Chapter 46
CHAPTER FORTY SIX
Ipulled on my armour in the quarters I’d been offered here at Ravensview. It was far grander than I’d expected to be given by my enemies, and I didn’t like to spend too long thinking about why they were kissing my ass so much.
They needed me as I currently needed them.
But this alliance had a deadline and once this night was over, if we managed to stop the eschaton star breaking through into this world, then this fragile union could shatter fast and violently.
I may have been offered a place in Effelridge as we all had, but I wasn’t convinced that we were all going to play happy families once this was done.
There were too many years of hatred stacked against us.
How could the four elements really co-exist long term?
I decided not to dwell on it too much now that the blood moon was almost upon us. The chances were, none of us would survive this night. So if I made it to tomorrow morning with breath still in my lungs, I’d figure out what fate had in store for me then.
I adjusted the emerald green breast plate onto my chest and sheathed my sword at my hip while hitching my dagger to the other. I’d made a few alterations seeing as Mirelle had done me the service of placing a fire in my room. One I had swiftly made into a forge.
I’d added new engravings to the metal, the Pisces constellation running down the plate at my back and a sea serpent subtly curved around the cuff on my right forearm.
I held a cluster of metal flowers in my hand, all intricately forged with swirling patterns and twirling tips on each petal.
They were made in the image of deathless primroses, a flower that grew in all parts of The Waning Lands, and no matter what destruction happened to its habitat, it always grew back.
It was a beautiful flower, white and pure with dark black tips to the petals that tapered to subtle magenta twirls.
I’d made them as a symbol of this night of alliance, thinking if we all wore a pin of the same emblem, we might work as one unit.
It was foolish, but forging always calmed my soul and I’d made them now so I may as well offer them out.
A knock came at the door, a hard firm rap that could only belong to one person. My fingers clasped tight around the metal flowers in my grip, tight enough to imprint them onto my scarred palm.
“Come in,” I called and Kaiser entered my room, dressed in his usual black casual wear. I supposed his Order offered armour on his skin whenever he needed it so he didn’t need to dress for war tonight.
His head tilted as he kicked the door shut behind him and my breaths came unevenly. We were alone. Something we hadn’t been in Ravensview. And it felt strangely forbidden.
“This night will change the fate of The Waning Lands,” he mused as he looked me up and down in that penetrating way of his.
“I’m aware,” I clipped.
“Always so touchy,” he commented, walking forward, leaving me to decide whether I was going to retreat. But I stood firm. “I’ve been thinking…”
“Makes a change,” I drawled.
“A joke?” he guessed.
“Clever boy.”
He didn’t smile.
“What have you been thinking then, hollow man?” I prompted.
“I’ve been thinking about the tomorrow we’re not promised,” he said darkly, walking over to my forge to examine the dagger I’d been working on.
It wasn’t anywhere near ready. I hadn’t even finished hammering it into shape yet, but I supposed it had comforted me to leave something unfinished in the face of tonight.
The stars just might let me come back and complete it.
He crouched down, rifling through the forging tools I’d talked North into gifting me. Kaiser touched them like he owned them and I scowled at his back.
“I see getting your emotions back hasn’t made you any less rude,” I muttered.
He glanced at me over his shoulder, my half-forged blade in his hand.
“I can never decipher what classifies as rude to you.” He tossed my blade back by the fire with a clatter and stood up, turning to me with a glare.
“Do you have any idea how difficult it is to decipher you? You are not consistent. You touch me softly one moment then strike me the next.”
I knew he was referring to how I’d helped calm his breathing back in the forest and something about that made my cheeks heat.
“Says the man who threatens me one moment and gets hard for me the next,” I scoffed. “You’re the enigma here, not me. I know my own mind.”
“Do you?” he growled.
“Yes,” I hurled back. “Do you understand the madness of you desiring anything from me beyond my death?”
“Enemies. Lines. Lands. I’m well versed in our history. I may have had no emotions but I’ve not been blind and deaf all these years, silka la vin.”
“Stop calling me that damn nickname. I’m not your killer, am I? I failed.”
