Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 by Galvin, Aaron (top 5 books to read TXT) 📗

“Aye, everything of value,” said Darius, standing once more to lord over her. “Or so you might believe.”

Sydney trembled at the invisible touch of icy fingers wrapping around her heart and gently squeezing. “What do you mean?”

“Exactly as I said,” said Darius. “I find the majority of poor fools left in your position often believe their circumstance is both far harsher than any others punished, and, strangely, that they could not be worse off.”

You talk with a lot of fools, do you? Sydney wondered but did not say.

The king continued. “And yet . . . those same fools fail to recognize that things can always be worse, for the truest of hells is a bottomless pit.”

Sydney’s throat ran dry at the continued mirth in his voice.

“I could tell you more of hellish torments, of course,” said Darius. “But, then again, I’ve learned that telling such poor souls never quite has the same effect as showing them.”

Sydney trembled in her captors’ grips, believing the king meant to harm her as he did for her mother the last time she had seen him. Worse, that he might send the Blackfin to do his dirty work for him.

The king neither moved, nor gave such an order. “Why did you come back to the Salt, Sydney?” he asked her quietly. “Why did you and your mother return, but leave your brother behind?”

Jun. Sydney understood then. This is all about Jun. Her spirits rose at the notion. Which means they still don’t know where he is . . .

The king tapped his foot. “Well?” he asked. “Is it such a difficult thing I ask of you that you require more time to think on your answers?”

“No,” said Sydney quickly. “I just . . . I don’t know what to tell you that I haven’t already.”

The king scoffed. “Lies, you mean.”

“They’re not,” said Sydney. “Please, listen to me. The only reason I ran to the Salt was because I wanted to find my friend, Garrett.” She looked to the Blackfin with the hope that he might lend credence to her argument, he knowing that Garrett Weaver was both his nephew and the son of the former Orcinian leader, Makeda.

Malik Blackfin smiled in response, as if he well understood what Sydney would have of him, denying her for the sport of it.

Sydney warmed at the slight. She turned back to the king. “You have to believe me,” she said. “My friends and I came to the Salt looking for Garrett. That’s it! It’s why Mom came back too. She just wanted to find us all and take us back home where it was safe.”

“Home?” Darius asked. “And do you mean that shack upon the shore, or the home you once wished to have here with me in my castle? Before you fled my protection, that is . . .”

“On the shore,” said Sydney, after some thought and more biting her tongue to keep from saying what she really wanted. “Now that I know what this world is like, I understand why Mom didn’t want me to ever come here.”

Darius’s lip curled. “And yet even now you lie in admitting that you were once of two minds about which home held your allegiance – the Salt, or the shore.”

“How did I lie?” Sydney asked.

Darius raised a bit of his robe to cover his nose once more, drinking deep of its scent as if to rid the odor of Sydney from his nostrils before speaking again. “Do you know what the old ones say about such duplicitous people as you are, Sydney? The old ones rightly claim that no one may serve two masters. Either they will hate one and love the other, or else they will hold to one and despise the other.” The king’s nose wrinkled once more. “And it seems to me that both you and your cursed mother made your decision long ago by choosing to live upon the shore, rather than here where you belong.”

“Then give us the same choice now,” said Sydney. “Let us go back to the shore. Please! I swear that I’ll never come back to the Salt as long as I live.”

The king frowned. “Your mother and so many others swore such an oath to me too, once. All of them liars, right along with the pair of you, it seems to me now. Or did your mother not tell you of the oath she and others made?”

Sydney’s voice caught in her throat, her silence an answer in itself.

Darius scowled at her. “There be the first truth I’ve seen from you.” He scoffed. “And your lying, savage tongue cannot bring yourself even to speak it. For that is the power of real truth, Sydney. It silences even the most skillful of liars. I wonder though . . . do you truly comprehend the equal power and far reach of falsehoods?”

“I-I don’t know what you mean.”

“Perhaps, in time, you will,” said Darius. He glanced over his shoulder then, nodding at Solomon and the other Orcs.

Without a word between them, Solomon signaled a few more of the guards to follow him out of the dungeon.

Where is he going? Sydney wondered, her pulse racing. Why are they leaving?

The king reached into his pocket, fishing for something hidden there. “Did you like the theatrical show I had presented the night your mother was taken, Sydney? You slipped away so suddenly after, I’m afraid that I never got around to asking your thoughts on the performances.” Darius removed his hand from his pocket, his fist clenched. “So? What did you think?”

Sydney thought of Yvla then, the star actress of the show. How she had shot out of the water and soared through the air, taking on even the darkest of shadows as she played the role of the Tide-Turner known as the Lady Roselani. “I loved it,” she answered the king, her lip quivering as her memories turned to all that occurred thereafter. “Until the end and all that happened