Chapter 20 Khiona
Istumbled onto the solid, visible stony cliffs on the summer side of the chasm and breathed again.
Turning to look the way we’d come, my heart stuttered. That had been terrifying. I would not have done it without Andar. Yes, I could see the concentrated magic I’d left on the other side, but if I had to cross it on my own…
I shook my head. No. I would not cross it on my own. That was death waiting to happen. I would just have to convince Andar to stay with me until I went back.
He gave me a few seconds to catch my breath and then led us away from the Chasm of Death (as it clearly should be called) toward the line of trees that formed the rainforest’s edge.
Andar handed me a water satchel once we were inside the treeline.
The trees here grew four times bigger than most of the trees in the winter realm.
We had a few mammoth exceptions, but this forest was full of vegetative monsters.
Flowers bigger than my head and trees that would take a dozen, or more, fae to surround.
How many of them were edible? Would any make a pleasant tea?
I had to peel my attention away from the landscape to focus on Andar.
And it would take focus. He had slipped earlier, and I wanted an explanation. “So,” I started, returning the water satchel, “what were you saying about not helping me on this trip?”
“Oh, no.” He tied the satchel inside the pack he’d been carrying, and then set the pack on the ground. “I want to help you more than anything.”
I squinted at him. The sun was brighter in the Summer Realm, and I wanted to see his expressions. “So, are you still coming with me into the Autumn Realm to find the humans?”
He winced, opened his mouth, and then closed it.
“You’re constructing a deception?” I gaped at him, not bothering to hide my surprise. “How could you not be honest about this?” I stepped closer to him and pointed at his chest. “The one thing I asked for when I freed you?” I should have made him swear it in a bargain.
He grabbed my hand before I took it away from his chest. “I was not constructing a deception. I want… to convince you of something, and I am trying to organize a persuasive line of thought.”
I wrenched my hand out of his. “You’re not succeeding.”
He spread his hands to his sides. “Will you give me a chance?”
I clenched my fist. “A chance to trick me?”
“No.” He bent his head and met my eyes, holding them with a fiery intensity that reminded me how desperately I wanted him to stay. “I will be completely honest. Ask me anything you like. I will not try to trick or deceive you in any way.”
“Fine,” I hissed, forming an ice dagger out of the moisture in the air. I needed something to squeeze, and the hilt of a weapon seemed appropriate.
His eyes flicked from mine down to the dagger, and he lifted his hand. “May I?”
I narrowed my brows. “May you what?”
“Change it into something more comfortable.”
I squinted at him again, trying to read his intentions.
He didn’t explain anything, but stepped closer to me and touched my dagger.
The hilt hardened into some kind of wood, simple, but elegant, and the blade gleamed as sunlight reflected off polished steel.
My ice dagger had been lethal, but the knife I held now molded to my hand, the perfect blend of reassurance and death.
I pointed the blade at Andar. “This is a risky gift.”
He ignored the knife, studying my face as if he were trying to predict my next move. “It is a gesture of trust and hope.”
Flipping the dagger around my hand, I relished the weight of wood and steel. It had been too long since I’d had a proper weapon, and just handling it made me relax. “Start your explanation, Andar. I’m listening.”
He nodded. “When I met Kortan and Gran, I realized a few things. I was tired of the endless search for power. It hadn’t saved my own grandmother, and I don’t know what became of the island we loved.
I let my quest for power to do a good thing grow into an obsession that led to me doing many bad things. Things…”
He wrapped his hand around the sword at his own waist. “Things I was glad my grandmother was no longer alive to learn I had done. And through it all, I was not happy. Kortan is— He’s staying with his dying Gran, and they’re happy.
And I want that simplicity back. I want to return to my island and see if it survived. ”
I tipped my head. “You never went back to stop it from dying? After you became so powerful the Sun King himself feared you?”
His gaze fell to the ground. “No. I was too angry about Gran dying. I didn’t care about anyone else at that point. I was already obsessed with more power.”
