21. The Things That Break Are Never Fixed
LUCIAN
Physical strength can and will be reduced to nothing without the strength of the mind. Mental strength is what you will rely on in the end.
– THE RECORDED ACCOUNT OF KING LABYRINTH
They made a weapon that can destroy a universe.
Sickening, and exactly what Cynthia and I need.
What does it do now? They were on design number twenty-seven four years ago, and are still working on it from what I saw. It’s not what it once was.
How have they powered it?
Or have they not?
The entire image of Desdemona and her mother flickers out of my mind and I am left staring at the lunar lake. Perhaps Desdemona pulled herself out of the projection, because she’s not tethered to me anymore. I can’t feel her in my mind.
I dive in the water.
The last time I swam down this lake for her, I was interested in her mother and not her well-being. Now, I am far more concerned about the latter.
So, why did I let her do something I knew was dangerous?
Why did I let Azaire?
Are answers and revenge worth their lives? Because that is precisely what I’m risking.
She wasn’t strong enough yet.
I begin to worry, to spiral.
When I cannot find her body, a nagging tears through me, telling me to swim deeper, more like an instinct than anything.
I have to find her. I promised her she wouldn’t die.
It’s not the fear of failing to reach the void that panics me in this moment. It is the fear of losing her.
And yet, I went into this knowing I would.
Keep swimming,I demand myself. Faster.
I do, further and faster down until I have my arm wrapped around her waist and am swimming back to the surface. I pull Desdemona out, lay her on the grass, and check for her vital signs. She’s not breathing. No pulse either.
Losing my wit in this moment will do her no good.
As gently as I can manage, I tip her chin back and bring my mouth to hers. Then I blow air into her lungs before pumping her stomach.
Desdemona coughs and spits out the water, which then turns to foam as it suds up at the sides of her mouth.
Her eyes do not open.
“Marquees?” I say, trying to call her back to her body. But that’s probably not her name, is it? Dalin was never her father.
“Desdemona?” I try to say rationally but I end up screaming.
I close my eyes and reach for her subconscious. I do not find it. Have I killed her? Lost her in between time and space the way people get lost between portals?
Have I not only killed her, but sent her into oblivion?
Have I forsaken her to certain doom?
I thought I could handle this, yet I find my heart beating faster, my arms shaking, my body growing cold and rigid. My magic is withering between the mental and emotional strain. I am panicking. She is dying, and I am panicking.
What little use that will do for her.
I grab her wrist and feel for her pulse. Her body is still hot enough to set kindling on fire. I close my eyes again and visualize her as best I can. The wide angles of her face and the thirty-three freckles that dot her cheeks. It’s oddly frightening how easy it is for me to create a mental image of the girl. Even in my mind, she is beautiful in a way that is perplexing.
Beautiful in a way that is haunting.
There she is, still next to her mom, her body phasing in and out of something between a solid and semi-solid. As though she is turning to water.
I don’t know how to step through the way she has, how to tether myself to my projection as she’s done. I attempt to call her name, and she does not do so much as glance away from her mother.
She wasn’t strong enough yet.
If I were to even manage to step through—which I have no idea how she’s done and how I’d replicate it—then our fates would be the same. She had an advantage, being able to ground her physical body to our realm through me. I don’t have that luxury, though neither does she at the moment.
There is only one thing left to do—I have to enter her subconscious. Despite being in a purely immaterial realm, I feel the effort physically as I walk through an entirely dark void of nothingness.
I find myself in a maze. It’s a forest, much uglier than the mastick, meaning it must be the septic. Which means Lusia was right. I wonder not for the first time, how did she know Desdemona was septic yet not know her name?
But I have a much more daunting task to focus on. The forest is on fire. This is how her subconscious has chosen to protect itself—which means her subconscious knows how difficult it is to make it through a forest that is on fire. I, myself, do not. I’m used to snow and ice, the wind and the bitter cold.
