Chapter Forty-Eight
When we find the others, they are standing outside the flowing hair of the willow tree, lanterns in hand, Diarmid explaining that they could not trespass in the home of the arachnids for fear of being bitten.
Calli is shuddering and scratching her arms as though her skin is crawling with hundreds of phantom insects.
Lillienne wraps her arms around me, as soon as I emerge from the leaves.
‘How did it go?’ she whispers into my ear, squeezing me tighter when she hears my sigh.
‘It’s not good news, if that’s what you’re asking.’
‘Do tell us all how it went, we’re all waiting with bated breath.’ Cole parts the willow tree like curtains and steps into the open.
‘We will discuss it as soon as we are back on the ship and headed for Valtayre. Time is quite literally of the essence,’ Eliaz pats Cole on the shoulder. ‘But, I cannot let us leave without an apology from you, Cole.’
The raven-haired man scrunches up his face, regarding Eliaz like he would a rotten fish. ‘I do not recall anything I have to apologise for. Quit the dramatics and let’s get going as you wish.’ He tries to begin walking but Eliaz grabs his arm before he can take a single step.
‘You will apologise to Eira and my sister for the insulting things you said to them earlier. If you want to keep this arm, that is.’
Cole swallows hard, staring down Eliaz before turning his gaze to Calli and I. ‘I don’t think that is necessary. Do you girls?’
Calli and I exchange a look, and I cross my arms before turning my attention back to him. ‘No, please. Go ahead. I should like to hear the word sorry coming from a man as arrogant and small-minded as you.’
‘Well, I am sorry.’
I raise my brows at him. There’s no way I’m letting him get away with that so easily. ‘You’re sorry for…’
He narrows his eyes on me. ‘I have apologised. There’s no need to get into the specifics. Now, if you’ll excuse me. I will be making my way back to that dismal ship before Truman has our heads.’
Eliaz just shakes his head at me, as though telling me to leave it there.
‘Some men remain unchanged,’ Lillienne says, linking her arm through mine. ‘At least he said the word sorry.’
‘I’m surprised he knows it,’ I mumble
Eliaz follows Cole and we follow closely behind. Lilienne and I together, Calli and Diarmid trudging through the field either side of us.
The walk across the expanse of wildflowers and through the trees gives me too much time to dither over every detail of what the emperor told me. My father’s blood sacrifice. How could I not have seen it before?
We had all the information we needed to arrive at this conclusion and yet, we still were blind to the truth. My father using Neyktar to erect the Divide. The duke’s father’s murder.
He did not die purely for speaking out against the use of such magics, he was sacrificed in order for that very magic to work for his king. Ansel will be devastated.
No wonder my mother did not wish me to go searching for more answers, to work with Eliaz in finding out the truth. She did not wish me to discover this truth about my father, and no doubt her involvement in such an abomination.
My parents. Turning their backs on our gods. Now, their people pay the price.
‘Eira!’ Lillienne squeals, tearing her arm from mine. ‘Your skin is burning up like the grate of a hearth.’
I look to my arm, the bare skin there sizzling with the light drizzle of rain. ‘I’m sorry, Lillienne, I can’t control it. I was just thinking of my mother.’
‘That thought’s enough to make anyone burn with rage,’ she says with a giggle.
We walk on, and I keep a considerable amount of distance between us now. I can’t be sure I’m not capable of setting someone fully alight at this moment in time.
The emperor had known my mother, perhaps loved her. And yet, the woman he spoke so fondly of seems worlds apart from the woman who awaits us in Reyhen.
We will have to be especially careful if we wish to get past her and into the Relic. A knot forms in my stomach, coiling in my abdomen like a serpent tightening around its prey.
The Virtuae Relic has gifted us so much, the power to live and prosper on the earth. A taste of Godliness.
And we have tainted it, poisoned the vitality and goodness of it with our greed. Our relentless hungering for more and more. We were never meant to feel close to the gods.
Men should not know such a luxury as power, not when they have shown they are prone to misusing it.
We reach the pebbled sand of the beach, the sound of the waves crashing into the shore urging us to make haste to our tiny boats, beckoning us back into the sea.
It is not until we have rowed back to the ship and stare at the landmass of Atannae as it shrinks before us that I realise the mistake I have made.
I have left the red book behind.
I stare and stare until Attanae is nothing but a smudge on the horizon.
How could I have been stupid enough to have let that guard take it from me? I was so close to what I thought was the information that would piece it all together. Perhaps the contents of that book would have determined whether or not our decision on what to do with the Relic.
Cold fingers slide over my shoulders, causing me to flinch. Smoke tingles in my senses.
‘Come sit with us, Princess. We await your disclosure of your conversation with the emperor.’
I peer over my shoulder at them all, loitering about with the same eager expression plastered over their faces. Lillienne leans on the mast, biting at her nails. Diarmid lingers about beside her, hat scrunched into a ball by his side.
Calli and Cole sit on two crates, in the centre of the deck, Calli fidgeting with the fabric of her skirts and Cole tapping his foot impatiently on the planks. I scan the deck for Eliaz but he is nowhere to be seen.
‘I’m right here.’ His breath is hot as it caresses my neck. His hand finds mine, and I smile up at him weakly.
‘I thought I told you to stay out of my mind.’
‘Well, it seems only fair considering how often you occupy mine.’
A blush creeps onto my cheeks, hot and stinging.
It is a difficult adjustment, that he would regard me in such a way. The idea that I have a place in his thoughts just as he mine.
I was told so many stories of the Umbrian king, lurking across the Divide, all darkness and terror.
There is a dark side to him, I will not deny it, but he is much more than a villain seeking to avenge his people. He is real and broken and human.
And most of all, he is kind at his core.
And that is an attribute I will always put first, above all else.
