Chapter 29
I Was to Be Crowned, Not Caged, But Anything and Everything Can Be Broken
“Give us some space,” Baz barked over his shoulder at the Bazrians and Marina before crouching beside me to study the disappearing ghost. Her familiar face and frame were so gaunt that her eyes, dark wells of sorrow, appeared humongous, as if sadness was all she was anymore.
Her mouth moved, unhurriedly now. As before, no sound emerged.
“You still can’t hear her?” I asked Baz, panic bleeding into my voice, though there was no great reason for it.
Wherever the specter was going, it had to be better than being locked up for an eternity in the cage where we’d discovered her.
And what light could she possibly shed on the truth of Teo?
My expectation that she might have answers was just me grasping at flickering flames.
Possibly, it was Hope herself surging to fuck with me.
A man, even one who claimed he was an emperor, shouldn’t have been able to contain the demigods. They were demigods, for dragon’s sake.
Baz’s brow scrunched. “I still can’t hear her, but there is a way. Even so, we’ll be fortunate to get a few minutes with her before she’s gone.”
Though I dearly wanted to, I didn’t waste a single one of those minutes cursing out the blasted castle that had kept us away.
“How do we do it?”
He looked at me. Those ocean eyes sucked me in as readily as the ghost’s.
“Do you trust me?”
There was that question again. I felt every set of eyes, including the phantom’s, boring into me.
“Of course I don’t trust you.” I worked not to squirm afterward. It was true, it had to be true. I could not trust my number-one enemy.
Relief swept along our friends, who’d drawn closer. Baz, however, didn’t bother to conceal his disappointment. His scowl was biting.
You do remember that we’re enemies? I wanted to tell him. I nearly killed you. Our families despise each other so completely that the D’Arcos and the Rubors, when mentioned together, are synonymous with hatred.
Never was there a man I was meant to distrust more. He knew this already.
He rolled his eyes at his friends, who surrounded us in a tight semicircle, with Marina at my back. “At least don’t get in our way,” he said.
“We won’t,” Night said.
“Unless it’s to stop her from doing whatever deceitful shit she’s probably planning on doing,” Zi said.
“That,” Night said.
Moncho and Lev grimaced like it was taking everything they had to remain standing at their commander’s side, but there they stood, Lev in clothing still damp and Moncho bloodstained and smeared.
Ed’s hands rested on her weapons belt. Félix alone appeared relaxed.
Marina’s hands were stuffed inside the pocket of her frock, from which she could pull a variety of aid, thanks to her goblin magic.
Baz might have forgotten we were enemies, but none of the others had.
He extended his hand to me. The Rillis rope coiled on the floor between us like a snake that would strike without warning.
Despite the seconds slipping by, I had to ask. “What’s gonna happen?”
“We’re going to experience her darkness. Whatever’s left of it. She’s letting go of her torment.” He smiled slightly. “I think she’ll be able to rid herself of enough of it that she’ll go to the Etherlands when she passes through the Ethers.”
I could have asked about the dangers of exploring the darkness of a ghost who’d died a slow, agonizing death alone in a cage, but what would have been the point? Now that she was free of the cage, she was fading too fast, and I was going to do it despite the risks.
I clasped Baz’s hand. Marina gasped. It was her you’re being rash and irresponsible gasp.
I was well familiar with its inflection.
She was my friend, but she’d been a servant all her life.
In front of so many people she didn’t trust, she wouldn’t express her reservations. But oh, did she ever have them.
Baz reached for the phantom’s hand, and the phantom snapped out her arm, fast, as if she, instead of the rope, were the snake, and latched on.
At once, Marina and the Bazrians, along with Baz’s chambers, vanished.
Mauldrene’s constant accompaniment silenced without so much as a vibrating twang of a string.
Even her omnipresent shadows were absent.
In their place was an even more profound darkness.
It was primordial. It was everywhere and nowhere.
I recognized it. It called to me. This wasn’t the ghost’s darkness. It was mine. It was all of ours. It was magnificent and terrible. I wanted both to fold myself into it forever, and to run as far away from it as I could get.
Glowing with a dimming, golden light, the phantom stood before Baz and me.
Here, she appeared alive, as I imagined Rafaela had looked when she was seventeen years old, before she’d honed her edges into cutting blades.
