Chapter 39 #2
He became silent and let it seep upon us. “There’s not much I can promise, but I swear I will always come.” He marked it with a brief kiss on my hand before rising. “Your wounds must be cleansed.”
I tried to walk, but my body gave out. So I reluctantly let him carry me until he put me in a rapidly filling basin in a dark, silver-lined bathing room.
But as the warm water poured from an unseen faucet, it burned.
“You’re going to boil me alive.”
“Cold water would send you into shock.” He aided me in fishing off my filthy breeches. He raised them to the sapphire light, examining the blood-stained pants until a look of horror crossed his features.
With a trembling hand, he ran it across the ornate ribbing… or what was left of it. “I gave these to you.”
“And then they put me in prison.”
“As I said, I released you after hardly a night. You didn’t look like this then.” He adjusted his words. “How are you wearing the same clothes I put on you? These look as if they’ve seen a century, not days!”
“They’ve seen hell,” I muttered. But from the look that crossed his face, I regretted it.
He grumbled a curse and tossed them in the corner. “What happened to you?”
I grew quiet and shrank into the seat. “Nothing.”
When he slipped behind me, I tried to slide away but wasn’t quick enough. When he caught sight of my back, he inhaled a scream.
“What happened?” His voice shook, but I pretended it didn’t. “Who did this to you?”
My mind spun, running through every possibility of every answer.
They all pointed to a deadly end. If I told him who did it, he’d slaughter them the first chance he got.
After all, he’d already killed once for me.
And though I despised Arlein for this, they had been through hell themselves.
Something unimaginable, and I couldn’t mark every last one of them for death.
They deserved it, but I couldn’t bear that weight on my shoulders, too.
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine, you’ve been carved.”
He ran a finger down my spine and I bit a curse and winced.
I hoped he couldn’t hear, but he yanked his hand away as if I were plagued.
“Singers—it’s fresh.” I could feel him coming undone. The rage radiated from him in waves, trembling the air around him.
The water was now up to my calves, and I wished to sink into it—and hide. My chest tightened until I thought I might choke on my breath.
But he wrapped his bony fingers around my shoulders and tugged me up, leaving no retreat.
He shifted so close his wisps of hair tugged at my cheek.
Something cold climbed over my bare skin—almost wet—but when I looked, it was the room’s shadows.
They crawled and seethed up my face. “I will only ask once more. What happened?”
“They held me down and carved a name into my skin.” Not a lie, and the honesty pressed me further. “They took a blade, some hand-fashioned dagger, bent me over until I screamed and—”
He held up a hand, and the shadows stilled.
“That’s enough,” he snapped, his voice throaty.
It had lost its velvety quality, replaced with unveiled pain.
He swallowed, and his fingers released me, moving to the basin where the metal bent beneath his fingers.
Across the room, it was much of the same, the unsettled shadows slithering across the walls like seething serpents ready to snap.
“Who is ‘they?’”
I knew that would come. Yet when he uttered it, I still jumped.
I searched for the lie, foul as it was.
Because if I were being honest with myself, I desired revenge. But the vengeance I ached for would only lead to another bloodbath.
“The king’s guard.”
His presence slipped away, and three buckets burst into flame. It was so violent that embers tapped against the ceiling. Within seconds, only smoldering ash remained.
He returned to my side and stroked a finger down my cheek, but it didn’t bring the intended comfort. “They won’t hurt you again. You’re safe with me.”
Except I wasn’t. The curse encroached, and every passing minute was another step closer to death.
Silently, he tapped my spine, and relief spread across it.
He banished the burning, with cool pressed into where the torn flesh was.
His lumen spread across me, tugging away every ache and replacing it with tingly relief.
It was so quick and required no genuine effort from him.
If someone set him off, would he do the opposite? To not steal pain, but gift it?
I shoved that thought down.
In similar silence, he began to wash me, gently and oh so tender. His fingers roved sweetly, and as the warm water rolled down my tired skin, my shoulders finally relaxed. But the tightness in my chest never left—because as he bathed me, Ovatar’s curse only strengthened.
After far too long spent in the bath, he carried me back to the star-specked room, where the weight of the past two weeks crashed into me like a tidal wave, and I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
When I finally pulled myself from the slumber, I was presented with a silver platter stuffed with food. My stomach screamed, and I gorged myself until I reached the plate of roasted meat.
The memories of the hanging, dried I’phri flashed in my mind, and not only did I not dare eat it, but I had to struggle to keep what I already had down.
The room held little besides the oppressive bed, with a curling and twisted iron headboard. Only the stairs that swirled along the walls and a similarly dark dresser. I stared at the moving lights and strained to focus on them. “Why stars?” I whispered.
“Why not?” Aelen asked from the door. I jumped. My heart thundered, my sternum a cage that could barely contain it.
He slipped across the room to my side, but until he got close, I could make out nothing besides iridescent irises. “The Starsingers gifted us with their love of the night, and we are borne of its great beauty. It’s their gift to us for our service to them.”
“Your service to the forest?” I asked, recalling his previous comment.
“Yes. It breaks my heart that we must cut down the wood for heat.” he paused, and in that his face contorted as if it was in great pain. “But my people’s lives are at stake.”
“For some reason, I thought you were dragon caretakers—or trainers.”
He shook his head. “No. They are not of this world and do not belong to us. One day, if the frost leaves, we’ll return to using lumen to coax the shoots from the ground.”
If.
The darkness settled onto my shoulders.
The curse wouldn’t cease. And if we didn’t fix it, Eltide, Ilyatria—they’d all die.
“What about with their lumen? Could your people help us stop the ice?”
“They cannot. Theirs is small, running through their blood. It’s intended for trees, helping them bloom and then carefully shedding their leaves.”
His father wasn’t from his I’phri side, then. It was from his father. With the way it shimmered and shuddered to get out of him. But one question hung on my mind as I focused on the moving corners.
“Are the shadows your lumen too? Why don’t I have shadows?”
“My shades aren’t magic—they’re me. An extension of myself, the way the deathly cold is an extension of….”
The fear shifted behind his eyes, afraid of uttering his name.
But that brought forth an uncomfortable reality.
“You are a god, then.”
He hunched his shoulders and curled into himself. A stark difference from his usual proud posture.
“I’ve never been a god, nor will I ever be. I am uncomfortably mortal with all the crushing burden an immortal should bear. Should you take a knife to my throat, as I offered, I would bleed.”
“And die.”
“And die,” he confirmed. Without another word, he straightened his robes and offered a hesitant hand. “We must sort the future. You must return to cull your father, and release yourself of the pact.”
I took his hand, but the room still lacked air. I wondered if I’d ever breathe again.