Chapter 39 Twilight of the Gods #2
My chains now fully gone. I flail about clumsily for a moment when a current slams into my back, has me careening through the cave with only the faint light that glows off the illusion of the trickster god to guide me.
Harlow is there, floating listlessly. His body still twitches and spasms some, but his chest has caved in from the force of Rhyland’s powerful kick, and I don’t think he’ll make it. Pity.
There’s a dark temptation to hold back on grabbing him until the twitching stops, no chances taken, but I fear I'll sink to the cave floor before that happens. Instead I grab tight to the first limb I can reach, and before I know it, I’m sucked from the sea-filled cavern and slammed onto smooth, cool marble.
I begin choking and gasping immediately, like I can’t get enough breath in. Maybe I’ll never be able to. Fucking sea. It stays with you.
Salt and mildew stain the air; a slimy film of both cover my skin and I sit up without thinking, trying to wipe it away. A useless attempt, as my hands are layered in it, too. I’m just smearing it all over at this point. Still I keep trying—I can’t stop. Why can’t I stop?
Soft fingers grab at my wrists. Faintly, I register the burning in my feet and the harsh outline of Harlow’s lifeless body sprawled out next to me—just as slimy and stinky as I am.
Quiet sobs emanate from somewhere. A sharp burning roosts just beneath my breastbone, but slowly travels to my throat. Squeezing, spasming.
Then it clicks.
It’s me, I’m crying. Crying and trying like hel to rub the salt and slime and old blood off my skin.
“Avi, Avi, baby, it’s okay.”
She gathers me in her arms, bundles me up tight to her chest. How is it she smells the same after eight years?
Cinnamon and sweet smoke. Like she’s just finished tending the fire in the hearth back home.
I bury my nose into her, certain it’s all a dream.
That I’ll wake up at the inn in the Barrows or curled up in some back alley, shivering to death.
When minutes go by and she doesn’t fade away, the tears come to a slow halt, and I sit up.
How is this possible? How is she here? It feels too easy. Too convenient.
She seems reluctant to let me go, but does, so I can blink at the familiar irises—caramelized swirls of glowing amber.
Hair as rich and dark as the skin of fresh chestnuts.
She’s unchanged, still the moeir ripped from me in the storm all those years ago.
Tear tracks stain her cheeks. Her shaking hand rises to cup my face, slip through the tangle of my hair despite its soiled, grimy state.
“Avalon,” she repeats a few times, like she can’t make herself believe I’m real either.
“Màma?” I finally manage between gasps, and burrow into her soft embrace. Shock. I think I’m going into shock. I’ve given Harial no crown. I haven’t fulfilled my end of the deal—this is a trap. An illusion of the cruelest making.
Behind her, dark oak double doors slam open and a haughty looking young man strolls through, straightening the deep green, tailored suit made of some sort of velvety material. His hair is pale blonde—paler than mine even—and his eyes are a shade of liquid mercury.
“Up,” he says snidely, though he’s reluctant to touch my foul skin. “Now.”
I don’t like the way my moeir flinches at his tone. How she scrambles. But she still speaks with the poise and grace of a true fiernaid. “Albright, please. She’s just arrived, can you not—”
He cuts her off by kneeling an inch or so away from her face, his silver eyes narrowed. “Quit your blubbering. She reeks. Harial’s spent a fortune maintaining this apartment for you and time is of the essence. He wants her up, bathed, dressed. She has a week to train for the games.”
I try and fail to absorb his words. A protest seems to rise and die in her throat. I put my arm across her front and slide my body between them. I don’t know who this Albright thinks he is, but no one speaks to my moeir that way.
“Get away from her.”
His sneer reveals a dimple in his right cheek, which is strange to see on someone with such sharp cut features. Who is he? A godling? Or just another religious fanatic turned minion?
“He said you were a stubborn one. Lucky for me, he added a little clause into the vow this time so you’ll be forced to follow direct commands from him.” He rises, slowly. Says something quick and low before his eyes mist over with that tell-tale emerald.
Albright’s expression twists and ripples. When he blinks again, his irises are Harial’s namesake green. A shift I've seen before, in the belly of the Nightingale, but the eyes of a different man. How—?
“Avalon darling,” he purrs through teeth straight, white, and clenched. “I don’t have time to visit every time you want to act like a child and disobey. Up, now. To the bath. You’ll listen to Albright. I’ll return when I can.”
Trouble in the heavens? I wonder, but fail to ask.
The rune behind my ear burns with the force of his command. There isn’t even a chance to argue. Albright goes vaguely limp, then blinks so that his sheened silver eyes are his own again. Harial is gone.
“Well?” He crosses his arms smugly.
I shake as I push myself up. Moeir does her best to support me, but it’s still sheer and utter agony when my scorched feet press into the cool marble. I cry out. My knees try to buckle but can’t under the weight of Harial’s command—up.
On some stray impulse I turn very suddenly towards Harlow's mangled frame. “The crown pieces—”
“They’ll be here when you’re through,” he sighs. “The body won’t. Another fun task for me to take care of.” Sarcasm drips from his every word.
My gaze lingers on Harlow, the man who started this all, broken…
dead. For some reason I feel robbed of the relief of it.
He took so much from me. My home, years of my life, the woman I’d believed to be my best friend…
and Rhyland. Did Harial really spare his brother?
If so, where is my Pirate, what is he doing, thinking, feeling?
Is it the same misery laying waste within my chest?
Strange to hope it is, and it isn’t, at the same time.
