth. Placing his ale back down, he watched me.

“I was angry when you left. And even angrier when I saw you in that tavern because I realized in that moment how much I’d truly allowed you to affect me all these years.

I had finally begun to let it all go, until you showed up at Hawthorne.

When you suggested we begin again, I told myself…

this is for the best. Holding onto those feelings has done me no favors.

But understand, Marek…” I said his name forcefully, channeling my mother, who had never doubted her authority.

“For that to happen, you need to be more honest with me than before.”

He blinked. “Honest,” he repeated, as if the word was foreign to him.

“Honest. I cannot be myself with someone who I do not trust.” I could tell that hurt him, but there was no hope for it. “You know more about me, the true me, than most. Please do not abuse that knowledge by lying to me.”

I had opened myself up to him in a way I had not any other. A difficult lesson, but one I would not repeat. I picked up my own ale, confirmed Kael and Mev were still nowhere in sight, and turned back to Marek.

When he wasn’t smiling, Marek actually appeared quite fierce. His jawline defined and set, clothing denoting him very much a sailor, he fit in quite well with The Drowned Oath’s clientele.

He glanced up, over my shoulder, Marek’s back to the wall, and focused once again on me.

“Bram secured that journal for me. I have been coming to Valmyr Port for many years as it is a known smuggler’s haven. The antiques dealer is one of a very few who know the truth about the reason behind my less than above-board activities.”

He stopped as Kael and Mev sat down, Mev immediately launched into a story about a conversation she had overheard between the innkeeper and a patron who apparently refused to pay the coin owed for his meal because it was “unseasoned.”

It seemed I would have to wait for the rest of his story. One I didn’t expect to hear, even after asking him to be honest with me.

The reason behind my less than above-board activities.

What could that possibly mean?

“Tell them what else we heard,” Kael said, taking a bite of one of the meat pies that had been brought to the table. He, apparently, would have done so himself but Gyorians were a hungry clan. It was well known, they ate more than most Elydorians, more akin to humans.