Chapter Seventeen #2
Walking winded him instantly. Halfway up the hill, past so many broken, smoking buildings, Kai’s knees buckled. He tensed, anticipating crashing to the ground, but River held onto his arm and carefully lowered him to sit.
Kai lifted his shaky hands, studied them, turned them this way and that. They didn’t feel connected to him. He wrung them together, touched his face, his hair. It all felt foreign. Ill-fitting.
“Breathe,” came River’s voice, but Kai barely heard him.
Would he feel like this forever? Why did this happen? If this was real – if he hadn’t gone insane – then why wouldn’t Menon have just awoken within Ione like She was supposed to?
He didn’t want this, didn’t want this, didn’t –
“Breathe.” River was in front of him now.
“Breathe. She’s all right. She can wait a second.
” His hands were cool on Kai’s face. River’s expression cracked, albeit briefly, revealing sorrow and beneath it, relief – but he squeezed his eyes shut and schooled himself.
“You need to calm down,” he said, stern again.
“I’m not taking you to her if you’re going to start crying. ”
“I’m not – ” An errant, frustrated tear slid down his cheek; River wiped it with the heel of his palm. He gave in, following River’s stupid breathing instructions: breathe in, hold, breathe out. In, hold, out. It wasn’t helping, but he did it anyway, praying to wake up from this nightmare.
“Good.” River too blew out a breath.
“Ione?” was all Kai could say, his voice coming out choked.
“She’s up ahead.” River’s mouth was a grim line. “We saw her walk up here after we finished gathering everyone up on the beach. Cynthia and I’ve been finding excuses to come up and check on her every now and then since.”
“How… is she?”
He didn’t quite answer. “She didn’t want to talk,” he said. “But now you’re awake, I thought…”
River moved to stand, but Kai grappled for him, pulling him back down. “Wait – wait.” He swallowed, tasted smoke and blood. “What happened to me?” He felt River’s fingers tense in his hands. “Please. I need to know.”
River’s eyes lowered. “It’s… it’s like Saros said.” His gaze met Kai’s again, mournful. “You’re Menon.”
Kai’s mouth went dry. “What did I do?”
“You summoned rain that put out the fires and healed us. All of us, even Lina, Castor, the Moths.”
Lina. Lina, cradling Ione in her arms. “Is she with Ione?”
“No, she…” A muscle worked in his jaw.
“River.”
“She’s alive,” River returned quickly. “I – I presume so, anyway.” He pressed a palm over the rip in his shirt, where Castor had stabbed him.
“Castor attacked you, first thing. It was like a hurricane. Blue fire, not even Lina could put it out.” He shivered, haunted.
“You stopped it like it was nothing. Froze the water on the floor, made it shoot up like spikes.”
Kai’s breath caught. He remembered Castor’s face then. His too-wide eyes, the curl of his smile contorting with rage, the dawning terror that he had summoned Menon, but could not succeed in killing Her.
“It was instantaneous,” River murmured. “A single ice spear through the heart.”
Kai saw him hanging, lifeless, at the head of the spear. Saw the rest of Castor’s crew, falling back. Saw Lina paralysed; Ione, diving in front of her.
Don’t you dare, Kai, she had screamed.
But it was Menon who replied,
Bastard sons and daughters of fire, She had said, a wave of filthy water rising behind the puppet that was Kai’s body. Live and tell the fools who reared you not to cross Menon a second time.
He – She – swept them into the sea. Left them to swim to shore or drown. Saw Ione swinging at him, begging him to bring Lina back.
He felt himself nod, numb. Right, he muttered.
He must’ve looked bad, because River huffed out a long, weary sigh and slid his hand behind Kai’s head, guiding him to rest his forehead on his shoulder.
Kai closed his eyes, listened to their breaths, focused on the weight of River’s hand on his nape, the steady pulse in River’s neck against his temple.
Alive. They were alive.
They sat silently like that for a long moment before, “You must really fucking hate me now.”
“Kai, I never – ” River sighed, gently squeezed the nape of Kai’s neck. “The only person I hate right now is Saros.”
“Yeah?”
“You should have seen him. How happy he was. And how easily he abandoned Ione.”
She waited past the cracked-open shell of the altarhouse, perched at the edge of the dry reflection pool in her courtyard.
She stared ahead, expressionless, her hands folded on the lap of her ruined wedding dress.
Around her, the incinerated skeletons of her peacocks lay scattered, although Kai thought he could hear the keening cries of one of two, somewhere far off in the emaciated woods behind the shrine.
She didn’t move as they approached, River helping Kai to sit before her.
