Chapter 14 #2
I stare at the glass encasing of colored smoke, the world around me slowly ebbing away as I watch the colors float and dance.
As if hypnotized, it becomes all I see. I feel drawn to it.
Then, next thing I know, I am moving toward it, as if being called to enter the smoke.
While rising, images emerge all around me, each calling out for me to come to them.
There are images of King Alastair sitting on his throne.
Images of the entertaining chamber. There are images of Bathara.
Of Sterling and Azalea. Gray, Draven, and Marcella.
I attempt to go to their images, but the light beams morph into a solid wall, not allowing me to escape its bounds as I rise toward the smoke.
Then there are images I can’t make sense of. Of a burning arrow. Of a land on fire. Oddly, I see King Yarum looking at me with awe and something else in his striking eyes. His lips move as he voices something to me, yet no sound enters where I am.
As I slam into a place of smoke and mist, where the light is not bright and up and down make no sense, I am simply left wondering what it is King Yarum was trying to tell me. Why I saw an image of him at all.
My feet touch a water-like ground that is firm yet possesses no real shape. A mixture of fog and smoke sits waiting in the formless void. As I step closer to it, colored light materializes behind the hanging veil.
That voice I once knew yet didn’t know sounds behind a colored cloud of misty smoke. “I’m afraid this is as far as I can go in the Veil. The rest is up to you.”
Feeling like my mind is finally my own again, I glance at where the voice sounds from, then back to the endless expanse of smoke, fog, and mist. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Ask the Veil to show you something and see if it will respond to you. Start with something of the past. It will be more straightforward since it has already come to be, and it will require little interpretation on your part.”
I clench then unclench my hands, staring at the sprawling void before me.
I want to know more about my mother. About her past, who she was before she had me.
Yet I know that is not what is most pressing.
I should try to see what happened four hundred years ago.
The true events surrounding the Great Clamaté War. What happened to Casimir.
The thought comes before I can stop it.
A song hums, filling the space of everywhere and nowhere. The tune is familiar, even if I can’t make out the words. The smoke and mist shift, brightening and glowing with a spectrum of color. It crawls toward my ankles, rising like a tidal wave until it crashes over me, swallowing me whole.
A hand slams down onto the walnut table. “War is here, damnit! It is banging at our door, practically splintering the wood to get in. How much longer are you going to cling to these deluded ideals of yours, Casimir?”
My gaze glides toward the moving figure, whose kind eyes and clasped hands are the portrait of what a prince should be. I glance down and look around, realizing I am nothing but a ghost in this memory of the past, being forced along like a loose, brittle leaf swept on a breeze.
“I recognize your concerns as valid, Magaius. I truly do.” Casimir paces back and forth in a lavish room composed of floor-to-ceiling windows, overlooking the crystal channels flowing through a glittering white city.
Keziah, I realize. My home city. The capital of Rivara Kingdom. It is so similar, yet so different. I’m also able to place the name after considerable thought. Magaius—Casimir’s best friend, according to his journal.
“If you recognize them as valid, then why are you not heeding their warning?” Magaius rubs soothing circles against his temple, dropping his eyes and sighing loudly.
“You cannot play peacemaker for eternity, brother. There are times where brute force is an unavoidable necessity. To incite peace is at times to ignite violence. Unfortunate yes, but a truth of this world nonetheless.”
Casimir halts in the middle of the room, squaring his shoulders to the brown-haired man. “I choose differently,” he says simply, as if it could truly be that easy. “The Restorationists seek a war, but a war I will not give them.”
“One does not merely get to choose when war arrives at their doorstep,” Magaius counters, his words sounding sad and tired.
“I will find a way. There must be a solution that will allow us to avoid conflict. A solution that will allow my men to bed their wives and laugh with their children. And until then, I will continue to work for my people, feeding the hungry and offering aid to the poor.”
“You already house too many peasants and beggars in the estate already.” Magaius rubs his forehead, pinching the bridge of his nose after. “Our staff is overworked and our resources stretched far too thin from the excess numbers. We cannot afford any more mouths to feed or bodies to clothe.”
Casimir cocks his head at Magaius, like he didn’t understand a single word he just said. “I am a Prince, am I not?”
