7. Calista
7
CALISTA
It was the middle of the day when a knock sounded on the door.
“It’s open.” I knew who it was without having to check. Only one person came to visit me.
Commander Luxe let himself inside, dressed in his casual clothes rather than his uniform. “You look better today.” He helped himself to the armchair Talon had occupied the night before.
“Yeah, must have been something I ate.”
“Perhaps the change in diet is the culprit.”
“Maybe.” I closed the book in my hands and set it on the table.
He glanced at it. “What do you think?”
“I like it.”
“Good.” He remained there, looking at me with an intensity that reminded me of Talon. “Since you cooked me dinner last night, I’d like to return the generosity. Would you like to come over tonight?”
“I cooked for you because of your generosity.”
“Well, I’d like to cook for you anyway.”
Talon’s words hadn’t faded from my mind since our conversation. His jealousy was profound, but I know my jealousy would be just as uncontrollable. “I never answered your question last night.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I was in a relationship recently, very recently.” Was still in that relationship in a lot of ways. “It’s still really raw for me. I’d be lying if I said he wasn’t in my heart as we speak.”
Commander Luxe held my gaze as he listened, and he eventually gave a slight nod. “So, is that a yes or a no?”
“What?”
“Were you in love?”
“I—I don’t know.” It was all surreal, a relationship that had happened under difficult circumstances. He was the man responsible for all my hardship. If I hadn’t been trapped with him in the castle and forced to know his character, I wasn’t sure if anything ever would have happened. “I felt like I should tell you that…in case you’re looking for something more than a friendship.”
He had the confidence to continue to look at me. “It’s not every day that you meet a beautiful woman who can resist the temptation of power. Your heart must be pure like sunshine.”
It was the best compliment I’d ever received.
“I’m not going to pretend that I’m not interested in more than friendship—because I am. But I also understand that the timing isn’t right. But maybe it will be right in a couple months…or in a year…or someday. So my invitation for dinner still stands—as friends.”
Now that he knew where I stood, I felt better about accepting the offer. “Sure, that sounds nice.”
Every night, I expected Talon to come to me.
But he didn’t.
Our final conversation seemed to have driven him away, and he had no desire to continue it. Staying away from each other was the best for both of us, but that didn’t stop me from thinking about him pretty much every moment of the day.
It didn’t stop me from missing him.
Commander Luxe had returned to his rotation on the front line, so I spent my time alone, mainly in my tree house. Sometimes I went to the market or the library, but the forest still felt like a strange place, despite how beautiful it was.
I was in the kitchen when someone knocked on my door.
I knew it wasn’t Commander Luxe, so I wasn’t sure who’d come to visit me. “It’s open.” I washed my hands then turned to the doorway.
I sucked in a breath when I saw him—Ezra.
It took me a moment to say something. “Hi.”
“Am I intruding?”
“No, I’m alone.” I was alone in every way you could imagine. I stopped in front of him but wasn’t sure what to do next. Greet him with a handshake or a hug. I decided to do neither of those things.
“I wanted to check in on you. See how your first few weeks have been.”
“It’s been okay.”
“I would have come sooner, but I was required at the front line.”
“Hope everything is alright.”
“It is. Just part of my duties.”
“Commander Luxe has been very kind.”
He nodded. “He’s an honorable man. If my time is cut short, he’ll replace me.”
“Well, hopefully that doesn’t happen.”
He gave me a slight smile. “Hopefully not. Are you hungry? I’d love to take you to lunch, if you’re interested.”
“I just ate, but coffee would be nice.”
“Coffee it is.”
We went to the restaurant Commander Luxe had mentioned before. We received a lot of stares as we sat there.
Well, I received a lot of stares.
He ordered a coffee and a roasted potato bowl.
I enjoyed my coffee with plant-based cream.
I was in the presence of my only living relative, but I didn’t have anything to say. The conversation wasn’t natural the way it was with Inferno or Khazmuda…or Talon. “So, what was my father like as a child?”
“A little rambunctious, to be honest.” He smiled. “But he always had a good heart.”
“How was he rambunctious?”
“He used to break the rules a lot. Sneak out of the castle and run off with girls in the middle of the night.”
I smirked, wishing I could tease him for that.
“He ran off with one girl more than the others…and he married her.”
I smiled. “My mom was so beautiful.”
“She was. Even I had a crush on her.”
“You did?”
“All the guys had a thing for her. But when your father told me it was serious, I redirected my attention.”
“Why did you leave Scorpion Valley?”
“Queen Eldinar’s men came to visit and invited us to their forest. It was just supposed to be a visit, but I fell in love with it. It was my home from that moment onward. It was hard to say goodbye to your father, especially when I knew it would be nearly impossible to visit, but he understood my decision.”
“Did you fall in love with the forest…or Queen Eldinar?”
