The Lion Soul by Amy Sumida

Chapter Thirty-Six

Kaelen didn't return by nightfall. I shared an awkward dinner with the others in our group, then went to bed alone. I tossed and turned awhile before I finally got up, got dressed, and went looking for him. My eyesight had improved vastly and navigating the woods in the dark wasn't a problem. Finding Kaelen, however, was. I even tried sniffing the air, trying to scent him like an animal, then gave up on the woods and headed to the beach. Kae wasn't there either. He was gone.

I sat down on the sand with a sigh, pulled up my knees, and watched the waves sweep over the shore in morose spurts. This couldn't go on. I wanted to be with Kaelen, and I wanted to love him, but I couldn't lie to him and tell him what he needed to hear just to ease his pain. And that's what I'd felt today—pain. I saw it clearly now. It wasn't just about me, but I had been the last straw. To lose one thing after another that he cherished and then, at the moment he'd been seeking comfort from me, to be rejected by me was too much for him. It wasn't true, I didn't reject him, but that's how it felt to Kaelen. And it had broken my beautiful lion.

The sorrow had built upon itself, festering even while I was in his arms. When Kae had connected his pain to mine, it had sought me like the hand of divine vengeance. I don't think Kaelen instructed the magic to hurt me—in fact, I was certain that he didn't—but it had attacked the source of his pain nonetheless. It had blinded me because Kaelen felt as if I didn't truly see him, and then it had shoved all his sorrow down my throat until I choked on it. It sounds a bit literal, but I believed that was what happened. The magic had translated what Kae was thinking and feeling into an attack.

It was only more proof that I didn't love Kaelen, not yet. Because my sorrow didn't come anywhere near his. I was horrified that I'd made him feel this way but also upset that he hadn't spoken to me about it. Kaelen was the open one; the one who bared himself without hesitation. But he had bottled this up and let it stew. Maybe it was his father or the way the Lion Fae had rioted, but something had turned his open heart against him. Against me. Kaelen had closed himself off in response, losing one of the qualities I liked most about him.

Pain hit me again suddenly, knocking me to the sand, and I briefly wondered if Kaelen were attacking me again. Then I realized that it was something physical holding me down and the pain wasn't pain exactly, more of an ache. The ache of emptiness. So similar to sorrow, but not. It was my magic, or rather, the lack of it that I was feeling. I was cut off from my fae abilities, couldn't even shift, and, as I stared through an iron-barbed net at a group of Farungals, I abruptly realized why.

“Hurry! Gag him!” one of them ordered.

As I was trying to recover from the waves of rolling emptiness, a rag was shoved through the net and into my mouth. It was tied in place and the whole of the net used to bind me, then I was lifted between two monsters and carried to a rowboat that waited several yards down the beach, behind the cover of some boulders. A watchtower was no more than forty yards away from me, but I hadn't called out in time and now it was too late; the Farungals had me.

I was thrown into the bottom of the boat and rowed out to a ship, where I was hauled over the side with ropes like so much cargo. By this time, I was limp with weakness and barely keeping my eyes open. As soon as I was aboard, the Farungals started chittering, then scurried about, preparing to set sail.

“I can't believe he was just sitting there,” one of them said to another as they carried me below deck. “What luck. The very one we were after.”

“You sure that's him?” another asked. “They all look the same to me.”

“Look at the swords, idiot,” the first one said. “Two. On the same side. It's him all right.”

I was dropped in an iron cage and the net yanked away. The sudden pull sent me rolling, then I flopped to a stop and gasped for breath. With the iron off my skin, I began to recover my strength, but before I could regain enough of it to fight back, my sword belt was removed and my precious swords taken from me, carted off in Farungal claws. The last thing I had of my family was now in the hands of monsters.

My captors chittered again and locked me in, talking to themselves about what a prize I was as they left. I began to breathe easier as the physical weakness finally left me and my magic returned. I rolled onto my back and stared up the ship's hull, also lined in iron strips, to the iron plating the ceiling. I may have my magic back but it wouldn't reach beyond my cell.

I grunted. Grunt translation: I'm fucked.