Chapter 23 #2
It was a shame he was so tall that she couldn’t ruffle his hair. Warmth blossomed in her chest. He reminded her so much of her younger brother.
“Give us a moment alone,” Aurora told her attendants.
“Come on, I have so much to tell you,” Hyllus said, offering his hand and fairly dragging her into the nearest meeting room.
A few oil lamps lit up the space, an austere room decorated in white and grey with a few chairs seated around a table.
He ushered her into a seat that was more functional than comfortable and then went to close the door.
Once the door was closed, his smile faltered.
“Hyllus?”
“I’m sorry. I promised I would kill Drakon,” he said, slumping into the chair next to hers.
“We haven’t failed yet. What of Lord Leukos?”
“He’s maybe a day behind me. I don’t…I don’t think I can kill it on my own. It’s too fast. No loper can match its speed. I need your help to slow it down.”
She reached her hand across the divide and put it atop his.
“Then you’ll have it.”
Hyllus nodded.
“I’m sorry to ask this of you. Rumour is you’re going to become a queen.
From what I’ve seen of Aureum, it’s desperately needed.
I…I had no idea the blight was so bad. I’ve seen whole villages wiped out by angry spirits, crops rotting in the fields, cattle that sicken and die hours after they drink from a stream.
I’ve lost two lopers that way already. I’ve had to…
look before I dare take a single sip of water,” he said, whispering the last part.
What he’d seen didn’t surprise her. She’d seen the horrors herself, though nothing quite that desperate.
“You can see the blight?” she asked quietly.
She knew so little about the magic of divine eyes.
Hyllus nodded.
“It reminds me of…well, monstrosities. It’s so angry,” he said, his eyes haunted.
Aurora’s heart skipped a beat. She remembered the last time she felt a kind of anger that was so very big and old. Had that been the blight that had brushed across her senses, or had it simply been a sign of the madness eating away at her mind?
“Hyllus…what else can you see?”
He furrowed his brows in pain.
“Too much, it feels like.”
She hated to be another cause of pain, but she had to know. Just how far gone was she? Did she dare train her magic anymore? Or was she best served waiting until the moment of truth with Drakon?
“Can you see…madness?”
He seemed confused at first before his eyes widened with horrified understanding.
“You can’t think—”
She shook her head.
“I’ve been hallucinating. I don’t think I have much time left,” she said, voicing her fears for the first time. It was a relief to say it aloud, to share her burden.
Hyllus swallowed nervously.
“I’ll look.”
His blue eyes took on the look of faceted sapphires as he peered at her thread.
In that state, Hyllus appeared calm, almost cold.
His gaze roamed over her, and she could swear she almost felt it.
Aurora stilled. The longer he looked, the more nausea threatened.
She supposed no one was ever prepared to find out just how much of their mind remained intact.
When his eyes returned to normal, he frowned, opening his mouth before closing it. It took an effort of will not to throw up.
“I don’t think you’re going mad,” he said finally.
“You don’t think?”
“I admit, I’ve looked at very few people stricken with madness. I’m more used to seeing melancholy. But they look like…it’s hard to describe. Maybe like snarled strands? But I don’t see that when I look at you.”
That was almost worse. What could explain the hallucinations if not madness? Was it simply that Hyllus didn’t know what he was looking at? She met his gaze and almost wished she hadn’t. He didn’t appear relieved. In fact, he seemed alarmed.
“What do you see?” she asked, not sure if she wanted the answer.
“Something bigger than I can fathom is reaching for you.”
Talons around her torso, dragging her high into the sky, so high the wind screamed into her ears as it burned her cheeks with the frigid cold.
She was a fairy mouse caught by a falcon, her only hope to escape her captor’s grasp and fall to her death on the ground below, else she would be torn apart piece by piece to become its dinner.
“What is it?” she whispered.
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen it before. I’m sorry.”
Aurora gasped, a tugging feeling dragging her from Hyllus’ side. Fight as she might, she couldn’t escape its grasp.
Theron stood in his receiving room, holding a woman tight. Her heart burned with anger. But as she looked more closely, she could see he was gritting his teeth. A flash of a dagger, a spray of blood on the marble floor, the dagger plunging into Theron again and again.
