Chapter 27
Cyra
I barely had time to gasp in air before the icy chill of the ocean water sent needles of pain through my body. The shock of it left me dazed for several long moments as my mind reeled, trying to understand what had just happened as I took stock of my situation.
Axenus had grabbed me and was now dragging me down into the depths of the ocean. Fast, if the water rushing over my body was any indication. Faster than I would’ve thought possible. Was he really trying to kill me?
No, Axenus knew I could survive underwater. He was trying to get me away from the prison.
A strange mix of fury and relief hit me, and my mind cleared. My magic had already begun to do all the things it needed to do to keep me alive, such as filling my lungs with air, warming the water around me, and relieving the depth pressure.
Axenus’s strong arm was like a band of iron around my waist, but now that I had my bearings, I ported out of his grasp.
It took me a moment to orient myself when I reappeared in the vast nothingness of the water, though. Axenus must’ve expected the port because it seemed like only a second before his hand closed over my ankle, and he yanked me back down against him to continue swimming.
I considered porting again, but I realized the futility of it.
Porting required me to imagine my destination within a frame of reference, and I had none down here.
On land, you ported next to a tree or onto the other side of a door.
The tree and the door were spatial references that helped the power determine where to make a person appear.
Down here, the only thing I could use as a spatial reference was Axenus, and – to a degree – the surface, but that didn’t seem to be enough for the magic.
I could probably do better with some practice, but I didn’t have time for that now.
Moreover, now that we were no longer in the prison, I was starting to lose my anger, and with it, my desire to fight Axenus. The deeper we got, the more I also needed to concentrate on keeping myself alive, so I stopped struggling.
I felt the tension in Axenus ease as my body relaxed against him.
“I’m sorry, Cyra,” he said, and his voice was garbled through the water. “This was the only thing I could think of to stop you.”
I didn’t respond. I could’ve tried to break through his mind shield to seize control and make him bring me back to the surface, but I was tired. I didn’t want to fight him. Whatever plan he had, I’d let it play out.
I lost track of how long we swam into the depths, and I was about to break my silence when Axenus finally slowed.
The pale blue glow of phosphorescent light appeared before us, and I made out the dark outline of an underwater rock formation.
Axenus swam straight for it, and I saw what looked like the opening of a cave.
Panic surged again at the thought of him dragging me into a dark enclosed space, and I pulled at his arm with a muffled scream of protest.
“There’s a large cave inside,” he assured me. “Don’t worry. It’s safe. We just need a place to talk.”
I stilled against him, but the tension in my body didn’t abate as he swam us through an opening just barely large enough for both of us to pass.
Nausea turned in my stomach as claustrophobia took hold of me, but it eased slightly as the phosphorescence illuminated a wide-open space inside the stone.
“I’m going to push the water out of the cave,” Axenus told me. “I need you to fill the space I make with air.”
I nodded.
All around us the water started to flow out the way we’d come in, and I immediately filled the space with breathable air. About a minute later, my feet touched down onto rock as the water withdrew, and several seconds after that, my head was above the surface.
I gulped in a huge lung-full of air. Axenus’s arm was still around me, and he was standing as well. He’d apparently shifted out of his merform because he held onto me until I was steady enough to stand.
“Are you alright?” he asked as he eased his hold on me.
I stepped away from him.
“You mean aside from the fact you tried to drown me, and I’m now trapped on the bottom of the ocean somewhere?” I asked.
Neither was true, but I wasn’t above hyperbole right now.
I stepped back some more and saw Axenus was still wearing his clothes, but the seams of his pants had been torn when he shifted, and they now hung around his waist like a tattered skirt.
At least he wasn’t naked.
“How long do you intend to keep me down here?” I asked.
“Until you feel it’s safe for you to go back up,” he said.
“And if I told you I feel it’s safe now?”
“I’d ask you if you really believe that.”
I pushed out a breath. I wouldn’t admit it out loud, but he was right. I wasn’t ready to go back up yet. I shouldn’t go back up yet. It was just now hitting me that I’d killed Clarice, not in self-defense, but out of wrath.
I looked around, but there wasn’t anything to sit on, so I eased myself down onto the hard stone floor.
