Chapter 43 All In
All In
Lucian
S
he saved me, and I am destined to destroy her.
After she stabbed me with the Soul Ruby, my memory of her returned—along with the full story Icarthus told me. He used the Soul Ruby on me for her. She is what I was created for.
I’m grateful I didn’t know this sooner; I don’t know what to do with this information now.
We walk through the kingdom in the direction of the nearest mirror, Desdemona beside me.
She freed herself, somehow, and came for me. Would she have done the same if she knew my destiny?
We ascend the castle. There aren’t many mirrors below sea level; if a prisoner were to escape, the guards need optimal time to catch them.
We must be swift. Yet, as we get closer, the muscles in my legs stiffen.
I try to take a step forward and can barely move.
My heart beats in the opposite direction, and I curse under my breath.
“What?” Desdemona asks.
I sigh, running a hand along my jaw, because this isn’t the kind of thing I can stop. In fact, if I could have stopped it the last time, Desdemona and I likely wouldn’t be here right now. Everything would be different. I would know her. She wouldn’t have sacrificed herself to the Arcanes for me.
“It’s Cynthia,” I mutter, voice thick. “She’s calling for her favor.”
“You gave her a favor?” Desdemona asks, looking ahead at the freedom we’re so close to.
“Go,” I say. “Run, far away from here.”
“Are you kidding?”
I shake my head. In no world would I ever jest about her safety.
Desdemona scoots out of my grip. She’s going to leave me, and I don’t blame her.
Instead, she steps in front of me, slowly meeting my gaze, as if this is a normal occurrence. How dearly I want there to be a normal with her. To hold her for so long that I can expect her to be there.
“I don’t leave people,” she whispers.
I knew Desdemona was fierce, but once she decides she wants you, she’s even fiercer.
What a privilege it is to be wanted by her.
To even be merely tolerated by her.
I’m smiling despite the severity of our situation.
I smile as we walk through the house of my abuser because Desdemona is by my side.
She stayed with me. Glancing up, she seems confused for a moment, then her eyebrows fold, and she smiles at me too, as if we’re co-conspirators, sharing a secret through eyes alone.
We have each other.
And I’m lying to her. The reason we’ve been incapacitated and tortured is because the rulers want me to kill her. Is the past doomed to repeat itself? Will she lose her life again trying to save me? I discard the thought as we walk the corridors. I won’t do it.
We turn back in the direction we left from, entering the trap we narrowly escaped.
We manage to make it past the first cluster of guards that pass us.
As we walk halfway down the next hall, Piphany steps in front of us.
Four guards stand at her sides—one with purple eyes.
A Drae. It isn’t uncommon to hire Draes and Nepenthes as guards.
When I stop walking and glance at the man again, I see I was mistaken. His eyes are blue.
I watch Piphany, frozen in front of us. She glances beside me and reaches for her wrist, holding the empty socket where her hand used to be.
Claws tear at my muscles once more, forcing me to step forward. I open my mouth to tell Piphany off, to try to talk our way out before we’re forced to fight.
No words make it past my lips. The only thing my body wants to do is walk forward, get to the dungeon, and reach Cynthia.
Then, a drip of sweat spreads on Piphany’s forehead. Sweat and Ilyria don’t belong in the same breath—my world is draped in snow, untouched by heat. I look at Desdemona, expecting her to be just as surprised. I find her eyes glowing red. Magnificently so.
Horrifyingly so.
The four guards clutch their chests and collapse to their knees, while Piphany remains standing.
“You feel that?” Des whispers, her head tilting to the side. Despite the anger in her voice and the violence in her gaze, I can’t look away.
I don’t think I ever could.
Piphany croaks, her head tipping back as a tear forms in her eye.
“I can take your heart just as easily as I took your hand,” Desdemona threatens.
“Escort us to the dungeon,” I say, reaching for Desdemona’s hand and stepping beside her.
Piphany nods with a groan, struggling to say, “Ye–yes!”
I turn toward the dungeon, stepping forward. The tightness in my legs releases, and my shoulders fall to a more comfortable position.
When Des looks at me, I lean down to her ear and whisper, “You can do that trick easily?”
“Like tying a shoe.” She smiles.
Something about it is brilliant. It’s a new smile—a sinister one. How far she’s come from the self-proclaimed powerless girl I first fell for, to the girl I fell for all over again.
She’s not the same person, and I chose her anyhow. Perhaps I always will.
Piphany stops walking, tipping forward as she clutches her stomach and catches her breath. Desdemona steps forward, muttering, “Chop, chop.”
Piphany groans as she slowly moves forward.
No one interrupts us on the way down to the dungeon—a perk of being escorted by the queen’s advisor.
Each step lifts the weight from my bones, but when we reach the threshold, I hesitate, teetering at the entrance as much as I can.
My powers won’t work inside, and Piphany knows it.
