Page 71 of Somber Prince
“What’s wrong?” He ducked his head, trying to read my face.
“I’m not a jug or a vial, Rha. Not a vessel to be kept under a lock in a cave. I’m a person.”
“And do you think I don’t know that?”
“It doesn’t look like you do.”
He narrowed his eyes at me in the way of a man who wasn't used to his actions being questioned. I tried to free myself from his arms because standing inside his embrace while arguing felt weird. But he wouldn’t let me.
“Don’t go.” A pleading note slipped into his voice. “I don’t want anger to be the last emotion I feel from you before disconnecting.”
“I’m afraid there isn’t much else I can offer you right now, Your Highness. If it’s positive emotions you’re after, you definitely should disconnect for the time being.”
Still, he wouldn’t remove the tendril.
“Tell me what I can do to make you feel better?”
I studied his expression carefully, trying to gauge how far I could push. Realizing I had nothing to lose, I decided to shove all the way.
“If you really want to make me happy, Rha, let me go. Send me and my friends back home.”
He winced as if I’d slapped him.
“Is that what you really want? To leave?”
The hurt in his eyes was real, stirring compassion inside me. I splayed a hand on his bare chest. With his chain-link armor gone, it was just his warm skin stretched over hard muscles. And the strong beating of his heart.
“Rha,” I softened my voice. “We didn’t meet under the best circumstances. Your people stole me and brought me here to be your slave—” He stirred to protest, but I wouldn’t let him. “What happened to me and the other humans didn’t happen with our consent. You can’t argue with that.”
He swallowed hard. “I’ll give you anything you need to make your life with me better than it has ever been back in your world.”
“Except that the only thing I really want is to be free.”
“But I can’t do it,” he groaned, raking a hand through his hair.
“Well, then?—”
“No, Dawn. You don’t understand. Even if I wanted to grant you your wish, I cannot do it. It’s impossible to send you back exactly where my people took you from.”
“Why not? What do you mean?”
“We didn’t simply use smoke tunnels like we do to travel to the World Above. To connect to the human realm, the Joy Guardians had to use ancient magic to tap into the stream of the River of Mists.”
“Okay? So?”
“The River of Mists is a magical entity that connects many worlds, including the human realm and Nerifir. The river is turbulent and temperamental. Some believe it has a mind of its own. If that’s true, then it’s also deliberately ruthless. Unless we use the same portal to travel both ways, the time changes. The portal you’d arrived through is now closed. If you try to return to your world, you will never come back to the same time.”
“What time would I come to, then?”
“You may end up centuries before or after the time you had been taken from. The people you knew and loved would no longer be there. Even the place itself may not be something you’d recognize.”
I eyed him suspiciously.
“Are you telling the truth? Because if not, if you’re making it up just to keep me happy?—”
“It’d be cruel of me to lie about something like that. Too cruel, no matter how desperately I wish to taste your happiness again.”
Despair filled me, spreading through every fiber of my being like black tar. It weighed down on me, making it difficult to remain standing.