YOU ARE NOT DEAD #2
When she’d bled and become a priestess to Ojalla, she’d received her Folla Afe—the Folla-silver claws that replaced her nails.
Back then, her body parts had been removed and holy metal melted into her skin in its place as claws of ever-bright silver.
The metal was gifted to her people by Ojalla, and it sang with Her magic.
If one wielded a weapon made of Folla silver—or, in Esme’s case, melted it into their body—they could join their will with Ojalla’s and would be protected by Her as long as they followed Her orders.
But her nails were not her only Folla Afe.
When she was born, cold and still and quiet, Ojalla had commanded that she be taken to the temple, where Her holy metal ran in liquid in rivers through the halls, and dunked in whole.
Her mother had held her under the bubbling silver with her bare hands until Esme had begun to cry, then lifted her out a living baby.
The rest of her family wouldn’t know until her first horse-riding accident, but Esme had Folla Afe in her bones. It glimmered in her blood.
She was the swirling embodiment of the night and the stars and death. She was made of black shadow and silvery moonlight and resurrected by the boiling magic of a god.
Simon refused to blink. He must have been memorizing her every feature, from the stars’ placements in her eyes to the rivers of riotous moonlight from her scalp. He stared like he could see through to the magic in her very blood.
“Bast,” he whispered, so soft she almost didn’t hear him.
But she flinched at the sound of her name in a new accent.
Simon didn’t say it like Urias did, in the Micrean way.
He knew it was two syllables instead of one, with the t pronounced so softly it was almost inaudible to non-native speakers of her language.
“How do you know that name?” Esme asked, taking up the space between them. “How do you know how to say it?”
Simon smiled. He eyed her like he wanted nothing more than to reach out and feel her swirling coldness against his skin. “You are the daughter of an empress. Your name is no secret.”
“How do you know it?”
Finally, he did touch her cheek. Their magic did not stand in opposition. The sun always chased the night. Esme’s cold dripped across his fingers as his heat crawled into her skin.
“I am well read,” he said simply. His touch trailed from her hairline down to caress her jaw. “You were correct. I am feeling rather overcome.” He grinned so hard she could barely see his irises, but a sliver of light shone beneath. There were tears in his eyes.
“You are lying to me,” Esme muttered. She knew him, and he knew her.
“I can’t be well educated?”
“I barely believe you can read,” she said, resting her head on his shoulder. “How do you know me? How do I know you?”
“I am actually a very accomplished reader.” He half-hiccupped, half-laughed.
A hissing skated on the floor and Esme and Simon both bent down to look as a sliver of Magic slipped out of her window.
Esme rose to go and find out what had been camping out in her room, only for a chain to fall from Simon’s pocket right at her feet.
She pouted and picked it up for him. Poor thing was more grime than metal, tarnished black.
It was a simple chain with the clasp undone.
Esme found its edges, intending to re-hook it, only for her stomach to drop.
The clasp was fashioned as a pair of hands. Not just any hands, but ones with dark fingers and long, silver nails.
No.
As soon as she realized what the necklace was, it crumbled. Esme dropped to her knees to catch mist dancing through her shaking fingers, but nothing remined except the dark hands and their glimmering silver nails.
“I’m so sorry,” Esme told him. She couldn’t imagine losing that necklace.
Simon slipped to his knees with her and took her quivering hands. “It was an old necklace.”
“But it was…” Esme struggled even to say the word.
Simon grinned and turned her hands over to find each half of the clasp in her palms. “It was just a chain,” he said.
It was not just a chain. It was a Ki, the necklace lovers traded below the purple shroud during their Kipat at dawn.
The clasp was cast as the hands of one’s partner.
Simon’s wife was likely a priestess, like Esme had been in Is-Khan, given the nails.
That’s how he’d known how to pronounce her name, Ojalla’s name. That’s how he knew so much.
“Is she the friend you’re looking for? Your wife?” Esme asked. That would mean there was another woman from Is-Khan running around this world…
“I found her long ago,” Simon said quickly. He wiped a tear from high on her cheek. “Don’t cry.”
“It was important.” If not to him, then to her. That chain was Folla silver.
