12. Kye
Kye
We plodded on, fighting the mountain to reach the top with small affirmations.
I knew Maren well enough to guess which inner thoughts plagued her, and she knew mine.
I’d never taken comfort in my own vulnerability before.
Even in the moments when I’d bared my demons to Maren, I hadn’t realized quite how exposed I’d let myself become to her.
I suppose I should have been ashamed that she knew, deep down, which parts of myself I hated. Which parts I ignored. Which parts I abandoned. She had a way of splitting through the turbulence, grounding me with words I never would have allowed myself to indulge.
Neither of us knew how to help Cebrinne.
I’m not sure that Maren was capable of helping her.
The mountain may have fed us false truths, but something within the sand blocked our ability to lie.
I knew in my bones that the mountain would steal any words I didn’t truly believe from my lips.
But Maren purposefully avoided watching Cebrinne, mouth set in a blunt line as she fought the torment of her thoughts.
Step by step, we climbed. My reflections darkened with every step.
Coward. Worthless. Weak.
You are not a coward, Maren murmured into my head.
Whenever she did that, whenever she challenged the sneering voice, my feet seemed to float atop the silver soil, the scorch of it diffusing into the air.
The same happened to her. She had no way of telling me I’d banished one of her demons, other than the smooth glide of her toes over the silt rather than through it.
A string of pride laced through me whenever I knew I’d silenced her hostile thoughts. That I could have that effect on her.
I hiked another step. Do you know what fate you’ve sealed her to, human?
Nori’s voice.
I froze, immediately knowing what came next.
She is a Naiad queen, and her life will extend hundreds of years beyond your own. Inevitably, human, you will abandon her to a life without you.
Maren passed as I listened to the mountain’s new form of attack. I wondered who echoed inside her head. Had her voice morphed into someone else’s as well?
You may seethe into the distance as I stand here reminding you that you are worthless.
But the truth remains that you are a mortal who took the one and only bond of a deity you do not understand and, with that one selfish act, cursed the rest of her days.
Your life will run its course, while hers will continue on.
I glanced at her. Nori’s words twisted and cut like barbs on a wire, slicing into the walls of my mind, my throat, my chest. I’d done my best not to think of them while in Perpetuum, so naturally, I’d thought of little fucking else.
Maren still hadn’t looked up at me. But her body had locked into place, the tendons in her inner wrists taut and hard, the space between her knuckles white. The burn in my legs slowly began to return. I stole a glance at the top of the mountain. We were only halfway.
Worthless, selfish human.
My stomach heaved. Behind us, Perpetuum glimmered in distant pools of silver and starlight, ethereal and lovely. But here, the sand beneath my boots made me want to retch.
Cebrinne released a broken growl as she belly-crawled past me. The sand sizzled against her fingers.
Maren still hadn’t moved. I didn’t know whose voice traversed her mind, but I knew how to help. Taking her hand, careful not to pull her up, I waited for her to focus her attention on me. Then, opened my mouth.
And couldn’t speak.
Not that the words weren’t there. Not that the mountain had taken them from me the way it had from Cebrinne.
Do you know what fate you’ve sealed her to, human?
Dark eyes waited. The anger in them ebbed the longer she gazed at me. Cracks formed in her volcanic gaze, tiny fractures in onyx glass. She hung there, desperate.
…With that one selfish act, cursed the rest of her days.
I didn’t know what was in her head.
I didn’t know what was in her fucking head.
I didn’t know what to say to fight it. The only thing I could think to tell her was that I loved her.
Cursed her days, the voices echoed. Her days, her days.
“Kye,” Maren whispered.
Ahead, Cebrinne’s growl of pain stretched into a soft scream.
What fate you’ve sealed her to? Sealed her to, sealed her to?
You think you deserve her? My voice again. When all you do is leave? Everyone in her life has left her. Abandoned her. And you think you love her? You cursed her.
…Cursed her, cursed her.
