Chapter 33
Ballad of Lillian Bach
Lillian
THE MOMENT I’D removed the dagger from the Corpo Seco’s shoulder, there was a monumental shift in the world around me. Everything I once knew disappeared in a raging blue light that bit like fire. All at once I was no longer looking at Ben but instead at an empty chamber.
“I’m surprised it took so long for one of you to find me.
” The voice belongs to no one. The room is empty to my human eye.
There is no longer a body beneath my hands, only an empty altar.
My fingers tighten around the silver hilt in my hand, and I raise the dagger in a defensive stance like Ben had taught me. “But look, you’ve returned my gift.”
As my grip solidifies, so does the dagger’s pull.
“Do you feel that?” the voice asks. “Feel all that you could do with it.” I contemplate putting it down, but the connection with it is strong. “Hear how it calls to you. I myself have not seen it since she banished me here, but I still feel its draw as if it were in my hand not yours.”
I don’t give satisfaction to the voice, a gnarled and manipulative voice. I only stay the course and focus on the good in my life.
“Not good for much longer, I’m afraid.” There’s a clap of thunder and then nothing but evil consuming all things.
An upcoming war that creeps over land and sea slowly and agonizingly, people starving, people being murdered for no reason at all save for who they are, and bombs of the like that the world has never seen.
All planned without the mercy of the dagger.
Mercy, the dagger would bring so much mercy.
“That’s right, mercy.” The voice breaks me from the illusion of the future.
“Was it mercy?” I ask, daring to speak for the first time. “Was it mercy when you murdered men, women, and children?”
“Was it mercy,” the voice hisses back at me, “when my wife drove a blade through me to kill me?” All at once a man appears, the same man who laid dead beneath my fingers moments ago, stuck here in this pocket of reality for centuries.
Dressed in nothing but dark trousers, a black robe, and a crown, he stares down at his wrists.
His attention catches momentarily on the amazonite bracelets that adorn them, before remembering that I’ve found him.
He circles the room, never again taking his eyes off of me.
“It was a gift,” he says, motioning toward the blade in my hand.
“A dagger cut from the same ancient stone that I pried her necklace from.”
“Except you did not treat it the same,” I answer, staring at him with a hawk-like glare of my own. “They both came from something good, and you corrupted it.”
“Do you not feel that power in your hand?” Holding the stone up to the light of the balcony, I feel the swell of it, but it’s not the same as the power of the necklace.
This is hungrier and more aggressive in nature.
It yearns to conquer. “I can see it working,” he coaxes.
I intend to play along, but then a sharp stab through my wrist forces me to lower the artifact out of sight.
I hate that he is right; the connection is growing stronger.
“Most fascinating.” The man clasps his hands in front of himself and cocks his head to the side. “All these years of my wife and her little birds whispering in your ear, and still you do not understand. Shall I summon her here so that she might get a look at her failure?”
It’s my turn to share a trick up my sleeve. “Your wife is dead,” I state with a knowing smirk. “I killed her just now.” The fallen king glares at me with a snarl. “She had suffered long enough for your wrongdoing.”
“My wrongdoing?” Like a phantom in the night, he lunges toward me.
With each step my necklace gives a warning pulse of light.
It’s enough for him to stop a few feet away.
His pacing immediately returns, but he keeps his distance.
“It was not me that lured my men here, nor was it I who placed the temptation of riches at my feet in the form of power and purpose.”
For the first time, I step away from the altar.
With light feet I descend the few stairs to the main floor and approach my opponent slowly.
This conquistador, Ivo, my father—they’re all the same.
They saw a beautiful land that had something to offer, and instead of respecting it and its people, they decided to take from it instead.
The power in my hand rises with my anger until I am face to face with the coward. “Did you not come to this continent with ill intent?” I ask.
He does not answer.
“Did you not see a pretty thing in that of the woman you married and exploit her way of life? I’ve seen the happiness your settlement provided for both of your peoples.
I saw how happy she was to bear your child and raise it with you.
” At the mention, I swear I see a small change in him, but it dissipates as I continue.
“I saw how proud she was to give you something that she valued more than you value gold. You threw it all away. Why?”
His eyes dart to the dagger. At first I think he might reach for it, but then those deadened eyes snap to mine. “You are just like me.”
“No,” I answer calmly. I refuse to give in to the impossible doubt swirling. If I don’t tamp it down now, it will become a tornado hell bent on destroying everything.
“You are my descendent; I am a part of you just as much as my wife. Did you not bring dozens of people here on your behalf only to see them suffer? Tell me, do you not intend on leaving here alive? Where does that leave your beloved? Surely he will be quick to follow you in death if you leave him to face the war alone.”
It had been my biggest fear in all of this. Losing Ben would shatter me, but I would always be able to find a way forward in life no matter how desecrated. Ben though, Ben losing me would set him on a path I would never wish to see him go down. He would lose himself.
