Chapter 20
The Boy in the Helmet
Gripping the helmet with both hands, being careful not to slosh the water, Hamal walked deeper into the hallway until he reached what seemed like a good place to have a conversation with the e’nethaine. The air remained cool and fairly moist here—hopefully, he thought, it would feel welcoming to men whose flesh could blend with water.
The rest of Cale’s party gathered in the sitting room doorway and watched. No one approached.
Hamal was listening, and he knew exactly where the two invisible men stood. E’nethaine—who, supposedly, no one in King’s Barrow had seen in a thousand years. And yet, here Hamal was, carrying one in his hands.
The land was home to many, many descendants of those who lived in the sea; those with e’nethaine blood were much more common than most people realized. And yet Hamal could appreciate Lord Rhyan’s thoughts on the matter. The moment felt weighty as he stood there and stared toward heartbeats in the shadows. Ermond’s light barely reached this far. Hamal could see only the faintest outline of the walls.
“I believe this belongs to you,” Hamal told the dark. “And I’m sorry it was taken.”
Nothing responded. The hall remained silent and still. The weight of the helmet in his hands didn’t change; no one stepped forward to take it from him.
Hamal sighed. He didn’t know what he was expecting, but something needed to respond. He couldn’t very well set the helmet on the floor and just leave it there. It would tip over and the water would run everywhere. That seemed rather disrespectful. If nothing moved to take this from him, he didn’t know what he was going to do next.
“I would like to hand this to you,” he said, stating his desire clearly. “I can’t put it on the floor. See? It would tip over. I think that whoever is in this water will need to be healed when they come out of it. I’m sure you have your own healers that you would prefer to use. Don’t you?”
Hamal did not have any e’nethaine blood inside him. He had no idea how to go about healing someone who was in their water state. The person would have to change first—to shift, he thought it was called. This meant going from a watery state to a solid state. Only then could Hamal use his gift.
He didn’t understand why the e’nethaine had not immediately come forward and snatched the helmet from him. That is surely what anyone in Cale’s team would have done, if an e’nethaine had captured one of them. If he were healthy and in good working order, the man in the water could have simply fled into the air and escaped, now that there were no flamemakers nearby, but he very clearly was not healthy. If, for whatever reason, the e’nethaine intended to keep their distance, then the only thing Hamal could think of was to wait until the man in the helmet shifted. Then Hamal could heal him himself.
He decided he would try it. He would be careful, of course. Careful was good. Adjusting his grip, he slid his right hand beneath the helmet, so the dome rested against his palm, and said into the water, “I am a healer. If I could see you, I might be able to make you feel better. But I can only heal you when you are in a solid state.”
Hamal cradled the helmet and felt rather awkward as nothing happened. He glanced over at the men he couldn’t see and then turned to look at Cale. Cale’s brows rose, and Hamal shrugged in reply. If this didn’t work…
The helmet shuddered in his hands. Hamal slid back a step, startled, and blinked once—and suddenly held a boy in his arms instead of a helmet. The helmet itself dropped with a sharp metallic clang onto the stone floor and rolled off toward the wall.
Exclamations and startled curses erupted behind him as Hamal dropped to his knees beneath the boy’s weight. The child was small and thin in his arms. Eight years old, his bones said. Hamal could barely see the boy’s face in the shadows. The light skittered across his dark skin the way it would across crystals, sparkling with tiny flecks of color.
Immediately, the boy’s blood started speaking, but Hamal, to the best of his ability, tried to ignore it. This was a bad situation already; he didn’t want to make things any stickier by learning something the local e’nethaine people would rather he didn’t know. However, he did allow the blood to tell him about the boy’s heritage. There was no human blood in this boy. He was a full-blooded e’nethaine, as pure as the sea.
Cale appeared beside Hamal. Looking over at the e’nethaine watchers and lifting his hands slowly, so their observers could see he was unarmed, he knelt next to Hamal and helped him set the boy on the stone floor.
“Cushion his head,” Hamal ordered and went to work as quickly as he could, not knowing how long the boy’s two invisible friends would let Hamal have with him. He set his hand on the child’s forehead. “Look,” he told the boy quietly. “I appreciate your trust. This is a very sad situation, and it should never have happened—”
The boy’s eyes opened.
Hamal froze, his fingertips hovering just above the boy’s skin.
The boy had eyes the color of emeralds. They glowed in the darkness with a light that didn’t come from fire or Ermond’s lightning. When he could, Hamal moved his hand to the boy’s shoulder.
“My name is Hamal,” he said, which he had told the boy at least once already, but he could see the child’s eyes now, and it was good to introduce yourself when the person was looking at you. “I live in a faraway place that is much warmer than it is here. I’m not overly fond of how cold it is here, actually.”
He worked as he talked, quickly repairing the boy’s muscles, which had atrophied. How long had the bad men left him in that tank? Glowing eyes watched him as he worked.
The boy’s body responded to healing the way any other boy’s would. He just had more in his system than would be found on land; it was a larger system, in a way, with additional pieces. For instance, he had two sets of lungs: one set that was more comfortable in water and another set that was more comfortable in air.
“In King’s Barrow, where I live, it is spring and the flowers are blooming, and the winds are warm in the morning. If you’ve never felt a warm breeze, when it is full of the sun and warmth and dampness from the dew—well, you don’t know what you’re missing. There.” He pulled his hand away. “How do you feel now?”
The boy just looked at him.
“Do you…need a hand? I can help you up, if you need it.”
There was no response.
“You should be able to stand up now, but if you can’t, let me know.”
Could the boy understand what Hamal was saying? He opened his mouth to ask, but then the boy’s gaze flicked toward his invisible companions, and he disappeared right in front of Hamal.
Cale took a quick breath.
Hamal stared into the space where the boy had been.
“Hamal,” Cale whispered. “Speak to me. What is happening?”
Hamal counted heartbeats.
There were six people in the hallway. Only six. He rubbed his chest and stared out in the darkness where their watchers had been just moments ago.
“Just us,” he answered finally. “We’re alone. They left.”
For some reason, he felt a little sad.
– H –
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Comment below or find us on Facebook. Copyright notice: © 2026 by Lauren Stinton. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events or sapient plants is purely coincidental.