“I have what matters. A chain is a chain.” Simon curled her fingers around the clasp and folded his hands over hers.
“That necklace belonged to someone I knew a long time ago. She’s long gone now, and that’s okay.
I spent a lot of time thinking I could get her back, find someone who reminded me of her and pick up right where we left off.
I know now that she’s truly gone. But the love she gave me is still here, and the man she made me is one I’m proud of.
The necklace was just a necklace. I carry her with me in ways that are much more important. ”
His words were a balm to her grief. Still, Esme pulled her hands from his and placed the clasp in his palms.
Esme dragged a jewelry box she hadn’t opened in over a decade out of her closet and hefted it onto her bureau.
It cracked open like a book, little shelves groaning as they folded out.
Gold and rubies and pearls rustled as she dug through them until she came to the box’s false bottom.
She unlatched the secret compartment and moonlight burst out from inside.
Even after almost a century, the jewelry still shone.
It was all that remained of what she’d worn the night Omniel pulled her through.
The clothes were gone, but she was able to smuggle this from hiding spot to hiding spot.
Omniel never found it, never forced her to tell him where it was.
He’d threaten to melt it all the time, but it was the only promise he’d never delivered on.
Esme blew out a frosty breath and picked up the chain she hadn’t worn in nearly a century.
The day Omniel kidnapped her, Esme’s mother had forced her to marry a man she didn’t love.
He’d been an emperor from a world over, a nightmare of a man who’d hid it well until their wedding night.
Esme had run from him, seeking safe haven in her own temple.
She’d fled to the room that had held her city’s Void, but another monster found her there: Omniel.
That’s how she’d ended up here, why the last memories of her siblings were so painful.
Eight of them had opposed the marriage, but Sek, the eldest, had agreed with their mother that Esme should marry to prevent a war with her new husband’s growing empire.
The other girls were too young, and he had no interest in men, so…
So Esme had donned a chain just like Simon’s and cried under her purple shroud as a man she hated had garroted her with his heavy Folla-silver necklace.
The necklace she held now.
It still had her husband’s clasp, his hands too big for the chain.
He’d wanted it that way. Esme pried the clasps open and freed the chain, then tossed those hands back into her box and closed it before re-hiding it in the back of her closet.
She grabbed the chain and kneeled down in front of Simon.
His eyes grew large and glassy on the metal in her hands.
“I can’t ever replace that one but…but I can give you this one,” Esme said, presenting it to him.
Part of her thought she should have chosen one she cared more about, to make it even, but this was the most even she could make it.
Both chains had been exchanged by two people kneeling beneath a purple shroud at dawn, with just a priestess of Ojalla and the goddess Herself as witness.
Each was the same length—short enough to hug the neck and boast the strength of their love.
Each was Folla silver as proof of their commitment to their god.
The chains were equal, even if Simon and his wife probably loved each other more than Esme and the man her mother chose for her did.
Simon stuttered to speak. Before he could say a word, sunlight beamed through the window, and a rustling at Esme’s door tore them from the moment.
Simon scooped both the new chain and her hands and kissed her fingers before slipping the chain into his pocket.
“They don’t know I come here,” he said. “And Balthazar will pitch a royal fit if he finds you out of bed.” He helped Esme back into said bed, no matter how she tried to protest. She wanted to know who his wife was, how they’d met, when they were married.
Where she’d gone. “Don’t,” she said, and grabbed his arm just as the door swung open. “Please.”
Simon swept down and Esme swore he’d kiss her. She closed her eyes to let it happen, only for his kiss to sear the crown of her head. A tingle shimmied down Esme’s spine at the press of his lips.
She opened her eyes to her curtains blowing in a blustering wind, and Simon gone. She pulled her glamour on just in time.
“Valos above.”
Balthazar was dressed in the finery of a king, but he would never not be Bal. He stood in the doorway with a cup of coffee in one hand and a crumpled handful of papers in the other.
He dropped both.
He was on her in a second, not noticing her open window or the lingering scent of smoke. Instead, he patted around her body to make sure all the parts were there. He muttered about thinking she was dead, and sniffled because he was glad she wasn’t.