How selfish to wish this sort of pain on a man who lights my soul aflame.
In reality, it would be best for him to forget me altogether.
But he won’t. That last look—the one he gave me before I destroyed the cave—that look doesn’t forget.
“Come,” Albright barks, and I jump.
Moeir squeezes my hand with warm reassurance. It still doesn’t feel real to have her here…and oh the questions I want to ask.
Why didn’t you tell me the truth? Who was my father?
They quiver on the tip of my tongue but I swallow them. It’s too dangerous here and now. Maybe it was simple luck, but no one else seemed to know my true lineage but Rhyland and her, and I want to keep it that way for as long as I can.
I limp after the man. He and Moeir corral me to a large bathroom before he finally leaves us after shooting Moeir with a look that’s full of pointed warning.
A clawfoot tub’s filling with clean soapy water.
The air is fragrant, notes of lavender and holly blossom curl in with the steam.
It’s overwhelming, trying to take in the grandeur of it all.
We must still be in Staygia’s capital because the apartment itself is built from snowy white marble, decorated with gold accents and winged statues.
I’ve never been in a building with running water or indoor plumbing aside from the Citadel where the sisters took us ‘orphans’ to pray.
When I imagined where Harial might’ve been holding Moeir, this is not at all what sprung to mind.
I look at her again—mostly unchanged. Perhaps a bit leaner with a sort of downcast aura. I guess the imagining had been torture enough for the both of us. Why lift a hand when we’ve spent all this time agonizing about whether the other was okay, intact, alive?
“Màma—” I start, but she quickly shushes me.
“Not here,” she murmurs into the hair over my ear, seemingly unconcerned with the grime that stains her cheek for it. “Not now. He’s always listening.”
I can only nod and pull away as she helps me peel off the rags clinging to my bones and lower myself into the tub.
The water is luxuriously hot after my time in the frigid sea.
She leaves me to scrub myself and comes back with a clean, warm towel and a fresh set of clothes.
There’s scarcely enough time to think, to ponder on why in the four realms Harial would allow me to be with my moeir before I’ve gathered the crown for him.
On how strange and wrong our reunion feels, like waiting for the axe to fall before the execution.
She hums softly as she dries my hair, runs through it with a silver backed brush.
I weep silent tears all the while. Despite my suspicions, I never thought I would feel this again—the familiarity.
Moeir’s gentle, soothing touch. Something as simple as running a brush through my long hair, weaving it into an intricate, traditional nymph braid.
When she’s finished, she wipes my cheeks and plants a soft kiss on my nose.
We go back to the living area with its fine couches and thick rugs.
The only thing missing is Harlow’s body—in its place sits his leather satchel, and the floor’s been polished and shined.
There’s a faint smell of lemon and fresh tea.
A spread of sandwiches and floral shaped cakes sit on the low coffee table.
Finery I can only stare numbly at after my time in the cave.
Moeir leads me to a soft chaise lounge, threaded with deep green and gold.
Clearly, colors favored by the trickster god.
It’s a relief to take the pressure off my damaged feet.
I can’t stand the idea of looking at them, so Moeir does, and quickly sends a servant off to fetch a salve and bandages that she smears over the deep burns before binding them tight.
I’d give almost anything for one of Rhyland’s laeknir potions right now.
When she’s finished tending me, Moeir insists I eat.
While I choke down half a sandwich, she pours me a cup of tea, adding cream and sugar before pressing it into my hands.
I stare around the room as I take slow sips.
Marble and glass, green and gold. More than half the far wall is windows.
Two paned doors lead out to a balcony. I imagine it’s a breathtaking view over the capital city.
Once my teacup is drained, Moeir refills it before taking my hand in hers, shaking. “You can’t join the games, Avalon.” Her lips hardly move around the words. Her eyes flash to the satchel still sitting on the floor. “Harial can’t get his hands on the Midnight Crown.”
Something aches within me. It’s a little too late. I’ve made my promises. My vow.
My finger runs up to trace over the little crow foot shaped rune behind my ear—ansuz. Harial’s mark. But a jolt hisses through me when I touch behind the other ear to find Rhyland’s rune is still there, too.
What can it mean? The vow I made with him is still intact? Stronger, perhaps. A loophole?
I shake my head. “Màma, we need this to be over. When I win the games, we’ll finally be free. We can go home.”
A strained choking noise curdles from the back of her throat. “No, that’s not—”
But the door slams open again. Her sentence withers off into the ether.
Albright strides through, scans the room, sniffs. “Good. This is much better, though I don’t know if we’ll ever get the faint smell of fish and sea rot out.”
His look is accusing, like I've done this to annoy him personally.
I say nothing. Just stare evenly until he looks uncomfortable, straightens the collar of his suit, and crosses toward the window where he presses a wispy curtain back to peer out over the city. One of his white blonde, spring-tight curls slips over his high forehead.
“Good news,” he says after a moment of quiet deliberation. “I’ve managed to secure your place in the Queen’s Games.”
My heart clenches, pulse pounds.
“Bad news; from what I’ve gathered, Talon still has every intention of fighting in the arena. Godlings and gladiators are one thing, a fallen war god is quite another. Do you think you are up to the task?” His mercurial eyes gleam.
“The task?” I repeat as a sort of numbness begins creeping through me.
“Yes.” Albright straightens. “The one you’ve sworn to Harial, that you’ll stop at nothing to win his crown piece. Are you prepared to fight your husband in the arena? Are you prepared to kill a god?”
END BOOK ONE