The faint glow of phosphorescence still dimly lit the space from under the water at one end of the cave, so I let a small fire flare to life on the stone.
It didn’t actually burn anything, so there was no smoke, but I still wasn’t sure it would be safe to stay down here for long.
I also warmed the air in the cave, and the chill from our little swim began to seep away.
Axenus sat on the ground across from me, and for a long while, neither of us spoke.
His lightly iridescent skin shimmered in the firelight, and his garnet-colored hair hung over his shoulders, dripping beads of water.
His shirt clung to his body showing each muscle of his sculpted chest, but I wouldn’t let myself see him as an object of desire as I once had. I knew too much about his past.
Finally, I couldn’t stand the silence any longer.
“Do you wish you’d killed Clarice instead of me?” I asked. My voice was overly loud as it bounced off the walls of the cave, and both Axenus and I winced at it.
“I had my chance to kill Clarice years ago, and I chose not to,” he said. “I wish you’d chosen the same.”
The resignation in his voice was worse than any anger, and my face flamed with shame.
“Why didn’t you kill her?” I asked, anger rising to mask the shame. “She deserved to die for what she did.”
He looked me squarely in the eye, and I had the urge to shrink back from his stare as his expression made me shudder.
“You don’t even know half of what she did,” he said, and it sounded like he was barely holding onto his composure. “You killed her because you wanted to kill someone, not because she may or may not have deserved it.”
“I killed her because she put her hands on you,” I said.
“It’s not your job to protect me.”
“No, but it is my job to punish,” I said, standing. “I don’t understand why you let her live.”
Axenus heaved a deep sigh. He remained seated, his legs stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankle.
“I couldn’t kill her,” he said. “Not without risking my own humanity, my own sense of self. I didn’t want to let her take that from me.”
“Have you never killed anyone before?” I asked, a bit surprised.
“I have,” he answered, “but when Bressen brought me to see Clarice and told me he wouldn’t stop me if I wanted to kill her, it wasn’t the same.
When I started to drown her, she wasn’t a soldier on a battlefield.
I wasn’t defending myself or trying to save someone else.
I was murdering a woman in her prison cell.
I didn’t like what I felt, so I stopped. ”
The memory of almost killing Eddin in his prison cell came back to me. Bressen had brought him to Tide’s End, and I’d nearly killed my former lover before my healer magic had kicked in and tried to counteract what I was doing.
“Well, I took care of her for you,” I said stubbornly to Axenus.
He finally rose to face me. “Do you think I wanted to see you become a murderer?” he said harshly, and the words struck home. My stomach knotted at the accusation in his voice.
“I’m the Hand of the Nemesis!” I shot back. “It’s my job to punish.”
“The Nemesis decides who lives and who dies, not you,” he said.
“Maybe the Nemesis decided Clarice should die and that’s why I had the urge to kill her.”
“Or maybe you were angry and scared that Bressen was taken, and you were looking to lash out at someone,” he said. “Clarice was just a convenient surrogate for the person or people you really want to hurt.”
I turned away from him, not willing to let him see just how right he was. I shook my head.
“It’s not fair,” I said. “When bad people hurt us, we’re expected not to retaliate out of some misguided sense that doing so will make us as bad as or worse than them.
Why do others get a pass – get to live – when they do horrible things, but if I kill someone in retribution or punishment, I risk being branded a monster? ”
“Cyra, killing is a slippery slope,” he said.
“You told yourself Clarice deserved to die – and maybe she did – but then that wasn’t enough for you.
You went after Glenora next. And yes, maybe Glenora deserves to die as well, but her child doesn’t, and you were willing to sacrifice that baby for your vengeance.
That wasn’t your choice to make. That’s not a soul that deserves punishment.
If I’d let you kill Glenora, how many more people would you justify killing to get the answers you want? ”
I clenched my teeth together. I didn’t have a response to that, and once again, I knew he was right.
“So what am I supposed to do?” I yelled.
I closed the distance between us and pushed on his chest with both hands.
“Am I just supposed to sit here and do nothing while Magdalene and Sandrian do the gods-only-know-what to Bressen?” Angry tears sprung to my eyes.
