Loving Atlantis

C H A P T E R 2 — Anoa.

Voices. 

That was the very first thing that I became aware of. But unlike usual, they seemed muffled, quieter than they should have been—almost as if they were coming from someplace far away, like I was coming out of a dream. And just like that, I realised that my eyes were closed, that I was actually busy waking up. I started blinking, doing so rapidly, much faster than should have been necessary, in order to get my eyes to adjust to the light much faster. And the more that I was able to see, the more I was able to recognise around me, the more I tensed. 

Even though I was only able to see the interior of this one, singular room, I knew where I was. Which was right back in the castle. It would have been pointless for me to even try and deny that fact—there was no way that I would have forgotten this place. You don’t forget the first place that you called home, even if you had run away from it. 

Once I was able to see more clearly—as well as think more clearly—I was able to register the presence of two men, both of them standing on either side of the doorway. It didn’t surprise me that there was someone watching me. They must have been tasked with the duty of making sure that I didn’t get the chance to run away again. And when the man on the left, left the room, I knew enough about the systems and customs around here to know that he was on his way to alert my father, to warn him and tel him that I had woken up. 

I tried to lift my hand, my intention being to rub my eyes and try and get some of the sleep dust that had gathered there out and away. But to my slight surprise, my hand didn’t move the complete distance that it had been supposed to. Because I had been tied to the bed. 

I wasn’t sure what I had been expecting, but I was willing to admit that it hadn’t been this. I didn’t think that they would go as far as this, as treating me like a prisoner, but there was a part of me that knew that I shouldn’t be surprised. My father was King for a reason, and this was one of them. He wasn’t the kind of man who would take chances—even if the said chance, was his very own daughter. 

A few minutes must have passed—a few painfully long minutes, minutes in which I wished that I had died when I had jumped off of that cliff to come back here—before the man returned, returning to his post just as silently as he had left. Doing the best that I could with my hands bound to the sides of the bed, I tried moving into an upright position, my back starting to ache in protest to my movements, causing me to still, to stop moving. 

I hadn’t been expecting my heart to sink in the way that it has, right into the tips of my toes, further than my stomach as a familiar figure out walked through the open door. My eyelids instantly started to burn, my eyes watering as I took in the sight of my father, of his height, and everything that made him, him. He hadn’t even changed a bit. 

His beard was much longer than it had been, reaching down further than his stomach, which had also gotten much bigger since I had left. His rust coloured hair fell down to his shoulders, lined with streaks of silver that betrayed his true age, his blue eyes—eyes that reflected the very same blue of the ocean—pinned me to the bed in a manner that would have had me questioning whether or not I was actually being bound by the bindings, or whether he was the binding. 

He was staring at me as if his eyes had been glued to me, and I got the impression that he was waiting for me to do something, that he was waiting to get some kind of reaction from me. But all that I was doing, was blinking faster than would have been seen as normal, simply because it was aiding me in keeping my composure. Admittedly, my heart hadn’t beat in the way that it was doing for a long time, and considering the way that it was aching, I couldn’t believe that I had missed him so intensely. 

     “Well, well, well. If this isn’t the surprise of the decade. You decided to come back.” 

The tone of his voice was much harsher than should have been acceptable in these circumstances, but there was nothing that I could do to change it. I decided to lay back and to relax, to close my eyes. I had already decided—although, it may have been subconsciously—to be honest with him right from the start. There was no point in lying to anyone about why I had come back, nothing to gain from it. 

     “May we please have some privacy, father?” 

 I opened my eyes when I asked the question, knowing that it would be a sign on disrespect if I didn’t, my hand gesturing to the guards who were standing by the door—just to that my father wouldn’t be able to claim that he didn’t know who we needed privacy from. But I felt like my gesture had been made in vain, for my hands were bound, making movement seem minimal—but I wasn’t going to do it again. He was paying enough attention to me to have noticed it, watching me intensely enough to have picked up on it—he was obviously trying to decide what to say, how to react to my request, whether to comply or not. 

He remained silent for so long, simply just standing there and watching me, that I had started to believe that he hadn’t even heard my question. Just when I had started to consider speaking again, to consider repeating my request, his shoulders visibly slumps, although his voice remained as harsh as ever when he spoke. 

     “Leave us. Make sure that a dinner invite makes its way to King Dae within the next hour—I forbid anyone to mention Princess Anoa’s return to him. Do I make myself clear?” 

     “Yes, your Highness.”

My eyes followed the guards as they left, neither of them even looking at me or bothering to say anything to else, but then again, maybe there wasn’t much else that they needed to say. The moment that the door closed behind them, my father started moving, his movements slow and measured, sitting down in a chair that was in the far corner of the room—a decorative chair, one that I had never sat in myself. 

     “You’re welcome to start explaining yourself.”  

The tone of his voice had changed. It had finally changed, losing that cold tone that it had. He now sounded resigned—I wasn’t entirely sure if that was better than his harshness—but it was almost as if he just wanted to get this conversation over and done with. I decided to close my eyes again, knowing that I would be able to piece together the events better if I dared to relive them again. 

     “Where would you like me to start?” 

For some reason, my tone had changed in an attempt to match his, now sounding much softer than it had been. I couldn’t help but to be reminded of the last time that I had seen my father, when I had lied to him, when I had already known that I would be leaving—and for the first time, in all this time, I started to feel guilty. 

     “The reason why you left.”

I was grateful that I had had the sense to close my eyes, because I couldn’t imagine looking at him, seeing how he felt towards me, seeing what was going through his mind. What was I going to tell him? That I had overheard a conversation that warned me that there would be infidelity in my marriage? I doubted that he would believe me if I told him that. But what else was I going to say, to use to explain? 

