Chapter 20 #4
Yemi blinked. The world was silent but for their panting, the ripples of the lake lapping at land’s edge.
It was true, then. Even Nova, at her core, believed she was a fool or, at best, a child.
Unable to control herself, capable of making messes but never cleaning them up.
The realization knocked the wind from her.
When had Nova’s feelings for her changed? Or had they always been this?
“Oh,” Yemi said quietly. “There it is. You stay because you think I’m weak. Because I make it easy for you to be the hero.”
Nova shook her head. “I stay because I love you. You. Not whoever this is.”
Yemi had the eerie sensation she’d fallen inside herself again, only being encircled by a tepid, black void this time instead of the warmth of hunger.
Nova’s words drifted through the void but never seemed to touch her.
She knew loss. This was like every other death: premature, vaguely cruel.
She turned back to look out over the lake and the mug of cooling tea perched on the river rock.
Her future. Whatever Nova had been or felt was now behind her in every way.
She bent and picked up the mug. It had been in the evening chill for a while now but was still scorching to the touch. Her deep breath came out easy but hollow as she turned back to Nova.
“I’m not going to be the person you want me to be.
Not when it comes to this. I’m not going to abdicate.
I’m not going to drop my family name and disappear to some country overseas, get a city cottage and a job as the local neighborhood book clerk.
Take you as my champion wife. I can’t put this behind me.
Everything has been stripped from me, and this, who I am, is what’s left. ”
Nova’s eyes fell to the mug, and a heartbroken smile appeared on her face. It was a winded, crestfallen twitch of the corners of her mouth that said she wanted to move, to act, but that she was heartbroken at having to.
“You have the stone,” she said as it dawned on her. “Is Selah dead, then? Did you kill her?”
Yemi didn’t respond. There would be no explanation good enough for Nova.
Instead, she tipped back the tea. It didn’t so much splash as ooze, thick, warm, and brackish, down her throat—quickly, as if alive and in a hurry.
Her stomach cramped just once in protest, and her skin prickled as if her veins were thickening with each pulse of her heart.
In a single, breathless moment, she stumbled as she felt herself being pulled beneath waves at impossible speed amid massive swarms of tiny blue lights in sunken graveyards as they exploded into ethereal skeletons and rapidly gained flesh. Hundreds of them. Thousands.
Her army was alive.
She inhaled once, desperately, and was thrust back into herself on the edge of the lake between the fire and Nova’s dread.
The world settled around her. She felt awake, in a word.
Serene and clear of mind, even if the knot of sadness within her would not move.
Her vision blurred a moment before becoming the clearest it’d ever been.
She blinked and could make out the topmost leaves on trees a mile away, the things hidden in the dark revealing themselves tinged in violet light.
Beside her stood a towering specter, built not unlike Cutter, staring down at her with piercing gold orbs for eyes, set in a face and body made of shadows but limned in an eerie, luminous green.
A ghost, wearing a stoic expression and a prisoner’s tatters, the scars of his torso and the brand on his neck highlighted as if she was to know him by them.
When he bowed at the waist, he extended a thick hand in the direction of the house.
A gold thread issued forth, marking her path past the house, back through the forest to some unknown destination that Yemi understood implicitly she was to follow.
Nova’s shoulders slumped in defeat as the cup thudded on the soft ground and a dense fog began to descend overhead.
“I can’t believe I didn’t see it,” Nova said quietly between sniffles. In Yemi’s new sight, she seemed to be crying incandescent tears. “All of this was a lie. You always intended to use Ursla’s power; you just needed it to look like a last resort. But it wasn’t, was it?”
Whether she was right or wrong didn’t seem to matter now. If Nova didn’t understand, she never would. It was clear from her lack of reaction that she couldn’t see the ghost patiently waiting to usher Yemi away. Time was of the essence.
“This,” Yemi started, her voice deep and legion and divine, “is not the part where I allow your love to transform me into some agent of peace content with something less than what’s mine. Come dawn, you’ll have a decision to make. But I think we both understand now that I can do this without you.”
She said it with love and remorse, the way a god might bid farewell to the world she’d created and was leaving in ruin.
Whether Nova received it that way was no longer a concern.
Yemi moved past her to follow the ghost. The thousands of thoughts, plots, and ideas swarming her mind had aligned themselves into a neat, manageable order.
It was as close to calm as she could remember ever feeling.
“Ursla got inside of Dahlia somehow. You sure she isn’t doing the same thing to you?”
Yemi ignored her. Ursla had everything to gain from Yemi’s success. Their missions were more aligned than Yemi’s and Nova’s ever were.
“Consider letting Luzon’s men go, at least,” Nova called when she didn’t reply. “They don’t deserve to be wrapped up in your shit.”
Nova’s voice had the effect of momentarily shattering the thread. Yemi had to shake her mind free of it to get the clarity back. She turned to face her love in a way that felt, in some ways, final.
“Sunrise, take the vehicles east to the lighthouse, using the fog as cover. When you and Cutter arrive, you may dismiss the Gold Guard at your discretion. But make no mistake: Whatever comes next, that was the last demand you’ll make of me.
” She gave Nova a moment to debate the idea, to enter another plea.
Instead she was met with a bitter silence and a steel in her eyes that felt like she was watching Nova’s heart harden against her in real time.
“If you intend to stay, your orders are to take back the Rock. Find the Bear Queen. Leave the Harpy for when I arrive.”
“Arrive from where?”
“I’ve made the city my business, since you lack the stomach for it.”
Yemi continued following the thread toward the coast where Ixia and Kespia touched.
The closer they came to water, the more Yemi felt her body fill with electricity, an almost nauseating sense of power that seemed meant for a larger vessel than her human form.
She couldn’t move or think or use it fast enough.
This must have been the overwhelm Selah mentioned.
She emerged from the tree line onto the small pebble beach where Yemi’s grandmother had insisted she learn to swim.
Kespia and its sleeping highlands loomed in the distance on the other side of the craggy bay.
Moonlight illuminated a lone skiff, abandoned and bobbing against the shore before them.
She approached it, and when the toes of her boots touched the water’s edge, a hush fell over the ocean, familiar in the way lines of her soldiers once stood by to await her command.
She was the center of the sea’s attention.