15. Undying Heat
Undying Heat
Four days after I have made my vow to the Void, I chant the Litany of Silence in the breaking hours of dawn.
My throat bleeds from the lies I am forced to utter, and I take the pain as penance for obedience.
Standing still as stone, I stare into the glowing orb of the managram, maintaining the perfect mask of the ice cold Sokar’s visage.
For now, I do not have a choice but to keep order.
To chant.
To light the Polis with the prayer and maintain the illusion of compliance.
I could Weave. I could call upon the silver in my veins and see how far its righteous fury might take me in divine retribution. I want to. By the skies, the winds, and all that lives and breathes, I have never wanted something so much.
They brutalized the man I love.
Buried madness into his skin.
Forced him into acts against his will.
Chained him into apathy.
My Kailorien.
My Resh’Agar.
But open war is useless in Krystopolis. The Doctrine is too vast to be burned out. The Flaeme holds souls and minds captive. The Reskala are too numerous, even for my magic. I am only a grain of sand in a vast desert.
But not for long.
I will claim my voice atop this tower of madness. I will find a way to show I am not small. I will break the silence.
And so, for now, I chant.
Hours and hours pass in mindless prayer. I lose myself within the ebb of flow of the words. A numbness takes hold. Almost comforting in its oblivion.
My body aches. The heat from the Estar has not subsided.
If anything, it’s grown sharper, heavier.
Different, this time, from all the other decades I’ve endured it.
I do not know if the ritual broke something inside me or if the affliction worsened suddenly when the Bond was rekindled with Kailorien’s return.
But it hurts.
It dulls my senses.
My mind drifts, and in this fog, I allow Lu’ma to lead me back to the Resh’Agar’s abode.
My friend.
Another soul I must protect.
A fragment of light I must guard against the dark.
She helps me rest on a stool, moving with quiet precision as she pulls the ceremonial gown from my body pin by pin, button by button. It must be returned to the Crafters at the Prismatum. All of the Sokar’s dresses are borrowed, never owned.
When it is done, Lu’ma wipes sweat from my brow with a cool cloth. She says nothing, but I sense the tension in her body. As she braids my hair, her movements are practiced. Soothing.
I run my fingers along the golden braid at my shoulder.
Thessia…you swore you would find me, and I have sworn to carry this until I can return it to you. What would you say if you saw me now? Would you laugh at my weakness?
No. Never. She would clap a hand on my shoulder and tell me to keep fighting. Keep walking. Even if each step weighs more than I can bear.
Beside me, Lu’ma signs, ‘Your Radiance, will you go to the Temple in such a state? Your Radiance is unwell.’
I nod. “Yes. I must. Please bring my other gown and shoes. I will go without delay.”
She nods her head and helps me don another formal dress.
The only one I truly own. Her hands are gentle but firm as she pulls the aged fabric over my shoulders.
The fabric whispers as it slides down my arms—worn well past its prime.
The stitching near the hips has come undone again.
Lu’ma had tried to fix it the night before.
Her fingers were deft with thread, but not perfect, and the hem pulls to the left.
Unsightly in Krystopolitan standards, but it will have to do for now until my stipend is distributed.
One Gleam could buy another gown, though I am in dire need of more.
I’d been in dire need for some years now.
Months ago, I’d prepared all the necessary documentation to motion for a stipend increase.
But I cannot present it unless I speak at Council.
And I wasn’t ready. Wasn’t certain I had all the right pieces in play to stage a coup.
Now, I’ve grown tired of waiting.
Now, they will hear me whether they wish to or not.
I close my eyes at a wave of dizziness, bracing my palms on the stool beneath me. My head throbs with that slow, drumming heat. Relentless. Draining. My skin feels too tight for my bones, and sitting upright takes all of my strength.
Another flurry of gestures from Lu’ma. ‘Your Radiance is too warm.’
“I’m alright,” I cut in, forcing a smile as I stand, then sway.
Lu’ma reaches for me, but I steady myself, my jaw tight.
“I have duties, Lu’ma. We all do. Kailorien left early this morning, did he not?”
Lu’ma nods reluctantly.
“Then so must I.”
I pull my white cloak over my shoulders. The same pale, silvered weave as my only gown. The brooch at the collar has dulled over decades, no longer gleaming with its tiny, embedded rune. Another relic of splendor reduced to a placeholder over years of neglect.
I step toward the doorway, my gait stiff, controlled.
Today, the Council will be expecting reported progress on the Grand Festival of Growth.
I had spent weeks working with the reluctant priests at the Eastern Platform, readying wards against potential Creeper Vine intrusions, ensuring the platform was painted and ready.
If I can make it there today and oversee the blessing structure and the webs myself, I will have the final pieces I need for my report this eve.
A start. A beginning.
But, the first stair takes my knees from me. I catch myself on the wall, panting, trying to ignore the fresh sweat prickling at my brow. Lu’ma is beside me in an instant, hands fluttering with alarm.
“I do not need help,” I insist, but it comes out too soft—too breathless—to sound like truth.
Lu’ma doesn’t argue. She simply offers her arm.
We make it halfway down the corridor before I have to stop again.
The light slanting through the crystal archways blurs.
Every step is a calculated surrender: give some weight, now shift.
