Chapter Fifteen The Villainess and the God-Child #4
The Emperor caught hold of Rae’s arms, and eased her backwards, down upon a throne of light. It felt like sitting on fire, without being burned.
In the original books, Key had not learned to forge from air and illumination until years after he rose from the abyss. She wondered how much power the God’s Eye in his sword gave him. She wondered how much power the God’s Eye in her necklace might give her.
“I command the storm,” the Emperor told Rae. Lightning underlined each word.
Under a storm-torn sky, he knelt on the stone at her feet. She was enveloped in the scent of smoke and gunpowder.
“And you command me, my lady,” he murmured. “You have lightning on a leash. Is there anything you wish?”
Rae could think of many things. Above all else, she had to keep him safe this time.
“Once you trusted that I could see the future. Try to believe again, so we can make the story true. I saw the prophecy come to pass. I saw the rise from the abyss. I saw the Emperor reign from on high. I saw it all, but I didn’t see clearly.
I couldn’t see the face beneath the mask, I couldn’t tell illusion from reality; I made a terrible mistake.
There’s one thing I’m sure of now. Believe me when I tell you, clear as black and white on a page: I saw a hero. ”
There was no clue in Key’s voice as to what he might feel or think. “And you believed Octavian was that hero?”
“Yes,” Rae admitted. “But now I think it’s you. I want to make sure the story comes right for you.”
Still kneeling before her, the Emperor sighed. “What should I do?”
What was the advice people usually gave heroes? “Think of your people, and don’t forget where you came from.”
Key’s eyebrow slanted at a satanic angle. “The abyss?”
“The Cauldron.”
Key’s eyebrow took on an even more infernal angle. “Some would say that’s worse.”
The ruler coming from humble origins was supposed to be more empathetic to the plight of the common people. Granted, this held up better when “humble origins” was a farm with charming hay bales, like the farms barefoot women with flawless natural make-up lived on in social media.
Key had asked what he should do. Rae must answer.
It was so annoying when characters asked for guidance and didn’t get it, and everything went wrong.
She had to keep her bargain with the goddess and encourage him to be heroic, but she knew her man: he wasn’t humble or patient.
Asking him to have heroic qualities he didn’t possess was impossible.
So Rae thought of the qualities he did have. “Be brave. Be loyal. Be wonderful. Don’t accept defeat. Don’t accept anything.”
“Is that being a hero?” The Emperor sounded highly doubtful. “Perhaps I’ll try it out.”
It wasn’t enthusiastic, but it was agreement. To being a hero. To getting the story back on track. And as Rae anxiously watched his expression for a sign of what might come next, he surprised her again.
Key reached inside the dark, expensive folds of his clothes, and drew out not one of what Rae knew were many hidden knives, but a letter. The letter bore the name Rahela Domitia in dramatic script, and a silly drawing.
He put it in her hands. “It’s for you. It’s from the Cobra.”
“What does it say?”
“I don’t know.” The sky darkened. The Emperor’s voice went cold. “Obviously.”
Rae wondered what the ministers and courtiers would think of a ruler who couldn’t read. She wondered if Key cared what they thought.
She tore the letter open, hungry as teeth for meat.
The Cobra had written,
My very dear demented Rae,
I deeply hope this finds you alive and well, despite being with the Emperor.
I can’t believe you persuaded me I’d changed the story so much that the Emperor wasn’t Key.
How could the Emperor be anyone else? Nobody else has the same killer style.
I assume we both feel silly, and we’re both now dedicated to the possibly hopeless and definitely reckless mission to change the story.
I’m trying to save Caracalla Valerius. I think I know who you’re trying to save.
I’ve sent my spies all over the country searching for Merel the minstrel.
If we can stop the Oracle and Merel from speaking the last prophecy, that should help.
In closing, a small piece of advice. Is everything going wrong for you? Maybe it’s that cursed necklace you’re wearing! Just a thought, but maybe take off that cursed necklace.
Vipers together.
He signed his name, naturally, with a winding flourish reminiscent of a serpent.
Since when did the Cobra call her Rae? He was alive, safe, and talking to her as if they were friends. Rae hid her face in her hands.