I shrugged. This wasn’t as big a problem as he was making it sound. “So help me find the humans, and then I’ll come check on your island with you.”
His eyes shot up to mine again, hopeful. He stepped closer and lifted his hands as if he wanted to hold mine.
I pointed the dagger at him. “First, tell me you’re keeping your promise.”
He dropped his hands. “I learned something else from Kortan. Well, remembered it anyway. Gran used to talk about it.”
I lowered the dagger. These confessions weren’t about me at all. I’d seen his worry and assumed it was tied to me, but it was just him sorting through his own traumatic past.
He stared at his hands, not talking.
“Well?” I waved my dagger like an extension of my hand, encouraging him to finish. “What was it?”
“Destroying Brintontoven won’t make me happy.”
I almost rolled my eyes. “So find something else that will.” Like me. Stay with me. “There are worse things than being a villain.”
That caught his attention. He raised a brow. “Like what?”
“Like being alone.” My own words echoed against my head. I didn’t want to be alone. It was the worst part of my existence.
He shook his head. “The revenge I wanted won’t make me happy. It won’t bring back Gran or undo the centuries of misery I had. It won’t help anyone. As much as I dislike Brintontoven, he’s not even a threat to anyone. He only tricked me because I was—” He stared at the ground. “Destroying people.”
“Andar.” I waved my dagger at him. “Again. Not a problem. You can—”
“The revenge you want won’t make you happy either.” He cut me off, and I froze. This is what he was leading up to. It wasn’t about him.
He wasn’t coming with me.
Fury built inside my chest, and I opened my mouth to let it out, but he interrupted again. “Your Majesty, I said I wanted to help, and I truly do. I admire so many things about you, and I want you to be happy. I also want to be a better person. Killing the humans won’t help either of us.”
Oh, no. It was my turn to speak over him. “It will help me. It will make me very happy. I have done nothing but dream about my revenge for forty years. I even left Kalshana to Prince Bylur because this was more important to take care of first. And you— you promised to help!”
His eyes turned hard. “I have helped.”
I took a step away from him, edging toward the outside of the rainforest. This was worse than I expected. “You said you would use your power to help me kill them.”
He gripped his hands behind his back. “I said my power could accomplish nearly anything, and I would support your quest for vengeance. I did not say how long I would support it.”
My stomach tightened into a knot, and my next words trembled in accusation. “You said you would bring the world to its knees.”
He rolled his shoulders back. “I am not proud of the fae I was when we first met. At the time, the only thing I cared about in the world was myself. When I said those words, I meant I would kneel in front of you.”
He dropped to his knees, bowed his head to the ground, and then straightened his back so he was kneeling with his head nearly as tall as my waist. “I intended to use it as a gesture to procure my freedom, but now— I am bowing at your feet because you are more important to me than the world, than anyone in the world, including myself. I would give up anything for your happiness, including your good opinion of me.”
My good opinion? He’d had it until this moment.
But he hadn’t just had a change of heart when he met Kortan. He’d chosen those words when he’d first asked me to free him.
My heart plummeted at this realization. He’d tricked me into freeing him. “Did you ever intend to accompany me all the way to the humans?” I had to know, had to be sure that I wasn’t assuming anything now.
“No.”
That one word hung on the air, a testimony that everything I’d hoped might be between us was just that—a hope. A foolish, impossible hope. I tightened my grip on the dagger and pulled my arm back to throw it at him.
“But Your Majesty!” He jumped to his feet and flung himself to the side to dodge the knife I threw. “I’m not the same fae. My reasons changed, as I told you.”
I formed an ice dagger in my hands and threw it at him, hoping to catch him before he recovered.
“You deceived me.” He blocked it with a fiery shield, so I formed another.
“I freed you, and you—” He blocked that one too, but I already had another ready.
“You mocked me.” I threw another ice dagger.