Breathe in, then again. One more. But my body betrays me.
My thoughts are a whirlwind of plans—altar placements, mana-flow alignment, a list of priests to see and speak to—but they slip from my grasp with each faltering step.
A voice speaks in my mind.
:: …cannot live without Silari’s breath…find him…use what you’ve been granted… ::
I shake my head. More hallucinations. They come, sometimes, even during the day.
Perhaps I, too, am nearing madness after spending years trapped within the Doctrine.
Or perhaps this is the voice that spoke to me decades ago upon the Moores.
I haven’t heard it in so long, I’d nearly forgotten of it.
The voice of my origins, perhaps. Once, I hoped to remember more about them.
But now—I stroke the golden braid at my shoulder—now I only wish to survive, to fight for those I love, to be myself in a world that would erase me.
Lu’ma supports me at my elbow. I hate needing help to walk. Despise how my gown clings to my back. That the silk beneath my arm has grown threadbare. That Kailorien had likely seen the state of this. Of me.
Most of all, I hate how much that matters. That he saw.
Saw and yet said nothing, likely knowing it would upset me.
We round the final turn before the descent to portal hall.
I don’t notice him at first.
But I hear him.
A voice—firm, displeased—snaps across the corridor.
“Stop.”
I freeze in place.
Kailorien stands ahead. Alone. No Reskala.
No heralds. His thick black cloak is slung over one shoulder, showing off the Resh’Agar’s blazing crest. His hair is tied up high, some strands still clinging to his skin from morning exertion in the Sparring Ring.
His eyes narrow with fury, fixing on my dress first.
Then my face.
Then Lu’ma’s expression of thinly-veiled frustration.
“I instructed that she wasn’t to leave the wing,” he says to Lu’ma.
I lift my chin. “Do not turn your anger on her.”
“You’re burning,” he says flatly.
“No worse than before,” I counter. “I told you, this is commonplace.”
“You’re sweating.”
“It’s warm in the corridor.”
“You’re swaying.”
“I’m not.” I glance away. “Only a little.”
Lu’ma steps back as Kailorien walks up to me.
His gaze takes in everything. Seeing everything.
His eyes fall to the dress. He steps even closer, and without asking, touches the seam above my hip.
Just with his fingertips. Just enough to feel where the thread had been mended, where the fabric had warped.
“Why are you wearing this again?”
I tense. “So you did notice.”
“Of course I did. You’ve been wearing this same dress for days. Auryn, where are your others?”
I hesitate for one more moment. “It’s the only one I have left.”
Kailorien’s jaw clenches visibly. He steps back from the edge of his own temper. His fists curl and release. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s another burden.”
The silence between us is white-hot. Thick. Tangled with words unsaid.
“Starlight, go back to my wing.”
“No.”
“Auryn.”
“I said no.” My voice is hoarse but steady. “The Grand Festival is coming in less than three weeks. I have to see the platform myself. I need to—”
“Auryn,” he cut in, stepping closer. “You will sit. You will drink water. You will order Lu’ma to call the Noctrist.”
A flash of panic in my gut. “The Noctrist won’t know what this is.”
“Sweetfire, you’re wearing a fever like armor and calling it resolve.”
I turn my face away. “This is what they all expect. For me to break. For me to hide. If I cannot do my duty today, if I miss another report, the Council will deem me unfit.”
“They already say that,” he snaps. Then, softer, “But not because of you. Because they fear you. Because they don’t want you strong.” His hand hovers near mine. “You are not weak for needing rest. Let me be the one to defy them.”
I sway on my feet, enough that Lu’ma steps close.
Kailorien nods to her. “Help her back. I’ll come soon.”
“No,” I insist, shaking my head. “Don’t…please don’t stop me, Kail.”
He steps forward and touches my waist, guiding my body against his. “Today, I must. Don’t make me carry you, starlight.”
I lean into the shelter of him. Into the temptation of the safety he wields with his words alone.
“I am not ill. Something is out of balance in this unknowable body, but it will stop soon.”
Kailorien exhales. “Then rest until it does. And do not speak such things. This body has carried you through storms. Be kinder to it.”
“Simple to say for someone that walks in a living aegis.” I frown.
“If I could give you my strength, I would.” His arms tighten around me. “I thought if you stopped,” he whispers, “if you stopped Weaving, your body would heal.”
Silence. The kind that burned.
“But it hasn’t.” He tilts my chin, urging me to look at him. “You keep breaking. Even without using that magic. And I don’t know what else to do.”
He drags a hand through his hair, and his pain stings across the Bond. I rest my cheek against his armor—cool and smooth and steady against the heat in my bones.
“I’ll be alright.”
“You say that every time, starlight. But that isn’t enough answer. Not for me.” His gaze turns inward, haunted. “Something is missing. Something I haven’t thought of. But I’ll find it… I’ll find it and make you well again.”
“This isn’t something you need to fix, Kailorien. Please—” I take his hand and press it to my chest. “Please don’t carry this burden too.”
His mouth thins into a hard line. “You aren’t a burden.”
I don’t know how to answer such a lie. In this moment, all I can see is the red in his eyes during Estar. The way Vargrún on his neck had glowed crimson and violent against his will. The weight of duty that had chained him for far too long.
And I cannot—will not—add to it.