The ash greying her face was streaked through with tears, but she barely blinked when Kai brushed a strand of hair behind her shoulder, exposing her neck, the abalone necklace, stiff and stained with blood.
He took her hand and kissed her fingers, his chest aching.
“Ineen,” Kai whispered, and slowly, painfully, she dragged her hand away.
“Leave.”
His eyes stung. He blinked hard and raked his hair back. Was it agonising for her to see him? Was it horrible that he wanted to be here regardless, that he wanted to hear someone tell him everything would be all right?
River stirred beside him. “Saros announced we’ll all be moving to Caelos. We’re not leaving you here alone.”
“Saros.” She emitted a harsh, biting laugh.
“As always, he gets what he wanted. A better Menon, a reason to declare war.” Finally she faced him.
“And you,” she whispered through gritted teeth.
“Was this part of our deal? Steal Menon, leave Lina to drown, take everything I had?” Her voice deadened, brittle as ice. “Was this the glory you sought?”
Shame spiked through him. “No,” he breathed, his chest caving at the way she looked at him. “Ione, I don’t – I never wanted this.”
Her colourless eyes bored into him. “Did you hear what they said?” She smiled, hateful. “Menon regretted choosing me. She shed and discarded me like an old skin. You were perfect, they said. The perfect replacement.”
Kai grabbed her hands again, held them tight.
“I don’t want to be – ” Why had this happened, to either of them?
To Ione, who loved Menon; to Kai, who hadn’t prayed to any god since his father died?
Ione recoiled, but he reached for her shoulders and shook her, ignoring River’s protests, his hand on Kai’s wrist. “Take Her back. I don’t want Her. ”
“I can’t.” She lowered her head, her stringy hair curtaining her face as she sobbed. “She didn’t want me. I wasn’t good enough. I couldn’t do anything, protect anyone.”
Kai pulled her to him, his heart squeezing to hear her cry. Like River had with him, he guided her to rest her forehead on his shoulder and buried his own face in the crook of her neck, wishing he could comfort her, comfort himself. But he couldn’t.
River slid up beside him, reaching his own arms around the both of them. His chin rested on the back of Kai’s neck, and Kai could feel his fury simmering too, his helplessness.
Ione’s sobs quieted. Sniffling, she raised her head.
“I can’t go back,” she whispered. She trembled, her expression broken, desolate.
“I can’t face them again. I’d rather die.
” As though the weight of those words hit her only after she’d said them, her face twisted with grief.
“I want to die. Everything I ever had, ever was, is…”
“Ione,” River hissed, his voice strangled.
Kai took her face in both hands and pressed his lips to her forehead. His mind chanted You’re loved, you’re loved, you’re loved, but the words didn’t come out. He couldn’t say anything at all.
The Tannos’s masts and furled sails cut an ominous figure against the early sky.
The docks brimmed with energy: priests scurrying to board the ship, Hilo’s crew shouting commands and blowing whistles.
Kai set his jaw as Cynthia rejoined them, absently patting himself down for his cigarette box before deciding the last thing he wanted right now was to breathe more smoke.
Hilo met them at the end of the dock, all but standing in between them and the gangway leading onto the Tannos. He smiled at his little brother and his entourage, and tonight more than ever it felt to Kai like he was looking into a cold, callous mirror.
“What pranks have the gods played on us today?” Hilo’s smile widened into a grin, sharp eyeteeth catching in the dawn light. His eyes slid over Kai and his friends, idling hungrily on Ione hiding in the back. “Welcome to the Tannos.”
Kai nodded his thanks, sensing that his brother was in a mean mood and feeling stupid for not having expected it.
Their tenuous peace was rocked when Kai became Oseidos’s warden, and again, worse, when Kai announced his engagement to Ione.
Now, as Menon, Kai supposed he and Hilo would never enjoy the pretence of brotherhood again.
Kai willed himself to neutrality. “It’s an hour-odd journey to Caelos, I reckon – ”
“Hour-and-a-half,” Hilo supplied, like Kai was an idiot. “We have to go around to the inner bay.”
“ – and we are very tired, so – ”
“I’ll bet. Some wedding, huh? I’d say you broke the record for the fastest divorce.” He feigned a pout, looking from River to Ione, and back to Kai. “First your man and then the lady. Is no one safe from you?”
Kai felt each of them tense, himself included. “Just let us onto the ship or I’ll throw you into the sea.”
“With your special new powers?” He wiggled his fingers, whistling mysteriously. “Sure, it’d be a treat having a fight with you last more than a minute.”