22. Somebody Might Die, But Everybody Gets Hurt
LUCIAN
Corenths are creatures without a single soul—herds from tens to thousands share one. Every orphia apart from the Lucents were born from such a creature. Among the stories, there’s a similarity: the individual corenths no longer wanted to feel the pain of the collective, so they morphed themselves together to create one. Apart from the Armanthine. Each herd of dragons was forced into one body when they became too large of a threat to our universe. Zola was said to have done it as an act of mercy, but this historians personal idea is that she simply couldn’t perform an act of mass genocide against a breed of corenths because of her beloved balance.
— HISTORY AND CORENTHS BY JJ ARIST (UNPUBLISHED)
Idid it and now the only question left is: Was it worth it? I’ve alienated her entirely.
Yet I know what the weapon can do. I’m a step closer to using it for myself. And, when it comes time to go to the void, I know with certainty that Desdemona will aid me, if for no other reason than her mother.
It was not the wrong thing to do, and a part of me cannot find a reason to think that it wasn’t the right thing.
Still, I try not to think of the disdain in Desdemona’s eyes. “It’s as we thought. Desdemona’s consciousness can make it through my projection, but not her body. Try to do it again before she knows what she’s doing, and she’d likely die.” As I finish, all I can think of is the disdain in Desdemona’s eyes.
I can’t get her out of my mind—and not for the right reasons. It’s not the questions that surround her that occupy me, it’s only her.
I spin the little silver wolf in my pocket. I have to let it go. The answers, the truth, the promise of revenge, it’s all I have. All I can ever have.
“Don’t look so sad,” Cynthia muses.
I sigh, change the subject. “They made the weapon to destroy the void. As to my understanding, they weren’t able to make it work.”
“Perhaps you should meet Freyr again,” Cynthia says with a small shrug.
“Azaire almost didn’t get out last time,” I remind her. “He set us up.”
“He set you up… yet you’ve found more than you’d initially hoped for.” Her head tips to the side while she offers me a lopsided little smile.
“You don’t think he was lying?”
“What good would it do him to protect the people who have imprisoned him in a facility?”
A vision begins to prick at the edges of my mind. A blurry mess of green, brown, and red. I stand up in an instant. This isn’t something small like the next move of an opponent. It’s the kind of vision that is the reason Lusia forced me to learn to paint as a child.
I leave her office without another word.
* * *
My head falls, and I try another time to see the vision. It’s right there—it’s been right there—and yet I’ve been in this room all night standing in front of the empty canvas and unable to conjure the image. My eyes hang heavy, and when I allow myself the sweet relief of closing them, I see her. The fire in place of her hair, the red where her eyes should be brown.
This is a pointless endeavor, because she’s all I can see. With that, I leave behind the art room and whatever the future may hold. Today, it can wait. The first and most important thing is the consumption of the vesi that sits under my bed. I rip off its cap and take my first, sweet drink for my last day of phony freedom.
Azaire comes to my door, saying, “Your face looks better.”
By better, he means entirely healed.
“You should see the other guy.”
“You looked worse.”
“Thanks.”
I take another sip of alcohol.
“Are you sure you want to drink beforehand?” Azaire probes.
Lowering the bottle from my lips, I take a deep breath and say, “The subtle poisoning of the vicma is the only silver lining today.”
“And are you ready? For today?”
Before I can answer, I am taken out of the room and into the future. All there is to see is red. It’s the same vision, I can feel that. Then it’s a girl, whose face I can’t make out. She’s laying in the mastick under the sun.
“Ready as I can ever be,” I say and pull the white, shining shirt and Royal blue vest from my closet.
I stain the shirts red with my soaked hands. I look in the mirror, and the shirt I haven’t put on yet is stained with blood.
This is pressing. Perhaps personal. Sometimes, the more emotionally demanding a vision is, the harder it can be to channel it. I button my bloody shirt until the blood is no longer there.
“Luc?” Azaire says. “What was it?” He is always understanding. Too understanding. When I don’t answer, he asks, “Do you want me to come with you?”
Yes, I do want Azaire to come, though I would never put him through that. The threats and stares from the Folk. Forcing him to feel like he doesn’t belong—even more than he already does.
“No,” I say, “I can handle it.”
I wrap and tie the dark-blue cloak around my neck. The inside has the figure of Sulva embroidered with no less than natural silvers. Even I can admire the delicacy it took to produce this cloak by hand—though, when I do, the blood is back. That’s when I see her again, the girl laying in the mastick. I can’t make out her face, though I can make out the slash across her stomach that runs deep enough to expose her ribcage.
Immediately, I run. My cloak constricts around my neck, but I can’t imagine what Lusia and Labyrinth would do if I were to show up without it, so I ignore the subtle feeling of choking and pick up my pace.
