Chapter 18 #2
“You already have one.” Elianne ignored the way her son stared at her as if wishing she would burst into flames.
Maybe he’d change his opinion in a moment—or maybe resentment of her abandonment had its roots too deep inside the soil of his heart.
Still, she had to try. “Me. He implied he’d accept me in your stead, and it’s the simplest solution.
No other Blessed would be considered your equal, but—”
“Absolutely not!”
She wanted it to be Nik who objected, enraged that she’d even consider trading her life like that.
Dae’s shout took her completely off guard. And brought frustration bubbling to the surface, as usual. He shot to his feet, and because she wasn’t about to let him tower over her, Elianne did the same. “This isn’t your call, Dae.”
The earth shook beneath them, the rivers of lava storming over rapids that hadn’t been there before. She could feel their roaring, tried to calm them, but as always, his hold was stronger than hers. “It is my call. I am your primal, the head—”
“Oh, please. We made that up two weeks ago to give ourselves a structure the world would understand.” She spat the words as a defense, but the look on his face as he closed the distance between them told her the argument was a stupid one.
Because as true as her statement was, it wasn’t nearly as true as his.
He was their first. He was their leader. He had been swimming the lava pools and shaping the tunnels long before the rest of them had been born, and though he’d poured himself into helping them all grow strong, he was still stronger than the rest of them combined.
Even so, the hand he curled around her arm might have been unyielding, but it was also gentle. “Excuse us,” he growled, gaze latched on Elianne’s. “Family business.”
She tracked the lava busting its way through rock beneath them, but the others clearly couldn’t.
When the ground cracked and split open, Kyrja and Perla both screamed and leapt away from the blast of heat.
Elianne saw Nik push to his feet, but if he intended to intervene—or join them—he was too slow.
Dae pulled her into the flow and closed the mountain again over their heads.
The lava ran hot and fluid, and they ran with it.
Dae’s hand slid from her arm to her back, tucking her tight against him as he hurtled them through a narrow tube.
She didn’t know where they were going, her sense of direction and the mountain getting turned around after a few side-streams he darted down.
Deeper, that was all she knew. Deeper, down, into the heart of Helviti.
When finally he pulled them out of the flow and into a cavern, it wasn’t one she recognized. There were no tunnels or tubes connecting it to anything but the stream, no shelves carved in it for use, nothing to designate it as different from any other random opening.
Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was just one pocket of many that Dae knew because he’d been down here forever.
She pushed to her feet, shook off the glowing globs stuck to her boots, and wrung it from her hair. “You didn’t have to kidnap me.”
Wrong choice of words. The tick of his jaw said the half-jest was not welcome.
He wiped the clinging lava from himself as well and flung it to the cavern floor.
“Isidor kidnapped you—the king whose selfish contract you just volunteered to uphold. All I did was bring you into a room in our house for a private conversation.”
Something about the way he said our house had her easing back a step to better look at him. “Don’t lecture me, Dae. This has nothing to do with you.”
Were it Nik or Eldrid or Logi, she’d have thought his veins were beginning to glow with anger. But Dae never lost control that much unless he wanted to prove a point, so it must just be the reflection of the stream at their side. “No?”
She sighed. “He’s falling in love with her.
” The way Dae’s expression blanked in confusion would have been comical if so much weren’t at stake.
She motioned upward. “Nik. He’s falling in love with Kyrja.
I can’t—I can’t just sit by and watch his heart break while she marries that snake.
Can’t you see that, Dae? He’s my son. There’s not much I can do for him, but this? ”
She spun away from the burn of Dae’s gaze.
“Stefanos is not going to accept just any Blessed. Not when he knows he has the most powerful of them on the hook and that she can’t wriggle free without burning all of Fjordlandi to the ground around her.
And she won’t do that. But we’re something new, and you saw him.
He finds us intriguing, which puts him on the hook.
I can give this to my boy. I can take her place, and they can be together. ”
For a long moment, the only sound was the burble of the boiling flow.
Then Dae’s fingers curled around her shoulders.
“For twenty-six years,” he whispered, lips beside her ear, “I have tried to get you to let go of whatever was holding you to Above. For twenty-six years, you held this secret in your heart. Held him close, both of them. Why, Elianne? Why did you never tell me what you were mourning? What you’d left behind? ”
Her eyes slid shut. “If I’d admitted to having lost them…
then I’d have lost them.” The words probably made no sense, but what about her life did?
“I couldn’t speak the truth Above without endangering them.
How could I speak it Below? The only thing I could do for them was keep the secret, so that’s what I did.
What I would have done until the end of time, had Nik not… not…”
She pressed a knuckle to her lips, willing down the choking sob that threatened every time she remembered seeing him plummet toward the lake.
Every time she realized that if Perla hadn’t intervened, if Kyrja hadn’t pressed her blood into his veins, he would be dead right now.
All his potential burned up along with the rest of him.
