48. Chapter 48
Chapter 48
Viola
D ishes are still piled all over, and clothing is scattered from end to end. The place I once lived in is a mess, a physical manifestation of the chaos that lives within Himureal's mind. The grid buzzes like an annoying insect flying around my head. Himureal clearly isn't here, so I head up the familiar stairs to the main level of the Palace.
When I reach the top of the stairs, I call upon Shadow, Light, Yearning, and Influence magic, combining it all within me into a surprising weapon. I feel the Illusion settle on me, hiding the weapons on my thighs and the deception in my heart and mind.
Before I left, Cirrha told me that he spends most of his time holding court in the ballroom where the gala was held, so I decided to check that first. The Palace is hauntingly empty, and my path crosses with no others as I sneak through it.
I fling open the double doors to the ballroom, and the smell of old, dried blood assaults me and almost brings me to my knees. The beautiful marble floors are marred by the caked lifeforce that coats it. A throne sits in the front of the room, bathed in blood and gore. The room is empty, and in the dark, the shadows that reside in the corners tell the truth about the horrors that have unfolded in this room.
I back out of the empty room and continue my search for the God of Winter. I check every room and open every door as I wander through the eerily quiet Palace. My feet stutter and bring me to a stop in front of a familiar door.
Mace's office. The one that became Zeph's once we fled.
Every part of me knows that Himureal sits behind this door. I take a moment to call my magic, making sure my Illusion and deceptions are solid.
This is the best it's going to get.
I open the door just enough to slide in, and I close it softly behind me.
Sitting behind the desk is the Frostweaver, his eyes wide and wild, his white hair billowing around his shoulders in loose waves. His skin, so pale I can almost see the blue veins running underneath it, is on full display as he only wears an open black vest on his torso. His face stretches into a huge, hopeful grin when he notices me, and he stumbles, rising to his feet.
"Shadowweaver." He breathes my name like it is his salvation, and I see the magic I have woven take hold as his eyes soften. "You've returned."
"So I have." He doesn't make any moves to walk closer. He leans on his hands across the desk, moon eyes staring at me. I slip into a chair and prop my boots up on the surface. "I came as soon as I could."
"I knew you didn't leave me, I knew you were taken. Taken. Taken from me."
"I was," I say softly, letting the magic of Yearning and Influence coat my tongue and coaxing trust and love from the God. "But I am here now, father, for us to be together."
His ice-blue eyes light up, and he moves around the desk, leaning against it. He's so close I can almost touch him, but it is not the time yet to take his magic from him. "Everything I've done has been to get you by my side, my side, my side. I have purged the city of those unworthy of us. Everyone here is ready to pledge their lives to us, Shadoweaver."
The door behind me opens, and I spin to see Nimh, the Neried that Cirrha warned me clung to Himureal, walk in. Himureal's sharp eyes cut to her.
"Out! Out out out!" he shouts, voice full of venom.
Nimh ducks her head. "Frostweaver, I apologize, but I must…"
"OUT!"
Before I can even flinch, Himureal grabs a dagger with a blade of shadow and hilt of ice, twin to my own, from the desk and hurls it across the room, where it embeds itself into Nimh's chest. She drops to the floor, her legs unable to support her through the shock and pain.
"I am talking to my daughter, " he sneers. "I'm sorry, Shadowweaver," Himureal says, his voice calm as he turns back to me. "Where were we?"
I roll my eyes at him and stand, crossing to where Nimh lies on the ground, bleeding out in the doorway. I squat down, grabbing the hilt and yanking the blade from her chest. "I' ll take this."
Her hand, slick with her own blood, grabs my wrist, and she begs, "Viola, please, heal me. I know you can." Her eyes are going glassy as tears trail down her cheeks. Her breath is coming in rough pants, and every beat of her heart pushes more blood out of the wound. Himureal watches us impassively, with no emotion for the fae who stood by his side the entire time he was in Ytopie.
"I don't think I will," I tell her with a wry smile on my face as I wipe the blade on my shirt.
"Please. Zeph was my friend. He would want you to. Please," she continues. Every word is a great effort as she fades in front of me.
My laugh fills the small room, the sound out of place in the situation I have found myself in. "Funny story," I say quietly so Himureal can't hear me. "Zeph told me all about how you helped and supported Himureal. Cirrha and Taegan told me about you marching your neighbors to slaughter."
I rise to my full height and look down at her fading form. "Also, Zeph is dead." I turn away, pushing the sounds of someone fighting for their life out of my head, and stand in front of Himureal. "Where were we, Frostweaver?"
