37. You Can Never Go Home Again
LUCIAN
Despite the belief that the Nepenthe are a barbaric and corrupt species, the DOA (Department of Archives) has found evidence to support that they and the Armanthine were the first civilizations to construct a monetary system and trading route.
— WARNING: FORBIDDEN TEXT
It shouldn’t come as a surprise when I’m called to Soma. The moment that I step upon the throne room threshold, a dagger of shadows comes for my throat. I twist my wrist, stopping it, and the shadow evanesce, rejoining the rest cast onto the floor.
“In times as these, wit is of the highest value,” Labyrinth says. “Good on you for seeing it.”
I nod, the collar of my formal attire cutting into my neck.
“Two things,” Lusia says. “Lilac will be returning to the academy.”
“And the corenths?” My voice is tight, as is my jaw.
“The situation has been taken care of.” She waves me off.
“You didn’t send soldiers,” I say. Is this why they are allowing the Collianth Ball to take its course? Because they believe the threat to be passed?
“Fighting was not a necessity in this case.”
“How was the situation taken care of?”
“Worry not of things that don’t concern you, darling.” A hand made of shadows caresses my cheeks and almost freezes my face in the process. “How is your darling Desdemona doing?”
My body goes quickly rigid. I did not disclose her name.
“Superb,” I reply blankly. An interesting time to ask such a question. I am not sure where I have landed on what I believe about her. I wasn’t sure before the moonaro supposedly protected me, and I’m less sure now.
My confusion does not mean she has been absolved.
“How did you know she was from the septic before you knew her name?” I ask.
“Tongues travel faster than thought.”
Shall I forever be caught in a game of tug and pull between my heart and her wishes?
“The second thing?”
“Ah yes, darling. You will be speaking to an audience about the corenths. You shall see Lilac after.”
“Alright,” I say.
“Piphany will get you ready.” Lusia shoos me out of the room, and I find Piphany waiting for me when I exit. She walks fast ahead of me, and when I sit in front of the vanity mirror, she looks at my reflection from behind me.
“Not sleeping?” she says in a high-pitched voice devoid of compassion.
“Let’s do this without chatter, shall we?”
Piphany smiles. The kind that doesn’t meet her eyes. I’ve spoken in front of a live and public audience before, to Lucents and Folk with their pens and papers and idle lust of gossip. I’m familiar with the pampering as she wipes damp brushes under my eyes.
A few minutes later, the entire room is full of Lucents, measuring me or makeup-ing me. “We all offer you our sincerest apologies,” Piphany says and plucks again at my eyebrows, nodding in an entirely unsympathetic way.
“How does it feel?” I ask slowly.
“Hm?” she mumbles, her focus taken by my eyebrows.
“To be the head advisor to the queen and king of Soma, yet still be responsible for plucking my eyebrows?” I glance down at her as she stiffens. “Pity.”
Piphany scoffs lightly. “Did Queen Lusia and King Labyrinth give you your briefing on what it is you are to do?”
“No.”
She pushes my eyes closed and brushes powder on my eyelids. “I’ll grant you an idea. You shall be pandering to the rich and noble orphia who matter to our kingdom.”
And Azaire wasn’t one of them. She doesn’t have to say it, not when it’s lined between her words and filling the gaps in her teeth. Not when I know exactly what our public speeches entail. She is right, it is entirely pandering. Pandering to exactly the types Piphany’s described. Those who, without our system, would collapse. The middleman between us and the septics.
“Yes, Piphany,” I say with my eyes closed gently shut. “I’m well aware of what my title entails.” She ought to be nicer to me, I think. Who will she become when Lilac is queen?
“Pity,” she whispers my word back to me slowly.
I take the silence for what it becomes—bliss. The moments before disaster strikes. For I am not naive enough at this point to think that there wasn’t a reason Lusia told me I’d see Lilac after this meeting. A subtle threat, yet still one, nonetheless. I try not to ponder on the question: what will she be asking me to do?
A little under an hour later, the crew clears out and I am in another extravagant suit. This one is bright and iridescent like the Stone of Light, an obvious display of power and rebirth. My first clue that this meeting will be holding importance to the kingdom. It seems, from Piphany’s talk, that while the news of Azaire hasn’t spread through the school, it has spread through the kingdom.
I slide the merai blade he last held down the sheath at my back.
His room is a blank slate. His existence wiped clean, as though his blood could ever be wiped from my eyes.
The world will never look the same again.
The view from his room is more familiar than my own. My hiding spot in my own house. The only piece of him left in the space.
The snow falls thunderously outside, landing over the Great Sea that borders the kingdom, coating the glaciers. Is his soul truly gone? Obliterated by the venom of the fatta? Or is he only part of the universe now? Atoms that once formed his body now creating the snow that falls from the sky? My eyes chill from being so near the glass, and my tear freezes against my cheek as the words take on a new meaning.