I don’t know where to go from here. I’m at the river and I’m squeezing my eyes shut, begging Sulva for another glimpse of this vision. I get nothing.
Could it be Desdemona? Is that why I kept seeing her while trying to see the vision?
Then I hear a scream.
I fear I know who it belongs to.
I take off running in the direction of it. It isn’t long before I see the back of a girl’s head, her black hair braided and wrapped up. She is holding a girl in her lap. I don’t want to recognize the dark hair, the ripped skin around her nails.
Lilac.
I drop down to her and gently take her body from Aralia’s lap. She’s sobbing, and my sister is out cold. I do not hesitate before I am running back to the school.
Never did I think that Lilac would meet her death at the hands of a corenth. No, all my anxieties, all my fears always pictured Lusia to be the culprit.
I see myself at nine years old swearing to Sulva that I would do everything in my power to protect Lilac, after the first time Lusia threatened her on my behalf. It’s all I can think about as I run through the hallways of the school while my sister’s blood falls to the floor.
To protect someone at all costs is a sacrifice, and it has not come cheap thus far.
What was Lilac doing in the mastick? She was supposed to be getting ready. How long had she been there bleeding out? If only I could’ve seen that accursed vision sooner.
The healers rush an unconscious Lilac into a room and rub wargners balm into her gashes and put ground euryice in her nose. They prick her finger and let three drops of blood fall on a round crystal plate.
There are only a handful of healers in the school at any given time, for the injuries most of us acquire in training. They’re trained to save people. I repeat that to myself as three Eunoia stand over Lilac with green energy wisping from their fingers and open palms into my sister.
They are trained to save people.
I sit with my sister’s unconscious body until I have no more time to spare. I make a weak attempt at scrubbing the blood from the clothes, then I portal to Lorucille.
“You’re late” is the first thing I hear when I step into Lorucille’s foramen room—where all portal travel takes you when entering important places such as a kingdom. It’s Piphany, the advisor to Lusia and Labyrinth.
I’d like to say that a forced betrothal is not the kind of thing I’d like to be on time for. I look at her and say, “My inadequacy.”
“What is on your attire?” she asks, though it comes out as more of a demand.
“Blood,” I say with no effort to diminish my scowl.
Piphany takes a deep breath, and it sounds like she is stifling a scream. “We will have to get a seamstress to fit you a new suit.”
“There will be no need.” I begin to walk forward.
“Excuse me?” she asks in a tone that should not be used toward royalty. But she is Lusia’s pet.
“I will not be changing,” I say.
Piphany laughs. It’s a loud and deranged sort of noise. Then she asks, “Where is Lilac?” I can hear she is on her last string.
“She will not be attending,” I say.
“And why is that?” she almost squeaks.
“None of your damn business.”
We make it to the back staircase of the throne room, and she all but pushes me while telling me to, “Get in there.”
Calista and Kai are waiting before the main stairs that will lead into their throne room. Neither bother to look at me. Calista wears a pastel-purple dress with wings made of mesh sewn into the back, showing her skin. Kai’s in a deep-purple coat that goes down to his knees with the same wings sewn into the back in an iridescent white. It’s odd the way they still pay homage to their creators—the ones who made them into killers and only cared about control.
If Lilac wasn’t unconscious in the infirmary, she would be wearing her pastel-blue dress with crescent moons embroidered in silver around her torso.
I step up to Calista, and she links her arm around mine without so much as glancing at me.
“Where is Lilac?” she whispers.
“Lilac isn’t coming.”
Calista looks at me, and a small noise comes from her mouth as King Easton’s voice fills our box. She looks away quickly.
“Welcome,” his voice booms through the room above and the one below. “We are gathered here today to watch and honor the union between the future King and Queen of Lorucille and Soma as they make their vows of promise.”
That’s our cue. We begin to make our way up the sprawling staircase, made of unfinished wood—much more elegant than the staircase I entered the back of the room from.
Their throne room is different from Soma’s. There isn’t nearly as much light—the walls are made of gray stone, not bright marble, and accentuated with dark wood. There are windows, but not the ceiling-to-floor ones that cover wide expanses of wall, only a few arched windows near the back.
We make it to the top of the staircase, enclosed between two larger-than-life statues of the faeries that created them and no longer exist. The dark wood carvings are covered in iridescent glass.
Before us are two long tables filled with the most notable members of the kingdoms of Soma and Lorucille on either side of the aisle. The second we step out I hear the gasps and murmurs, no doubt from the blood that stains my shirt. I keep my eyes directly ahead of me, looking at King Easton, though not making eye contact.