“Over—” Another dagger. “And over—” Another dagger. “And over.”
His cursed shields made my daggers useless. I reached into the sky, formed thousands of spiky little pieces of hail, and rained them down on him.
He shifted the shield to block the hail.
I stamped a foot and a layer of ice coated the rich soil underneath us. Nice of the rainforest to have so much moisture in the air. I waved a hand and coated everything in sight with a thin layer of ice, hoping to distract Andar as I marched up to him.
He raised two fiery shields in each hand, ready to throw them in whatever direction I attacked from.
But I didn’t give him room. I marched so close I could have bitten him, and lifted a new dagger to his throat. “I let you get close to me,” I whispered as my heart quivered, “but I will never make that mistake again.”
I would have ended him right there, but I underestimated his speed.
His hands gripped my arms, just above the elbows, and I couldn’t move.
He trapped me with a magic I couldn’t see or feel, but any movement I made—any twitch of my arm or lunge from my legs or even just lifting my little finger—every movement was blocked by a wall of power that had completely enveloped me.
A savage anger burned inside me, and I could not move a single muscle.
He closed his eyes and drew a long slow breath. As he released it, the layers of ice I’d drawn over the landscape faded, returning the forest to its lush greens and browns.
He kept his hands on my arms. “I know you can’t talk right now, so please listen.
I’ll only say this once. I just want you to hear it.
I care about you. I want to see you happy.
I would love to take you to my native island Vitana.
I cannot lead you to the Autumn kingdoms or help you find humans that do not deserve your rage because that kind of vengeance will destroy your soul.
And you deserve better than that. I’ve shown you how to go home.
I think it will take you enough years to find the humans without me that they will finish their short lives in peace.
Perhaps then you will find some peace as well. ”
I wanted to attack him, but I was perfectly immobile.
“Or,” he added, “you can come with me to Vitana.” He raised his brows like a question and let go of my arms.
I lunged at him. “I do not travel with traitors!”
He caught me, more easily than I’d hoped, lifted me up, and repositioned me so my back was pressed up against a tree.
I tried freezing him, but he’d done something to his body to push back against my ice, like a fiery shield.
He held me against the tree with an arm across my chest while his other hand pushed my left arm behind me.
Something bound my left arm to the tree. I couldn’t move it.
I growled at him through clenched teeth. “What are you doing?”
He pulled my right arm behind me and bound it to the tree too. Then he set his hand in front of my waist, and an invisible rope tightened like a belt, securing me to the tree.
“I’m not going to keep fighting you,” he said, placing his hand on top of my head. “And I can’t have you freezing the forest in an attempt to make me slip and break an ankle.” My magic pulled away from me, like it was hiding deep in my own chest. I felt it retreat, but I could not summon it again.
For the first time in forty years, true terror gripped my heart. “What have you done?”
He looked guilty, and I was glad for it. “I pushed the strength of your magic away from your control. It’s terribly temporary—”
“How?” I couldn’t breathe right. The thought of losing my magic again overwhelmed my normal senses. I fought the temptation to faint.
More guilt tugged his features downward.
“It’s a thing I learned some time ago. You will get control again within an hour.
And I set the magic tying you to this tree to also expire in an hour.
You will be free at that point. To go home, to hunt me, or to hunt your humans.
I hope you’ll consider what I said and not choose the humans. ”
He moved the pack with all our food and supplies to the ground next to my feet, and then he turned and walked away.
“Andar!” I spit his name like it was a curse, but he turned back and looked at me. “If you leave me here like this, I will destroy you. I will find you, and I will make you regret this.”
A sad smile turned the corners of his mouth. “I expect nothing less.” He started to turn away again, but stopped half-way. “I am sorry for the pain I have brought you. I know you won’t believe this, but besides my grandmother, I care more for you than for anyone else in my life.”
“Lies!” I yelled at his retreating form.
But he did not turn around again.