C aduan and I spent a long, long time in bed. I had never realized how wonderful sleep could be when it was not plagued by unwelcome
dreams, and instead was cradled by a warm embrace. I woke to Caduan kissing me, not with hungry kisses but small, tender ones. I took him into my body again, this time with him on top of me, moving slower, so I could appreciate all these different sensations. I wanted to touch him more, feel more of his bare skin against mine, but when I tried to undress him, he pinned me down and kissed me hard enough to make me forget that mission.
Afterwards, Caduan left to the washroom and I, now alone, rolled out of bed. My whole body was soft and languid, suffused with a new awareness.
Was this how living beings felt all the time? With this much pleasure built into their form? I was almost offended that I had missed out on it for so long. I spent months hating my body and the life it locked me into, when I could have been eating honey and listening to music and riding crests of carnal bliss.
Caduan’s chamber was grand and beautiful, like everything in Ela’Dar’s palace. Glass decorated with swirls of bronze stood floor-to-ceiling on one side of the room, with a large, sliding door that now sat partially open, leading to the balcony. I rose, not bothering to cover myself, and went outside.
It was raining. Within seconds, I was soaked, but the water was warm and pleasant.
I leaned against the railing and looked out to the mountains below. The city of Ela’Dar spread out before me, glistening in the silver rain and the
misty embrace of the clouds. It seemed like a lifetime ago that Caduan had brought me here to show me this view, when I had first awoken in this new body.
I had thought I could never appreciate the beauty of it. But I did now. “What are you doing?”
I turned to see Caduan walking out onto the balcony, seemingly undeterred by the rain, which quickly plastered his dark skirt to his skin and hair to his forehead in auburn swirls.
“I was thinking of the House of Obsidian,” I said. “I used to feel so small when I stood before the Pales, and all the stories carved into their surface. I never thought I could feel that way again. But…”
I turned and looked again out over Ela’Dar.
“There are stories written across Ela’Dar’s landscape, too,” Caduan said. He sat in one of the chairs and observed the view. “In a different way.”
“How?”
“The topography of Ela’Dar is always changing. Every time I look at it, something is different. Sometimes it’s the landscape itself. That ravine, for example, opened three hundred years ago, after an earthquake—it revealed some of the most useful scientific breakthroughs I’ve ever had. But most of it is in the lives of the people themselves. Families move and evolve, greeting new members or mourning those who have departed. Businesses open or shutter. People paint their walls or change their homes. All of those things are visible from up here. As much as I disagreed with your father, I had always appreciated that about your people. That stories, even those of everyday people, were held in such high regard.”
I looked down at the single mark on my wrist. Once I’d had tattoos covering my body that told my story. Now such a tale was far too complicated to tell in a line of symbols. It spanned hearts and minds and ages and the boundary of death itself.
“What about yours?” I asked. “Where is your story?”
“My hope is that the parts that matter are written into Ela’Dar itself.
What else matters?”
I stared at him, stunned that he would even say such a thing. Ela’Dar was magnificent, but this landscape said nothing of the way Caduan’s eyes looked when he was deep in thought.
“You do not feel that way,” I said. “What way?”
“That nothing else matters but Ela’Dar.”
His face, still, had been tilted out to the horizon, but now his eyes slipped to me. I could not decipher the emotion that shadowed them as he rose and approached me.
“Some things, perhaps,” he said, his voice rising slightly over the intensifying sound of the rain.
I was going to ask him what he meant, but then he kissed me hard enough that it didn’t matter anymore, anyway.
 |
MEAJQA, quite literally, interrupted our days of strange, suspended peace.
Caduan and I barely left his chambers, though he often disappeared for short stretches of time to deal with some business or another. The hours passed in either deep planning, thoughtful conversation, or, of course, physical pleasure. A strange balance of activity by some standards, perhaps, and yet it seemed oddly fitting for these times. I understood now what Meajqa had said the night of the Feast of Occassus. When the line between life and death was thinnest, everything felt more… intense.