Lusia and Labyrinth are not here. This should be no surprise. They can control our lives but could never be bothered to show up to the disasters they orchestrate. I pray for a miracle—like a corenth breaking past the kingdom’s protective barriers and upending this entire mess.
Then I turn to Calista and clasp her hands in mine as I announce, “I, Lucian Aibek, agree to take Calista Contarini as my wife and future Queen of Lorucille on the day of our shared coronation. I will love her as I love myself, I will protect her as I protect myself, and our powers will become one, and the same, in the name of Sulva.”
Calista looks like she is going to cry. She clears her throat, “I, Calista Contarini, agree to take Lucian Aibek as my husband and future King of Lorucille. I will love him as I love myself, protect him as I protect myself, and our powers will become one, and the same, in the name of Zola.”
Kai arises from the staircase, alone, and the room yet again subtly gasps. “Lilac isn’t with us,” he announces. The audience sounds even more horrified than when I stepped out covered in blood.
For the first time, I look into the eyes of the king. “Very well, we shall begin the feast.” His voice doesn’t sound nearly as angered as he appears.
I make my way to the right side of the room, to the table full of Lucents, and sit next to Lilac’s empty seat. They feast on traditional Lorucillian foods—breads with and without seeds, jams made of every fruit the world has to offer, steaks from their cattle, and even some of the organs, all to be washed down with an array of wines. I don’t touch a thing.
I am too consumed by Lilac’s absence to consume their foods.
Halfway through the ceremony, Calista and Queen Melody both leave the room, one after the other, and I find myself believing there may be a silver lining apart from alcohol after all. Perhaps Melody found out Calista was snooping with her weapons. Following them could lead to answers.
“If you’ll excuse me,” I announce to the table, setting my cloth down and exiting the throne room.
I follow behind them until they enter the foramen room, to which I sneak into once they are out of sight. I make it to the back where the mirror lies and watch as Calista steps into the infirmary of Visnatus. This is not at all what I expected to find. I run to the nearest reflective surface and open my own portal.
If she is doing anything that pertains to Lilac, I will be there.
Calista walks into room twelve—Lilac’s room—as I arrive. I watch her through the small crack in the door. Calista plugs her nose and cups a hand tightly around her mouth while silent tears fall from her eyes and her silver makeup stains her cheeks.
“Oh, Lilac,” she whispers and picks up my sister’s limp hand to hold under her chin. “You have to know I’m sorry. I’ll always be sorry.”
I enter the room immediately, believing her words to be a threat. Then Calista pries open Lilac’s eyes and her own glow yellow.
She is going through her memories.
I find that I am eager to not only find out what happened to Lilac, but to also uncover what the queen has put her heir up to. It takes much longer than I expect for Calista to drop Lilac’s hand and close her forcefully pried-open eyes.
Her hands are shaking, and her jaw is chattering when she sees me.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
Calista looks between me and my sister’s body, unable to settle on either. “What are you up to, Calista?” Her breathing picks up, heavy and uneven.
“My mother told me to find out what happened,” her voice shakes. “I didn’t know it was Lilac, I swear.”
How is it possible that Melody already knows what’s happened?
“Why does your mother want to know anything?” I ask.
“She wanted to know who was nearby when it happened.”
Against my will, I think of Desdemona. The vision of her and the moonaro, then watching it run from her while she lied to me, over and over. I saw her in my visions when I was supposed to see Lilac. It’s not enough to convince me she has anything to do with this. Nothing would be enough. She couldn’t possibly.
Could she?
“What did you see?” I ask, and Calista shakes her head. “What did you see, Calista?” I can hear the tension in my voice.
Calista bites the inside of her cheek and her rounded face squishes together. She even winces. Whatever she saw caused her physical pain too. It makes sense, the more emotionally connected you are to someone, the more it will hurt to use any form of mental magic against them.
“She ran when she saw the corenth, but she tripped,” Calista says reluctantly. “When it was close, she grabbed onto the creature and then… I don’t know how to explain it. It just felt gross. Lilac almost fainted, and when she let go it slashed her stomach.” She wipes a tear from under her eye before it can fall. The emotion is gone from her voice when she says, “She watched herself bleed out before losing consciousness.”
All I can see is Lilac, alone in the mastick, bleeding out and believing she is going to die. I think about the power she must’ve realized she had in that moment and how that might’ve made her think of herself.
That day, weeks ago, when Lilac came to me and told me she had a vision—that it felt like what I explained Lusia does to others… I should’ve known. I should’ve put it together.
It makes sense. Stealing another’s life force is a rare power, no wonder it is hereditary.
I pull myself together enough to ask, “What attacked her?”
Calista’s bottom lip quivers and she turns away from me, cupping her mouth again and plugging her nose. Silent sobs rack her body before she finally turns to me and whispers, “A moonaro.”