He beams at me, not even asking for the blade I have in my hand back. "Yes, yes, yes, now that that unpleasantness is taken care of, I was saying, the whole city left is ready to pledge themselves to us."
"Us, or you?" I ask, tilting my head to the side .
His eyes are dreamy from the magic that still holds him hostage. "Well, it's the same, right? You are of my magic, here to support me, and so they prostrated themselves before me and will be there for you, too."
"It sounds like you didn't give them much of a choice." I keep my voice light and curious.
"Well, of course not. If they didn't want to submit and chose to die for their convictions, who am I to stop stop stop them?"
"Submit or die?" I muse, chuckling as I adjust myself to be just a little bit closer to him. "That's what you asked people to do?"
He beams with childlike joy, and for a moment, it hurts my heart. This God is my ancestor. I am luring him to his death like a siren. In another realm, another time, he and I could have stood proudly side by side.
"I met your siblings," I say casually. "I brought them back."
"That was ill-advised, daughter." Is that my imagination, or did I just see a flash of fear in his eyes?
A wry chuckle slips from between my lips. "You're not wrong about that. Amaryn is a piece of work, and Avidor…"
"What did my brother do?"
"Besides making it clear that he wanted me as his consort? He was an ass." I twirl the knife I pulled from Nimh's chest in between my fingers. "It's interesting, though." He's hanging onto every word I say, sitting on the edge of the desk. His eyes are wild, and I can see the barely contained madness swirling beneath the surface.
"Do you see what I told told told you? That they do not care about people. All that matters to them is their own power power power." He runs his hands through his hair, eyes darting around the space in paranoia.
"Oh, you're not wrong about that. But for all their faults, they did teach me a very important lesson."
He leans closer to me, white brows lifted up to his hairline. "Do tell!" he exclaims.
"How about I show you?" Gently, I place my hand atop his on the desk and slowly pull his magic from his body.
His shoulders lock, and he roars, yanking away from me, but it is too late.
The magic of Winter roils happily within me as I become a God of all Seasons. The only God of Krillium.
"How could you?" he screams, flinging himself off the desk and charging at me. It is easy for me to flick shadows toward him and wrap him up in them, suspending him just slightly above the ground where his bare toes barely touch the floor. "How could you?" he repeats, quieter. "How could you?"
"Here's the thing, Himureal," I say, using his blade to clean under my nails. "You've been asking people to submit to you or die, but what you do not realize is there is power in submission. Just because someone makes the choice to kneel before you does not mean they follow you. It does not mean that they support you. When someone makes that choice to submit, they are choosing to live another day."
He thrashes against the bindings, yelling, trying to interrupt me, so I wrap his face in a shadow as a gag. "Those that you killed for not submitting are no more or less brave than those that choose to kneel before you. You seemed to forget that sometime people can pretend to follow you and that, ultimately, is your downfall. You were so desperate for love and affection, like your little helper over there," I nod my chin towards the dead figure of Nimh, sprawled on the floor, "that you readily and easily believed that I was here to take your hand."
As the Illusionary magic fades around me, I can feel the magic surge within me and flutter to life. A soft buzzing fills the air, and I shake my head to clear it, but it stays. It was easy to forget how loud all of the magic in Ytopie is.
I face Himureal, my blade raised to put him out of his misery when fights against his gag, yelling around it. I peel the shadow off and flick my blade at him, giving him a chance to say his final words.
"Viola, Viola, Viola, please. You have to understand. This is just the way I am. This is how they made me," he begs. "I wasn't supposed to be this way, don't you see? Before the banishment, I was loved. I had a family. I was loved. Loved. Loved."
"Lucinda?" I say quietly. "Your high priest?"
"It was pure. It was true. I loved her, and she loved me. She was supposed to bring me back. Bring me back." Thick tears fall down his cheeks. "Why didn't she bring me back?"
I can't pretend to know the motivations of his former high priest. It is heartbreaking that the woman he loved left him to rot, but that doesn't excuse what has transpired since the ritual.
"I cannot say, Frostweaver," I say gently. "But we cannot base our decisions off of what ifs."
"Please, Viola. Viola. You don't understand what I went through through through."
"That's the thing, Frostweaver. I do understand." I rub my free hand on the back of my neck. "But what has transpired here can't continue. You'll never be satisfied, Himureal. Do you think you can live a normal life after all of this? You're broken." In my gut, I feel sorry for the God, but logically, I know he will never change. I will forever be looking over my shoulder, tracking his actions, fighting against his nature to keep him in line.
Even without his magic, he is a danger to the realm that I have sworn myself to protect.
