Chapter 28 #2
That’s when it hits me. The light is from a mimic.
As always, I try to feel that special something in the air that signals mimicry, but I get nothing.
Mare, though, his teeth are clenched so tight I can see the muscle in his jaw jump.
The light is small, but the uncanny way it illuminates the entire courtyard plus the second floor in one even sweep isn’t normal.
“Natural light won’t survive here, baby Yana,” a voice comes from above. A woman, about the man’s age, descends the unstable, rusted stairs. “We have the power to keep it on for you and your friends. Why wouldn’t we?”
Despite the woman’s words, the light dims. Mare stops squirming, though the crease between his eyebrows never goes away.
“You shouldn’t keep it on because someone is paying for it. Power is not worth human life,” the princess bites out.
“It’s the only thing worth human life. You should know.
You were powerful beyond belief back then, and you have the potential to be so again.
” The woman punctuates the end of her sentence with a long sigh and stops before the last step.
She looks at her feet as if contemplating the benefit of coming down.
She makes no further effort to move toward us.
“You’re here for a reason. It’s not to change our way of life, I hope. ”
The princess bares her teeth. Her face is washed out and ashy in this light. She looks halfway to death.
“Your daughter was executed five days ago,” the princess says.
Her words stop my heart. I look at the woman standing above us. It’s as obvious as the light. There’s no point comparing her to a dead woman when the proof is alive and breathing and holding my hand. I look at the princess and see the two generations before her reflected in her face.
“You’re not kind enough to come all this way just to tell us that,” the woman says, face impassive as if the princess just reported the weather.
“You don’t know me,” the princess responds after a fateful second.
“We know your mother, and we know she told you never to set foot back here unless you had to. So what is it, baby Yana? What are you here to do?”
The princess is defeated.
“I’m out of samay, and I need to raise Isla del Sol.”
“So find someone to get more samay from,” the princess’s grandmother says, like it’s the simplest answer in the world.
“I don’t do that anymore. We’re trying to find another way.”
“No. You’re failing to find another way, and you’ll continue to fail,” the woman doesn’t have an inch of doubt in her voice. She’s so sure of it, of the cursed words she speaks, that I question my own resolve. We need to raise Isla del Sol. There’s no other choice.
“We shouldn’t have come here,” the princess says and shakes her head. “I told you I’d try and I’ve gotten you as close as possible to the island, but I can’t do anymore–”
“That girl isn’t listening to you,” the woman interrupts.
“Don’t you dare talk about her,” Yanami responds before I can.
“Can she not speak for herself?”
“I can,” I answer, relieved when my voice doesn’t waver.
The insidious doubt has traveled to my throat, shutting it tight like a vice.
Yet, I go on. “I want you to know that I’m the reason your daughter is dead and why Yanami is here in the first place.
So, talk to me. We need a boat to get Yanami’s samay back. We’re going to pray to the Guardians.”
“You’re a fool,” the woman says Yanami’s words, and the vice tightens. When I speak, it feels like gasping.
“Or Inti, or Viracocha, if we have to, just tell us where we can find a boat here.”
“I can tell you what you want to know, clear and simple. She needs to drain someone’s samay to replenish her own, and she has everything in her to do it.
That is the only way. My husband and I, our daughter, everyone who’s ever known of that cursed stone has looked for other ways, and no one has ever found one. You think my daughter wouldn’t try?”
I do think that. At least, I did. And I got her killed for it.
“Stop,” Yanami spits out. “Just stop it, everyone. This was a mistake. Champion, I promised you I would try. Well, this is all I can give. I’m leaving tomorrow.” She rips her hand out of mine and walks toward the room in front of us. She doesn’t ask. She just opens the door and goes inside.
“That’s her mother’s room. The three doors to the left all lead to empty bedrooms as well. Feel free to take refuge in any,” the man says. His voice startles me. He stayed quiet throughout the heated exchange.
“Mare, go to bed,” I say.
“But Rei–”
“Please, Mare. Just not right now, okay?” I ask, though it sounds more like begging.
He doesn’t respond. He looks at the ground and lets go of my hand, the motion less aggressive but just as cutting as the princess’s. He opens the door to the furthest room from the princess and slams the door shut.