Baz stood to my left, beaming brightly, and completely naked, which seemed wholly unnecessary when the ghost was fully clothed.
Her dress, with its puffy bell sleeves and train of tulle, spoke of trends long passed, but at one time her dress had been the pinnacle of fashion.
“Why must you be naked?” Baz grumbled to himself as if pained.
“That’s a very good question,” I said, while admiring the incandescence of my skin.
“I need to focus.”
“Then focus.” It was undoubtedly saucy of me to say, when I was having difficulty keeping my gaze from traveling below his face. I didn’t need the distraction either, and a naked Baz was distracting to a fault.
He gawked at me for another beat. But even as his gaze was trailing my body, he was nodding. “Focus. Right. I can focus.”
“You said we only have a few minutes.”
“Less, I think,” the phantom said. Her voice was at once sad and melodious, like a haunting song that plucked the listener’s heartstrings. “I feel my hold on myself slipping.”
Her accent was thicker than Rafaela’s, who’d erased any signs that might suggest she hadn’t always been intended to be Zaraga’s queen. The ghost clipped her final consonants, and set her words as if to a lilting score.
She met Baz’s eyes, then mine. “I want to let go.”
“You’ve earned the right to let go,” Baz said, sounding more compassionate than I would have ever guessed a commanding general with a reputation for marauding could.
“Ask your questions quickly,” she told me. “I will hold on as long as I can.”
I didn’t want her to remain for me when she’d already suffered as she had. Even so, I accepted.
“Why do you look so much like my rebirth mother, Rafaela?”
Her eyes brimmed with heartbreak. Before she answered, I already knew who she had to be. I must have realized it even before then, when I first saw her.
“She was my twin sister.”
My skin prickled at the confirmation. “She never said she had a twin, and my brother and I—she made us s?nglures and claimed us—we’re twins.”
“No, she would not tell you about me.”
“She has mentioned an older sister, a sister who…”
“Who what?”
Where should my loyalties lie? With Rafaela, who’d concealed a sister, and a twin no less, or with a stranger who, despite everything, was light enough to be welcomed into the Etherlands?
“Rafaela’s older sister—yours too, then—betrayed her.”
“Hm, is that so?”
“That’s the story. Will you tell me your version, please, while we still have the chance?”
Slowly, she nodded, and I clamped down on the urge to hurry her more. At least Baz’s attention was now on her and not on my nudity.
“Our eldest sister, Andra, have you met her?”
“No.”
“And our parents?”
“Not them either.”
Her jaw stiffened, jutting out. “Because they are dead?”
“Yes, because they’re dead.”
She shuddered. “I feared as much when they never found me. But the demigod either did not know or would not tell me.”
“What demigod?”
“The one trapped inside this castle with me.”
I whirled to exchange a look with Baz. He was wearing the same what the holy fuck? look that I was.
“There’s a demigod trapped inside this castle?” he asked. “How?”
“I know not. I was already caged. It was some time before she took over the castle. She does not remember what happened either. She knows not even who she is.”
“How could a demigod not know who she is?” I asked. “Never mind. We’ll figure that out later. Why are your sister and parents dead?” But then, I already knew this too, didn’t I?
When her mouth tipped into a crestfallen smile, it was so different from Rafaela’s that, for those moments, I ceased seeing my mother reflected in her.
“Given how I have spent my last centuries, there is no way for me to be certain, but I must assume that Rafaela killed them as she did me.”
All too aware of our urgency, I still could only stare while I searched for words.
“How is it that you’re dead but still have your head?” Baz asked. “You are a s?nglure, are you not?”
“I am. Was. Or perhaps still am. When does a person cease being what one is? See, Rafaela and I were bonded twins.”
I gasped.
“It is different for bonded twins. She alone could kill me without taking my head and my blood.” Her eyes glittered darkly, her glow fading noticeably. “She severed our bond—”
“The bond can be broken?” I asked as my chest squeezed.
“Anything and everything can be broken. After she unbound us, she was able to kill me as if I were human. She locked me in that cage and”—her voice caught—“walked away. She never looked back.”
“She left you to starve to death?” I asked, though I already knew. When we’d found her ghost, she was flesh stretched taut over bones.