“Caduan, there is— oh.”
We were on the balcony when Meajqa arrived, Caduan lost in research and me looking out over Ela’Dar. I was naked—I realized it was very comfortable, and Caduan certainly did not seem to mind it, though he always remained clothed himself.
At the sound of the new voice, I whirled around to see Meajqa hastily turning his back, leaning against the frame of the open balcony door.
I crossed my arms over my naked body.
“Consider knocking, Meajqa,” Caduan muttered, putting aside his parchments.
“I did knock. I see why there was no answer now, but I did not expect to find everyone frolicking naked.”
Caduan retrieved a robe for me, which I wrapped around myself before we returned inside. “It is safe,” I said, and Meajqa turned around again. He glanced between me and Caduan with a strange expression on his face.
“So this is why both of you have been so mysteriously absent.”
“I have still attended every meeting, Meajqa,” Caduan said. “It is wartime. I have work to do.”
He spoke very sternly, and yet, did I imagine that he seemed, perhaps, a bit pleased with the way Meajqa was looking at us? Like he wanted Meajqa to know what had changed between us. When Caduan crossed behind me and brushed his hand across my back, in full view of Meajqa, my suspicion became certainty.
I liked this.
Meajqa cleared his throat.
“Well?” Caduan asked. “What was so important?”
“Two things. First, interesting rumors that our spies have heard whispered in the south. Some say that Maxantarius Farlione and Tisaanah Vytezic are currently traveling to Ara, with the intention of taking advantage of our… guest’s absence.”
My ears perked.
Caduan’s brow twitched. “Hm. And second?”
“As long as we’re speaking of attempted coups,” Meajqa said, coolly, “I am pleased to report that we now have Ezra in custody. It was so very difficult to find him, stumbling around Ela’Dar’s streets like a drunkard, trying to meet with all of our highest-ranking generals.”
“Ezra?” I asked. The name sounded familiar.
“A madman who used to be a king, a very long time ago,” Meajqa replied. “Somehow, he seems to think that means he has a right to Ela’Dar’s throne, which is ridiculous for all the obvious reasons and more.”
A wince flitted across Caduan’s face. “You have him now?” “Yes. Luia can have him taken away, or—”
“No,” Caduan said, firmly. “I want to speak with him.”
|
THE MAN WAS NOT KEPT as a prisoner. This was not a dungeon, just one of the many sitting rooms in the castle. He sat at a small table in the center of the room.
“Ezra,” Caduan said, and the man looked up. Recognition speared through me.
I’d met this man once… long ago. The memories were fuzzy and half- formed. I had reclaimed so much of my former self, and yet so many individual experiences still lingered just out of reach.
Caduan turned to the servant who had followed us in, took a glass of water and a plate of bread from them, and then dismissed them. He joined Ezra at the table, sliding the food across to him.
Ezra pushed the plate away. “I suppose you will execute me.”
“I will do no such thing.” Caduan gave him a steady stare—the kind that methodically pulled its subject apart, as if he wanted to examine all the pieces that made someone whir to life. “You have been busy.”
Ezra was silent.
“It’s not poisoned, I promise you.”
“We hear that you have been working on raising an army,” Meajqa said. “Poorly.”
Ezra’s gaze flicked up to Meajqa. “You strongly resemble your father.” Meajqa’s face hardened at the mere mention.
“You must have something to say,” Caduan said.
“I have nothing to say to those who helped my kingdom fall.” Luia let out a short laugh, but Caduan remained utterly serious.
“I almost died the night Niraja fell,” he said. “I never supported what happened to your kingdom.”
“But you support an even greater slaughter.” “I support a world that is safe for our people.”
“For your people. Would my wife have been safe in the world you are trying to build?” Ezra’s face crumbled as he shook his head. “No. No, he was right. No, she would not. She would not.”
He was right.
Meajqa and Caduan exchanged a pointed glance. “He?” Caduan questioned.