“You want to talk to us.”
“I need to talk to you. I need to know why, to understand how you know about the stone and how you could have… how you could have…”
I’m rambling, my voice incoherent and wet despite holding back all my tears. Maybe I was this way all along. Since the princess ripped her hand away after making me promise not let go. Since Mare left. I don’t know when it started, but the tears have long been wanting to fall.
“I need to know why. Why do all of this?”
“Because it was the only way. Because we believed in our daughter, and, at that moment, we needed the rest of the world to believe in her too.”
It only takes a few more minutes, a few more stilted words, for an agreement to be made. Then, they leave me too.
I enter the princess’s room in dead silence.
I don’t expect her to be up. It’s been hours since she went inside, hours I spent crying in the dirt courtyard, choking on my own breath and pulling at my hair, after my conversation with Yanami’s grandparents.
I was surviving the pain and fear of a heart attack, alone, with my head on my knees, sobbing their words out of my lungs.
Because we believed in our daughter.
I’ve never had someone believe in me like that, and now I never will. My mother is dead.
I rub my face again. It’s still dry. No more tears dare to fall.
To my surprise, the princess is sitting on a wooden bench placed beneath a window facing outside the property.
She’s changed into some wool pants and a tank top.
She wears a blanket half fallen off her left shoulder, revealing the thin strap of her top about to slip off.
She stares out the window and doesn’t move an inch, even when she speaks.
“They still have some of my mother’s clothes if you want to change. They’re too big on me, but they might just about fit you.”
“Could you hear me this whole time?” I ask.
She doesn’t do anything to respond. She doesn’t even acknowledge me, save for a flicker of her eyes in my direction.
My stomach is in my throat. I was raw out there, and I cleaned myself up before stepping inside. I can’t have her know who the person I tried so hard to scrub from my face was. I can’t live with myself if she does.
Half her face is lit up by moonlight, and it gives nothing away. The half that’s in shadow, though, speaks something devastating.
“Kiss me,” she says, finally turning to face me.
“What?”
“I’m leaving tomorrow. You’ll do whatever it is you think, you swear, you need to do, and I’m gone. So you have to kiss me now. Before–”
I shut her up with my lips.
The kiss isn’t nice. It’s not even desperate. It’s a tool because I can’t stand to hear what else could come out of her mouth. The princess isn’t dumb, though. She turns away. Whether she’s mad or wants more is impossible to know now, but I still crave to be inside her head.
“Princess,” I whisper.
“Stop it. Everyone just needs to stop it. My mother is dead. I’m not the princess anymore. I am nothing to the empire.”
She’s wrong. She’s everything.
This time, when I kiss her, it’s an explosion rather than a restrained threat.
In seconds, I’m sitting on the bench and have her on my lap.
My back is to the window, making it possible for the moonlight to continue to light up her face.
I kiss the tip of her nose, the side of her cheek, her forehead, her neck.
I kiss every inch that the moon dares to touch like the jealous lover I’ve found myself to be.
“I have no right,” I gasp in the middle of my sentence as Yanami slips her hands under my shirt. Her fingers tease and scratch at my ribs. “I have no right to touch you right now.”
“I know,” she says and captures my lips again.
“Did you hear us? Outside?” I’m gasping for air in between every other word.
She punishes me for talking with a sharp bite to my lip.
“It doesn’t matter,” she whispers.
“It does,” I try to fight. She’s not having it. Every time I open my mouth, she closes it with her own. “It does.”
She shoves me until my back hits the wall. The window ledge digs a bruise into my spine.
“No. It doesn’t,” she says louder. “You’re the one who believes in fate, so believe it now. Nothing we do tonight will change what happens tomorrow,” her voice crescendos, yet it’s still so quiet, so restrained. It hits my ears like a scream.
Nothing we do tonight will change what happens tomorrow.
It won’t.
I’ve made my choice. I’ve cried over it. I’ve hurt myself for it. I know what fate entails for me, and I’m not going to back down. I’m not going to cower. I’m going to make the hard decision because that’s what heroes do. That’s what I’m destined to do.
But right now, I’m not destined to do anything. I can kiss Yanami, just because I want to.