Chapter 22 #3
We crossed through the waterfall once more and I felt the crash of power striking against me as it forced truth to cling to my lips again.
We climbed back up onto the rock shelf on the other side of the water and I observed the bodies of the thieves I’d brought with us uneasily.
Jadar was laying across the path just before the waterfall, his hands still clutching the jewels he’d taken from the trees moments before the curse on them had killed him.
“Why the hell were you hiding in a place like this anyway?” I asked Kyra as she paused to make two large stones look like the bodies of Cassius and myself.
Not that they bore much resemblance to us with their skin turned inside out and blood staining the ground all around them, but the clothes looked right and there was the correct number of bodies here now.
“The Prophet who cursed me decided to put me here so that no one would ever find me again. He made it so that any time my coin was lost, it would return to this place to await discovery once again. Usually, the coin passed from master to master due to murder or theft, but on occasion it would simply be lost and would reappear here. A long time ago, Fae used to know of my coin and the power housed in it. They would seek out the cavern and claim the coin for their own. At least they did back then,” she murmured, trailing off without explaining why the knowledge of her coin had been lost or how long it had been since she had been summoned from it last.
“Cursed you?” Cassius asked, latching on to that fact. “So, you weren’t always like this?”
“No... I was Fae once,” she sighed. “At least I think I was.”
I arched a brow at that in surprise. I mean sure, she had a lot of Fae like features, but she was also a living embodiment of pure magic.
I could feel it crackling in the air ever since the moment she had first appeared, could see it in the colour of her skin and hair and in the swirling darkness of her eyes, so it was hard to imagine she’d once been just a normal girl.
I had to wonder if any part of the Fae she had once been even remained now.
“Why were you cursed?” I asked, eyeing the rock she’d glamoured to look like me with distaste. I wasn’t nearly attractive enough in death.
“Because I killed an emperor,” she said with a shrug before turning away from us and heading through the waterfall once more. It seemed to part around her body and her feet walked over the surface of the water as if it were solid.
Cassius’s face dropped at her words and he caught my arm before we could follow.
“Maybe this is a bad idea,” he breathed urgently. “What if she wants to make killing emperors a habit? We can’t risk bringing her into the palace if she’s holding some ancient grudge against the royal line.”
I folded my arms as I thought about it. “You didn’t even recognise the name of the emperor she asked you about before, so it seems like her grudge must be far outdated to me.
Why would she harbour any ill will towards a man she’s never met?
Besides, she doesn’t exactly strike me as the assassin type. ”
“She seems entirely unhinged to me,” Cassius countered. “And we don’t know her true nature. Everything she has said to us so far could be a lie.”
“You can’t lie in here, Cass,” I said dismissively.
“We can’t, but what if that creature can?” he hissed, and I frowned. “At the very least, we should keep our guard up. We don’t know how volatile she could be. She seems confused and not entirely sane, how do we know we are safe in her presence?”
“Alright, you make a good point,” I conceded because the girl was clearly at least a few kurus short of a gold bar.
“But I don’t think she has any power at all without my say so,” I replied, tilting my arm and feeling for the chain which I could sense beneath my skin, though my fingers brushed against nothing but flesh as I hunted for it.
“She can’t even stay out of that coin unless I allow it.
So if she does anything we don’t like, I’ll simply send her back in. Problem solved.”
Cassius didn’t seem totally convinced, deep lines forming on his brow, so I slapped him on the arm bracingly.
“Relaaaax. You look like I just unleashed a plague of death on the world,” I laughed.
“What if you did?” he growled and I shook my head at him. Poor, sad little Cassius with his pointless valour and noble causes, trying to save the world while it crumbled around him.
“Then we’ll deal with it. I’ve gotten myself out of plenty of tight situations, mate. It always works out. Don’t worry about building yourself a shelter until the sky is actually falling, that’s my motto.”
“That’s a terribly foolish way to live your life,” he scoffed.
“And yet here I am, breathing air in and out of my lungs just the same as you are, but with a lot less stress about me. You’re like one of those fancy, fizzy wines from Shamba that’s been all shaken up in its bottle, the bubbles inside trying to explode their way past the cork, but me?
I’m a crisp, smooth whiskey in a glass, chilling with a couple of ice cubes on a fine summer’s day. ”
Cassius gave me a flat look at my colourful description, so I guessed he didn’t appreciate it, but he did that restraint thing where he straightened his shoulders and held back the animal in him instead of snapping at me.
Perhaps my guard companion wasn’t as empty inside as I’d first thought, because the more I saw that beasty peeking out at me, the more I wanted to rattle the urn it was housed within to see if I could break it free.
It was probably too late for that though.
He was too far gone, forged into a royal pawn who didn’t even have wants for himself anymore.
He'd seen my shiny new coin’s power and the first thing he’d thought of was saving his precious kingdom from it.
Sad that. He could have tried harder to get his hands on it, challenged me to a proper bloody fight and maybe he could have walked away with it too, then gone and wished for a nice new sun hat or something.
Cassius was still thinking, and he finally came to his long-drawn conclusion. Unlike me who made decisions on a whim, this man was cautious in fucking everything. It must have been so boring being him.
“Alright. I just hope we aren’t making a terrible mistake,” he said at last.
“Only one way to find out.” I slapped him on the cheek then turned and strode away after my little goddess.
This might have been one seriously strange turn of events, but I wasn’t a fool.
So if that girl wanted to be my Blessing, then I was gonna be all in with that, because the sound of all of my dreams coming true was pretty fucking beautiful, and I was starting to really like the idea of becoming a damn emperor.