40. In Your Choices Lie Your Fate
LUCIAN
Desdemona’s hand is in mine as we sink deeper into the water. I begin to swim, but I’m carrying most of our weight.
Something is wrong, I can feel it. Instinctively, I turn to Desdemona, seeing that her dress is tangling around her legs. She’s trying to reach for her thigh and failing.
I let go of her hand and swim beneath her, my head at her knees, my arms holding her waist. She meets my gaze and nods, answering my question by tapping her left thigh.
My hands rise up under her dress, grazing her soft skin. But now is not the time to grow overwhelmed by the feeling of her. Locating the blade, I unsheathe it.
Barely a blade. It’s a letter opener.
Desdemona lets out a muffled cry, and I look behind her.
The guards and soldiers have caught up.
Carefully and quickly, I cut up the side of her dress as best I can with the paper cutter. But it’s a measly thing. In the end, I grip her dress with both my hands and tear.
She kicks her feet. Grabbing her hand again, we swim.
The timing is important. Desdemona is running out of breath, and if I open a portal and can’t get us both through before the guards follow, then it’s all for naught.
I’m jerked back, stopped. Desdemona tugs on my hand and I let go, swimming behind her and stabbing the guard who grabbed her in the heart.
He lets go to reach for the wound in his chest, but a soldier grabs my hand that wields the blade. Another guard grabs my legs.
“Desdemona!” I try to shout. It is a barely audible cry.
She’s being restrained as well. A guard has both her hands, and another swims behind.
Her face is blanched. My lungs are on fire. If I don’t get air soon, my body will force me to choke down this water.
I’ll die.
Desdemona will die.
As if we did not have enough problems, something else approaches. Something large with a ball of light on its head.
The soldier pulls me, and I can only assume the guards are pulling Desdemona. I try to fight, but alas, my energy is dwindling.
That’s when I see it in its entirety. A corenth the size of the fatta scorpion, but with fins instead of claws. Teeth of blades instead of a stinger.
The thing comes right for me, its jaw unhinging, preparing to bite my head off. I close my eyes and prepare for the end.
In the darkness behind my eyelids, I see red. A moment later, when I don’t die, I open them.
The bottom half of a severed body floats by and down. The corenth swims away. Desdemona looks at me with wide eyes.
She saw it all.
It protected us.
Questions aside, I open our portal and we land in a snowy landscape, miles away from the kingdom. Desdemona shivers and I shuffle out of my all-too-thin dress coat. She eyes it like it’s a weapon and offers me the faintest of nods. I place it over her shoulders. The moment my hands are off her, she shrugs her arms into the coat—that hangs past her knees—and wraps them around herself in a hug.
The cold begins to bite through the thin fabric of my shirt, and Desdemona asks, “Do we have a plan?”
“Yes,” I answer. “We will be sleeping somewhere warm.”
“And after the night?”
“We will find food.” I don’t tell her that I have to go back to Visnatus for Lilac—not yet. It’s not safe for her to join me. Not that it is safe for me to go when I’m the power source of their weapon. I’m their key to destruction. That’s the reason they brought me to that room. Tried to shove that liquid down my throat. Why Labyrinth told me I was only a contingency. I’m sure of it.
Before I let that happen, I’ll make sure Desdemona is safe.
I believe I was right about her being involved with Elysia’s greatest evil. What I was wrong about was her awareness of it.
Her jaw clatters as she asks, “How exactly are we going to find somewhere warm when it’s snowing?”
“I know a place.”
Desdemona stops, so I do too—which we really shouldn’t do, considering anyone from the kingdom could be following us. “My eyes,” she whispers.
This is the first good look I’m getting of her. The real her, eyes and all. Is it depraved of me to think that she is the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen? When she is so evidently the very creature that murdered my parents.
If that’s the case, there’s this incessant knocking in my head, repeating that while she came into my life as a puzzle, she’s now a piece of me. Because there are very few things that I can control—in fact, I can count them all on one hand.
My feelings for Desdemona Marquees are not one of those things.
Arcane or not. Evil or good. She could burn the universe down, burn me inside out, and I’m sure this feeling would not falter.
I want to sink to my knees before her and pray to her for her forgiveness. I want her to serve me my retribution.
I want her to look at me the way I’ve been trying not to look at her.