Even though my body is not in this realm, I feel the beads of sweat forming below my shirt.
Seeing as I cannot wield shadows here, I have to rely on my instincts. I run to the left, through the small path that has not been set ablaze yet.
From here I climb, not a great move, and yet the only one I can think of, the only way to find a path through the maze. The forest goes on forever, in every direction. There are no mountains, no bodies of water, nothing else but a patch of black in the middle. It is my only option.
The fire is closing in on the tree, and I have no choice but to jump. Running on my newly sprained ankle is certainly a nuisance, and in the midst of this pain, there is only little relief to be found in the fact that my real body lies perfectly preserved on Visnatus.
I turn to my left and quickly to my right, only for my path to be blocked by fire. The fire comes dangerously close to my shoulders as I make it back to my starting point.
I trip, falling to the floor, the leaves beneath me hot enough to burn.
I get to my feet to see that I tripped over a body.
I run. Turning left and right and left again. I find a building, though building is a generous way to describe it. It’s more of a dilapidated hut.
And it certainly wasn’t here when I looked down from the tree.
Perhaps Desdemona is trying to help me reach her. I open the door, and I find a small child with long, orange hair and a woman. A younger and less haggard looking Isa.
“What happened to my eyes?” Desdemona’s little voice is as short as she is.
Isa visibly recoils. “What, sweetie?”
“My eyes.” She taps at the bone below her eye twice.
The woman opens her mouth as though she’s going to talk, and a heavy sigh comes out. “Shit,” she mumbles and grabs the pendant at her chest.
“Wait,” Desdemona beckons, and her head turns to the side. “Every time you do that, something funny happens.”
“Do what, sweetie?”
Desdemona taps her chest twice.
“Gods damnit!” Isa shouts and tugs at her hair. This time it’s Desdemona who recoils. Isa takes the necklace off and stares at it, shaking her head. “Fucking Willow.”
“Mommy?”
Willow.
Isa puts the pendent in Desdemona’s hand and says, “Close your eyes and just… feel.”
Little Desdemona’s hands glow orange. Then she looks at me, and in a voice more akin to the one she carries now, the little girl goes, “Get out of my head!”
I stumble out of the hut. There is only one path that is not covered in flames, and I take it. My shirt catches fire as I run and it burns its way through to my skin. I rip it off as I turn and finally get a brief vision.
If I keep going straight, there will be a fork to my right that leads to the patch of nothing. This is what I do.
The forest has gone from view when I step into the darkness.
Everything has gone from view. This is absolute nothingness; dark, empty, lonely, except for Desdemona. She sits in the middle. Her hair looks more akin to fire—the only beacon of light. Her legs are tucked up against her chest, and her forehead rests on her knees.
I would never be able to pick up this picture with a brush.
Everything here feels like her. The very air sets fire to my skin, sparking every nerve and sending shivers down my arms and spine. As if rising the hairs on parts of my body I never knew existed. As if she’s coaxing the very power within me with her own.
I could never depict this essence that I’m finally able to define as her.
I sink to my knees in front of her. As if I’m worshiping a deity at their altar. “Desdemona?” I whisper like a prayer. She looks up at me, her chest rising up and down fast. Her hair certainly isn’t hair. It rises around her, wisping in every direction. Her eyes aren’t brown either as I’ve grown to know, they are the picture of flames.
“Can you see me?” I ask, all while I wonder which is worse—my lies or hers. Has she lied to me even with her eyes? Every time she looked at me and I knew she felt what I felt, was that merely a deception? Alas, she nods, and I say, “I can get you out of this, all you have to do is allow me.”
Desdemona shakes her head. “I don’t think I want to leave.”
“I see,” I say, sitting next to her.
She watches me sit, and I can’t take my eyes off of her. In a different way than usual. Her hair, her eyes, glow in this darkness while her face lifts into a humorless laugh. “Right,” she says mockingly.
