Chapter 7 #2
“Ollie.” Dom clutches my cheeks and wipes away the tears with his callused thumbs stained with dirt. “Ollie, it’s okay. We’ll be happy. I promise I will do everything in my power to make you happy, and this way I can keep you safe.”
“Your aunt knows of your intentions?” I ask.
Dom’s face falls. “I don’t need her permission.”
“So you will spring our union on her, and what? Count on her to clean up our mess?”
“The council is planning to pin the collapse on you. Runners are coming and going from the manor at all hours, and my aunt isn’t as quiet as she believes she is.
Think about it. Why else have they tasked you with maintaining an aqua system that is meant to outlast us all?
Why else have their hand of death as your keeper?
Any low-level guard could watch you while you work.
They chose Caius because he won’t hesitate when it is time for you to pay the price in blood. ”
My world spins off-kilter. I can’t accept what he’s saying.
“Ollie, I’m sorry. It’s true. But my aunt will protect you, protect us. She has to, to save face in front of the council. She can’t let Nero sully our family name. Our union will take you off their playing board. Please.”
The room spins as my mind races to fit the pieces together. I need to find another angle, another way, but try as I might, I can’t find fault with Dom’s words. He is right. Caius told me as much behind the falls. They will come for my blood, and Dom is offering me a way out.
“I—I’ll think about it.”
Dom nods, still holding either side of my face as he leans forward and places a chaste kiss on my brow.
“I will make this right. I promise.”
“She said she’ll think about it, Dominic.” My mother pats Dom on the shoulder, and he finally releases me. “I think you’d better get home.”
Dom stands and moves towards the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Ollie.”
As soon as Dom disappears behind the door hanging, my mother moves to the back of the room, opening a chest that I haven’t seen her touch in years.
A chest where I know the memories of my father live.
She rummages through his belongings until she finds what she’s looking for.
Clutching the item close, she whispers a prayer that I can’t make out.
Then she closes the chest and returns to the table with a black leather cuff, the same cuff that my father wore every day of his life.
It wasn’t until after his sky burial, once the carrion birds had picked every last piece of his flesh and the sun had bleached his bones white, that he was returned to us, the cuff still fastened around his wrist. We are all creatures of sky and stone, and so our remains are returned to where they came.
It is the bones of our loved ones we are allowed to keep and carve into sky stones to be worn in remembrance.
My fingers drift to the sky stones on my necklace, carved with care into beads depicting dragons soaring freely, like I hope my father’s spirit does now.
My mother runs her thumbs over the intricate leatherwork. Then she fastens it around my wrist, wrapping her hand around the cuff. “This will keep you safe. Wear it always.”
“I promise.” The words leave a bitter taste in my mouth, souring my stomach.
Would the cuff keep me safe? The same way it had kept my father safe?
It wouldn’t do to voice such fears. Let my mother have her superstitions.
So little belonged to her in this world beneath the earth.
She had lost more than most. I could let her have this.
“He’s a good boy, Ollie.” My mother’s words snap my attention back to the moment.
“Mama—”
She grasps both of my hands in her cool, knotted ones.
“Listen to me, Oliviana. I know. I know that you and Dominic are not a love match. I know that I raised you both to dream of such things, and for that, I am sorry. But he is a good man. He will honor you. Aurelia is powerful. Maybe as powerful as Nero now. His family name will keep you safe when nothing else in The Below can.” Tears glisten in her dark-green eyes, so different from Caius’…
A vision of Caius flashes before my eyes, with soaked dark locks draped over prasiolite-green eyes, promising to keep me safe.
“Oliviana.” My mother’s tone is scolding, and I’m not quite sure what I have done to deserve it. “I know that look. I haven’t seen it in over a decade—”
“Mama—”
My mother lifts a gnarled hand to stroke my cheek.
“Oh, my sweet girl. That boy broke your heart once. Don’t give him the opportunity to do it again.
I know you loved him. I know you saw the good in that poor, broken boy.
But Dom is right. Whatever light was in Caius burned out long ago.
He will always choose himself. He will hurt you again if you let him.
Please promise me you will guard your heart.
” Her eyes shine with unshed tears, and there is only one answer I can give her.
“I promise.”
She tucks a lock of hair behind my ear and pats my cheek. “And consider Dominic’s proposal.”
