Chapter 83
Samkiel
I snapped my fingers, hoping the gifts appeared as I’d planned. If sleep had found Dianna, she should be deep enough now that it wouldn’t wake her. Either way, it was the least I could do. I lifted the pendant she had given me and kissed it for good luck. I just hoped I was not stuck here too long.
I exhaled and summoned a blade, sliding it across my palm. I drew a large circle on the floor, placing runes around the perimeter in my blood. A few moments and it was complete, the wound on my palm healing.
The council hall was quiet, everyone working away upstairs while The Hand returned to Onuna.
I’d instructed the council members to leave me unbothered and posted a few guards outside the main doors, just in case I was out longer than I hoped.
Any interruptions could be dangerous. I rolled my shoulders to loosen the tight muscles before stepping to the center of the ring.
I sat, curling my legs under me and resting my hands on my knees, clearing my mind and calming my body before speaking the sacred words.
My mind drifted first to her, always her, then a swift, great current swept me away.
* * *
“You use a lot of power to come see me, god king.” The voice wavered in and out, echoing all around me.
A chill shivered up my spine and touched my mind. I stepped forward into the massive white room. It went on forever in both directions, with no end or creature in sight.
“I know, which is why we must keep this trip short.”
“You loved my dimension once.” The room shifted, and I was back at the palace in our room. “But it seems your heart belongs to another now.”
The bed shifted in this phantom place as Dianna rolled from it. Only it was not my Dianna.
“It does.”
The Higher One lifted one of her hands, running her fingers over her face. “She is beautiful. Is she yours?”
“Yes.”
The Higher One tsked, waving one long red-tipped finger at me as she walked forward. “Wrong again.”
“Must you take her shape?” I asked, my stomach churning.
“Why? Is it distracting?” Her hand trailed over a thin lace robe, exposing the matching lingerie beneath. It was a set that Dianna had asked me to make for her. The Higher One was playing in my brain, using my memories to their advantage.
“You can not distract me,” I said, the room vibrating. “You are not her.”
“Pity.” The Higher One looked at her nails. “So the prophecy is true. How sad.”
“Yes, yes, everyone is upset because I found someone I want to spend my life with. I grow tired of hearing it.”
“That is not the sad part.”
“What do you mean?”
The Higher One jumped onto the bed, placing one toned leg across another as it lay back. “You know the rules, nothing from me until….”
“What price do you ask of me for this information?”
The Higher One slid a hand across her thigh, then higher.
“If you cannot help me without that, our time here is done,” I said and turned to leave.
The Higher One laughed. “I’m kidding. I just wanted to see if you are serious, and you are. The Samkiel of old would have wasted no time accepting my advances.”
“I grow weary. What is your price, then?”
“I have no need for a price. I have seen, just like the fate has, what is to come. You are already about to pay a steep price, god king.”
“Am I to be punished because I went to Roccurem first? He speaks in prophecy and riddles. I do not need that from you.”
The Higher One sighed and rolled her eyes. “Roccurem was locked up for a reason. The fate is fickle.”
My blood ran cold.
“Explain.”
“The fate wishes for the old prophecy, for her to love you, but the seed has already taken root in her chest, festered and nurtured by a creature made of darkness. She is quite beautiful, Samkiel.” The Higher One raised a hand and petted her face. Dianna’s face. “But she is evil.”
I took a step forward. “No, she isn’t,” I growled.
“To you perhaps, but the verge of madness she walks is thin, and what she is willing to do for the ones she loves has no known bounds. She would slaughter your very family if they raised a hand to you. Is that love?”
“Love?”
The Higher One cocked her head and jumped from the bed.
“Have you told her that you love her yet?”
I glanced down.
“You’re afraid,” she whispered in shocked awe.
Then her laughter echoed in the room, bouncing around in thousands of different voices.
“For eons, your name has incited fear into the hearts of your enemies, and they have hunted for ways to make you feel the same without success. Now this,” the Higher One indicated the shell of Dianna she was wearing, “frightens you?”
I didn’t say anything, my throat going dry.
The Higher One shifts into swirling formless mist, its true form, and screams, “Tell me! You seek truths. Give me this one!”
“Yes!” I yelled to the maelstrom of smoke whipping around me.
The cloud shifted, returning to Dianna’s form.