“Fuck.” The word tumbled out of my mouth without my meaning it to. My chest constricted. Tightened like a fist had wrapped around it. Shame bubbled from the pit of my stomach, threatening to spill over. Was she still cursed by me if our cordae was broken?
That look in her eyes flashed inside my head. The one she’d angled up at me when I’d said I didn’t need a cordae. Desperate and hopeful and worth more than a man like me could ever fucking give her. I couldn’t help it. I pulled my hand from hers.
Tore my eyes away.
Sent my focus into the deep tracks Cebrinne had left instead.
“Come on,” I muttered. Even that took effort. Even that felt less like a spoken sentence and more like it was wrung from my chest.
Her gaze lingered, boring into me. Waiting. Longing.
I’m with you, I tried to say.
But I couldn’t. Not here—not on this mountain. It knew. The mountain knew it was a promise I couldn’t keep.
Your life will run its course, while hers will continue on. And do not think she has not thought of it every day since she realized who she is.
The longer she stared, the more cavernous the betrayal of not meeting her eyes became. “Come on,” I said again. Another step, and my foot sliced deep into the sand. The heat engulfed my leg, burying me in liquid flame, wavy lines rising into the air as I tried to dig myself out.
“Don’t listen to it,” Maren called from the other side. A moment later, the unmistakable sound of sand tumbling met my ears, followed by a sharp hiss.
Failure, failure. Even now, when you know how to help her, you can’t.
Shut the fuck up, I snapped back at myself.
My own voice laughed at me.
So I ignored the fucker. I hated him anyway. I let him berate me. Sank into the words as much as I did the burn of the mountain, and did not care when or how they might brand themselves into my mind forever.
The top was in sight.
We’d taken turns in the lead, each of us falling back when the mountain became too much to bear. Cebrinne wrestled the hardest, though she often lagged behind, gathering her strength to scale the crumbling silver truth while waging war against it.
Finally, Maren reached the top. She’d long since shut everything out—including us—crawling over the dune like a snake slithering through the grass, her arms and legs skulking low.
As soon as she’d crested, the hard iron in her muscles relaxed, as though reaching the top had left her boneless with relief.
The curve of her shoulder hung over the edge as she lay there, so very still.
Except for the black fringe of her lashes, blinking slowly into the vast stars above.
You hid his body, Maren said.
I paused, unsure if I’d heard her right. Leihani?
Yes? she sent back. Even through her mind, it sounded like a long exhale.
You lying, deceitful, coward of a man.
My fingers twitched. Maren rolled over, the silver ions in her hair catching light. Sparkling. You’re almost here. Keep coming.
I saved your life. Her voices overlapped, this one cracking in disbelief.
I saved yours, mine said. We’re square.
Maren pushed herself a bit higher. She’d gone limp at the top, but her energy seemed to return the longer she sat up there. It goes away as soon as you cross the top.
I nodded vacantly at her, my mind elsewhere. Lost under the backwaters of time, to a place living and fleshed with color, a beach with swaying palms and flooding sunshine.
You will behave, my voice mocked, caustic in my own ears. Fist clasping the searing sand, I couldn’t understand why the words twisted like a knife in my gut.
I told you that you were coming with me.
“Kye,” Maren called from only a short distance away.
Kye, a memory-version of her voice reverberated, thick with fear and pain and disbelief.
A memory. One that I’d lost. One I’d never been able to reach while alive.
I shook it away. But it clung to me like wet paper, lying flush with my grooves, threatening to wither and harden into the shape of me. Even as I climbed the fired sand, it hardened like a mold.
Maren standing alone on the beach of Neris Island, surrounded by my father’s navy, staring up at me with pain and confusion and fiery rage. A knife under her chin, a hand holding that knife, an arm that belonged to me.
I gulped down the thick feeling of bile, churning in my gut.
The voice in my head laughed. I wasn’t sure if it laughed at me now, or if it was part of that memory. Part of that day.
A hand slapped against mine, latching on.
Sand tumbled under my feet as Maren pulled. But the surface of the mountain didn’t break under her weight. She lay with arms hanging just over the edge, eyes and mouth tight as she heaved. It was all I needed to snap me out of the trance of the voices.