He’d just finished taking a drink of his coffee when he heard the question. He stared for a moment before a slight smile moved over his lips. “Did Commander Luxe tell you?”
“No. I noticed it when I saw you together. The way you talk about her, the way you look at her…”
He looked down at his food, that smirk still there. “We’ve been married for twenty years.”
“That means you’re king of Riviana Star.”
“No,” he said quickly. “The crown is transferred by bloodline. I will never be king, even if she were to pass away. It would pass to the next of kin, which means it would go to her sister or her sister’s children. She appointed me as the general of Riviana Star because she knows I love this forest as much as I love her. I would gladly give my life for both.”
“That’s beautiful.”
He drank from his coffee.
“Is it hard? To be married to a monarch?”
“No.” He shook his head. “It’s not hard at all. She’s a great queen, and it’s an honor to be called her husband. I’m still surprised I’ve earned the title when she could have literally anyone she wants.”
“She is beautiful, really beautiful.” She looked like a goddess.
“I know.” He said it with the glow of pride in his eyes.
“So, how does that work?”
“I don’t understand your meaning.”
“Commander Luxe told me elves are nearly immortal.”
“They are.”
“And you…are not.” He would be lucky to reach eighty, and by the time he did, he would be frail and weathered—and Queen Eldinar would look exactly the same.
“Yes, it’s a bad deal for her.”
“For her?” I asked, slightly surprised.
“I’ll never know life without her. But she’ll know life without me, in the blink of an eye.”
I looked down at my coffee, which had gone cold after not touching it for so long. Our conversation was so engrossing, I thought of nothing else. “If you don’t mind my asking, do you have children?”
“No.” His eyes dropped down to his coffee, and he stirred it with a spoon…even though it didn’t need to be stirred.
“I’m sorry.”
“Not everyone wants children, Calista.”
“No. But I can tell you do.”
His eyes were still down when he gave a painful smirk. “You’re like your mother. She saw everything.” He lifted his chin again and took a drink of his coffee. “We decided it was best if we didn’t procreate.”
“We…or her?”
“Why do I get the impression that you dislike her?”
“I don’t dislike her. But I can tell this brings you great pain, and we’re family.” He was family to me, even if I felt like a stranger to him. “I care for you even if that affection is not reciprocated.”
“Calista.” He closed his eyes and gave a sigh. “I wish you would forgive me for the way I behaved at our first meeting. It’d been a long time since we’d interacted, and you arrived in our lands on the back of a red dragon. I’m the general of Riviana Star and sworn protector of Queen Eldinar…my wife. I was simply protective. I see that you aren’t a threat to our people and you believe in the same philosophies that we share, so I’m no longer suspicious of you. Please forgive me, because I would love to get to know you.”
“I’m not one to hold a grudge. I—I was just in a vulnerable place when I arrived.”
“Tell me why.”
Put on the spot, I took a moment to find my words. “I’d just escaped the Death King, and then I returned to Scorpion Valley to see if my father left anything behind…and I saw that his people had given him a proper burial. In his letter, he told me that you lived here, so I guess I was hoping for…a warmer welcome.” I couldn’t describe the depth of my pain and heartbreak, not without going into detail about my captivity in the Arid Sands or the complicated relationship I had with Talon…that I still had with him.
His eyes fell in sadness. “I’m sorry for the way I mistreated you.”
“It’s okay. I understand.”
“I want you to know that I’m very happy that you’re here, that I will have this opportunity to get to know you. My brother and I were close, despite our differences. I remember the day you were born…and the joy it brought to us all.”
“I’m happy that I get to know you too.” I decided to brush off the pain he’d caused me, to forgive and forget because his affection seemed sincere. “So…why does she not want children? As a ruler, I thought continuing her line would be important to her.”
When the subject returned to his wife, his eyes fell once more. “It is. But I’m not the right partner for that legacy.”
I hoped I’d misheard him because if I didn’t, that was awful. “So, she wants to have children…but not with you? I’m sorry, but that’s the most fucked-up thing I’ve ever heard. Why did she marry you, then?—”
“Let me explain,” he said calmly, cutting me off so my voice wouldn’t grow any louder. “She’ll live thousands of years, and I’ll be lucky to see seventy. Half of my life is already behind me. If we were to have a child, I wouldn’t be around long enough to enjoy most of their life, not when they’ll live so long and I so little.”
My chest ached in sadness.
“And what’s more, a child we make together will have a much shorter life-span than a full-blooded elf. Which means my wife would outlive them…and have to experience the agony of watching her child die. I couldn’t do that to her.”
I stared at his face, seeing his eyes grow hollow.
“It’s just not the right decision for us.”
“So, she’ll marry someone else and have his children?”
He nodded.
“But not yours…” My throat constricted with tears I refused to shed, but keeping them in felt more painful.
He looked down into his coffee before he took a drink.