“Yes, I am afraid. She left so easily before. Even if I say the words, what’s stopping her from leaving me again? Or what if she does not feel the same? So yes, I am afraid. I fear not monsters or realms or anything really, but that, her rejection, she terrifies me.”
“You share flesh like feverish beasts, yet wonder if she loves you?” The Higher One laughed. “Pathetic.”
“Just because I meet her physical needs does not dictate love.”
“Over a thousand years, you let no one get close, and now, even with all that ego and pride, you’re insecure.” She laughed once more. “This is better than any trade we could have made. The great protector has a weak spot in his armor.”
“Enough!” I said, losing my temper. “I did not come for ridicule. Either help me, or I am leaving.”
The Higher One shrugged. “Fine. Ask your question.”
“The giant said a creature broke through Yejedin, where Kaden and the other Kings of Yejedin resided. I need to know why and what beast.”
The Higher One walked back and forth with a knowing grin on her face.
“You still see Kaden as a King of Yejedin?”
I shook my head, confused. “No, I know he is one of my father’s generals.”
“Is he now?”
“What else could he be? Only the four kings could enter and leave their dimension.”
The Higher One held up a delicate finger. “Unless something was locked away with them. Something an old god wanted to hide. To forget.”
My gut lurched, and I swallowed the growing lump in my throat, knowing who’d broken that place open. I’d heard the whispers of the secrets but refused to consider any of the rumors.
“My father?”
That catlike grin returned as she spun back to me. “Bingo. We have a winner.”
“Why would he put his general there? Why would he protect the kings? The only reason would be to unleash chaos so they could defeat us in the war.”
“It was not the kings he wanted to protect, but what Kaden had made.”
“Kaden made the Kings of Yejedin. Yes, I know that.”
The Higher One nodded. “Your father lied when he said it was the Primordials. The Primordials saw the raw power Kaden possessed and knew its potential. Unir’s power grew tenfold with Kaden at his side, and they recognized the threat level.
They challenged him, and your father wanted peace, so he locked them all away.
” The Higher One formed before me, still wearing Dianna’s face.
She reached out, her fingertips brushing my cheek.
I moved my head to the side, avoiding her touch.
She pressed against my jaw, turning me to face her.
“Think, Samkiel. Why would he lie to so many he claimed to care for? Why lie in the first place? Unless what he hid was so very precious to him. Wouldn’t you want to hide that which you loved so much if the entire realm wished it dead? ”
My heart thudded. “Kaden was more than a general to him?”
The Higher One nodded.
My hands fisted. “A lover?”
“No.” She smiled widely and shook her head, her dark hair spilling over her shoulders. “A son.”
Son.
The word echoed through my skull.
Son.
My head reeled back, bile rising in my throat. “Kaden?”
“Is your brother.” A vile, cruel smile played on her lips.
Words did not come. My mind ran over a million and one scenarios before coming to a screeching halt.
It all hit me at once. The portal, the power, his ability to create Dianna, heal her sister long enough to use her to control Dianna.
He stayed far away from me because he knew I would sense and recognize the power so similar to mine.
It was how he knew of the battle, The Hand, and about the Fall of Rashearim.
Kaden was not the king I thought he was. No, it was so much worse.
He was my brother.
“How?” My voice sounded so far away.
“You are asking the wrong questions. Your next one should be about your other siblings. Siblings that still exist, maiming and destroying beyond the barriers of the realms you hold sealed.” The Higher One stepped back and raised her hand, holding up three fingers.
“Unir had three children long before you, god king.”
“Three?” I choked the word out, holding my stomach. He hadn’t told me. No one told me. “My mother, she never said anything about my siblings. I didn’t know.”
The Higher One tilted its head. “Why would she? You are the only one born of flesh, god king.”
“But you just said—”
“Unir’s power far outreached even the gods closest to him.
He saw a vision of the Great War. Only he didn’t realize he would be starting it when he made his precious children.
The Great War happened because of them. Unir formed a plan, a way to build weapons to destroy any threat once and for all.
Long before you were ever thought of, it seems. But to create life without sharing life is forbidden.
He proceeded anyway. He cared for the realms, his people, and others so much that he made a choice, and it ended up costing him everything.
The universe takes its debts very seriously.
You cannot gain that much without balancing the scales. ”