Her smile was bitter; her glow dimmed a bit more. “That is Rafi for you.” Her jaw trembled. “I never … never imagined what she would do. I never fought her. Never did anything to stop her. She just…”
“The cage,” I blurted. “She put me and my brother in cages just like the one we found you in.”
Her eyes held mine—searching for what, I couldn’t tell—for long enough that her light faded more.
“Of all the things I struggle to believe about Rafi—Rafaela—that is one of the most difficult. That she would do that to her own children…” She shook her head.
“We promised—we swore—that when we became of age we would destroy the cages forever.” She wrung her fingers, noticed, and let her hands fall to her sides. “She locked me up before then.”
“By scorches,” Baz muttered.
“What’s your name?” At the very least, I wanted to know her name before she left this world forever. Rafaela couldn’t be allowed to erase the existence of her bonded twin so easily.
Again, that devastated smile. “Micaela. Our parents enjoyed having a matching set. We were bonded twins of the blood. That was unheard of. We were expected to embody great power. I was stronger than Rafaela, you know.” Lost to memories, her eyes unfocused.
“When she destroyed our bond, she took my power for herself. That is another thing only bonded twins among s?nglures can do.”
“Micaela,” Baz interjected, ever so gently. “Don’t focus on the pain. When your light finishes fading from this world, you need to be as free of the darkness as possible. The Etherlands is within your reach. Don’t let your sister rob you of that too.”
Micaela nodded, as if steeling herself. Her luminescence intensified. “You are mates. It is why you are bared to each other.”
“Yes,” Baz answered immediately, while it took me a few moments to even comprehend what she was suggesting.
I chortled. “Wait. You mean … us?” I gestured between Baz and myself, for the first time noticing a fine thread, glowing faintly, tying us together. “Wait, wait. Baz and me?” My voice rose in pitch despite myself.
“Yes,” she and Baz replied together.
“No. No, no.” A strained laugh wrenched free. “You think that’s what this thread is? It’s not that. It’s the Rillis rope, filtered through into…” I glanced around. Darkness engulfed us, pressed down on us on all sides … and also set us free. “It’s the Rillis rope, just here.”
“It’s not,” Baz said.
“We’re not. Baz, I assure you, we’re not.”
“We are. Destined mates.”
“Destiny does love fucking with me. But that would be going too far, waaaaay too far, even for her.” But was there ever too far for the demigods, who considered us their playthings, here for their amusement? “No. You’re wrong.”
He faced me. Calm acceptance smoothed his features.
“It’s why you couldn’t kill me when you tried to stab me in the heart.
Your aim was true. But it’s ancient faithum.
You can’t kill your one true mate. The forces of this world don’t allow it.
To do so would be a violation of nature.
It’s a bond much like the one between twins. ”
“It’s not. It’s nothing like what connects me and Teo.”
“You and your brother are bonded twins as well?” Micaela asked, her voice quieter, sounding as if from far away.
“We are.”
“No wonder Rafaela took an interest in you.”
“Why, though? For what purpose, exactly?”
“I would tell you, but as I learned, I knew not my twin at all.” She hesitated before asking, “What became of her?”
“She married into the D’Arcos of Zaraga. She became queen of all Zaraga.”
“Ah. Of course she did. That had been arranged to be my fate. I was oldest. I was to be queen.” She looked down at herself, at her glow, now so faint it was like a winking star.
“I was to be crowned, not caged. I was never meant to be alone. The Fuerin gods gave me a bonded twin sister so I might never be alone. It took me long, such long decades to die. Without my bond, I was not exactly like a human. I was still at least somewhat a s?nglure. Eventually, I did die. I was so, so very alone.”
“I’m so sorry.” How crushing had it been to wake underwater and experience my twin gone?
It had broken me. And she’d endured decades like that before dying?
And then centuries already dead and utterly abandoned and betrayed by the one person who should have protected her above all others?
“I’m so, so very sorry.” My words trembled from the imagined agony.
“Micaela,” Baz snapped. “Your light is fading. Now, for your sake, you must forgive her.”
Her smile was the saddest yet. “I know not if I can. I loved her more than I loved myself. But now … now I hate her.”
“Release your darkness, you must before—”
Micaela flickered for a single moment before fading entirely from this world.