Chapter 19
THIS IS THE HEART OF ME
ARAZ
When the air begins to taste like fire, I know that we’re close to our destination.
I feel Leela’s probing regard on the side of my face.
She’s waiting for me to recall something important, and yes, I sense a memory shrouded in shadow, aching to step into the light, but I’m afraid that if I reach for it now, it will slip deeper. I fear that is how I planned it.
Yes, this memory is hidden by design.
I will remember when the time is right.
The dunes crest then dip, and the thing I have been searching for comes into view. A circular wound in the sand, the stone lip barely four feet high.
The air above it shimmers with intense heat.
I slide down the dunes, pulse racing, throat burning with each breath as I get closer. My blood simmers in awakening, in homecoming, as I run toward the aperture carved into the desert of my soul.
I know what I’ll see even before I look, but the sight of it burns away the clawing ache that’s lived inside me for much too long.
“Oh…” Leela joins me at the stone barrier, leaning in to look down into the glowing abyss where the heart of me resides.
The sun hidden in the depths flares and rotates. Orange and blue flames lick at its surface before reaching for me.
It welcomes. It calls.
“Your core,” Leela says. “Your power.”
“Yes…” The shadow at the back of my mind shifts, and my stomach tightens. The sun rotates below me, and I recognize the cause of my disquiet.
The crescent-shaped eclipse branded into its fiery surface.
The memory hidden in my mind finally shakes off the shadows.
I stagger back, a hand on my chest to hold my heart in place as it attempts to shatter my ribs.
“You remember now, don’t you?” Leela says softly.
She is the unspoken part of me. She is the shadow. She is the unknown parts given form, and she knew. She always knew.
“What do I do? How can I—”
“Breathe,” she says. “Do not think as Araz. Think as Iblees. Become the god who hatched this plan. The one who knew what might occur. In that moment as you were taken over, in that split second when you were invaded, you made a choice. But you did not make it lightly. So think now. Remember it all.”
Her words are balm to my frantic senses, casting me back to that awful moment. To the sense of defeat. To knowing that I must stay. I must anchor. But that moment isn’t where it began.
It began eons before that. When I was alone and wandering. Slowly going insane. There was no sleep where they put me. No blessed oblivion to pass the time. No becoming vast consciousness and waiting to be reincarnated. Nothing but gray. Until I heard him.
A friend, he said.
A confidant. Created by my will. That is what he told me, and in my addled state, I believed him.
He kept me sane.
But in the moment of release, in that moment when I found my vessel, when I was to be whole, when I believed that my creation would disperse, he proved to be not of my making.
He revealed his true power. Revealed himself to be the primordial evil.
And in that moment, I did the only thing I could.
I fractured. Just a sliver. Enough to take the shape I’d believed that I’d given him.
I cannot claim my power because I am not whole.
A part of me exists outside of this body. But even though I cannot claim my core power, I can direct it. Use it to send a signal. To reach that sliver. My power can become a voice. A message. A prayer.
I lean over the stone wall and reach for the sun in the chasm. “Find what belongs to me. Carry my voice where the veil cannot.”
The sun throbs softly, and my heart echoes the beat, pulse spiking as the burning orb spits out a single ember—teal and gold and breathing.
It rises and crests the stone wall, floating across the sands and coming to a halt five feet above the dunes where it flares bright blue, cutting a seam into the air.
A doorway.
A cool breeze kisses my fevered skin, and a sigh brushes my senses. Tears prick my eyes as nostalgia rolls over me like a crushing wave.
I know this place, but it has been too long since I visited it.
I take a breath and step through the crude doorway into the heart of my dreaming.
Leela doesn’t follow. She remains at the seam, a watchful sentry. The part of me ever alert to him.
My feet, now bare, press into soft earth, cool and welcoming. Butterflies with teal and lemon wings flit around my face, brushing my cheeks as if in welcome. The starlit sky watches me in silence.
There is a path made of white pebbles leading to the grove, but I stay on the earth, exhaling as soil sinks between my toes, grounding and healing. Slender silver-barked trees rise around me, evergreen and fragrant, hung with fruits that have no name, only explosive flavors.
I walk parallel to the path that is lit by moonlight so that the pebbles shine like a silver river, trickling toward the gleaming star-bathed oasis that lives deep inside me.
My creation sits on a rock by the water.
This is where he was born, after all. This is where he is anchored.
The primordial evil may be able to cloud his mind, to lie and deceive him, but he cannot control him, and he cannot end him, not without damaging his control on this vessel.
But what the bastard doesn’t know is that this entity’s existence is also the loophole to my freedom.
The key to a lock that the evil isn’t fully aware of.
My creation looks up as I approach, his bright green eyes catching the moon and turning silver for a beat. His brows pinch slightly, then he smiles.
“I think I’ve been waiting for you,” he says. He stands slowly and pushes his hands into his pockets, shoulders rising in a shrug. “I think this is home.”
“It is. Do you know who I am?”
“You’re him…Iblees. You’re my maker. The true maker.”
“Yes, I am. And do you recall the name I gave you?”
“Of course. You named me C’ael.”
C’ael…That name…it first belonged to him, as did this form. There had been no time to craft something new for my fragment, and so I’d given it what I already knew—the form that the primordial evil discarded.
“It’s time to do what you were always meant to. Are you ready?”
He steps closer, his gaze searching my face. “Don’t you want to know how she is? What she’s doing at this moment?”
A sharp, stabbing pain lances through my chest, and the Araz aspect of me rises to the surface, desperate to know everything that is Leela.
Every breath, every look. The sound of her laughter, her scent.
I push that part of me down. There is no time for pleasantries right now.
But I know C’ael’s nature. He is, after all, an aspect of me.
I place a hand on his shoulder. “If you help me, I can ask her myself. The primordial evil blocks my direct path to Leela. I saw her once when he connected with her. But you can help create a bridge to her. To allow us to communicate directly.”
His eyes brighten. “How?”
So eager to help. To please. This is the purest part of me, and he holds more power than he knows. I didn’t expect him to be so…real.
This changes everything.
“How can I help?” he asks again.
I squeeze his shoulder. “Tell her not to reach for me in her dreams. Tell her not to pull on the golden thread. That will alert the primordial evil. She must wait for a bridge to be formed.”
He nods. “Yes. Okay. I understand.”
“Good. Take her to the place where I left an eternal anchor. A fragment of my flame lives there.”
“What if she doesn’t believe me?” He frowns. “This is a dream, after all.”
I can’t allow doubt to creep in. “Listen to me. This is real. I am real. Tell her…Tell her that I’m sorry that she had to kiss evil to shield me.”
“What?”
“Repeat that.”
“You’re sorry she had to kiss evil to shield you?”
“Yes, that’s good.”
“What does it mean?”
“She’ll know. You must give her the message and tell her to go to the flame.”
His eyes flare. “Wait. Where is it? Where is the flame?”
The air shimmers, and the ground beneath my feet trembles. Leela’s voice fills my head. He senses something. You must come back.
I open my mouth to tell him the location, but another tremor steals my words.
Now! Leela cries.
An invisible force wraps around my torso and yanks.
The oasis rushes away, and the next moment I’m lying on the sand looking up at clear blue skies.
“That was close.” Leela offers me a hand, and I take it, allowing her to haul me up. “He senses the seam, but it’s closed now, and his attention is elsewhere once more. You’re safe. The core is safe…for now…” She studies me for several beats. “Why didn’t you tell C’ael the whole truth?”
“You know why.”
She sighs. “Yes, but I don’t like it.”
“Neither do I. Neither do I.”