But Ezra seemed as if he hadn’t even heard him. He sagged over the table as if all his energy had left him at once. “I cannot do this. I can’t. I cannot be a king. What was I thinking?”
Luia scoffed in disgust, but I felt a knot of pity in my chest.
“This wasn’t your idea,” Caduan said. A statement, not a question. Ezra just kept mumbling, “I can’t do this, I can’t, I… I…”
Caduan remained there, but every question after that was met with only Ezra’s mumbled, nonsensical responses. Eventually, Caduan sighed and
rose.
“Take him to the prisons,” he told the guards. “Don’t harm him.”
The guards obeyed, ushering Ezra from the room while Caduan joined the rest of us.
“What was he thinking?” Luia muttered. “Trying to mount an insurrection? He could barely string a sentence together.”
“It wasn’t his idea,” Meajqa said, coldly. He looked out the window to the clear blue sky. “Someone has been putting this thought in his head. Whoever could it possibly be?”
Luia swore. “That traitorous bastard.”
“I’m almost disappointed by what a horrible idea it was,” Meajqa said. “Though, not that much. It could have been catastrophic if Ezra had been even a touch more coherent.” He cast Caduan a dark glance. “We need to address it. Forcefully.”
A wrinkle of thought deepened between Caduan’s brows. “The Aran queen. Have we gotten anything from her?”
Luia sneered. “No. She will not talk. No matter what we do to her.” “Try once more. If you get nothing from her by tonight, kill her. She is
too dangerous to keep alive.”
Luia inclined her chin, but said nothing, an awkward silence falling over her and Meajqa. They shot each other a glance, then looked back to Caduan.
Luia seemed to choose her words very carefully as she asked, “And who should execute this order?”
I watched Meajqa, who was failing to fully control his expression. I could practically feel his bloodlust.
Caduan’s eyes slipped to Meajqa. “You wish to do it.”
“I deserve to,” Meajqa replied, quietly but too quickly, like he had been holding himself back from saying it before. “I— I need to.”
Caduan was silent. I wondered if perhaps Meajqa’s words from before were echoing in his head as they echoed in mine:
Why is it unacceptable to feed my vengeance some human bitch’s fingers, but yours can devour an entire race?
I thought of Ishqa’s face, and how I would feel if he was the one locked up in that cell. I knew what it was to have a hole in yourself that could only be filled with the blood of the one that hurt you. Perhaps Caduan did, too.
“Fine,” Caduan said, at last. “Do it.”
A vicious smile spread across Meajqa’s mouth. “As you wish, my King.”
“Be careful with her, Meajqa. Do not underestimate her. And Luia, take care of Ezra. Keep him somewhere comfortable. His life has been difficult enough, and he is harmless.”
“Where are you going?” Luia asked, as Caduan moved to the door. “I’m going to wait for an old friend.”
|
CADUAN DID NOT COME BACK. Meajqa poured himself a glass of wine, clearly overwhelmed with anticipation for the moment he would at last get his final revenge. I was happy for him. Perhaps this would bring him the peace he so clearly needed.
“If you wish to say a final goodbye to your old friend,” he said, casually, “perhaps you should do so now.”
He gave me a knowing look out of the corner of his eye. He and I, after all, always understood each other.
Nura looked even more pitiful than she had when I last saw her. Bruises bloomed like flowers over her skin, severe enough to be visible even beneath her burn scars. They marred her shoulders, her arms, the entire left side of her face. She was listless, barely able to hold her head up. Her hand with the missing fingers had been bandaged and treated, if only because Caduan had wanted to make sure she did not die before he was ready for her to do so.
I crouched down before her, and finally, she stirred from her half- conscious state. She jerked her chin up, as if scraping together the last scraps of her strength for a single glare. I saw through that act.
“It is strange to see you this way,” I said, “when for so long you were so much more than that to me. It makes me think of how so much is different now.”
“How long will your king keep me here like this?”
I smiled. “Not much longer. Unless you give him what he wants.” “He wants to destroy my country. I won’t let him have that.”
