Chapter 52
The Chalice and Naethor come back into view. The younger Kaelis stands in the same position he did in the vision, staring at the floor, as though my mangled body is still there.
In the silence, I ask the Kaelis I know, “Why did you sacrifice your futures to the Chalice?”
The academy didn’t exist yet. Kaelis was a powerful enough Arcanist that he didn’t need the power of the Chalice to use the higher-numbered cards.
None of this was necessary.
“Do you think I had a choice?” The way he asks makes it clear that he thinks I already know the answer. I suppose it should’ve been obvious…“Had I refused, my father would’ve killed me.”
“Because you were the heir to Revisan?” I guess.
Kaelis dips his chin slightly. It’s part nod, part glower cast in the direction of the memory of his father.
“If he took my future, I couldn’t be a threat. By this point, I’d already gone to the fortress and found proof of my lineage.”
“How did he know what future you’d give up?” I ask.
Kaelis turns his void-like eyes to mine. “Do you believe in destiny, Clara?”
“Of course. The cards are proof enough of its existence.”
“Then he knew it didn’t matter what cards I picked from the deck…
because he knew what I was destined to be.
Every road was leading me toward the crown that was my birthright.
Ruling was fated for me, and that was what he feared even after using the World, due to its unpredictable nature. So my father wanted extra insurance.”
“But you met me anyway. The Chalice might take the core of something happening, but not everything from the vision. And since you still met me—albeit not in the way the Chalice showed—that was not the core of the future you lost.” At least, this is how I’ve always understood the Chalice to work.
“Yes…it was not the fact that we met. It was happening to come upon you when we were both still so young.” It has me imagining what my life might have looked like had Kaelis entered sooner.
“Because of what I sacrificed, I had to search for any sign of you, and when it came time to orchestrate the meeting, I could not be the one to summon you. Every time I tried to do it alone, and I did try, I was thwarted. Letters lost. Commands misunderstood. Currents that prevented my boat from getting to Halazar in the secret of the night.”
“But you did ultimately summon me.”
“Glavstone did, not I. And I had to punish him to within an inch of his life to get him to. I didn’t know he was so far in Ravin’s pocket.
” Kaelis’s attention drifts back to his father, and his gaze hardens.
“My father was confident that by forcing me to sacrifice three futures to the Chalice, he would take from me the ability to revolt against him. I would become the perfect warrior he so dearly wanted because I would have no hope for my future. My ambitions would mean nothing, and his would supplant them. And if anyone else could uncover the true history of the past, there would be no way to restore my bloodline to power.”
My attention shifts from Kaelis’s silhouette to Naethor. He’s outlined in cold blue by the Chalice. As still as a statue. I can see the overlap in the shape of their noses and cheeks. The familial resemblance is there, as much as I’m sure Kaelis loathes it.
“How do you know that was what the Chalice was taking from you?” I ask. “What the immutable thing was?”
“I knew it in my bones, just as I think you did after sacrificing your future to the Chalice last year.”
That silences me as I think back to the feelings I had.
I knew from the first moment that I’d given up the possibility of a relationship with Liam.
I’d never thought it was just meeting him in one moment.
Or dancing with him. It was giving up the idea of us completely—of a love that could flourish once more.
Maybe giving that up, too, was a form of destiny. As if the Chalice were trying to correct itself and bring me back to Kaelis.
“And this is why he takes the futures of other Arcanists,” I murmur. To turn us into his unquestioning servants. Someone without a future—or who perceives themselves as having less of a future—has little to lose and will be more likely to cling to any direction that’s offered.
Kaelis of the vision turns up the next card.
Ten of Coins.
It’s thrown into the Chalice, and the world blurs once more.
However, this time, when everything comes back into focus, the same blue hue dances on the walls. Now it originates from a shallow pool that circulates around a statue. Along the outer edge are twenty familiar slots.
Different versions of Kaelis and me stand before it. We’re older than in the first vision. Roughly our current ages, maybe a year or two older? It’s hard to tell in the dim lighting.
Kaelis lays a final golden card into its slot. The tenth Major. The Wheel of Fortune. My card.
The me of this world stands at his side, dutiful and determined.
Her crimson eyes watch as he lays the card down and the water of the pool turns from blue to gold.
The statue comes to life, leaning forward.
The globe it holds in its hands is presented to Kaelis.
But unlike the rest of the statue, it is no longer stone.
The globe has turned into swirling threads of gold.
Kaelis reaches a hand into his pocket. My eyes widen as he produces a card with an intricate frame drawn upon it but a blank center.