“May we meet again,” I finally say my farewells.
Perhaps I’ll see you in the snow.
I trudge myself to the courtyard before the audience arrives. A translucent tarp has been tugged over the skyline, blocking the snow for the neighboring orphia who don’t know how to handle the burning cold.
It’s only Lusia, Labyrinth, Piphany, and the guards in the space surrounded by glass paneling and white marble exterior walls. The floor we stand upon is made of white and blue stone, mocking the pattern of the Great Sea and its glaciers, while Piphany sets up the reqreium—a device that projects what it sees through its partners. Something only the wealthy and noble acquire.
“You look dashing,” Lusia says.
Labyrinth stands tall, holding his staff straight. “You have an hour to prepare. You’re the face of our conquest, act the part.”
Lusia hands me a scroll, and I skim my eyes through the material before asking any further questions.
The conquering of the corenths. My defeating a single fatta has been ramped up to me defeating them all. Are the corenths gone at all, or is this all a facade so they can still have their ball?
My eyes snag a quarter of the way through the paper. Azaire’s name in blasphemy. They want me to say that he forced me to the battlegrounds to fight.
Because a prince can only be a prince, not a soldier. Entering battle is bad press—no one wants their king on the front lines, not unless they want their king dead. A king is a show of strength, and who is stronger than those who control an army? Certainly not someone who fights in an army. Not to the Lucents.
I scan further. The entire page is anti-Nepenthe rhetoric. For how is a creature so thirsty for blood any different than the corenths who attack for fun?
This is what I’m supposed to say. This is why I’m not to see Lilac until after I’ve completed their mission—to have something they can hold over my head.
“How much of this is public?” I ask.
“Everything,” Labyrinth says, clutching his staff. “The people only need to see their savior now.”
“The corenths attacks on the other worlds have ceased?”
“After you killed the fatta, they all seemed to retreat.” Labyrinth’s face is straight as can be. They don’t know that I spent my time in the mastick, still fighting off these creatures. They have most certainly not retreated. Though they wouldn’t kill me either.
“Fair to hear,” I say. “I’ll stay to the tunnels until we begin.” They both nod, and I walk to the tunnel south of the entrance.
I killed him and now am expected to slander his name. Yet, what choice do I have? What choice have I ever had?
I read through the scroll—the script—three times, memorizing every lie until they are easy on my tongue, all while hoping that it will twist. I have to do this for Lilac’s safety and no longer for Azaire’s. Because I killed him.
Sometimes my visions show me how someone will swing and I’ll miss the knife in my back. My own thoughts evaded me when I said let the consequences be damned. I never meant it—I didn’t think there would be consequences. I certainly would’ve never said it if I knew it was Azaire who would face them.
He should’ve been the one to live, not me.
One day I will show the worlds what he is.Yet here I am, about to not only go back on that promise, but to smash it to smithereens.
If choices create our fate, at what point does compliance define me?
The crowd shuffles in, and I watch them from the tunnel. The faint light of the reqreium tells me it’s on. It’s not only the hundred orphia in this room who are going to hear this, there are thousands across the worldly borders listening in.
Lusia and Labyrinth take the front of the room together, but I am lost on the audience. My heart is beating with the threat of coming out of my throat.
This is the moment that I lose all honor; every good piece of Azaire that I carry with me will be gone with his soul when I say what I have to.
I take their place, staring into the reqreium at the back of the room, past the orphia with their notebooks and recording devices. It’s propaganda, I’d know it even without our psychology class. I’m promoting the hostility against the Nepenthe—the exact mindset that’s been used as a weapon.
“As we all know, the corenths have risen again, attacking the orphia and destroying our homes,” I begin, as the words on the scroll instructed. “Some have made it so far as to break past the protective barrier of Visnatus, killing Azaire Wendigo.” There’s a subtle sigh among the crowd. Not one of despair. “Your queen and king wanted me to come forward and say a few words about the situation and my heroics. The moment that I knew there was no choice but to stop the fatta before it stopped me.” There’s much conviction in my voice that I do not feel an ounce of. “Azaire took the path I had hoped he wouldn’t. As we all do, I wanted him to rise above,” I stutter, speaking slowly, losing conviction, “his nature.”
I pause, take a deep breath, and feel my hammering, traitorous heart. I look into the audience instead of the faint light behind them.
Don’t let them take more of you than they already have.
“Azaire was not only the best Nepenthe I ever met, he was the best orphia. With a stronger moral compass, probably, than any individual in this room.” I make solid eye contact with many recoiling faces. “It was my idea to fight the fatta, my idea that got him killed, and in the end, do you want to know what he asked me to do?” A shiver runs through my spine. “He asked me to give him peace.