He thrashes against the shadows that were once his to command. "I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. Please, let me try. Let me try. I can do this. I can live a normal life."
When I look into his bright eyes, I can't help but see myself.
Who I could've been.
Who I would've been.
Who I was saved from being.
Without the guidance of those that I love and who love me, I could've easily fallen into isolation and desolation and ended up exactly where the Frostweaver is now.
"I have always wanted to believe the best in you," I tell him quietly. "I wanted a father figure. I wanted someone who understood me and what I was going through with my magic." I reach out, touching his cheek.
After all we've been through together, this may be only the second time I've touched him. He leans into my hand with the fervor of someone starved for touch.
"I wanted it to be you."
We stare at one another while his body shakes and fights against the restraints. The loss of his magic and the energy he's exerting are weakening him by the minute, and the manic light is leaving his eyes.
"It's just…" I inhale sharply. "This is the only way. Don't you see? It was never supposed to be like this, Himureal. Somewhere along the way, the magic became perverted with selfish desires. The world needs a cleansing that only I can provide."
"I… please, please, Shadowweaver." His quiet voice, so broken, so human, cuts into me and almost shakes my resolve. But there is no saving him. There is no coming back from the lives he stole. As he struggles and fights against the shadows that I have weaved between and around his limbs, his chanting is a plea to me to understand, to save him, to spare him. The passion and fear in his words are so at odds with his normal intonation that I almost do a double-take to check who it is that I have restrained.
I clasp the back of his head with my hand, stroking gently, his hair incredibly soft and almost cool to the touch. I shush him quietly as I pet his head and slowly slide his blade across his throat.
"Sleep well, Frostweaver. Maybe in the next life, we can try again."
He sputters and gasps, his blood leaking onto my hands, my arms, and my clothing as I hold him close to me and run my hand down the back of his head as his life drains out of him.
Death is silent.
One would think it would be loud, like the body is putting up one last fight on its way out of the realm.
But it's not.
True death, the moment whatever part of you it is that makes you, you, leaves the body, is so silent it almost sucks the sound from everything around it.
I untwine my shadows and gently lower the Frostweaver's body to the ground. The dripping of his blood from the slice in his neck is obscenely loud in the vacuum of sound his death has created. But as I lay his body on the white marble floor, swirling with the blood and death of today but soaked in the residue and memories of two great men who once resided in this room, the silence screams at me.
The world is changed, for better or for worse, because the full power of Winter now flows through my frozen veins and because this God died a man by my hands.
My hands.
They're shaking in a way they have yet to after a kill. My teeth are chattering as if the magic that now lives within me has decided that I am unworthy, and it must shatter me from the inside out.
The blood that soaks into me is rich, and its metallic smell lights up parts of my brain and magic that I would prefer to ignore.
I know the madness that lives in that blood, and I want no part of it.
Slowly, I rise to my full height, my eyes dancing over the two supine and motionless bodies on the floor around me. I have to let the others know, and then we can make a plan for what to do next.
Up until now, Shadow had remained still and quiet around my neck, an unmoving support that is so much a part of me that it is easy to forget he is around at all sometimes. He slides down my arm and rests his head in my hand, silently urging me to summon my shadow vision.
So I do, pulling the darkness around me with Rainworth on my mind.
As I walk through the darkness to the now-familiar door of Rainworth, I feel a tightness and a tugging in my chest. I didn't expect killing Himureal to affect me as much as it did, but this pain is unfamiliar. I rub my chest as I step through the door into the deep twilight.
The moon casts a warm orange glow on my chosen family. Waiting for me, Jaz, Plume, Cirrha, Taegan, Morrow, Tulip, and Mace are scattered around the grass, some standing, some sitting, all looking directly at me.
"Viola!" Mace shouts, rushing towards me. I hold up a hand, halting him a few steps from me.
"It's not my blood," I say, my head woozy from the tugging in my chest and the smell of the blood. "It's his. The Frostweaver is dead."
"We know, we think-" Mace begins, but I cut him off, holding my hand up. I can't hear him, and his voice is garbled in my ears.
"Wait," I say, shaking my head, trying to clear whatever it is that is clogging my ears. Through my blurry vision I can see my companions all stepping towards me, slowly, carefully, like I am a rabid animal they are fearful of.
I rub my hands on my face, dragging them down my flesh to try to push some clarity into my sight. In doing so, my hand breeches the boundary of my lips momentarily, and I taste the familiar, earthy flavor that blood holds.
The vaguely metallic aroma overwhelms my senses, and my vision goes out entirely, my limbs buckling, and just before I fade into blackness, I hear my name on the lips of someone I love.