It’s just like Mother showed me.
Every line is there, even the ones I forgot. Though I get only a glimpse, I quickly imprint them on my memory. I knew that somewhere in the academy I’d find the final pieces for how to ink the vessel. I never expected the answer would come from Kaelis’s own memories. Luck is still on my side.
“This is how I knew what the vessel was…and what the World could do,” the real Kaelis says from my side, his words somber. “I had only theories and partial information before this.”
The Kaelis of the vision holds the vessel card into the orb of magic and the light stitches across the card, inking the legendary twenty-first tarot. I am shocked into stillness at the sight of the World in his hand. At it being real at all—as real as this could be.
Vision Kaelis holds up the World and takes a breath. The glow of the font illuminates the inking on its surface. My eyes widen. But the prince then turns before making his wish.
Once more, I watch myself be destroyed by his hand.
We’re back with King Naethor, who looks positively incensed. Younger Kaelis, for his part, stands defiant. Even though I can imagine the physical toll these visions, in such quick succession, are taking on him.
Naethor’s loathing makes me think of the dance we shared at the Feast of Cups last year. He must have recognized me before then, I realize. Back when I was at Fate Hearth…Maybe that was why he issued his warning to me.
“Why did he endorse our marriage during the end-of-year Swords celebrations at Fate Hearth?” My thoughts gain sound as I muse aloud. “He knew who I was.”
“Calling you my bride protected you from more than the suspicion of enforcers,” Kaelis says thoughtfully.
“It protected you from Ravin, and my father in a way also. It put you in a spotlight and made it so that if they moved against you without cause, it’d risk showing a dangerous rift in our royal family.
It could imply that I was not in alignment with the king.
Or that the king did not have quite the firm hand guiding his son that he so likes to project. ”
“That must be why Ravin had to bring Glavstone with the cards I inked for my Three of Swords Trials…” They were working against me behind the scenes and creating an excuse to remove me. They couldn’t do it outright.
“I sometimes wonder if my father blessed our potential union to torture me,” Kaelis says gravely.
I look to him in shock, about to ask if he would really do that.
But this is King Naethor we’re talking about.
This is the man who destroyed a world to consolidate his power.
Murdered his wife. Who stole the futures of his own son to keep it.
Of course he would punish Kaelis for daring to act outside of his authority and threatening the good image of his rule.
Without a kind word from the king or an offer of reprieve for the Kaelis of the vision, the final card is flipped.
The King of Swords.
I’m instantly tense at the sight of it. For me, every time the card has come up in a reading, it’s represented Naethor. The King of Oricalis—the King of Swords.
As the world shifts, I realize that the association is still half correct.
Gilded spires surround us. Elegant peaks of a castle I’ve never seen before. Magic hangs in the air, woven around garland and banners.
We are centered in the vision once more, slightly older again than we last were.
Except this time, Kaelis wears the trimmings of a king.
Fine rings adorn his fingers; a cape lined with silver fur weights his shoulders against winter’s chill; an ornate sword with a crown-shaped pommel and guard of silver-spun clouds is at his hip.
And on his brow is a crown I recognize only from the portrait of his mother.
A five-pointed crown with the four suits framing a sapphire at its center point.
The version of myself at his side is dressed in equal measure.
A high neckline nearly grazes my earlobes.
Strands of hair fall from where it has been pinned up around a silver tiara.
A corset that is so encrusted with silver and gems it looks almost like armor sits over skintight leather trousers.
Two decks are strapped to my right thigh.
An excessive number of cards, but…oh, how wonderful it would be to carry that many at a time.
To have that much power at my fingertips and place it on display as both a promise and a threat.
The Kaelis in the vision lays a single rose upon a sarcophagus at the center of a walled garden.
I’m reminded of the tomb of his mother here in the academy that hides the entrance of the Sanctum of the Majors.
Like her final resting place, this sarcophagus has been carved to look like the man within.
King Naethor’s stony face looks far more serene in death than I ever saw it in life. A generous liberty taken by the artist. Behind us, fireworks explode across the sky in some distant celebration.
“Let’s go, my love,” the Kaelis in the vision says softly. “Our kingdom awaits.”
His eyes shift toward me—not the me of his vision, but me. As if he can see through what should be nothing more than a fabrication of the real Kaelis’s mind to where I stand. A thousand unspoken words shine in his eyes just before they darken with unfathomable shadow.
Before the inevitable attack comes, the world twists. It’s as though a child picked up her dollhouse and turned it on its roof. I’m falling out of rooms propped up by magic. Of a reality not my own—but that could have been.