“So far, yes. But something tells me we’ll come to blows again,” he said grimly. “That hatred in your eyes never dulls.”
“You saw me as nothing but a weak runt when we first met. Why give me that name?”
“You scarred me. No one had ever done that before your father,” he said and the mention of him sent a shudder through me. “I saw the venom in your eyes. Even as a man with no feelings, I knew the power of revenge. I killed your mother, of course you would come after me.”
I winced at the reminder, turning from him, looking down at the cluster of metal flowers clutched in my scarred palm. If she could see me now, would she be ashamed of me?
“I cannot make up for what I did,” Kaiser said, his voice heavy.
“It was an act of war. I’m not excusing it.
It was who I was. Who I am, I suppose. I follow orders; I kill, I make moves which swing the war in Pyros’s favour.
I’m a tool for a victory that may never come.
Aren’t we all? We’re honed and hammered like this blade of yours.
This half-made thing reminds me of myself.
Not quite anything yet but still battered into a shape of someone else’s design. ”
“I wasn’t raised like you,” I said coldly, still refusing to look at him and be reminded of the day he’d seen to my mother’s death.
I pocketed the metal flowers, eyeing the marks they’d left on my palm.
“No one wanted to hone me. I was the scrap of steel that didn’t make the cut.
So I forged myself. I’ve always been different.
Always stood out. Because I looked at weapons like you and saw the hollowness of being just like every other warrior in this world.
But you’re right, Kaiser. We’re all tools.
How pathetic of me to try and be different because all I really wanted deep down was to fit in.
” I laughed bitterly. “I still walked the path our rulers wanted. Still ended up on battlefields risking my neck for the ‘greater cause’.” I turned to him.
“But you know what I learned by being the great and powerful Void? The revered creature who is prophesied to end the war?”
He stepped closer to me, a frown creasing his brow. “What?”
“That being a warrior means nothing if your heart isn’t aligned with the cause.
Because I don’t think the war was ever really for the greater good.
It was for the greater evil to prevail. The land that could swing the biggest axe, kill the most of their enemies.
Destroy, annihilate, conquer. There’s no peace beyond that.
I watched my father kill Avanis warriors who had surrendered to him without mercy and I realised that it didn’t matter if it was Cascada that won the war or Avanis or Pyros or Stormfell.
Whoever wins will have no mercy. They aren’t going to accept the other lands they defeat, they’re going to punish them for all the atrocities they blame them for while ignoring the fact that they are guilty of the very same crimes.
They’ll destroy them or enslave them. And that’s where the most taboo truth lies.
Because I think there can only be death in The Waning Lands until we accept each other.
Air, fire, earth and water united.” I breathed a humourless laugh, knowing how ludicrous it sounded, even balking against the mere suggestion of it myself.
But when only logic was considered and all hatred was put aside, that was the answer to this war.
“I agree,” Kaiser said, surprising me. “I’ve weighed all other options in my mind too, and this is the sole conclusion that equals true peace.
But you know as well as I do how farfetched that possibility is.
Look at us, for example. How could you ever live alongside a Fae who hurt your family?
How could your hatred ever be doused? There are countless stories like ours, perhaps less personal in many ways but hatred is stitched into the soul, it’s not so easily unpicked. ”
“You’re right,” I breathed. “We could never be true allies, let alone friends.”
He regarded me with scrutiny, seeming confused by something. “North says people lie to protect themselves. I’m working on detecting such lies and I think I may have just caught you in one.”
“You’re wrong,” I snarled, heat rising in my skin. “There’s no lie in those words. We could never be friends.”
“That I do agree with,” he said darkly, prowling closer to me like a wolf with its sights set on a meal.
His eyes flashed red and I was caught unprepared as he possessed me with the power of his Fury, snaring me in a net I’d wished never to be trapped in again.
“Speak the truth,” he commanded and it slipped from my tongue before I could stop it.
“Sometimes I want you. I despise myself for that desire. But I think of you and I feel hunger.”
The Void tore from me, shutting off the power of his Order form and he closed in on me, capturing the back of my neck with his hand and lowering his mouth to mine.