“Why not marry someone else?” I asked. “Someone who can give you a family?”
“Because I love her.” He looked up at me again, his expression hard with passion. “I loved her the moment I saw her, and I would rather love her deeply for my short time here on this earth than love another woman less.”
“I’m sorry, but I think her letting this happen is selfish.”
“She rejected my advances many times. Told me there was no future for us, but I pursued her relentlessly.” His eyes started to glaze over with the tale. “It turned into an affair, a secret that we hid from her subjects, and she told me it would be only physical, that it would last a short while until the flames were snuffed out. But she was wrong—because those flames only grew bigger. I told her I loved her and she tried to end it, but I refused to walk away. I didn’t ask her to marry me—I told her to marry me. She finally stopped trying to fight it. She married me under our favorite tree, and I’ve been happy every moment of every day. I have no regrets, nor will I ever.”
It was a beautiful tale, a tale that softened my anger toward her.
“I know it doesn’t make sense to you, probably to anyone, because a legacy that lives on after you is the only one that matters. But love very rarely makes sense.”
Black eyes popped into my mind, sitting just feet away from me, eyes burning deep into my soul. Hot fireplaces in empty bedchambers. His sweaty chest against mine. Angry fingers wrapped around my throat. None of that made sense either, but his mark would be on my skin forever.
“My legacy will be that I loved a woman with my whole heart—and it was worth it.”
It’d been a week since Talon and I had spoken.
I wondered if he would ever speak to me again. The last conversation ended on such a low point that I wasn’t sure if he wanted to face me again. I hoped that was the end of us, that I would never see those dark eyes again, but that hope was accompanied by a bottomless pit of sadness.
My eyes were on my book when I felt his stare in the dark. The sun had set hours ago, and the forest was deep in twilight. The fireflies floated everywhere, and the crickets sang their song. The peace was disturbed by the man so intense, his presence felt real even when it was a mirage.
I didn’t look up right away, staring at the words on the page until I had the courage to face him.
“You feel me.” His deep voice was calm and authoritative at the same time. “Now look at me.”
My fingers felt the weathered exterior of the hardback before I closed it. But it took me another moment to find the strength to lift my gaze and face him.
He appeared the way he always appeared, shirtless and barefoot, his eyes so intense they looked angry.
“Your breathing changes whenever I’m near you.”
“Because I’m scared.”
“The world should be scared of me—but not you.”
I gripped the book in my hand just to have something to do with my fingers. “Where are you?”
“In the armchair by the fire, where I always am.”
“How—how are you doing this?”
He paused before he answered. “One of my many gifts.”
I didn’t know a god existed until I came to Riviana Star and heard Commander Luxe describe the woman who walked through the trees with the glow of a thousand fairies, and now I viewed the world differently. “Are you…a god?”
His eyes narrowed slightly on my face. “Why do you ask?”
“Because…you don’t seem human.” He was unnaturally handsome, his face chiseled by an artist. And his powers…I’d never seen anything like it. Never heard of anything like it. “Because you have abilities that no mortal possesses.”
“I am mortal, and I will die by the blade.”
“Then how can you do this?”
He cocked his head slightly.
“How?”
His stare remained locked on my face as the silence continued.
I knew he would never tell me.
He asked a question I didn’t expect. “How are you?”
“I’m—I’m fine.” I almost told him about my uncle and the conversation we’d had, what I had learned about the god Riviana, details that would give away my position.
“I’m pleased to see that he’s not here.”
I was careful not to give details of that either. “He’s been good to me. Kind…respectful.”
“Has he?” he asked sarcastically.
“Well, he hasn’t demanded I fuck him like you did.”
A ghost of a smile moved on to his lips. “Don’t pretend you don’t think about me when you’re alone.”
I rolled my eyes.
“I think about you every fucking night.”
I kept my gaze averted in the hope of hiding the heat that flushed up the back of my neck.
“When I said I missed you, I meant it.”
“You mean you miss fucking me.”
He stared, waiting until I met his look. “I miss all of you. That’s why I come to you like this, even though it hurts me.”
“You come to figure out where I am.”
“Because I miss you.”
I looked away. “I told you our interests no longer align.”
“Care to explain that?”
I didn’t know how to explain it, not without breaking my loyalty to good people. “What you’re trying to achieve…can’t be done.”
His features hardened like stone, and his eyes turned angry. “I can come to you from thousands of leagues away with just my mind. I can raise the dead and command their sworn fealty to defeat my enemies. I can claim kingdoms upon the back of a black dragon. Yes, it can be done—and it will be done.” He seethed, the rage bottled deep inside him seeping out through his pores.
“Then you’ll do it without me.”
“I want to do it—with you and Inferno.”
“Well, that’s not possible.”
“Why?”
I redirected my stare.
“What aren’t you telling me, and why aren’t you telling me it?”