I come to my feet, leaning over the stone table to kiss my mother’s brow. “I will, Mama. Now I really do need to get some rest.”
“Of course.” She clutches my hand and gives it a squeeze. “Good night, my sweet child.” She calls softly after me as I slip out into the pale pink glow of second shift.
I climb slowly to my dwelling. All the strength has leached from my bones into the very stone beneath my palms. My head is fuzzy with everything that has happened. Dom’s proposal. The attack on Bǎodela. The Dragon…Caius.
I kick off my boots, strip off my damp clothing and fall onto my bed. Never mind my dirt-covered skin or knotted hair, not yet dry from the plunge in the lake. Today has been too much. I need sleep to come and take it away.
“Don’t tell me you are actually considering a union with him.”
I jump at the deep baritone that rings like a gong through the darkness.
I scramble back and pull the wool covering from over the glass glow terrarium I keep on the shelf carved above my bed.
The terrarium Dom made me when my father died.
So that you always have light to guide your way.
Even through the darkest passage. No. My father didn’t die.
He was executed by Nero Amarala because Caius Amarala couldn’t keep a secret.
I turn to the window. Heat flares under my skin as I take in the beautiful lines of Caius’ face, severe and haunting in the shadows cast by the glow globe.
“Get out!” I shout.
“Shh.” Caius moves like a shadow from his perch at my windowsill to sit on the corner of my bed. He presses so close I can feel the heat radiating off his skin, then whispers, “You’ll wake the neighbors.”
“Get out,” I whisper-hiss back. A lock of hair falls into my eyes.
Caius lifts his hand to brush the lock from my face, but freezes just before he touches me, gaze dropping, unfocused on the edge of the bed, as if just realizing I’m in nothing but my underclothes and he is in my bed.
He balls his hand into a fist and lets it fall back to his side.
“Don’t unite with Dom,” he whispers.
I’m shocked by how sincere Caius sounds, how…broken.
“I’m not having this discussion with you.” I shove my palms against Caius’ chest, prompting him to go, but he doesn’t even flinch.
“I promised you I would keep you safe. Do you believe me?”
“Keep me safe the way you kept my father safe?” The words are out before I can think better of it. They strike home, sending Caius reeling back as if I slapped him.
He hangs his head, his dark hair falling across his beautiful face. “I deserved that,” he mumbles. “There was nothing I could do for your father. But I can keep you safe. I promise you. I need you to believe me.”
“Oh my gods, Caius. Why does it matter?”
“It matters.”
I flop back on my pillows. I have no strength left for this argument. “It doesn’t matter if I believe you or not. Now, can you either get out or shut up? I have to see your ugly face for first shift in mere hours.”
“It matters…because if you believe me, you don’t need a union with Dom.”
Bat stretches at the bottom of the bed, then slinks into Caius’ lap. I watch as Caius gently strokes the dark fur between Bats’ ears, two shadows in the night.
“Traitor,” I mumble, then shift my gaze to trace the lines of the rock above my bed, considering.
I watch from the corner of my eye as Caius props himself up against the wall, crosses his arms, and stretches his long legs out on the bed beside mine as he waits for my answer.
Stubborn bastard. I won’t give him the satisfaction.
Instead, I listen until Caius’ breathing deepens to a steady rhythm.
I wait until the tug in my chest becomes unbearable.
“I believe you,” I whisper. I believe that he believes he is telling the truth.
That he will do everything in his power to keep me safe.
That Dom will do the same if I let him. But I don’t believe that either of them holds the power to deliver on that promise.
I think of my father. How he held me in his powerful arms, brought machines to life with a touch, and whispered tales of dragons in my ear.
“What would you do?” I plead to the darkness, sending a prayer to the gods that they might let me speak to my father one last time.
He would know what to do. I’m certain of it.
I run my fingers over the molded leather cuff, tracing the design that I know so well, letting my mind drift back to a time when all was right in the world because my father would make it so.
“How do I become a dragon rider, Da?” I had asked him many times as a child. He always gave the same answer.
“Well, first off, you have to be pure of heart.” He taps my chest right over where my heart beats like a hummingbird.
I bob my head excitedly. “Yes, Da, I can do that. What’s next?” I bounce in his arms.