No magic-wielder’s power can work beyond this barrier, none but a soul-sucker’s. I can’t put us at such a risk.
Desdemona shoves Piphany beyond the barrier. She trips on the cobblestone, trembling as she holds her missing hand close to her chest.
Des steps in after. “I have power in here,” she says, gesturing down the dungeon. “She’s in the fourth cell.”
I step trepidatiously. My muscles pull me forward, as though attached to strings, leaving me no choice.
Every step reminds me of my childhood. Every prisoner is evidence of what I’ve seen.
Every breath is proof of what I’ve endured.
The dungeons are eerily empty. Leiana has recently drained another dozen souls, their power now hers.
How many has Lilac killed?
Even if I wanted to stop this course, I never could. I almost turn away before Cynthia can tell me what she wishes. What a mistake it was to offer her a favor, all for information on the Weapon.
What good it’s done me.
I stop in front of Cynthia. She leans against the bars of the dungeon.
She shouldn’t be able to, and perhaps that’s why she looks worse than I’ve ever seen her.
Her usually black hair is streaked with gray.
Her face sags, her smile falters, and her eyes are hollow—the irises nearly green.
A strange shade between turquoise and chartreuse.
“What did Leiana do to you?” I ask, kneeling down to get a better look.
Cynthia smiles, her teeth rotting. “I suppose I can’t ask for two favors, can I?”
Cynthia is a woman I know well, which is precisely why I lean back, out of her arm’s reach. Yet, I feel the pull of her favor, the command she’s about to ask. It’s that remnant of power that forces me to stay nearby.
“What do you want?” I ask.
“Lucian Aibek—” She coughs. “I command you to bring me the Soul Ruby.”
Before I can think about the command, I feel it moving through me in the same, necessitating way it once had—telling me to hunt Desdemona. My bones constrict with the longing, the need to retrieve the object of Cynthia’s desires.
“We can’t give it to her,” Desdemona says, looking at me with wide eyes, her head shaking. “I need it— It’s the only thing that can bring back the memories.”
The revelation is a gut punch. That’s what she wanted it for—my memories, her mother’s, her friends’. And I stole the Soul Ruby from her. I kept it from her reach. I felt drawn to her, connected. I desired her, yet I still denied her what she needed.
What I, myself, wanted.
I glance between Cynthia and Des, feeling stuck. More than anything, I want Desdemona to have what she wishes. I want the worlds to remember her as I do. Yet I only want it after I remembered her.
I should have wanted it all along.
Cynthia laughs, then chokes on it, coughing. “The Soul Ruby is of no use to you, dear.”
Desdemona turns on Cynthia, hastily walking toward the bars. “I could kill you without a second thought!”
Cynthia finishes coughing before she says, “You underestimate my power.”
“And I can promise you never overestimated mine,” Desdemona says through her teeth.
I’m wrestling with the turmoil inside me—the dreadful sensation of being driven by forces beyond my control, by magic, by nature itself. The feeling claws at me, urging me to find the Soul Ruby.
“You do not have to bring me the stone, dear,” Cynthia drawls in Desdemona’s direction. “My only bind is to Lucian. You are free to roam.”
Desdemona takes a deep, shaking breath.
Cynthia’s voice remains low, neutral. “Your choice to stand by him is not my doing.”
Des looks away, and I watch her, wondering if she’ll revoke her declarations and leave me. She has others she wants back. I must be the least of what she has.
Yet, she looks up, meeting my gaze. She offers a faint nod, but it’s the glint in her eye that tells me there’s something more. I offer the same, nearly imperceptible nod back, and turn to Cynthia.
Tightly, I ask, “Do you have any leads?”
“Leiana has it,” Cynthia says.
The same as it always was, we are her pawns. I begin, “How—”
Cynthia cuts me off. “Because I had it when she arrested me. I watched her take it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you had it? We could’ve used it against the Arcanes, to bring Azaire back—”
“It was busy.” Cynthia looks down at her body, and another wrinkle splits across her forehead. “I possessed only a single piece. Another fragment existed, and I knew you’d reach it. But the piece stolen from me is the strongest left.”
“What’d you use it for?” Desdemona asks, her voice shaking—as if she’s taming her anger.
“Immortality, dear.” Cynthia looks up at me, resignation rising in her eyes. I can tell now, by the shape of her face, when she’s telling me the truth. She discloses it now with a sigh. “I may be a few hundred years older than I said.”
All this time, I thought Cynthia and I formed a trust, that we saw eye to eye. I shared everything with her, believing that, while cryptic, she shared her truths with me as well.
“How old are you?” I ask. The empathy, the love I held for the woman, begins to wither away.
“Maybe four… five hundred years?”
“Cynthia,” I warn.
She sighs. “Eleven hundred years old, Lucian.” Looking between us, she adds, “And those years will return to me if I don’t possess the stone.”
Desdemona looks at me, teeth bared, and says, “We’ll get it.”