“A Nepenthe, a creature you’ve all deemed to be aggressive murderers who are not much better than the corenths, was dragged into battle by me, and was killed at my hands.” When I hear the scoffs and see the orphia standing up around me, I feel my eyes grow cold. I let the shadows rise in obvious threat, and I say, “For those of you thinking of leaving or disrupting this broadcast, you’re going to want to sit down. This next piece of information will be a story worth your life.” They all sit, and for once I value my name, my status. I’m doing something worthy with it. The words spill from me before someone can stop me. “The respective queens and kings of Lorucille and Soma have been working on a weapon to destroy the lesser planets for the last eighteen years. Boycott, take the kingdoms, their powers.” I try to find Lusia and Labyrinth in the crowd. “They were never going to do anything worthy with it.”
The entire room buzzes, but no one stands up to do a thing. I escape the courtyard through the tunnels before I can be stopped and race the halls, looking for Lilac. I have to get to her before they can do anything to us.
Room after room and floor after floor come up empty, until I find Margaret. “She’s underground, in the dungeons.”
“No,” is the only sound I can manage to make. Then I run down to the place where I was forced to spend much of my youth. Could they have done to her what they did to me? Forcing her to watch or feel the dead? Or are they making her bring about the death?
I find her in the back of the dungeon, sitting on the floor in shackles. When she looks up at me, her eyes are still glowing bright blue. Too bright—almost enough to fill the room with light.
They’ve pushed her too far.
“Lilac.” I run to her. I lodge shadows into the keyholes before they bust and I yank her free.
She hugs me tightly, shaking and saying, “I didn’t want to.”
“It’s alright, you’re safe now,” I whisper. “You’ll never have to be here again.”
“I didn’t want to.” Lilac pulls away from me and looks over my shoulder. I follow her line of sight to the dead prisoners. “They made me,” her voice cracks with tears.
I grab her shoulders and force her eyes back to me. “Then you’re stronger now.” It’s like Azaire is whispering in my ear when I say, “Don’t let them take more of you than they already have.”
Does she know he’s gone?
She sucks on her bottom lip and nods.
“We have to run,” I say. We’re eight stories from the foramen room and three stories below sea level. We only have to make it to a reflective surface. “I promise you, Lilac, you’ll never have to do what they asked of you again.”
“How can you promise me anything?” she croaks. “When you can’t even say it of yourself.”
“It was different for me.” I hold my hand to hers. “Not anymore.” I take off immediately when she puts her hand in mine. We barely make it one story up when six guards block our path.
Lilac trembles.
“Prince Lucian,” a guard says. “Queen Lusia asks of you.”
“Close your eyes,” I whisper for her ears only. “It’s going to be alright.” We’re surrounded by shadows, all of us fair game, so when I begin to choke the guard who spoke, the other begins to choke me.
But I am stronger, proving this fact as I pull his shadows from my throat and wrap them around my chest like armor. I grab my merai blade.
I let go of one guard when he’s lost consciousness, and the other three already have their weapons drawn. I smile, take my hand out of Lilac’s, and shield her while hoping I’ll be able to maintain it. “I’ve never been above death,” I say. “Choose wisely.”
One swings and I duck, slicing open his stomach and raising my blade again to block the next one, who tries to dole out a life-threatening swing. His sword clatters to the floor, and from two steps below, I kick him in the stomach. There’s a whack when his head collides with the cobblestone wall, and blood is left behind when he falls.
I block a swing to my left and one to my right. I tie one guard in shadows and my head is yanked back, shadows pulling on my hair and exposing my throat.
They won’t kill me, I know that, but the sword still comes for my throat at the exact position needed to take my head. That is, until I regain control of my neck. The last two guards are thrown to the wall of the stairwell, falling unconscious with a growing puddle of blood below their heads.
I turn to Lilac, my shadows no longer shielding her and her eyebrows creased together sternly. Her hands are raised, fingers contorted, and shadows wrap her arms like she is a master.
It’s the first time I’ve seen anything like it from my sister.
The man with the sliced-open stomach holds his torso. Perhaps if someone finds them soon enough, he will survive. We run up the steps, stopping when we reach the ground floor. The light of day shocks my system.
I can’t imagine how it must feel for Lilac; how long she’s been down in the dungeon.
Lusia and Labyrinth step in front of us with a multitude of guards. That’s good—that means they think we’re strong enough to take them now.
Lusia flicks her wrist and Lilac straightens up immediately, her head tipping back while she wheezes. Black shadows exit from her mouth in a spiral. I chuck my merai blade at Lusia’s chest like an axe.