I could say that I hadn’t been happy… 

But that would be foolish, right? I was the Princess of Northern Atlantis, and yet, I had run away because of something as simple as not being happy? The chance that he would see right through my lie was there, but it was worth a shot. 

     “I know that it might upset you to hear this, but I wasn’t happy. I’m sure that you must have realised that when I had left… All of the conflict, the wedding. I just didn’t feel like I had the strength left to deal with all of that.” 

It felt like my throat was closing it, stringing itself tighter and tighter with each word that I spoke, trying to stop me from speaking, from lying. The words were clogging up in my throat, cutting me painfully when I forced them out. 

     “And then, instead of coming to me and explaining to me how you were feeling, and asking me for guidance on how to work through it all, you decided that you were going to run away.” 

And there it was. To the ears of anyone else, his words would have came out sounding like a question, like something that needed to be confirmed or denied, but I knew that it was a statement. It was the picture that he had pieces together in his own head, the one where he had pinned the blame on me, when he didn’t know anything about all of the pictures in the background. But I was feeding him a lie. I needed to remember that I was feeding him a lie, and the flavour of the story couldn’t change until I knew that he would trust me enough to acknowledge the truth for all that it was worth when I decided to tell him. 

     “I didn’t think that you would listen to me. You just seemed so excited and caught up in everything.” 

I closed my mouth abruptly, hoping that I had managed to down out the way that my voice had cracked. There was this un-ignorable ache in my chest, one that was impossible to describe. It was like scalding your tongue with hot water, except that was what was happening to my heart. 

I had been expecting him to speak immediately again, to snap at me or accuse me once more, but he was quiet. When I opened my eyes and finally managed to find the courage to look at him, I was able to take note of the way that his eyes were glistening. I had been aware of the moisture in my own eyes, but up until that moment, I had been doing my very best to ignore it, not to acknowledge it. 

     “If you think that your father was so terrible at parenting you, then why are you here? Why did you come back?” 

My eyes darted to the doorway in an instant, the intrusion being an unwelcome one, and when I saw that it was no one other than my stepmother standing in the doorway, the flicker of surprise that I had felt extinguished itself immediately. I should have known that she would have been bound to make an appearance at some point, but I simply hadn’t believed that it would be so soon. 

Her hair was a dark brown, almost black colour—something that was quite the common trait for the Sirens that resides in Atlantis—and it was also one of the things that put her first on my list of suspects. 

     “I came here for justice.” 

     “Justice? Justice for what?” 

She was defensive. That much was obvious. Her voice had come out snappier than a mousetrap, her eyes darting between the different features of my face, yet they didn’t once connect with my eyes. I couldn’t help but feel like she had been caught unawares by my hair, by the fact that it was barely scraping my shoulders. 

If I had to he honest with myself, I wasn’t at all surprised by her bitterness. The two of us had never gotten along, had never been able to form any sort of connection since she had married my father, and if I were to guess, I would say that it was because she believed that Cire had been meant to be the true heir to the throne. I begged to differ. 

     “Justice for someone who was very dear to me, and I suspect that they had been murdered by one of your species. So, I returned to find out who it was.” 

It felt like a literal slap in the face when her head swung backwards and she let out an echoing laugh, the sound seeming to echo in the small room. It caused a chill to travel down my spine, and all that I could do, was to clench my jaw and hope that she would stop soon. My nails were digging into the skin on the palms of my hand, the way that I was straining against the handcuffs making it feel like they were cutting into my skin too. I didn’t care enough to change these factors, to stop doing either of them. It felt like they were anchoring me to my sanity. 

     “You want to get justice for that? For something that is in our nature? What a pathetic excuse, Anoa. Was it a human? Is that why you care so much? They must have been the only creatures willing to provide you with refuge.” 

I gave an angry yank on the handcuffs, finding the strength to sit upright in a single movement. The ache in my chest was becoming so intense that I was surprised that it hadn’t started to have a physical effect on me. I had started to breathe much heavier, something that was never a good sign, and then suddenly, my father moved in between the two of us, effectively blocking off my view of her. He knew that this wasn’t going to end well if there was physical conflict between the two of us. She might have been a born hunter, but I had been turned into a predator. 

And I would have looked forward to seeing which of the two were stronger. 

    “You know nothing, Silen. Nothing at you. You think that doing something just because it’s in your nature makes it right? I hate to break it to you, but it’s not. You and your kind are repulsive—“ 

    “That’s enough! With the both of you. Silen, my dear, please leave while I finish speaking to my daughter. I will come and see you once I have finished.” 

I watched as Silen turned around and made her way out of the room. Once again, I wasn’t surprised by the way that she behaved, when she turned around and gave me a triumphant look before deciding to disappear from view. 

I made an extreme effort to calm myself down, feeling like I had to force my emotions into a bottle and lay down again. I didn’t even bother looking at my father when he returned to his seat, and I knew that his expression would depict that he was less than thrilled to he doing so. 

     "Anoa… I do not appreciate the way that you left, or your reasoning for it. And your return is ill-timed, too. The Kingdoms have finally reached a point where they have accepted your abandonment. I have no idea how they’re going to react once they receive word that you have returned.” 

     “The Kingdom will settle down when I leave again.” 

The confidence in my voice was something that had surprised my, but I knew that my choice of response had been wrong when my father stood up, instantly started to pace from one place to the other. His footsteps were slow and measured, almost as if he was walking more to occupy himself than to burn out his emotions. 

     “Leave? Again? I don’t think that that will be happening. You were promised to King Dae when you were nothing more than a mere babe. If it is within his desires, you will wed him as you had been supposed to before you left. You can go about finding your justice in your own time.” 

     "But father—“

     “No, Anoa. I will not have you telling me what you want and what you do not want. You had your chance to give me your explanation and I refuse to accept it. You have already disgraced this family once—do not upset me by doing it again.”