“You act as if it isn’t deserved.”
A sharp, bitter laugh. “Deserved. You want to start throwing those stones, Reshaye?”
“My name is not—”
“You’re the same. I watched your king order the doors locked in the Zorokov estate and slaughter those people.”
“Slavers. They did not deserve to live, even by human standards.” “What about the Farliones? Did they deserve to live?” She lurched
forward, yanking against her restraints. “You killed the only people that ever mattered to me. Children. What had they done? If you had wanted to kill us, the ones who had sinned, fine. I can understand that. But you— what you did—”
The memory rocked through me—the sheer, overwhelming scale of my hurt when Maxantarius had pushed me away in the wake of the greatest gift I’d ever given him. I had been so, so angry, and I had wanted him to have nothing but me, so that finally, for once, someone would see me, and I—
No. No, not I. Not me.
“That was not me,” I said.
“It was you,” Nura snarled. “It is still you.”
I launched myself at her, my hand coming to her throat, and I had to hold myself back from killing her. “It was not me. When I was Reshaye, I was not even a person anymore, because you, because humans like you, took everything from me over centuries of torture. Your human mind cannot possibly even understand it. It was not me.”
For a split second, there was pure, satisfying fear in her eyes. But then a smile rolled over her lips, and she laughed.
“You believe that, don’t you?” The smile soured like rotting fruit. “I have spent nearly a year trying to lead a country that your king is trying to destroy. I’ve lost count of how many little bodies I’ve pulled out of the wreckage after another attack, and another, and another. If I’m lucky, they’re already dead. If I’m not, they’re mortally wounded and screaming. On the worst days, I get to see one of those shadow creatures of his rip them apart alive while they cry for their mothers. So no, do not tell me that you’re the good ones, Reshaye.”
“Look at what you have done to the Fey you kidnapped. No creature that deserves life could do such things. Even your own people hate you. Maxantarius and Tisaanah are going to Ara to take your throne from you,
did you know that? Your own sickened country is ready to be rid of you. And we are ready to be rid of you, too.”
My fingernails dug into her pale flesh. Shock, then hurt, then anger twitched across her face, and I drank up each split-second of emotion with sadistic glee. It felt almost as good as her throat did beneath my grasp.
I realized that Nura had changed since I had last seen the inside of her mind. Then, she had erected so many steel walls to keep such feelings far, far from the surface. But something had eroded those walls over these last months. I was so close to her that I could see every muscle in her expression and how they all warred with each other to fight her emotions back—but all of it was still there, lingering just beyond her restraint, ready to explode.
Perhaps she had driven herself mad in her desperate pursuit of power, like her predecessor before her.
Good. She should know what it was for her mind to escape her own control.
My fingers tightened.
She struggled to remain conscious, her left eyelid twitching ever so slightly as she glared at me—like it took all of her will to hold that silver- edged stare.
She had no remorse for what she had done. She was a broken creature who weaponized her shattered edges and used them to draw blood over blood over blood. Caduan was right. He had always been right.
But… she was not mine to kill. Meajqa needed that more than I.
I released her. She slumped against the back of her chair, wheezing in a hollow gasp.
“Only one thing will stop this,” I muttered as I straightened. “Until your kind is gone, it will always continue.”
I turned away, but behind me, Nura spat, “You shouldn’t even exist. I felt it the moment you walked into the room. I feel it even now, pulsing from somewhere in this wretched city. Whatever magic your precious king used to create you, it is just as dark as mine. He and I are the same. The only difference is that he succeeded in creating what I haven’t been able to.”
I stopped.
She lies. She always lies.
I did not give her the satisfaction of seeing my reaction. I gritted my teeth and opened the door—just as she let out an ugly laugh, high and manic, like her final shards of control at last collapsed.
“I know what you are. I took you into my mind, too. You’re nothing but rage and pain. When this war is over, you’ll find another thing to burn. It’s all you know how to do.”