‘Come on, Eira. Out with it,’ Cole shouts over. ‘How are we supposed to know our roles in the solution if you won’t tell us what the plan is?’
I sigh, giving Eliaz’s hand a squeeze before dropping it to face the others. ‘There is only one solution, and I can hardly bear to say it out loud.’
‘Whatever it is, we will all face it together,’ Lillienne offers, before elbowing Diarmid.
‘Oh yes, we shall all offer our services where we are available. Quite right.’
‘And I appreciate that, I truly do. But I am afraid that it is an impossible task we must face on our own, Eliaz and I.’
Cole shifts on the crate, but does not speak his displeasure, so I continue.
‘My father’s use of Neyktar when creating the Divide was much worse than we had originally thought.
The blood magic rejected him, it wouldn’t give him the power he needed, so he found other means to achieve his goal, to employ the Neyktar to work for him, not with him. ’
‘No,’ Eliaz mutters in disbelief. ‘He wouldn’t.’
I give a solemn nod. ‘He sacrificed his own men in order to force the Neyktar to work for him. He must have somehow combined the Relic’s magic with the blood magic by killing his men with the dagger of Sirnet.’
‘So, we have the power to take it down between us?’ Calli says eagerly, getting to her feet. She crosses the deck, arms outstretched towards her brother and I. ‘We can truly take it down?’
I shake my head, my throat dry as I try to push forth words. ‘It demands the greatest sacrifice, and I am unsure I am prepared to give up what is necessary.’
My eyes find Eliaz, the muscles in his jaw tensing, his eyes blinking slowly back at me, knowingly.
‘The Virtuae Relic,’ he says. ‘It must be destroyed.’
‘You can’t! Think of all the damage it would cause, how many people would die before they get the chance of treatment. We’d be inundated with the afflicted.’ Calli retracts her hands from us. ‘They’d all die.’
‘Well, we could take the time to prepare,’ Lillienne pipes up. ‘Set up make-shift infirmary tents along the border of the Divide. Eliaz can do his thing and whip up a crazy amount of his vile cure.’
The image of him standing over that cauldron, eyes the same red as Calli’s, the devilish grin that commanded and distorted his features.
I do not recall exactly what went into the creation of the poultice in the recipe he wrote in the black book, but if the process is anything like the concoction he made to sustain life and power, then who knows what it would do to him, how much it would change him. ‘No, that’d be too much for—’
‘Not a bad idea, Lillienne.’ Eliaz cuts me off. ‘We could return to Umbra, get everything in order for a surge in cases, and perhaps we’d have a better chance of saving everyone.’
‘But, Eliaz, don’t you think—’
‘There’s no true cure for the affliction, Eira. Not one that allows people to retain their immortality. It’s being human or dead.’
‘But, that’s not my point. I mean you would have to—’
‘There is no question—’
‘Let me speak!’ And before I can even recognise its presence, the fire within me comes streaming forth, firing from my fingertips.
I have to redirect it so that it does not hit him, or Calli, who has to throw herself to the ground before it has the chance.
The screaming ball of flame hits a stray crate of wood, setting it alight in the blink of an eye.
‘What the fuck, Eira?’ Cole falls from the crate he was perched upon, eyes wide and disbelieving. ‘You’re out of control.’
Tears spilling from my eyes and evaporating from the heat of my cheeks, I bring a hand up to my mouth, sobs muffled by my burning fingers. For once, Cole is right. I have lost control.
‘I’m sorry.’ I fall to my knees. ‘I didn’t mean to – I wouldn’t have done that on purpose.’
Eliaz’s hands find my shoulders, and he kneels down to me. ‘Those powers are new, and unpredictable. You’ll learn to control them, to reign them in when they threaten to overthrow you. Just breathe.’
‘It’s just… we put everyone at risk in doing this, how is that better than just continuing as we are, with you crossing the Divide with the afflicted and treating them in Umbra. We could set up more support in Reyhen.’
He releases a deep exhale. ‘I’m tired, Eira.
I don’t know how much longer I can keep it up, especially now the number of cases with each bout is becoming more and more.
Everyone will be affected by it at one point or another, and Lillienne is right, if we take the time to prepare, set up tents along the span of the Divide, make up the cure.
More of it. We can defeat it once and for all. ’
‘But what would it do to you?’ I bring a hand up to his cheek. ‘You might lose yourself in the process.’
‘That’s a sacrifice I am willing to make.’
‘But I can’t be sure it is one that I am,’ I say.
‘Me neither,’ Calli agrees.
‘Whatever the price,’ his voice echoes my own words back at me in my head. ‘Let me save our people, no matter what it costs me. The Divide has to come down. There’s no other way.’
‘Okay. We destroy the Virtuae Relic.’ I nod, tired.
Defeated. There is no coming in between the Umbrian king and his people, or mine.
The only barrier is the one that exists between us, his unwillingness to see that in all his caring for others, he’s forgotten the value of being cared about himself.
‘Which begs the question, how? That thing was made directly from the Virtuae Gods themselves. We don’t possess that kind of power,’ Lillienne asks.
‘The emperor said all we need is something that matches the Relic in power, something made from it, ’ I reply, my voice scarcely more than a whisper. ‘My father’s dagger. Sirnet.’
‘We should retrieve the dagger as soon as we reach Valtayre,’ Cole pipes up, all of us craning our necks to ogle at him.
‘What? We cannot risk the Queen of Reyhen getting word of our preparations and what our plans are beforehand. She’d of course hide it from us as soon as she found out her Relic is at risk. ’
‘A helpful piece of input from the emperor’s son. I never thought I’d see the day.’ Lillienne nods surprisedly.
Cole smiles. ‘I am more than just a pretty face, my friends.’
‘Debatable,’ Calli laughs.