Page 39 of Winds of Destiny

Cam

It’s dark by the time we get to Zephyth. Well, dark compared to the day, at least—the moons are both full tonight, bright and luminous like a pair of glowing eyes. Their light makes us plainly visible as we walk—stagger, nearly—up to the main gate, where guards are waiting for us with their halberds at the ready. The man with the sharpest eyesight recognizes us from twenty paces out.

“Prince Camrael!” He drops his weapon and comes running over, hands extended like he wants to grab on but isn’t sure he’s allowed.

I smile at him. “I’m back. Well, we’re back.” I gesture to Kai and Turo, who flank me like a pair of bookends.

Rhianan is gone—she ran off as soon as we set foot on solid ground again. Turo isn’t worried, so neither am I…much.

“I’m sure we’re not expected, but—”

“But we thought you were dead! ” The guard’s voice carries and summons even more guards to see what’s going on, and then someone sounds the trumpet call specifically meant for the king, which— Shit . I was really hoping I could get to Ophiucas’s cove and do what needs to be done before interacting with my father. Now I’m going to be stuck in a lecture for the next three or four hours.

“Sorry,” I murmur to my lovers. “This is going to get uncomfortable.”

“Can’t be as uncomfortable as meeting with a father who tried to kill you,” Kai points out, and yes, I suppose that’s true, but—

“I don’t think it’s going to go like you think it is,” Turo says, his stare roving over the guards and the people slowly converging beyond them. “Look at their hair.”

It takes me a second to recognize what Turo saw right away, but when I do… “Mourning blue.” The dark shade of blue-black is so expensive to produce that wearers usually choose to indicate mourning with only a single band of it wrapped around a wrist or used to hold their hair back. Wealthy people might get a whole belt made from it, and—

“Camrael!” And there’s my father, breaking into a run on the far side of Zephyth’s grand entrance courtyard the second he sees me. He’s wearing an entire robe of mourning blue, and his face looks haggard. I hardly even realize I’m running to meet him until we crash together, nearly falling. His arms are tight around me, but the rest of his body is shuddering.

“He told me you were dead,” my father whispers, and I don’t need to ask who “he” is. There’s only one man who would know that we were killed—or kidnapped, which to Kai’s awful father was no doubt as good as a death. “The messengers just reached us a few days ago. I—”

He pulls back and cups my face in his hands, eyes searching hungrily for assurance that I’m really his son.

“It was an ambush,” I say gently. He’s actually hurting my face a bit, but I don’t pry his hands off. I grip his wrists instead, another way of reassuring him, of grounding him. “Set up by Anarx and carried out by Embros. Only I, Kai, and Turo survived.”

Well, that’s not entirely true. I glance back at Kai and notice the tension riding his shoulders as he looks around at the crowd. I don’t expect Jeric to be back here yet—one wagon loaded down with children isn’t exactly fast.

“Father, there’s a caravan with survivors from a village. We need to send an escort for them tomorrow morning. The man leading the group is the last of Kai’s soldiers.”

My father glances beyond me, and his expression becomes conflicted. Propriety dictates he should go greet our official guest—and my “proxy” husband—but he doesn’t want to let go of me. I understand. I don’t really want to be let go of, but it’s decided for us when I hear my sister’s shriek. I turn just in time to embrace her, and this time the tears are more than I can withstand. My father leaves us to cry in each other’s arms.

“Cam,” she whispers, before leaning up and kissing my cheek. She’s smiling through her tears. “I knew you’d come back.”

“You seem like the only one who did,” I joke, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand.

“Ophiucas gave me dreams of you. I saw you in a chariot, and sleeping beside lions, and then in a glorious temple.” Her voice is fervent, eyes alight with knowledge gifted directly from our god. “I saw you bring the everwinds back, Cam.” She beams at me. “I’m so proud of you!”

Damn it, I just wiped my eyes…

“And I know what you have to do next,” Gilraen goes on.