“It will be dark,” I say. Coward. “Keep your head down.” It will be dark enough. It has to be.
“Keep my head down?” she whispers in disbelief. “Wish I’d thought of that before.”
I scoff a laugh. “Yes, as do I. Would have saved me the trouble.”
For one second her face looks soft, unguarded. She pulls it together fast, which seems to be instinct because the daggers her eyes are shooting at me don’t seem to have her whole heart in them the way they usually do. Her mouth opens, then her eyes dart away from me and she sighs.
“Where are we?” Her hand rests on her chest vacantly.
“We’re in Soma’s septic.”
Desdemona’s face practically lights up. “Then why don’t we go to Lorucille?” She whispers, eyes wide and on me. Condensation from her breath fills the air.
“Let’s only worry about immediate needs for now. We can convene tomorrow?”
She kicks at the snow like it’s a rock. “We?” I can’t tell if the word is spoken in anticipation or animosity.
“I can’t very well leave you alone to track a world you’ve never been to.”
“No.” She smiles, and I think the action is one she meant to keep to herself. “You can’t.” Her eyebrows fold over her eyes and she stands a little taller, saying, “Just till I find my way home.”
“Until you find your way home.”
To my surprise, she frowns at that. “Right, okay. We should go.”
She makes it three steps before falling into a tree well. I reach out in time, catching her by her upper arm and pulling her out.
Desdemona turns into me and stops abruptly. She scans my face, looking for something, eyes jutting up and down and up and down.
“Thanks,” she whispers and pulls away.
Time passes in silence before I say, “Tree well.” She takes a step back.
“Thanks again.”
We continue trucking along, as do my thoughts.
I could tell her. I could come out and say it: My apologies. But it wouldn’t be enough. Sulva knows it wouldn’t be enough.
“What’s your favorite food?” I ask when I can no longer bear my milling mind.
“What?” She gives me an incredulous look.
“Your favorite food,” I say again.
Her eyebrows knit together. “Anything I get to eat,” she says slowly, contemplatively.
“Favorite color?”
She says, in the same way, “Anything I get to see.”
“Interesting.”
“Endlessly,” she says sarcastically.
“If you could see any color and eat any food, which would you choose?”
Desdemona looks over her shoulder and smiles at me. It’s a face I haven’t seen in far too long and one I want to remember for the rest of my life.
But that’s far from fair, and I’m far from deserving of it.
“I have one answer for your two questions,” she says, trudging through the snow. “An orange.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Because they’re made to share. My mom used to tell me that.” Her smile falters and before I can ask more, she says, “What about you? Your favorites?”
“Cheesecake with red berries. No favorite color.”
“I wouldn’t have taken you as a sweet tooth.”
“No?” I say. “And what about you?”
“Savory all the way. But we never got many sweet things back home.”
I want to know what it is that has her wanting to go back to a place that she doesn’t seem rather fond of.
“What do you get back home?”
“You know what an austec is?”
A scruffy, nearly inedible little corenth. That’s what she’s survived on? Barley eats better than that.
“I do.”
“Hunted those,” she says.
“Oh,” I say slowly, for efforts of teasing. “You’re a hunter. That makes sense.”
How much about her am I yet to know?
“Why’s that, Prince?” she says with a mock laugh.
I look at her while she looks at the snow ahead, which is for the best—wouldn’t want her falling into another tree well. “You’re strong,” I whisper. “Stubborn,” I mutter with a shrug. “And you have astonishing aim.”
Desdemona stops, turning to me and lifting a finger to the ear she had nicked before, when we were far from where we are now. At first, she seems solemn, then she smiles and says, “You better start wearing armor. I might aim for your heart next.”
The crimson of her eyes gleams like the blood that stains coffins. “Had you not already?”
Desdemona lifts her chin but her gaze doesn’t move. I swear, for but one second, she blushes. “You’ll know when I do.”
The setting sun begins to peak through the snowy trees, turning the whole white world purple. As much as I love staring at her, I say, “Look up.”
“Wow,” she exhales. “This is something.”
“Yes.” I look at her, looking at the world. “It is.”
If it’s wrong to long for the same creature that killed my parents then I will be wrong.
I will await my damnation.
But even in damnation, I would never grow used to the perplexity of her beauty.
