Chapter 38 #2
“No, I don’t want your forgiveness,” I said hollowly, giving up on trying to close the distance between us and instead turning to face the glass window that looked out over the forest. I could just make out the shadow of the Great Elm in the distance, but the night was pressing in thickly, like a blanket of black silk had been laid over the canopy.
“It is partly true what they say about me. I killed King Arthrun, but I did not covet the crown. I only wished for a new reign to come. Arthrun had been seated on the throne for hundreds of years – far longer than any other ruler before him but Providence had never come to select a new monarch. There was something gravely wrong about that. Everyone whispered of it. My mother was sure there was more to it than what he told the kingdom. He declared himself the Last King; the one Providence had promised to select one day for an eternal reign of peace. But Arthrun was greedy and cruel. And once I found myself old enough to join the Coterie and was welcomed into the fold, I saw what my mother had whispered to me of. Arthrun liked his blood sports. He had humans taken from their beds, stolen away in the night to partake in his twisted games.”
Ferris looked revulsed at that and I nodded gravely.
“He did the same to any ‘lesser’ Fae he took a disliking to. It was ritualistic sadism, all carried out in the name of the spirits. Arthrun would have the Coterie pray to them and declare his bloodshed an offering to their supremacy. And all the while, I saw the sick and bitter truth beneath his lies. All I know of the spirits is purity, they are not creatures who demand torture for their own gain. Not even Death herself covets such things. No, that is the desire of sick bastards like Arthrun. Fae with too much power and too much time on their hands.”
I took a heavy breath to calm my wrath, waiting to see if Ferris might comment on what I’d said but she remained silent. So I continued.
“Years went by where I was forced to keep the company of the most cruel Fae among the Coterie. My parents shuddered at what they saw, but neither said a word. For to speak out against the king was to find yourself placed into the execution pit yourself. But the more time passed, the more I could not stand what I witnessed. I could no longer stay my hand and pretend to go along with it, pretend to be one of them. Something had to be done.”
“So you killed him,” Ferris whispered at last and I sensed that she was closer to me than she had been before. But I didn’t look around.
“Yes,” I growled. “And I do not regret it. Not for a second. That monster needed to be dealt with. Providence would not have chosen him as the Last King and even if he had, I would rather deal with his wrath over the heinous creature he had placed on the throne.
So I trained in secret for the task. I studied the king’s palace meticulously – it’s a hallowed place, built on the bones of an ancient monster that was slain by the very first Fae royal to be selected by Providence.
I studied every door of that palace, every window, every avenue I could take in my plot to assassinate him.
And when the night came, I snuck into his quarters and attempted to kill him in his sleep.
But he woke before I could strike him and we fell into a bloody battle before I managed to drive a dagger into his heart.
In that moment I saw something. Something I still do not understand to this day… ”
“What was it?” Ferris pressed, like she was hanging on every word I spoke now.
“Providence,” I said thickly. “Just for a moment, a glimmer of him in the living quarters beyond the king’s bed chamber.
All I saw was a strange grey haze around the spirit then a blaze of violet ignited in his gaze, those bright cat’s eyes I’d heard all the songs about gleaming from his feline face.
He was there, then gone into that grey mist. And to this day, I do not understand why. ”
I fell quiet and so did Ferris, the silence passing between us broken only by the howling wind that whipped around the tower.
“I took his crown,” I said eventually, shattering the quiet like my fist through glass.
“I took it and ran – that crown holds a fierce power and I did not want one of the Coterie to claim it. But when I found my way out of the palace, I accidently alerted a guard as I made it to the outer wall. The cries were already going up in the palace. The king had been found. Blood soaked my chest, my hands and the guard who saw me put two and two together. I felled him with a heavy punch to the head, but I should have killed him even though he was an innocent. Had I done so, I may never have been caught. My family may never have been executed. That guard’s death might have stopped the axe of fate from falling how it did.
But…” I trailed off. I’d gone over that night in my mind so many times, seeing all the ways I might have prevented what had come next.
But there was no undoing the past. The coins had settled where they had fallen, meeting heavily with the hand of fate and binding themselves to it.
“I hid the crown,” I muttered. “It still lays in that place to this day. Buried somewhere in the trees that spread away from the palace walls, though the exact location is a blur. I suppose it doesn’t matter now anyway.”
“No,” Ferris agreed quietly. “So… you were caught?”
“Yes. And you know the rest. But what you don’t know is what happened after my family were killed while I knelt there in that stone courtyard with all the world ripped away from me.
The Art of speaking to the dead had been my gift from the spirits, but it twisted that day.
I called out for Death to assist me, begging her to answer my plea.
And she came. Death herself took my hand and spoke in my ear, words that crossed from the afterworld to this plane of the living.
‘You are death and death is thee.’ I felt her power pour into my heart, awakening a terrible force that rattled through my flesh and burrowed into my bones.
The spirit of Death’s power latched itself to my Art, mutilating and warping it into some new, deeper, darker magic.
And these marks appeared upon my neck, inked there by the shadow of Death herself.