My feet carved through the falling silver sand, until I was dangling over the ridge.
But she’d managed to guide my hands to her level.
Enough that I swung to the side, throwing my elbow over, then a knee, hoisting the rest of myself to the top.
Like Maren, I rolled away from the edge, staring up at the endless night.
The white-hot burn of the mountain subsided, cool wind sweeping the heat away, stroking its apologies into my skin.
Flecks of silver lifted into the air, tiny glints.
“You made it,” Maren whispered. She hadn’t let go of my hand, and she rubbed her thumb into the center of my palm.
I rotated my head to look at her. Dark skin and rich hair and vibrant black eyes.
Fine grain embellished her locks, glittering whenever she moved.
I wanted to ask her what she’d heard in those final steps.
The same question floated in her eyes as she waited for me.
I couldn’t. I didn’t know why.
That’s not true. I knew exactly fucking why. Because she’d return the question. She’d ask me right back. And then argue with what I told her. Try to convince me not to believe it, that none of it was true, that what happened before didn’t matter now.
Fucking coward, I told myself. Not the voice of the mountain. Me.
Cebrinne’s hand landed next to my head, nails scoring deep into the sand.
I pushed onto a hip, grasping Cebrinne’s fingers.
Maren took her other hand, and together we pulled her up.
She stood for half a moment before dropping to her knees, her entire body quivering against the gentle wind.
Tracks of wet silver clung to her cheeks.
Her mouth quivered, and she refused to look at either of us.
Time stretched in silence, the three of us looming over a sanded edge.
Maren dropped her mother’s hand softly, turning away.
The only peak in all of Perpetuum, the Mountain of Truth’s summit only spanned as wide as a single floor in my palace tower.
The temple in the center was the size of a modest room, its walls the same liquid fabric Theia had worn, held by a circle of white stone pillars.
Sand surrounded the pillars, both inside them and out.
Maren walked to it, already barefoot. It wasn’t far. Merely a few steps from us. She ducked smoothly under the shimmering fabric as it billowed away, placing a single step under the stone.
Cebrinne lifted her head to watch Maren press her toes into the sand.
It glowed around her foot. Bright and brilliant.
She took another step, and another. Everywhere her skin touched, the sand lit.
In the center, she sank down to the sand.
It ignited around her, bright enough to illuminate her face and shoulders in stark moonlight.
Fingertips in the sand, she began sifting it to one side.
My hand hadn’t left Cebrinne’s. I hauled her gently to her feet, and we followed. Like Maren, she was already barefoot, but I stopped just outside the stone to wrench my boots off, casting them into the silt.
The sand inside the temple cushioned the soles of my feet like fine powder.
It lit around Cebrinne in cool tones of silver, not quite as bright as Maren.
Warmer, almost verging on gold, around me.
We settled into it, digging in silence. Each swipe of my fingers, the sand smoothed away, bright where I touched and dimming as I released.
The deeper I went, the longer it remained lit. Maren’s hollow had widened enough that the powder inside shone like a silver fire. She reached for one more scoop and froze.
The onyx in her eyes, the black of her pupils—it all went white.
I started in surprise, ready to yank her hand back out. But nothing about Maren looked as though she was suffering. Her lips gently parted, the knots of muscle within her loosening as her fingers splayed into the fine grain. In fact, the tips of her nails pushed deeper, reaching.
Below the pads of my own fingers, the sand oozed warmth.
Not the blazing heat from the side of the mountain.
Gentle, inviting. A soft pulse drummed against my hand, so faint I barely sensed it.
I pushed deeper, shrouding my touch with that pulse.
It grew, a forceful beat against my palm.
Radiating up my arm, thrumming into my heart, a steady throb in my ears.
Somewhere behind me, Cebrinne inhaled a sharp breath.
I tunneled a little deeper. A little deeper. A little deeper.
My eyes closed. The world collapsed. And my vision clouded with white.