Elianne hadn’t saved him. Not all those years ago, and not two weeks ago. Isidor had taken that from her. Because of him, she’d had no part in her son’s story.
But she could now. “This is the only thing I can do for him, Dae. He doesn’t want me teaching him, and I’m terrible at it anyway.
He can barely stand to be in the same tunnel as me.
I know he doesn’t mean to feel as he does, but he does, and if I have the power to fix this and don’t?
It’ll be one more reason for him to resent me without even knowing why. ”
She turned, expecting his hands to fall away. They lifted to allow her movement but then settled again, though a little lower on her arms. “I want him to be happy. Whatever I can do to help with that, I’ll do it.”
Dae pulled her a few inches closer. “And what about your happiness? Does that not matter to you at all?”
“Happiness?” She blinked at him. “Since when have any of us had such a thing since we were Cursed? I’ve lived twenty-six years in Helviti. Twenty in Ellas would be nothing in comparison.”
His hands fell away now, and this time he was the one who winced and moved away, as far as the sloping ceiling would allow. “I see. It’s been that bad for you.”
Why did he make it sound like she was insulting him?
“Of course it has—for all of us. We were slaves, in case you’ve forgotten.
Forced to control the Ring of Flame in exchange for water, food, and clothes.
Never digging our hands into fresh-tilled earth, never breathing cool air, never seeing the flaming stars. How could that be anything but bad?”
He was utterly still, aside from the strands of straw-colored hair that blew gently in the heatwaves. “All these years, and you still haven’t come to terms with what you are.”
“Says the man who refused to believe he wasn’t the daemon Axel called him.” She spun toward the lava and considered leaping in, letting it carry her to the others. But maybe it was time they settle this between them. “Helviti is not who I am. It isn’t who any of us are.”
“Isn’t it?” He clenched his fist, and the volcano rumbled.
“Maybe not. The same way the sea is not King Seidon. The way the wind is not Queen Arden. The way the snows are not Valkyrja. But it is a part of us, and we of it. Or at least…” He turned, veins definitely aglow.
“Of me. But you have your choice. I’ll not stop you from making it. ”
She growled, knotting her fingers in her hair and tugging, as if that could release the tension inside. “Why are you doing this? Making it feel like if I choose something else, something for the good of our entire kingdom, that I’m rejecting the family you’ve built?”
“Because you are.” He slashed a hand through the air.
“Don’t you hear yourself? The family I have built.
What about you? You have been a part of this family longer than you were the one you had Above.
You were married to Tristan for three years—you’ve been here nearly thirty.
But you would abandon us at the first opportunity, especially when it benefits them. ”
“He’s my son! Can’t you understand that? Yes, you’ve welcomed me as a brother would—”
“I never wanted to be your brother, Elianne.”
At first, they sliced like an insult, those words. Dug into the wounds that she had never let heal, the gaps where she’d kept herself apart from them. Never letting them in, never giving herself over to the magic that would have made her more of what Isidor wanted, less of who she’d been.
Then he took a step closer, and she realized what he meant when his gaze dropped to her mouth.
When his hands found her arms again. His voice came so quiet, so low that she felt it as a vibration more than she heard it.
“Choose him, if that is what you must do. Nikanor. Stefanos. The memory of Tristan. It is your choice to make. But I would have you know what you’re rejecting. Not just Helviti.”
“Dae.” Her heart twisted, so tight she felt the pang all through her body. He’d never…not once. All these years and not once had he treated her like anything but an annoying, disappointing little sister. Now he looked at her as though she were the spring of water after those days with none.
She leaned closer, even knowing she shouldn’t.
His feelings couldn’t change the facts—and the fact was that she could make a real difference for everyone if she took Kyrja’s place in the betrothal.
And she didn’t love Dae, not like that. He was her primal, yes.
Her teacher. The one she knew she could depend on, no matter what.
But she wouldn’t even have called him a friend, not in the way Tristan had once been, that Ember and even Logi and Eldrid were. Because he’d always been that step removed, gruff and stern.
Could it really have been because he was fighting this?
One of his arms came around her. The other hand cradled her jaw. And yes, heat raced. His, hers, the heady excitement of realizing that she was wanted, and it wasn’t for her blood or what she could do for him. It was for her. Her breath went ragged even before his mouth came down on hers.
She kissed him back, kissed him hard, ran a hand up the taut muscles of his neck, onto the shaved side of his head, into his hair. She pressed close and then closer still, coming up on her toes for a better angle.
Time had never meant much down here. Perhaps it had snapped back into alignment recently, but now it spiraled free again, and she went with it. For a second, an hour, an eternity, she was free. No obligations. No thought to salvation or condemnation. Just being. Being…loved? Is that what this was?
She broke away, stared at him. He couldn’t love her. Dae, for all his steadiness and loyalty didn’t love anyone, did he?
He stared right back. Sighed. Rested his forehead on hers.
It was her answer. She just didn’t know how to translate it. And couldn’t let it change her mind.