16. Kalel
Kalel
Ember-like fragments of the veil fall like ash around us. Did the Alzhorian knights break through somehow? My heart races as I stumble into the gardens. A townsperson said they thought they saw Alira heading this way, and I didn’t think it could be true, but here she is.
My precious godling stands in the center of my gardens with her shoulders slumped in a defeated stance.
She hears me approach and lets her head tilt down. Her fists are clenched tightly at her sides, and for a moment I think she’s injured because she’s covered in gold. But the torn-up flowers scattered around her tell a different story. One of the long-kept brutal secrets and horrors of our past.
My chest tightens as I reach out my hand. I stop myself before I can set it on her shoulder and bite my lower lip, retracting my hand and forming it into a tight fist.
The sound of the kingdom in hysterics is the tune of our sorrow as we stand on the graves of hundreds of demigods.
It was only a matter of time before she found out.
She was drawn to them like magnets. My fears grew every night that she would find them.
It was so foolish of me to even bring her here.
Were we cursed from the beginning? From the moment we met in Florum Forest that fateful night?
There was never a real chance for us, was there…
“You’ve created something darker than death, Kalel,” Alira says grimly as she turns to face me. My muscles tense at the shadows in her eyes.
She has a line of gold running down both sides of her face from her brows to her jawline. The gold liquid makes it look like she’s crying stars, but the hatred in her stare is unmatched. Perhaps only by my own rage when she led the attack on my hometown village.
What I’ve done is unforgivable. I don’t know what to say…there’s nothing that can amend this.
I stumble to find words as I study the way she’s looking at me. She’s never had this expression with me before, and it’s making everything I’ve planned out for this moment lost in my mind. Everything has gone terribly wrong at the worst time.
My explanation isn’t much, but I try. “We needed protection from the gods. Only our highest-ranked knights and the royal bloodline know of the history and roots of the veil. You cannot blame all our innocent people within the walls, Alira. Not for this.” I take her in, the torn beautiful dress she wore to the festival, her bare feet that are injured from running here, and her unempathetic gaze. “You can blame me, but not them.”
She wrinkles her nose at me with disdain.
“We both know that it is the innocent who pay the price of the guilty. I’m going to end all their suffering.
No more wars. No more hatred and using the bones of our enemies to keep your kingdom safe.
” She spits at me. The fury in her eyes is enough to make the hair on the back of my neck rise.
I wince at her words and take a step toward her. She takes one back. “Alira, I know this is a terrible practice that the demons have carried. But I know you, and you will never be able to forgive yourself for doing this. What you’re saying is…is…” I can’t get the words out.
Her normally blue eyes flicker with a flash of red.
As if the fires of Mortem are beckoning her to do what we did to them.
How many times did I take her kingdom in the time loops?
At least twenty. And while I don’t remember the details as much as the cursed victim does, I remember slaying many, many innocent demigods mercilessly.
And I felt nothing until Alira started to thaw out my heart.
“It is monstrous. It is as ruthless as the gods…as heartless as a time-loop curse placed on a knight so that her curser could get the satisfaction of killing her over and over and over again. Until there was nothing left of her. Until she blamed herself for every wrongdoing.” Alira’s voice is filled with misery.
My eyes widen, and my jaw muscles tighten. How does she know that?
“Alira…” I clamp my lips together and try to think of anything I could possibly say right now. The veil is down. Chaos is ensuing in my kingdom. I’m losing the only person I’ve ever loved and cared about.
Her eyes are filled with golden tears, where the whites used to be are now black, and her irises are red, as if she holds the power from the thousands of demigods that created the veil.
“You betrayed me. You killed me. Then you made me…” She furiously wipes away the tears before composing herself.
“You will die with them, Blood Knight.” Alira extends her arm to her side and bends down to pick up one of the blackened stems of a peony.
Instinctively, I reach for my sword and unsheathe it.
A small, cruel, and regretful smile pulls at her lips.
“Please, Alira. I can explain the curse… I can explain everything. I wasn’t in my right mind when I placed the curse. It was before I knew it was you. Before…” My jaw trembles, and I have to try swallowing down the tears. Why did it have to be this way?
She stares at me hollowly, not waiting to hear the rest of what I have to say, as she fists the flower; her hand glows with the power of the veil. Did she absorb their energy? My eyes widen.
It’s horrifying.
She looks like a new god, formed from betrayal and misdeeds. Beautiful, and as dangerous as the rest.
I lift the tip of my blade toward her. There’s nothing I can do to ward off the tears; they come in troves and stream down my cheeks in fever.
“Please, little godling. Please, don’t make me do this,” I plead with her, but there’s no give in her gaze. There’s no talking that can put to rest what I’ve done. “I’m so sorry. I can’t undo any of it and I’m sorry.”
Alira doesn’t wait another second. She dips low and surprises me. My eyes can’t trace her fast enough as she darts my way and stabs the black stem into my thigh.
I cry out and fall to one knee, gnashing my teeth together before forcing myself back up to my unsteady feet. She’s behind me in a blur, but I’m faster this time. I’ve fought her before, and my body remembers most of her tricks, even if she’s nimbler now.
I swing the sword down with all my strength, catching her eyes and seeing the fear flicker there momentarily. Of all the times I’ve slain her, it was the look in her eyes that always stayed with me.
