Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 Galvin, Aaron (classic fiction txt) 📖

could say where the prince and his guardian might have gone. Care to tell us?”

“I don’t know where they might have gone,” said Nattie. “Only that if they left our home ashore, it was for a good reason.”

Malik smiled. “So, there were indeed guardians left behind with the prince, yes?”

Wilda, Sydney thought then, her chest tightening at the evident glee in the Blackfin’s voice, her gaze drawn to the covered litter his Orcs had placed before the queen. Oh, God . . . Sydney thought, her eyes already welling. Please, no. Please, God, not Wilda too.

Malik prodded further when the queen did not answer, her own gazed homed on the covered litter. “My queen,” he said. “Your people and your king are waiting . . . were there guardians to look after the prince?”

Again, Nattie would not answer.

Malik nodded at her continued silence, then wheeled toward the king’s pavilion.

Before Sydney understood what was happening, the soldiers behind her in the king’s pavilion approached her chair. What’s going on? She briefly wondered, looking up into the visors that shielded their identities. Her gaze flitted to the king next, finding Darius watched her also.

Sighing, the king motioned to the soldiers beside him and Sydney. “Take her, then.”

What?

The soldiers on either side of her clamped down on Sydney’s biceps, then, both lifting her free of the royal chair she had previously sat. “Wh-What are you doing?” she choked as the anonymous Orc soldiers carried her down the pavilion steps. “L-Let go of me!”

Her eyes widened when the Orcs would not. Sydney wrenched her neck around to look back at the king. Darius had not moved from his position, his gaze no longer focused on her, but looking out to the direction her captors carried her off toward.

No. Sydney thought, then, the whispers among the crowd catching as the Orcs carried her onto the main platform and delivered her to their leader at the center. Her knees turned weak when the Orcs forced her to stand in front of her mother and the first of the covered litters.

“Sydney,” the queen’s voice was frantic. “Sydney, look at me.”

The Blackfin prevented Sydney from doing so, stepping between her and the queen. “Princess Sydney,” he roared for all in attendance to hear, his white teeth and cruel smile a loathsome taunt to hang over her. “There can be no doubt amongst any here today that you are your mother’s favored child. Thankfully, it is not many a parent forced to choose between their children . . . yet our queen was put to the choice and made her decision.” Malik reached out and ran his fingers through Sydney’s hair before speaking again, a mocking laughter dancing in his eyes. “Would you care to enlighten us as to why to you are the queen’s favored one, child? Why would the queen choose to safeguard you over our sweet prince and holding to her sacred vows to never return beneath the waves?”

Sydney’s body quaked at the question, her knees knocking against one another in knowing she must respond or else be thrown into the tank and have the truth exposed. “I-I don’t know,” she muttered.

“No,” said Malik, playing to the crowd once more. “And why should our princess understand such things? Why would any child innocent to our world and the Salt’s cruelties have any inclination as to why the queen mother would favor her only daughter over the son and heir of a king?”

She didn’t favor me over Jun, Sydney willed herself to speak, but could not find her voice. Mom treated us both the same.

Again, Malik continued his playing for the crowd, luring them in with the slow rise and fall of his voice. “We know why, don’t we, my people? We who live within this greatest of Salt kingdoms are no strangers to the pervading rumors of a princess brought to our glorious city against her will. We remember that it was not so long ago that our shamed queen once came to this city as a blushing, Merrow princess herself. To believe most who would tell of her arrival, the Princess Natsuki did not come willingly either. A Merrow from the far, eastern waters, her marriage to our beloved king came with the hope that their uniting and their children to come would bind the two great Merrow nations as one for the whole of time. And yet . . .” Malik raised his hand in the direction of Darius. “When learning of our queen’s continued displeasure, our goodly king opted to show the queen both his mercy and his love.”

Mercy? Sydney blinked.

“Aye,” Malik went on, bellowing for all in the crowd to hear. “King Darius allowed his lady wife and love to abandon him and all his people. With a great war looming over us, he offered this ungrateful queen a chance to take their child and flee toward the ashore! To create a haven for all others too afraid to face the prospect of another long war to come. Some of those cowards have returned to stand before our judgement today.” He nodded toward Owens and his father, along with all the others from the zoo and Sydney’s town. “Others, however . . .” Malik looked down at the covered litter at his feet. “Others continued to try and escape the punishment for breaking their vows.”

At his nod, one of the Orc soldiers knelt beside the litter and removed the black covering.

Sydney’s eyes rounded as the covering was slowly pulled away, revealing a glass-walled rectangular tank - a similar, if smaller, water-filled version of the same, enclosed cell that Sydney had been held captive in.

As the covering pulled free of the litter’s base, the first thing that Sydney noticed was a cloud-like blur of red to stain the otherwise clear water. Then, she saw the stilled remains of a dolphin tail. Dead. Sydney knew in an instant when there was no movement at all from within. Whoever it is, they’re dead. She fought