Page 224 of Fallen Stars

Chapter Seventy-Seven

The sea air stuck toElara’s skin as though begging her not to leave. She looked out to the frothy waves, the eastern continent merely a speck on the horizon as they crossed the Olympian Ocean.

She felt a presence beside her before she turned and saw Adrian.

“Shouldn’t you be celebrating with the others?” he asked, nudging her shoulder.

She looked behind her where her friends were still drinking and singing to celebrate both their engagement and the threat of Piscea being quashed. The festivities had run on for days, and Elara swore that if she even saw another drop of rum, she would be sick.

Adrian’s comforting scent of sage and sea salt washed over her as she turned back to him.

She shook her head. “I’m just pondering what we do now. Piscea is no longer a threat, but Ariete? The other Stars still wanting our heads…” She sighed. “It’s difficult to allow myself moments of peace and happiness. To even enjoy the feeling of being engaged. I don’t deserve it.”

Adrian was quiet for a moment. “Why?”

Elara thought back to the memory Ariete had showed her in his dreams. One that she was still keeping from everyone.

“I suppose with the hand that I have been dealt in life, it just doesn’t feel like good things should happen to me,” she said, telling a part-truth.

Adrian snorted. “Absolute nonsense. Elara, you are a good person. It shines through you. Sometimes, fate is just a shitty thing, but you and Enzo haven’t ever let it rule over you before. Your very existence together is proof of defying the Stars.”

Elara hummed in agreement as she cast her gaze back to the cobalt waves. “War is looming. I can feel it.”

Adrian nodded. “It seems inevitable despite how Eli is trying to help us escape it. Once the rest of the Stars know that I’m also awake, they’ll stop at nothing to try and defeat us.”

“And what of the others? Two more titans to wake, Eli said.” She turned over the ring he had given her, the small snake that had never left her little finger since he had given it to her. They’d been at sea a week now, and she found herself missing the god’s presence every day, as though a sibling had been taken from her. “The Earth and the Air. I was lucky with you. How in Celestia are we going to find them?”

Adrian drummed his fingers on the ship. “Well, our common thread was the Three. That’s what we need to hunt for now. A mortal in Verde likely, and one perhaps in Sveta. I can ask the sirens if they’ve heard anything.”

Adrian had been practicing his abilities with his new scope of powers the last week aboard the ship and had seemed to find the time to summon and flirt with a siren or two along the way—not a mermaid though. Never a mermaid.

Elara still found it so strange, this pirate lord before her governing the oceans.

“Dare I ask if you’ve heard anything from…her?”

Adrian’s eyes grew cold. “No. Not since All Hallow’s. She made her choice. And as she told me, the next time we meet, it will likely be on the battlefield.”

Elara reached over and squeezed Adrian’s arm. “Want me to kill her for you?”

Adrian snorted, patting her hand. “I think I can handle myself. Some people just aren’t meant for one another.”

Elara nodded. “There is a soulmate out there for everyone. That I truly believe.”

Adrian shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll ever find a love like you have with Enzo.”

Elara smiled. “I believed the same until I met him.” She nudged him with an elbow. “Someone out there has to love your barnacle-encrusted ass.”

Adrian snorted, the two laughing with an easiness Elara hadn’t felt in months.

“How do you feel about returning home?”

“Home is a stretch. The Goldfir Forest lies between Helios and Asteria.”

Elara had decided with Enzo a week ago as they left Kaos that they’d have their wedding in the forest between their two kingdoms. He’d assured her it was a safe place, one that had its own small community and lodgings deep within the woods, a space where none of the Stars would find them for a few blissful days.

“Home…” she looked up at the moon beginning to make its appearance across the sky from the sun. “Home seems so far away now.”

She turned, looking starboard, where the western continent was beginning to appear, Asteria right on the horizon.