The Cobra was thinking of ways to help her. He hadn’t abandoned her when everything went wrong. He was on her team.
“If you want to send him a letter in return, give it to one of my dead.”
Her gorgeous gown had no pockets, so Rae stored the letter in her bosom for safe-keeping.
“I will. The Cobra is well. He sends you his best wishes, and he says, maybe you should get rid of the God’s Eye. Possibly you could throw it in the abyss? Just a suggestion.”
She was a villain so she was fine, obviously, but Rae knew the Cobra was right about the danger.
“I’ll consider it,” said the Emperor.
He didn’t sound as if he meant that.
As the hero, Key shouldn’t be carrying around evil jewellery. But he wouldn’t listen to someone like her.
“Thank you for giving me the letter,” Rae told him sincerely. “And thank you for reminding me. We should get back to your reading and writing lessons.”
Slightly less cold, the Emperor asked: “When?”
“Now, if I had a book or a pen.” Rae spread her empty hands wide. “Failing that—”
The Emperor took her hand, the thumb-claw resting like a sharp secret in the centre of her palm, and lifted it. For a knee-weakening moment she thought he would kiss it, but he only moved her hand in an illustrative gesture.
A line of scarlet-tinged lightning appeared in the sky.
Rae moved her own hand this time, very carefully, just a fingertip held to the clouds. Another line of lightning was inscribed, white in colour, with scarlet at its heart, like the flame of a candle.
You have lightning on a leash, he had said. What should she do with lightning thrilling at her fingertips, with burning power in the palm of her hands? She couldn’t draw anything, but she could write. If she could inscribe only one word in lightning on the sky, what would it be?
Rae wrote a name in letters of fire against the dark storm-clouds. Key.
She glanced down to see the word’s bright reflection in eyes as grey as the storm-clouds. She spelled out the letters, and sounded out the name. “K – E – Y. Key. That’s you.”
She hoped it would remind him that was true.
“What shape in the sky means you?”
Rae wrote her name under his against the sky. Rachel in strokes of fire. Still smiling, she toyed with the idea of drawing a heart around them.
The Emperor said, voice rasping, smoke-soft and once again impossible to read, “Is that how you spell Rahela?”
Rae’s hand went cold in the cage of the Emperor’s grasp.
“I thought it was spelled a little differently. Be tolerant of my mistakes, my lady. There’s so much I don’t know. But I will learn.”
Key snapped the fingers of his free hand with a ring of steel. Her name and his written together against the sky disappeared in a puff of smoke and a shower of sparks, falling like red stars into the hungry mouth of the abyss.
Rae swallowed. “I’ll teach you anything you want to learn.”
“Will you really?”
The question was guarded, but there was an invitation in there, too, as though they could play a game together for a little longer. There were still lights in the sky. Rae remembered the role she had to play: desperate, wicked. The Harlot of the Tower scaling the heights of the palace.
She leaned forward, gazing down into his upturned face, and purred: “Since you made me the mistress of lightning.”
The Emperor was at her feet. His clawed gauntlet closed around her ankle. “And are you pleased to be mistress of lightning?”
Enchanted claws slid up her leg, light as the whisper of the softest silk stocking, but with steel behind the whisper.
Rae’s saucy smile slipped and fell off her face.
“You cannot be serious, Key!”
“Usually not,” said the Emperor.
“If you get too close, you’re going to hurt me! Don’t even dream that you can touch me with knives on your hands. Are you going to take them off?”
The Emperor hesitated, then shook his head, black hair always as storm-tossed and wild as the shadows in the abyss.
He watched her warily, the sky dark enough to make his eyes shine with that slight inhuman glow.
Burning bright, in the tense, fearful symmetry of his face.
For once, he was not smiling. She realized he was waiting.
“Will you command me to do so?” the Emperor asked.
She could order him to take them off.
She remembered the cracked, black leather gloves he wore before the clawed gauntlets.
He had only removed them once in her presence, at his mortal father’s grave, before she betrayed him.
Rae understood not wanting anyone to see proof you were vulnerable, that you had been badly hurt and unable to stop it.
Rae shook her head. She could command him, but she would never.
At her feet, the Emperor smiled. “I don’t need hands to touch you, my lady.”