“What if they’re torturing him? What if he’s hurt badly? What if…what if he’s already dead?”
I clenched my teeth even tighter to keep the sobs in, but I couldn’t stop the tears from rolling down my cheeks.
Nemesis damn me, I didn’t have time to be this weak right now.
I had to keep my head on straight for Bressen’s sake, and my body shook with the effort of trying to hold my bone-deep panic at bay.
“Cyra.” A look of compassion overtook Axenus’s face.
I shook my head. “No,” I managed to say. I couldn’t handle his kindness right now. I didn’t want his understanding.
He stepped toward me, and I took an answering step back. He kept coming, though, until he’d wrapped his arms around me and pulled me against him.
I broke. I sobbed into his chest as the weight of everything finally came crashing down on me.
The things Magdalene had told me shook me to my core, but they were so much worse because Bressen wasn’t here to help me pick up the pieces.
He himself might be in mortal danger right now, if not dead already.
No. I held on desperately to the belief that I’d know if Bressen were dead. I’d just know. I’d feel it in my soul. In our soul.
I curled my hands into fists in Axenus’s shirt. It was still wet, so my tears couldn’t do it much worse.
It was a long time before I finally let go of him.
He hadn’t moved, and he didn’t release me until he felt me pull back.
His arms slipped away as I wiped at the moisture on my face, which was a pointless endeavor.
We were both still wet from head to toe, so trying to dry anything would be futile until we got to the surface.
“Are you ready to go back up?” he asked me quietly.
“Do you think it’s safe for me to go?” I asked.
“I can’t know your heart and mind, Cyra,” he said. “You’re ultimately the person who needs to live with your actions. Are you ready to live with whatever happens if we go back up?”
I nodded. Whatever lust for wrath or vengeance had gripped me before was gone, washed away by either ocean water, or my tears, or both.
I looked at Axenus. Or maybe it was the unwavering caring and compassion of this man I now considered among my closest friends. He’d been called in to train me to use my magic, but he’d taught me so much more in the short time I’d known him.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have killed Clarice, and I shouldn’t have made you face her to begin with.”
“You didn’t make me do anything. If I hadn’t wanted to see her, I wouldn’t have stepped inside that cell.” He exhaled deeply. “Part of me wanted to see what Revenmyer had done to her.” His eyes locked with mine. “And yes, part of me is…grateful she’s dead.”
I knew it wasn’t supposed to be a thank you, at least not in the truest sense, so I didn’t say anything. I just nodded my understanding.
“I think it’s time to go home,” I said. “We need to try whatever else we can to find Bressen.”
Axenus nodded. “Cyra, you know we’ll all do everything in our power to get him back safely.”
I smiled weakly. “I know.”
I turned away from him to draw a portal back up to Revenmyer, and it opened in front of the prison. Since we’d left the area inside the wards, we’d have to be let back in if we still had business there, but I was content for the moment to return home.
I closed the portal behind us after we stepped through and looked around for Surgeon and Serise. I doubted they would’ve left without me, but I didn’t see them.
There was no warning when they attacked, but Axenus threw himself to the ground and rolled out of the way just as both gargoyles came streaking out of the sky for him. He was on his feet a second later with his dagger in his hand, which had somehow stayed on his belt.
“No!” I yelled as Surgeon and Serise banked around for another try.
I jumped in front of Axenus and hit Surgeon with a forcefield to send him veering off course just in time as he came in for another attack.
“Stop!” I said, throwing my hands out to ward off my protectors. I knew they were furious with Axenus for what he’d done, but they’d have to shelve their pride for the moment.
Surgeon and Serise landed in front of us, swords drawn.
“Step away from him, my lady,” Serise said, “and let us filet the fish.”
“Stand down,” I told them, and they both looked at me in shock. “Axenus isn’t to be harmed. He did what he thought was right, and he didn’t hurt me. We’re going to let it go this time.”
“My lady,” Surgeon said incredulously.
“Stand down,” I repeated.
The twins exchanged glances, but they finally lowered their swords.
“Are you sure, my lady?” Serise asked as she glared at Axenus.
“I’m sure,” I said. “It’s time to go home.”
For as much as a place without Bressen could be considered home.