“Is it sleep?” I ask. “Because I think I could really use some sleep.” I’m exhausted right down to the bone. I can’t remember when I last ate, and while the water of the inner sea isn’t salty like the ocean, it’s not particularly potable, either.

The walk from the edge of the marshy sea to Zephyth was only three hours, but in wet shoes after the longest day in the world, it felt like a lot longer.

She shakes her head. “You have to free Ophiucas, of course.”

Oh. Oh. Of course she’s right. I do—it goes from a nothing thought to a driving urge in the space of a second. I’m conscious of a tension that isn’t mine, a fitful hope that at last things will be different, that I can finally, finally be free.

Our god needs me, and I need him.

“Come with me,” Gilraen says, taking my hand.

“Someone will stop us—”

“No one will stop us,” she says confidently, leading the way. And she’s right. Somehow, even though there are cries of joy all around us, even though the temple chimes are ringing hard enough to shake the ground, no one lays a hand on us or even seems to realize that we’re moving. Soon Gilraen doesn’t need to lead—my feet are confident on the path to the cove where my god has been waiting so, so patiently for these past twenty years.

His head is out of the water and resting on the sand when I get there. I run to him and kneel beside him, wrapping as much of his muzzle as I can in a tremendous hug. “Thank you,” I say—pray—with all my heart. “Thank you so much. I would never have survived this without you. I would have lost them without the pearls, and we wouldn’t have prevailed at Inarime. Thank you, thank you.”

One of the god’s tears bursts against my head, shattering into a thousand seed pearls that glisten in the sand. Another blessing, and a plea— free me .

Of course he needs help. Even when the everwinds were ten times as strong as they are now, it was only during storms that they whipped the waves up enough for Ophiucas to get in and out of the cove. We can’t afford to wait and see if a storm will bring enough water to get him out, especially not when I’m here. I can do this.

I’m just not entirely sure how yet. I need to use the winds to whip up the water, get it pounding, get it to surge in and out of the cove, but without flying—and my last experiment didn’t go so well—I’m not sure that I’ll manage it.

Ophiucas pulls back, and I let him go. He doesn’t retreat all the way into the water, though—instead, he lowers his nose to the sand and wiggles his head back and forth a bit. He’s asking me something, but…

“Oh, of course.” I step up to him, then onto him, climbing the long length of his snout until I reach the crest of his head, where his massive horns begin to jut from his skull. I hold onto one of them, steadying my stance, and then Ophiucas pulls away from the cove.

Gilraen shouts, “I’ll ring the bell to evacuate the lower levels of the city!” and that’s when I realize that I’m going to have to do something that hasn’t happened in Zephyth since the everwinds went away. I’m going to have to work up such a storm that the city itself is drowned, at least for a while.

This used to be commonplace, a thing that happened multiple times a year, but how many people will even remember that? Who is going to hear the bell and not understand that they need to get to higher ground? How many of our citizens might be lost just because I can’t take the time to explain what I’m trying to do?

Ophiucas hums soothingly as he turns toward the gap that separates the cove from the dark sea, and I decide that the best thing I can do is have faith in him. He needs to be free—needs it desperately. He’s been languishing for too long, our poor, captive god. Our people will be all right—my sister will see to them.

As for me: right now, I have one goal—to bring the water in and let Ophiucas out.

My serpent god braces his long body on the bottom of the cove and lifts his head up high, until I’m thirty feet in the night sky. Wind is already whirling around us, natural wind, and it lends me strength that I never before imagined I could have. I spread my arms and reach out with my magic, and the wind slams into the water right in front of me with a tremendous splash.

And now I’m soaked and haven’t created a single wave. Okay, not the method to use, then. Maybe if I reach farther out instead and use the wind like I would a broom, sweeping the water in toward us. In…and in…and in, creating greater and greater swells, each building on the momentum of the last push to get the next one to rise higher and travel farther…

Water is surging past us into the cove. The temple must be absolutely swamped. Water will be rising in the city already…but it’s all right. It’s going to be all right.