We trudge through the snow a bit past sundown. I’ve helped Desdemona out of a few more than a few tree wells she stumbled into by the time I see the lights of Barley’s. Townhomes pile around with snow covering their roofs. Not much farther to go.
The closer we get, Desdemona says, “This is your septic?”
“Yes,” I answer. “Why?”
“We don’t have anything like this back home.” I glance at her, and my face must be uninviting because she gives me one look, and then her eyes are back in front of her. “I mean, it’s nothing compared to Visnatus, but when I think septic I don’t think… infrastructure.”
It dawns on me that I have no idea what she’s lived through in her life. What’s made her the girl standing across from me.
I’d like to know her thoroughly.
The red and orange lights from Barley’s shine on her face like fire, and she trucks along toward them.
“Come on,” she says.
“Keep your head down,” I whisper.
“I know,” she says as if it was the most dimwitted response to “come on” I could’ve mustered.
We make our way to the building. “I’m Andrew and you’re Catarina.”
“Cool,” she sighs.
I shove the door open and can barely hear the bells that used to be familiar over the crowd of drinkers out tonight. Glancing at Desdemona, I see her head is down. Perhaps it was a dimwitted response.
“No shit!” Barley shouts from behind his bar as we approach. “Long time!” He pulls me into a hug and pats my back roughly. I return the gesture. “Where’s Elijah?”
Azaire.
I have hopes that my few redeeming actions would make him proud—while doing my best to ignore any thoughts pertaining to what he would think of the guards I’ve killed.
“He’s busy with the family business.” In our imaginary worlds we came up with at eight, his family is alive. I twist to Desemona for no good reason, and she looks up at me with her chin tilted down.
She knows. It’s written in every crevice of her face.
“That’s too bad.” Barley walks behind his bar. “Sit, sit! Vena on the house!” Vena—the septic’s fake vesi. A shot glass appears in front of both Desdemona and me. We take them down like we haven’t been through anguish today.
“Thank you, sir,” I say with an exhale. “This is Catarina.”
Desdemona looks up for a split second. “Hi,” she whispers with a smile.
“Good to meetcha, Catarina. Sure Andrew told you, but I’m Barley.” He holds out his hand to shake hers. Then he’s looking at me again. “So, you gonna tell me why you two are in such get-ups?”
I lean in closer to him. “Truthfully, we’ve had a difficult day. By any chance is that room?—”
“You in trouble?”
“—still free?”
“No trouble, sir,” Desdemona says before I register the question.
“No trouble at all,” I second. “Just far from home and a bit too tired to make it back.”
“If there is trouble, you can tell me.” Barley leans down behind the bar and resurfaces with a key. “The room’s always open for you, bud.” The key slides across the table to me. “The missus is in our room, she’ll get you two something more comfortable.” He flashes a crooked-toothed smile. “Free of charge for my finest young friend.”
“I offer you the highest form of gratitude for the upgrade in title,” I say a bit sarcastically and Barley chuckles. I smile back, pocketing the key and walking to the hidden stairwell with Desdemona.
It’s exactly as I remember it. Every inch of this room is an assault on my memories. The truths shared with Azaire when the snow would coat the window on the days we escaped from our lives.
I sit on the bed, facing away from the window into a wooden wall.
I surrender.
How I’d love to follow in that path. Is it an option for me?
Consequences be damned is what I said, and it was never what I meant. There weren’t supposed to be consequences. There wasn’t supposed to be a world without him.
He’s not next to me, but he is in this room with me. He’s leaning against the wall, under the window, telling me more about what lies under his beanie. He’s under the bedspread shivering, and I’m looking up from the floor when he tells me what happened to his parents.
He’s understanding me when I tell him of Lilac and the things Lusia has done to me since my father’s death.
We’re in this room, together, alone, on every one of my real birthdays that I was never allowed to celebrate.
He’s everywhere and he’s nowhere, and for the life of me, I can’t under-stand it. It’s not like my parents—I hardly remember them. Perhaps, I didn’t understand it then either. Because he was here all but a moment ago.
So, where did he go?
If there’s a soul and fatta venom kills that, I don’t understand where that leaves him. In the snow?
In this room?
I won’t believe him to simply be gone.
“Aibek?” Desdemona’s voice is soft. The polar opposite of how I’ve ever heard my last name slip from her lips.
I stand up abruptly. “I’m going to go get something more comfortable.”