Chapter Twenty-Five
T onight, sleep and I are long-lost companions who, at the current moment, are not on cooperative terms.
I think my still-active brain is partly to thank for that.
On the one hand, it frustrates me endlessly.
But on the other hand, how could I not be wide awake with thoughts?
I never was able to find Gray, making his whereabouts unknown.
And even if I know he’s completely capable of caring for himself, that doesn’t keep me from worrying about him.
Then there is the matter of the first test: detecting my essence flower.
Somehow, I have to skillfully tap into the magic I can’t access at will and know nothing about—not really, anyway—and attune its energy to…to…its match?
How does that even work?
My mother told me stories about the essence flowers; a delicacy born from magic that cultivated a breed of flowers that glow with different colors and properties.
Properties that fall in perfect alignment with the essence of a wielder’s magic and soul.
Some variations claim they were bred from the blood of fallen stars.
Others say they were the sister seeds to the very magic that rooted itself into our veins.
Regardless, they are a sanctioned rarity, highly revered across the Three Kingdoms.
A dusty memory creeps into the front of my mind. Of a night spent in the royal greenhouse with my mother, pruning flowers and collecting herbs. There was a strange, white-speckled plant I had never seen before, and she had thumbed it fondly .
“It reminds me of the essence flower I once received,” she had murmured, her eyes going distant as she drifted into a memory. “It bloomed while cupped in the palms of my hands.” She had chuckled, shaking her head. “I couldn’t believe it.”
I remember asking her what she meant by received . I thought it odd that someone would gift her something so rare—wondered how someone would even be able to gift such a thing in the first place. But she had merely shaken her head, claiming the answers to those questions as irrelevant.
A sudden ache envelops me, constricting my chest to the point of pain. I squeeze my eyes closed, fighting against the demons that always seem to surface in the night.
But the demons whisper. And this time, they whisper the words of the gods that damned me. The words that condemned my mother—haunt my dreams.
A soul for a soul, sanctioned by the gods. But only fire can wash away the stain of what the child has done.
Slowly, flames flicker to life in my mind, and screams echo through me. I breathe against it, willing it all to evaporate—to go away. But the words press against me, demanding to be remembered, demanding to be felt.
I do not wish to feel.
You do not let this break you. You do not let them win.
I love you.
My eyes rip open, and I jerk upright, gasping.
I press my clammy palm against my sticky forehead and glance over at Marcella, who’s sound asleep, arm draped over her face.
For a moment, everything feels fuzzy and distorted.
It takes seconds—maybe even a minute—before my heartrate settles and my breathing goes back to normal.
Yet a lingering anxiousness remains wedged beneath my skin.
An anxiousness I’d do anything to eliminate.
I scan the room through the darkness, searching for my pack.
Finding it with surprising ease, I quietly get out of bed and rummage through it, until my fingers graze against old, bounded leather.
With stealthy steps, I sneak out of the room, not caring that I’m in the sleeping attire Bathara provided us.
The braziers remain lit, so wandering the corridors is easy.
Moonlight leaks through the windows in hazy streaks as I attempt to remember the turns Draven made while leading us to our quarters.
But somewhere, I take a left when I think I should have taken a right, and I wind up at the foot of a large staircase, wrapping round and round like a coiled snake.
Naturally, curiosity gets the better of me, and I follow the stairs all the way up, until I reach a small room with no furniture or features outside of a nondescript door.
I glance down at Casimir’s journal wedged firmly in my grip before back at the door.
Exhaling a clipped breath, I approach the arched wood and slowly turn the brass knob, creaking it open.
To my complete surprise, it reveals a square balcony.
My lip twitches with satisfaction at the discovery, and that tiny twitch spreads into a full-fledged grin when I step outside and consume the night-sky strung above me.
Stars scatter across the dark like sand spreads across the bottom of the sea.
Thousands— millions . All shining against the night, waiting for hungry admirers to stop and appreciate them.
They may not be colored like the stars in Rivara Kingdom, but these stars are brighter and more numerous in number.
And there is this hypnotic quality about being out here.