It stops midair and clatters to the floor with dissipating shadows. Every guard has a sword raised, and one hovers right over my chest.
I already have my previously fallen blade to Lusia’s throat.
Looking at the guards, I say, “Kill me and your queen dies.”
The sword pierces my skin, ripping into my heart.
Shadows pull from every one of the guards’ eyes and mouths, all coming toward me. The sword at my chest falls with a small amount of blood. But the shadows go into Lilac—not me—when every guard falls. She steps in front of me and says, “No one kills my brother.”
Lusia laughs. “My daughter,” she says in pride. Oh, no. “He is not your brother.” Lilac’s shoulders falter so slightly it’s almost imperceivable. “He’s barely even your cousin with the way his parents treated us.”
I put my hand on Lilac’s shoulder. “What is she talking about?” she whispers for me only.
“That’s it then?” I say, stepping in front of my sister. “She can’t know until you allow it? Or is this for theatrics?” And she plans on wiping Lilac’s memory, again.
Labyrinth is looking at Lusia with a face that says what I’m thinking: don’t.
“Will you protect a boy who’s been lying about being your sibling for your whole life?” she taunts Lilac, who looks at me like she’s contemplating the truth of this claim.
“Yes, it’s true,” I say. “My dad died when I was six.”
“That’s not possible,” Lilac whispers.
“I know,” I whisper.
“Lusia,” Labyrinth warns.
“The truth always comes out,” she says. “So what will it be, Lilac?”
Lilac turns to her mother viciously. “I have the power of your dead guards and every prisoner you held, so we’re going to answer my questions!” she yells louder than I’ve ever heard her before and turns to me. “Lucy?” she says, much more gently than she’d spoken a moment before.
“You’re my sister by heart, cousin by blood.”
She’s looking at Lusia again, and the only choice I have is to believe in hers. “You think I’ll side with you because you’re my mother? When have you ever treated me like your daughter!” she screams, her face scrunching up into the same configuration it always does when she cries. “I choose Lucy. Every. Time.” Her hand shoots back to me, and all I can feel is relief when I grab it.
What will she think of me when I tell her of Azaire?
“What do you know of the weapon?” Labyrinth asks with a hint of, is that fear, in his voice?
“Weapon?” Lilac echoes in question.
I stare at Labyrinth, challenging him. “It’s important, son,” he says, as he always has. As though he ever had any right to that word. I turn from him, a shunning act, and Lilac follows. “It’s not what you think!” he shouts. “You were only a contingency.” He sighs. “I loved my brother.”
Contingency?What is he talking about?
“Yet you did nothing of worthiness when he was killed,” I say without turning. He didn’t only do nothing of worthiness, he did something of disgrace. He banned the speaking of the very creatures that killed my father. He hid the truth and the dangers we’re facing. “As has been said today, Lilac isn’t my sister by blood, and yet I would never do to her what you did to him.”
“You’re projecting your current mind onto your future self,” he says too gently. “It’s hard to know who you will be before it becomes you.”
“Trust me.” For the first time, I look him in the eye. “You’ve taught me well.”
“Let’s go,” Lilac says, tugging on my hand.
“I’ll see you at your weddings, darlings,” Lusia calls softly to us.
* * *
I expect Lilac to berate me, to demand an answer, but she sits across from me on her bed in Visnatus, doing nothing more than stare.
I begin talking, “I was six when?—”
“I don’t want to know,” she cuts me off. “Too much has changed.”
“I’ll always be your brother.”
“There’s no need to say silly things when we both know them to be true,” she says wryly.
Before I can tell her Azaire is dead, I tell her I have something to do and venture out past the academy walls and down into the abandoned dungeon. Surprised to a degree to see Freyr still alive and surely starved. I drop a bag of pence at my feet and toss him bread and water.
There are puddles in his cell from the rain. I can see him drinking from those when I never came down to feed him after Azaire.
He devours what little sustenance I offer, and I unlock his cage. Watching him pull himself to his feet is difficult, and he falls against the wall three times before he can make it to me.
“You’re letting me go?” he asks groggily.
“You’re a free man,” I whisper in answer. Freyr shakes his head, denying my sentiment. “The bag is yours. Twenty thousand pence, enough to start a life far from the septic.”
“My life’s been over for a long time now.” He picks up the bag and notes, “You seem remorseful.”
“Yes, well…”
“You want to make up for it? Help Desdemona. If she’s here, danger is coming, and she’s not ready for it.”
“Please,” I whisper. At first, I want to ask what he knows. Dig deeper and deeper for answers until I can no longer see the moon. The words that come from me are far from my instinct. “How do I help her?”
“Don’t let the Arcanes get to her.”