“You are,” Magaius answers through a sigh.
“Then what good is the title if I cannot expend my resources as I please and act as I wish?”
Magaius kicks his brows up in concession, leaning back in his chair and shrugging.
“They are families, Mag. Children that have no say in their present fates. They do not deserve to sleep in lice-infested streets with empty bellies.”
“Not all people can eat like a king; not all kings can feed their people. It is the way of things. The natural order of the world.”
“I will believe in no such order.”
Magaius opens his mouth to speak, but a knock comes at the door, and the wood swings open a second after. A breathtaking woman strides inside, her ethereal beauty complimented by her blue eyes and ash-colored hair. She wears a silver tulle dress that hugs her waist and spills at her feet.
Casimir stiffens and Magaius jumps to his feet, knocking the chair back. In unison, they both incline their heads to her.
“Sitara,” Casimir drawls, his eyes seeming suddenly brighter. “To what do we owe the pleasure of your unexpected company?”
She bounces her gaze between Casimir and Magaius, a wry smirk tugging at her lips.
The scene ebbs aways, and I am pulled immediately into another.
Casimir’s cheeks are speckled with blood, both old and new alike, and he leans over the edge of a river, the bright blue sky reflecting down upon the waters in a peaceful portrait.
He plunges his hands beneath the surface, disturbing the peace, and he scrubs at his skin like it is tainted by some infectious disease.
His eyes are panicked, and he heaves in hiccuped breaths.
There is a sword discarded a few paces behind him, the blade covered in crimson and mud.
When he pulls his trembling hands from the water, he inspects them.
They are spotless, yet he plunges them deep beneath the water once more, the feel of the filth still clinging to him.
He repeats the process again and again. Until finally he falls back, still and silent for long enough to let a bird’s song play. Then, without warning, he leans over onto his hands and knees and vomits.
The vomiting lasts only for a couple of minutes, and once he has swiped the leftover spit from the corner of his mouth with the back of his pruned hand, he threads his fingers into his hair, tugging at the strands as he tucks his knees into his chest.
“Why did it have to come to this…” he whimpers under his breath. “Why.”
I am again pulled out of that moment and thrust into a different one.
Humming fills a modest room while the woman with hair like ash tends to a wounded man sprawled out unconscious on a bed.
Sitara cleans the grime and dried blood from Casimir’s body, only a pair of linen pants covering him. An oozing gash stretches across the length of his muscular chest, and his skin is slicked with sweat. He groans in his sleep, his brows knit together.
Sitara stills, gazing at him with worry and something else in her eyes. A knock on the door startles her, but she quickly resets her features, smoothing out her pained expression and rising from Casimir’s bedside.
“Enter,” she says with all the grace and finality of a true noble.
The door opens, and a woman who shares Sitara’s exact eyes yet possesses hair as black as a raven’s feather enters. “You called for me?”
“Yes,” Sitara says, lifting her chin. Her voice sounds strong, but the slight quiver in it betrays her. “I need a Diviner.”
The woman with raven hair wrinkles her brows. “Why? What are you planning?”
Sitara glances back at Casimir with tender eyes, a fever clearly wrecking his body as puss seeps from his wounds. When she looks back to the woman, her gaze is set with determination, and she opens her mouth to speak—
I am ripped from the memory with so much force, my mind swims in a twirling sea as dizziness overtakes me.
I reach out, trying to grip it between my fingers and return to it, certain I need to see more of what happens next.
I’m not sure why, but I just know that moment is important—feel it deep within my chest. Yet the Veil does not listen to my request, instead dropping me into a different moment entirely.
A jeering crowd throws stones and rotting food at the carriage as it passes through the streets.
Casimir sits across from Magaius, his head dropped into his hands, his shoulders hunched forward. When he lifts it, revealing dark smudges beneath his downturned eyes, he locks his gaze to a worried-looking Magaius.
“I have done everything I can to help them,” he murmurs. There is such defeat in his voice. “I have sheltered them. Fed them. Listened to them. Aided them in every way I feasibly could. Why have they turned on me so easily?”
“Peace demands sacrifice,” Magaius supplies gently, his brown hair falling into his face. “And unfortunately, brother, despite your many contributions, they have made you their offering.”