” I gestured to the bony hands that were tattooed around my throat.
“Then… the dead around me began to wake.
I wielded this new strength and dragged my family back from death, somehow tearing their souls from the grip of the afterworld and lashing them back to their bodies.
In terrified, delighted wonder I watched as they rose to their feet while the Fae who had come to witness their executions screamed in bloody horror.
But they were not as they had once been.
They were ravenous in their wrath, my mother, father, sister and brother racing out to kill all those who stood close, tearing at their enemies with nothing but their hands.
Any who met with death joined their army, bowing to the destructive revenge I had so desperately wanted to reap.
They answered to the call of my ragged heart that day, every kill another solider turned to my will. And the death they harvested was great.
“I still recall how Islasees Bellatorn turned and fled from the tide of Hollows I’d sent after him, the very man who had wielded the knife that had silenced my mother’s screams. The one who had watched in dark glee as his soldiers beat my father into a silent grave, who had commanded that my sister and brother followed them into death.
He who had placed the outcast mark upon my flesh.
I bellowed a vow to the spirit of Death, promising I would hand Islasees’s wretched soul to her myself.
But then the power she had offered me began to wane, I lost my grip on it and could not guide it like I had at first. It still spilled from me in a tide, flowing in every direction and I couldn’t stop it.
Like it was chasing every drop of life around it, determined to snuff it out.
“My family came to me, surrounding me with bloodshot eyes and ice-white features and as they drew me to my feet and my mother whispered, ‘you must flee.’”
My hands fisted on the narrow windowsill as I let all the pain of that day pour out.
“What happened next?” Ferris asked, her voice a raspy plea to know the end.
“Islasees gathered his ranks. His army met with that of my Hollow creations and a brutal war was fought between them. But Islasees only had eyes for me. He chased us, me and my family, hounding us towards the edge of Rivenspire until we were forced to abandon the only home we had ever known. Since that day, I have had little control over the Hollows at all. Sometimes I can will them here and there when the power gets it claws in me but…” I shrugged.
“Death comes and goes like the tide. It leaks from me unbidden and creates more Hollows who sew more death wherever they may go.”
A heaviness hung in the air at my words, shaking the foundations of everything we had built our shaky alliance upon. This was my olive branch, the only one I had to extend. And she might refuse here and now.
“What happened to your family?” Ferris asked. She was closer again, drawn to me by some madness and I was tempted to turn to her and pull her near – but she would only cringe away now that she knew what I was.
“They wait for me in the Blight,” I said thickly.
“They have remained at my side ever since that day, caught in the grip of death yet unable to leave this world. At first, I thought they were truly back from death, but over time I saw that they were not. Part of them is here and part of them is in the afterworld. They’ve lost their spark, their desire to live but still they linger here in some half form that is not enough to sate them.
They cannot even perish as the other Hollows are able to.
I have pleaded with Death herself to return them to me fully or to allow them to pass into death at last. But there is only one way to release them from my curse. ”
“The boon,” Ferris breathed and she laid a hand on my back.
I stilled, confused by her touch, how she reached for me when I was baring my deplorable soul to her.
“It is my only hope to free them,” I admitted.
“It’s my only hope to free Rissa too,” Ferris answered and my chest hollowed out.
I turned to her as her hand fell to her side and my heart sank at the broken look on her face.
“Only one of us can have their wish fulfilled, lightwing,” I said darkly, reaching for the amulets at her throat and brushing my fingers over the spirits she’d won for herself.
She took my hand, gripping it as if making some deal with me and I ached to draw her into the cage of my arms, but I remained rigid, uncertain how we would move forward from here, or if we would do so at all.
“Our trust is shattered,” she admitted and my throat thickened. “But…”
Everything hung on that word, every fragment of my being waiting to hear the next words to pass her lips.
“Some foolish part of me is telling me I am right where I’m supposed to be.”
“Then stay,” I gritted out, aching for her to do so down to the roots of my very being.
Her hand tightened on mine, a firmness to her fingers telling me she was in charge in that moment. “If I choose to leave, will you stop me?”
“Yes,” I said roughly, knowing it was so, casting all lies aside and giving her the ugly reality of what I was.
She nodded slowly, her fingers falling from mine and a roiling storm of tension rising between us. “Then I guess I’m staying.”
At that declaration, the dark power of death receded inside me, somehow dispelled by it. But I couldn’t fathom how such a little thing could hold sway over the tumult of death that had been pouring from me.
“Tonight or forever?” I smirked, relieved to feel the oppressive aura lifting from my soul at last.
“I’m not sure,” she answered, her throat rising and falling as I stepped deeper into her personal space.
I released her hand and trailed my fingers over her throat, a growl of want rising at her touch. “Let’s focus on tonight for now.”
“Alright,” she agreed, stepping closer to me, desire rising between us as tension corded the air, threading it with unspoken words.
I’d never felt drawn to anyone like this before. And something about the way the air was shifting and how her eyes were trained on mine told me everything was about to change for us. It was as certain as the sun rising upon the dawn.