My arms buckle with the emotion that rushes through me, and I lose my momentum. I cannot do it. Not even to save my kingdom. I’m not the same demon I once was. Heartless and starved for revenge. I don’t want that anymore.
Alira moves quickly, avoiding the blade and managing to swing back and knock my sword from my hands. I grunt as pain shoots up my arms from the blow.
“Alira, please, listen to me,” I beg as I lift my head to look at her.
She punches my jaw and sends me to the gravel amongst the torn-up flowers. I push myself back up to my elbows and am met with my own sword’s edge, the tip digging into my throat.
“I love you, Alira. I love you so much, and I wish I never did any of the things I have. They are truly awful, but I cannot change the past. I am not the same man. Please…forgive me. I cannot bear to lose you.” My words hang at the edge of my heart, and I can’t breathe.
I’ve never felt such heartache, such sharp pain that hurts as much as this.
Wait…
My brows pinch with confusion, and I slowly look down at Alira’s hands gripped tightly around my sword.
The blade, where is it… I follow the metal I’ve known for half of my life and find it buried inside my chest, piercing my black heart, and all the ebony blood within my veins twists with betrayal.
“That’s not love,” she says, staring into my eyes. “You had many chances to tell me. To try to make amends. You don’t know what love is, demon.”
I grit my teeth and grip the blade, taking a short, staggered breath that gushes blood into my left lung and makes me cough violently. My eyes lift to hers again.
Alira’s gaze is no longer filled with hatred. Only sadness and heartbreak, tears that are for me, the monstrous demon. Her ruin. She hesitantly lets go of the sword. I grunt at the weight I have to use to keep it in place.
She intends for me to die. She would kill me so easily? But what about the sacred oath she took? She will die too. My eyes drift down her chest to where her mark should be on her sternum, but there’s nothing there.
Everything inside me twists and aches. Did she break the oath bond? When? Was she planning on killing me all along? My jaw trembles and the pain in my chest worsens. Or was it my secretiveness that led her on this path? Planting seeds of distrust strong enough for her to protect herself?
I don’t let my eyes move from hers, even as they are consumed with tears.
“This is farewell, Blood Knight.”
I groan as I pull the blade out. Blood gushes from my chest, and I fall over onto my chest. “Alira!” I cry out, arms shaking, and my chest warming the ground with blood.
“Alira.” This time, my cry is weak and broken.
My breaths become shallower with each inhale, and I watch as she walks away from me.
Get up.
I flex my jaw and force myself to my feet, pressing my palm against my chest to staunch the bleeding.
She’s walking toward the festival again, likely intending to leave Devicit now that the veil is down. Fuck. The Alzhorians can now see the kingdom, as can the gods. They’ll all be coming unless we can ward them away somehow.
My kingdom will burn.
I take a staggered step forward before collapsing. My left lung is filling with blood, and my heart is losing rhythm.
“Commander!” Nikolai’s voice cuts through the grim, cold air that’s fallen around me. I stare up at the snow that floats down as if it intends to bury the world.
Nikolai skids to a halt at my side before dropping to his knees and looking over my body in horror.
“What happened? Kalel…she wasn’t in the cell and…
the veil.” He presses his hands to my chest, making a sharp pain jolt through me before the glow of his magic permeates around the wound, and a wave of relief overcomes me.
I let out an audible breath as my lung clears of liquid. My eyes are closed. I don’t want to see Nikolai’s expression right now.
I know I’ve let them down. I’ve let everyone down.
“Look at me,” he snaps, voice breaking.
I look up at him through blurry eyes.
“Don’t tell me that Alira did this,” he whispers, gaze dead set on mine. There’s a burden in them, he knows, and it breaks his heart.
“She…has chosen to perish with the demigods, Nik.”
Nikolai’s magic flickers for a moment with his shock. “She really tried to kill you…” His voice wavers with grief.
“Yes, and the moment you heal me, I will stop her before she brings her kingdom to wreak havoc on ours.”
Nikolai’s eyes narrow with anguish. “You mustn’t kill her, Kalel. We will find another way. She’s not thinking straight—”
“She knows about the time-loop curse… She knows about the bones we used to feed the veil.” My voice is broken. It feels like I’ll never move again. I don’t want to, if it means I have to fight her to save everyone else.
But I can’t do nothing either.
Nikolai removes his hands from my chest, palms covered in my black blood, and rises to his feet. I take a long breath and have little joy in the fact that I’m healed completely, yet my chest wrenches in ways that it shouldn’t. That of a broken heart.
“I have to. She tried to kill me… You didn’t see the look in her eyes, nor feel the power that thrummed through her veins like a thousand war songs. More god than demigod.”
I stand and clench my jaw. No ordinary sword will do. I will need to use one of our last remaining relics made of the devilstone to kill her now.
My hands tremble with the very idea of taking her life, watching the light fade from her beautiful eyes I’ve grown to know so much. I clench my jaw and close my fists. No. I have to… I cannot choose just one life over my entire kingdom.
I’m falling apart; I’m breaking into a sea of pieces that cannot be put back together.
After I ensure the safety of my kingdom…
I will follow my godling into Mortem. I press my hand against my chest. No creature can live with pain as aching as this.
I feel a madness falling over me. Mania and grief more than can be expressed into words.
I look to Nikolai.
“Bring me the god killer.”