“Because I can’t.”
He was quiet for a while, the anger in his eyes. “You know what I think? I think your father left something for you in Scorpion Valley, something he knew you would find and I would miss. He knew where the dragons were and imparted that information to you.”
He was right on the money, but I refused to act like that was true.
“But why wouldn’t you just tell me that? That, I don’t understand.”
I looked out the windows at the fireflies, at the dark forest that surrounded me on all sides.
“You would leave those dragons to their fate?” he asked. “Their minds taken from them and enslaved by a foul creature? You can sleep at night knowing they suffer and you don’t? You know suffering better than most, so I don’t know how you can tolerate this?—”
“Fuck you,” I snapped. “You can’t manipulate me, Talon.”
“I’m not the one manipulating you. Someone else already did—clearly.”
I looked away again.
“You don’t have to betray the trust of whoever houses you. Just tell me why you think my mission is hopeless.”
There was no way I could answer that question without betraying the trust of Queen Eldinar and the elves. When I’d asked for their help and they rejected it, I’d thought they were cowardly, but there was nothing I could do to change their stance. “There are things you won’t tell me, and there are things I won’t tell you.”
“But the things you seek are personal. My interest is not in you personally?—”
“Talon, I can’t give you what you seek. I can’t even explain why I can’t without giving you more information than you should have. My hands are tied behind my back, and my loyalty is divided.”
“If it’s divided, then that means I still have half of it. And that means whomever you’re with considers me an enemy.”
That was why I couldn’t say anything—because he pieced things together. “Everyone in these lands considers you the enemy, Talon. You conquered the world without mercy. Even those who serve you do so begrudgingly. If you died, your people wouldn’t bury you, not the way they buried my father…”
His eyes remained hard, like my insults didn’t sink beneath the flesh. “Please confide in me, Calista. I vow I won’t hurt those you protect.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I’ve never broken my word to you.”
“No, but I see the way you change when you talk about the revenge you seek. There’s nothing you wouldn’t do, no vow you wouldn’t break, to fulfill it. I understand because my revenge is also unspent. My father gave his life for the protection of these people, and I will not betray his dying wish by confiding in you.”
His stare was so hot it burned my face. Like the surface of the sun, it was scalding, blistering. The rage shook like tremors of an earthquake, so profound I could feel the ground move beneath my feet. “Don’t take this away from me?—”
“I’m not trying to take anything away. I told you this plan won’t work, and that’s more than I should even tell you?—”
“You don’t get it, Calista.”
“I do get it. I’ve let go of my revenge, and so should you.”
“You’ve let go of your revenge?” he asked incredulously. “Then why aren’t you naked in my bed right now?”
“Just because I don’t wish to usurp you doesn’t mean I want you.”
He clenched his jaw and closed his eyes simultaneously—all in the blink of an eye. “I need those dragons?—”
“You’re the single most powerful being I’ve ever witnessed. Khazmuda can fly and breathe fire, but you can raise the dead . Your mind can bring you anywhere in the world that you wish. You’re practically a god. You don’t need the dragons?—”
“So you do know where they are.”
“I mean that hypothetically. Why are you waiting around for this when you’re capable of taking back what’s yours entirely on your own?”
“Because I’m not enough. An army is not enough. Not when I face a hundred dragons in the skies. I have one fucking chance at this—one. Dying and failing is not an option. I must do this.”
I dropped my chin because the pain and anger on his face were too much to bear. “There’s nothing I can do?—”
“Bullshit. Don’t deny me what my heart desires most.”
My eyes stayed down.
“Calista—”
“I don’t want to see you anymore.” It broke my heart to say it, to sever ties with a man I cared so deeply for…but also despised. “I’ve made my desires clear, so there’s no reason for us to speak further. It’s just making it harder…for both of us.” I kept my eyes down because I didn’t want to see the look on his face, see the hurt mixed with rage.
He was quiet.
I waited for his hostility to evaporate, for his presence to disappear into the night.
But he stayed. “This is it, and you won’t even look at me.”
After a deep breath, I lifted my chin to meet his gaze.
He sat there, his angry eyes locked on mine, a world of hurt deep in their abyss. His stare remained glued to my face without a single blink, as if he was trying to memorize my appearance for the lonely nights to come. “This is it, and you have nothing to say.”
“It’s just going to make it harder?—”
“I’ve felt nothing these last thirty years. The only person I care for is Khazmuda, and that relationship took decades to build. But with you…it was real from the beginning. It was real the moment I saw you. I don’t know what the future holds, but I expect our paths will cross again…probably across a battlefield. And when that moment comes, just know that’s not what I wanted for us.”
I felt the tears build behind my eyes, but I refused to let them fall.
“Goodbye, Calista.” He didn’t wait for me to say anything before he vanished—disappearing into thin air.