“Why don’t you want to leave?” I ask in the silence.
“Well, I have nothing in here and nothing out there. Only one of those options sounds somewhat peaceful.”
“You have me,” I say, staring at her even while she won’t meet my eye.
“Do I?” she says to the darkness beyond her. I don’t answer. Her lips press together while she nods. “Didn’t think so.”
We’re both taken into the silence. I don’t know where her mind is, but mine is on her. What happens when Lusia tries, again, to get to her? When I discover how to use this weapon, originally made by her mother? Or when I know what she was doing with the moonaro? How she burned me internally? Why she’s able to semi-step into a projection of the void?
This would never work. A king-to-be and a girl from the septic. She burned me. She must have been lying about knowing the extent of her powers the entire time. Yet today, when she could’ve used them to fight me, she went for a knife and ran. When the Soman soldier was trying to take her, she stabbed him.
Then she cried in my arms, begging to be believed. Had horrifying dreams the entire night.
I don’t want to think about all the ways she might be good. I’d prefer to focus on her lies. Put her back in her original place as a means to an end. Yet her lies don’t seem all that tantalizing. I do. I betrayed her.
Revenge really is stronger than matters of the heart. Or perhaps it is a matter of the heart.
“Come back with me.” I reach my hand to hers. “Please?”
She rips hers away and finally looks at me. “So you’re pleading now?”
Yes, I am, and I am not ready to see the depths in which I will take said pleading for her.
Desdemona’s eyes are wide, on fire with what I can only read to be anger. “You’ve lied to me about my mom this whole time.” Her head shakes so subtly I almost wouldn’t have noticed it if I wasn’t watching her so acutely. “Did you see her?” Desdemona’s voice cracks, and her burning eyes grow glassy. “They’re torturing her, and there’s no way for me to actually get there.”
She’s right, the signs of torture were clear. Why not just kill her? The Arcanes have never been known to play with their victims. They’re deliverers of death, nothing more.
“What if I could find a way to bring us there?”
Her eyes light up, metaphorically, since they couldn’t get any brighter. “To the void?” The corners of her lips rise ever so slightly.
This is what we will become to one another. Partners in crime, if she’ll still have me. Surely, she now has a reason to want her own vengeance.
A smile splays across my lips.
“Yes.”
I look at her. Or she looks at me. Her eyes are wide. Her eyes are fire. “You can get to the void?” she asks eagerly.
“Working on it,” I say with one nod of my head. “If you stay here, you’ll never get there.”
Her nose twitches at me, and she raises an eyebrow. “Dirty work, Prince.”
I smirk. “It’s what I’m best at.”
Desdemona scoffs. “Lucian?” she says, and despite her tone, despite everything, I decide I never want to hear her stop saying my name. Then she shakes her head. “Just get us out.”
The light of the sun is blinding when I pull Desdemona and myself through to the land of the living. I’m surprised when I look at her and see her open her eyes. I wasn’t so sure she’d come with me.
Tears are caught in her eyelashes and brushing over her flushed cheeks. In her subconscious she looked like a god, and here, she looks like Desdemona. The girl whose face I’ve committed to memory with no wonder of it lost.
She wipes her eyes before glancing at me, a frown overcasting her features. Then she gets up and walks away, saying nothing.
“Wait,” I find myself saying.
Desdemona whips back in my direction. “How could you not tell me?”
There is no use in lying now. “Because I needed to make sure you were powerful enough first.”
She steps closer, both her fists clenched tight. “And am I?” she seems to be trying to ask it tauntingly, but it comes across morose. “Am I powerful enough for you?”
“No,” I tell her, almost sadly. “No, I need you to be able to get through.”
“So do I, Prince,” she says, turning her back on me. “So do I.”
As I step, I notice that my ankle feels twisted, and when Desdemona is entirely out of view, I lift my shirt. Right at my side, just above my hip, is a long patch of swollen skin. Pink and blistering.