“You should have made me your queen while I was playing nicely,” Lady Ino gloated, shoving Theron away, her hands coated in his blood.
He should have healed himself, but instead he stared at his shaking, bloody hands as he coughed up a river of crimson. Panic and dreadful, hopeless knowing twisted his features. Theron was dying and he couldn’t heal himself.
Aurora shouted, catching a glimpse of the woman’s self-satisfied smirk before the vision disappeared. She was back in the temple with Hyllus.
“What did you see?”
“She’s going to kill Theron!”
The silver lining to being poisoned before dawn was that only a handful of palace guards were present for Theron’s race to the temple district.
Less fortunate was that his arrival at Passion’s temple was much remarked upon by the few clerics on duty.
No doubt by midday, all of Altanus would know he’d been poisoned.
Just yesterday he’d thought he was ready for his enemies to test his mettle, that he could withstand whatever they threw his way.
Today, he wasn’t so certain. Being poisoned the day after such a spectacle would embolden the worst of them.
It was why he’d ordered Nireus to pay special care to Aurora’s safety.
As for his own, Theron wouldn’t feel safe until his magic returned.
So he sat in Myrina’s receiving parlour while a trusted priestess brewed his antidote.
Myrina appeared tired, worn out in a way he’d never seen before. Dark circles haunted her eyes, and apprehension seemed to be all that held her upright. She must know then who it was who had delivered the poison. Anger roiled in his gut.
“When were you going to tell me Batea was a dualist?”
Her face paled.
“Never, if possible.”
“You have betrayed me, Myrina.”
“Protecting my daughter is not a betrayal,” she retorted.
“How can you say that, as the High Priestess of Passion?”
“Though I have chosen to serve Passion alone, that does not make dualists traitors to the Divine Triad, Theron. They worship Her all the same.”
He must have shown his bewilderment openly. Myrina sighed.
“Does that shock you, my little lion? You may be surprised to find how many clerics share my views. You yourself were never in a hurry to persecute the dualists of Aureum. Why the change of heart?”
“They attacked my palace, stole the statue of Knowledge, and one of them poisoned me this morning.”
“And so for the actions of a few, you would condemn them all? If you applied that sentiment equally, there would be no more nobles in Aureum, after so many attempted to take your throne from you. But there you found yourself capable of punishing those who wronged you and allying with those who supported you.”
“This isn’t the same thing.” He clenched his fists.
“How so?”
“Nobles aren’t responsible for the cycles of chaos. Dualists are.”
And yet the moment the words left his mouth, he regretted them. Not so long ago, when he felt himself above such disputes, he thought them an easy scapegoat for the temples—for Orithyia. He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose as a headache bloomed. He really had lost his damned head.
“That is what some, like Orithyia, have long believed. But do you know? Never once, in all my years reading the signs Passion has sent me, has She demanded bloodshed.”
The door to the parlour opened, and a priestess entered bearing a tray with a foul-smelling concoction.
She bowed deeply and left them to their conversation.
Theron took the dubious brew, determined not to think too hard on what was in it, and swallowed it down as fast as he could.
It was all he could do to keep it from coming back up.
“How long until it works?”
“Half a day, maybe less.”
As the foul antidote churned his insides, Theron’s temper cooled.
Triad’s tits, he’d really made a mess of things with Batea.
She’d come with warnings of spies and traitors in his midst, and he’d let his anger and pain get the better of him.
He needed to recall what she’d told him, and yet one question ate at him.
“How long?”
“Hmm?”
“How long has she been a dualist?”
“Since she was a child.” At his puzzled expression, she continued.
“Her tutor was a dualist. Apparently, his son convinced her to sneak into one of their sanctuaries. She said it…felt like home. At first, I was horrified. I sent Leandros to investigate. But all he found were people, most good, some bad, the same as anywhere else. They weren’t a dangerous cult intent on the destruction of Trisia, they were Trisians no different from us.
And so I kept my daughter’s secret and did my best to teach you that dualists were not our enemies. ”
“I’m surprised.”
“Why?”
“I would have thought her dualism the reason you two have such a fraught relationship.”
Myrina frowned.