The many waterfalls surrounding Bathara compose their own melodies, playing in tune to the chirping insects and rustling grass, sounding like a peaceful trickle from this distance. It seems like the perfect place to think—or better yet, to read.
I sit cross-legged on the edge of the wide balcony railing and fold open the journal’s pages. Between the natural light emitting from the stars and moon, coupled with the lit sconces mounted on the stones, the words are remarkably readable. I begin where I last ended.
Magaius won’t see reason.
I understand the discord is growing, and that soon, we will be forced to choose: squelch the uprising and deal with the Restorationists, or choose a path of peace and continue negotiations through the means of compromise.
Magaius believes in the former and spits on the idea of backtracking; I believe in the latter.
My father is in the middle. It’s like he’s teetering on a parapet, waiting for the wind to blow him in one direction or the other.
Magaius does not believe we should concede a single thing to the Restorationists.
That they are simply unhappy children, and that one does not reward children’s bad behavior. But I see compromise differently.
I see it as a way to prevent a potential war.
A way to reduce tensions. I see a family whose father kisses his children on the head before they go off to sleep, warming his wife’s bed at night instead of lying on a cold battlefield.
I see a son who returns to his mother, or a sister who celebrates her next birthday.
These fragile lives must be protected from conflict.
Why am I the only one who sees that?
Casimir
I huff a deep breath, puffing out my cheeks. Still, that was a short entry, so I turn the page and read the next.
I watched two ravens today. They were fighting over scraps left out on the street. It seemed pointless to me. Why can’t both birds pick from the scraps? Why must they attempt to hoard the entirety of resources for themselves when they can simply share, maintaining peace between themselves?
I wasn’t sure if I wanted answers to these questions, or if I merely wanted to ask them. Yet an answering question floated into my mind: is this the fate of all living creatures? To fight for scraps, blind to the harm that’s inflicted as a result?
What does the answer change?
Casimir
I turn the page again.
A Diviner spoke of a great war—of a war where the gods fight alongside the mortals.
I fear there is nothing I will be able to do to stop it.
Desperate, I sought out a Veilreader from the famed Izavarda bloodline and asked her to enter the Veil for me.
I thought perhaps she could see something different.
Diviners commune with the gods, after all, and maybe the gods want us to be tricked into thinking a great war is our only fate.
But the Veil showed the reader images of blood-soaked grass and arrows arcing through a sky.
She said she saw three shadows—three figures—that would determine the outcome.
Whether they were gods, mortals, or creatures, she didn’t know; the Veil would not show her.
But the acrid smell of death wafted through the fog, and she knew with unquestionable certainty that what the Diviner had spoken of was true—that it would indeed all come to pass.
And that is what frightens me more than anything. For the Diviner did not just whisper of war, but she spoke of a chilling prophecy as well. One that, at this present time, I do not wish to record in ink. Still, the truth of the coming reality remains…
War is coming.
And something terrifying with it.
Casimir
I close the journal, my heart racing. For a moment, I sit and absently stare out over the hills in a loud silence.
It simply doesn’t make any sense. We were always taught that the Three King System was a peaceful division of power. That the Great Clamaté War came first, and the Accord of Three Kings came after. Why…why lie about something like that? What is there to gain?
Casimir speaks of Restorationists, yet I have never read any historical texts recording a group who opposed the new system. I could ask Gray, but doing so would require me to tell him about the journal.
Up the rising goes forward.
The obscure sentence echoes in my head, as loudly and clearly as if it were just murmured by the Abdite named Dridus.
The uprising goes forward.
It’s the only thing that makes sense. But what uprising? The Three Kingdoms have been in the Era of Peace for centuries. Since…well, since Casimir’s father, King Isaphus, assumed the first-ever Rivarian crown.
Something else strikes me. Casimir wrote of a Diviner who whispered of war and spoke of a prophecy.
All at once, words the voice at Foreigner’s Valley spoke swirl in my head.
In the far north is an island. On that island lives a Diviner. She is the one who sent me for reasons only known to herself.