As if the monster can read my thoughts, he swirls around me, feeding on my fears. Black smoke seems to billow around him as he approaches. “If you handed over the dagger to someone else, both you and your lover would walk free today.”
Losing me would injure Ben. Seeing me give up? That would make him hate me. “I won’t do it,” I whisper. I would not give in to these treacherous thoughts or to the evil slowly leaking into my veins. “I am not like you.”
Despite my confession, the phantom refuses to give up. “Who just banished the soul of my wife?”
“I did.” She had wished for it; she wanted to move on to where her child would be waiting for her. It was a mercy, but he did not need to know that. Darkness spreads through my hand at the horrible confession, but I do not balk.
“I did,” I repeat. My eyes flick from the blade to the phantom's black eyes. “And yours is next on my list.” I expect his destination will be far worse than that of the beauty of his wife.
The man’s eyes go dark as I begin my incantation.
“Sombra de uma montanha,” I begin.
Shadow of a mountain.
“If you kill me with the dagger, it will kill you as well,” the man hisses, backing his way toward a corner.
Though the fear of death stings, it is nothing compared to the fear of what could happen if the dagger is not destroyed. Pushing the terror to the side, I follow my prey. “Luz da Amaz?nia.”
Light of the Amazon.
My necklace glows brighter than it ever has before as I approach my target. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even hedge an attack as I say the final line and bring the dagger down hard. “Um sacrifício deve ser feito antes de um novo amanhecer.”
A sacrifice must be made before a new dawn.
The first stab of the dagger catches him in the shoulder. Not a death blow by any means, but he still screams in pain. Blackness leaks out of the wound, quickly coating the bareness of his chest. It covers the dagger and runs down my own hand.
I quickly pull back on the hilt. The moment it’s free of his skin, the world around me chips away piece by piece until I am back on that altar.
My hands are stained with the black blood of the Corpo Seco; his body under me still has a gaping wound in his chest where I had stabbed him.
But out in front of me, Ben stands with Diederick and my father, staring.
“Lillian,” Ben gasps. A smile flashes, and for just a second I feel hopeful. For a moment I allow myself to believe that what I’ve already sacrificed is enough.
I should know better.
As Ben shakes himself free of the daze, he calls my name again.
His caring inquiries are cut off by an exhale so pained it might as well be described as a shriek.
The Corpo Seco rattles in new-found life and then the blackness of his blood spews from the wound once again, coating the altar in darkness.
Diederick curses and Ben draws his gun. Nothing can be done as it seeps across the floor and envelops Ivo’s body.
Another exhale and then the body is stirring.
Whatever I had done, it had not killed him but awakened him instead.
Fumbling with the blade, I frantically call upon its power again.
My fingertips are already blackening with its corruption.
How much longer until it reaches my heart?
Kill. Kill. Kill, the dagger whispers.
One voice is able to break through the madness. “Lillian, look at me!” I obey and find that the black blood has left nothing but a skeleton behind in Ivo’s place. An unstoppable force now heading for Ben and Diederick.
Shifting the blade in my hand, I glance back down at the corpse. One more stab to the heart, and it would all be over. “No, Lillian. Don’t do this alone.” I hear the sounds of Ben’s boots slapping against the stone floor, but I can’t get the anguish of his voice out of my head.
“Ben, stop!” I yell, looking up. He does as I say, freezing a meter from the black sludge. “Just once more and then it will be over,” I call through strangled tears. I didn’t think I would cry in this moment, but looking up at Ben and seeing the terror on his face is enough to make me break.
“No,” he yells again. Breaking out of his trance.
“Diederick, stop him!” I don’t have to say it again before Diederick, in all his small but mighty strength, launches forward and grabs his friend by the arms. Ben struggles but doesn’t put everything he has into breaking free.
He knows my wishes, and he’s granting them no matter how much he doesn’t want to.
As my gaze scrapes across the room to make sure I haven’t missed anything, I pass my father.
There is not a single part of me that wishes to see him again.
In my observance, I skip right over him and turn back to the task at hand.
Closing my left hand around my necklace, I feel one more pulse of good in the form of my mother.
M?e fills nearly every space in my mind from childhood to adulthood.
Her smile grounds me and fights the evil in my hand still attempting—and failing—to infiltrate.
I squeeze the necklace harder, and then the memories with Ben come to me.
I so wish I could share them with him now, tell him that everything will be okay and that we did so much with the time that we did have.
When the scenes dissolve like an unfinished film reel, I loosen my grip.
There is so much more that we could fill our lives with, and we will never get that chance.
Needing one more moment, one more sentence to let him take away with him, I raise my head one last time. “Ben,” I say in a voice that is hardly my own anymore. “I love you.”
I don’t hear him say it back as I bring the dagger up over my head and thrust it downward into the beating heart of the Corpo Seco one last time.