Focus on Ophiucas.

The water from the sea is colder, drenching us both, but I find it invigorating. Ophiucas is still steady beneath me, but I can sense a new energy in him—he’s ready to leap, to ride the best wave I can create out into the sea. I’m getting closer, but we’re not there yet.

I dig deeper with my fledgling ability and increase the tempo of the waves I’m creating— boom-boom-boom-boom . Water tries to rush away but I don’t let it, sweeping it back to us, forcing it into the cove. This place needs to be full before Ophiucas can ride the water out.

In, in… My head hurts, my arms are beginning to ache, but I know I’m getting close from the way Ophiucas is trembling beneath me, readying himself to leap. I’m surrounded by water, but my mouth is dry, and my heart is pounding the wall of my chest, and I use the winds to hold back the water I’ve already poured into the cove while I bring in more, more, more…

And then the wave breaks, and so do I.

Water rushes out of the cove with a sound not unlike raising a city from the depths, thunderous and all-consuming. It builds, it crests, and then Ophiucas is there, surging with it, throwing himself into the immense wave and letting the water carry his huge, heavy body over bladelike rocks and finally out into the sea. His head plunges down into a whole new body of water, and I go with it.

I’m lost. It’s so dark—even the moonlight has abandoned me now. For the first time since I started this, I’m scared. I reach out toward my pearls and feel my lovers’ fear and confusion. I want to reassure them, but how can I? What could I say to make it all right? How can I pretend that nothing is wrong when I’m nearly out of air and I can’t see my god?

A second later, though, I feel him. Ophiucas is beneath me, lifting me, and then I’m out of the water, coughing for my life as I cling to the same spot I just vacated. He’s crooning now, a sweet song I’ve never heard him sing before. It’s triumph and tenderness all at once, and as I catch my breath, I can feel his gratitude as surely as I feel the water itself.

“I love you,” I tell him.

“And I love you,” he whispers back, stunning me into immobility. He spoke to me. He never speaks to us anymore, not even to the priests, why—

Then he shifts and moves and tilts, and all of a sudden I’m sliding off his head and falling straight into the arms of—

Of two very unamused men, both of them standing in a boat that’s not meant for such things. The rowers are doing their best to balance it, but if we don’t sit down soon, we’re all going to be back in the water.

“What the fuck?” Turo demands.

“You should have said something!” Kai adds.

I look out at Ophiucas, and I swear he winks before vanishing into the water. We’re left in a calm cove, with Zephyth’s great bell ringing behind us, and despite my exhaustion, I’ve never felt lighter in my whole life.

Now neither Ophiucas nor I are trapped—not by marriage and not by the cove. We’re not trapped in service to the city we love—we’re free to serve it how we will instead.

Free .

I like the sound of that, even if it comes with annoyed, overprotective lovers and a lot of explaining to do.

“I couldn’t let him keep suffering,” I say to them as we all sit down, much to the rowers’ relief. They get the boat moving back toward Zephyth, and I get a kiss to the temple from Kai and a relatively dry blanket over my shoulders from Turo.

“I can’t fault you for that,” Turo says, “but telling us what you intended would have been smart. Not to mention kind.”

“It all came together so quickly…”

“Your sister has already tried to take the blame, but we know it was just as much you.” Kai laughs . “Eh, what does it matter now? You’re safe and back with us.”

“And the city is half flooded and your father is furious, but that’s not new,” Turo adds. “So. Any more death-defying acts of worship planned for this evening?”

I’d like to say that I’ve got several acts of worship planned, all of them taking place in bed, but…

“A bath, food, and sleep,” I say. “In that order.”

Kai laughs hard enough to rock the boat.

Turo kisses me, gentle and smiling. “We can do that,” he says, and I don’t think I could be happier with my life than I am right now.