Five
“Why are you here, Raithe?”
Thankfully, my voice didn’t tremble in anger, though I was sure Raithe could sense the emotion anyway. The iylvahn moved gracefully
into the room, making no sound as he glided from the pool toward me.
“Apologies for coming in unannounced.” Calm and deep, his voice made my insides squirm and sounded no different than how he’d
spoken to me before. “I would have knocked, but I wasn’t certain the door would not be slammed in my face.”
I blinked, confused. I was expecting Raithe to be cold, stiffly formal, maybe even angry. I had been bracing for him to treat
me like a stranger. But the iylvahn standing before me tonight, his expression open and strangely unguarded, seemed almost
mournful.
No. I shook myself. I couldn’t let him get to me. Raithe served a Deathless, just like Vahn. The man who had raised me, who’d
been a father figure for seventeen years, who’d taught me everything I knew within the guild; when the time came, he’d tried
to sacrifice me to the Deathless King. I doubted Raithe would ever go that far, but I also knew he was loyal to his queen.
If she commanded him to do something, he wouldn’t hesitate.
“Well, you’re here now.” I shifted my weight very slightly away from him and caught the tightening of his eyes as I moved back. “What do you want?”
He hesitated, gazing past me as if gathering his thoughts, before he let out a quiet sigh. “You have every right to be angry,”
he said at last. “I should have told you, long before we reached Irrikah. If I had, that first meeting with the queen wouldn’t
have been such a shock.”
Surprise flickered through me. Again, I hadn’t expected this. And after talking with Halek, I could understand the logic of
it all. “You had your reasons,” I said at last. “We were strangers back then. You didn’t know anything about me.”
He shook his head, running a hand over his eyes. “I thought about it a hundred times between Kovass and here,” he said. “When
we were on the strider, I wondered if there was a way I could tell you. But . . .” His eyes narrowed, a grim shadow crossing
his face. “I needed you to come with me to Irrikah, to meet the queen. The ma’jhet had called you Fateless, and the queen
has been waiting for the arrival of the Fateless for a long time. Knowing what you went through in Kovass, I wasn’t sure if
you would agree to walk into the kingdom of another Deathless. And by the time I was certain . . .” He gave me a look of remorse. “We were far into our journey, and the Scarab Clan had already sacrificed much
of their tribe to keep you safe from the ma’jhet. If I had revealed the queen’s origins then, Kysa might’ve killed me. At
the very least, she would have refused to let you go to Irrikah.”
I shivered, as memories from that bloody day flooded in.
The day Vahn finally came for me, on the back of a gigantic abomination, and a horde of undead had attacked the Scarab Clan.
The insect riders had fought like the warriors they were, but Vahn’s magic continuously brought the rotting creatures back to life when they fell, and their sheer numbers were overwhelming.
We’d finally managed to shoot the giant abomination down, and I’d driven my dagger into Vahn’s heart myself, ending the battle and his life.
That day, I became a warrior of the Scarab Clan, an insect rider, and Ratuk became part of our small group. But for me, it
would always be the day I killed the man I’d considered my only family.
“Why are you telling me this now?” I asked. “It’s done, Raithe. I’m here, and in a few hours, I’m going to see the queen.
Your mission is complete, and your duty to me is over. Why did you come here?”
“Because I want you to know that what I feel for you hasn’t changed.” Raithe didn’t move, though his eyes, pale and beseeching,
met mine across the space between us. “I am still the same person I was before you met the queen,” he said in a quietly intense
voice. “I don’t want you to believe that everything I did or said was just to bring you here.”
My heart turned over. Tears pressed behind my lids, and I forced them back, turning away from the kahjai so I could gather
myself. I could feel him watching me, his silhouette hovering at the edge of my vision, and I curled my fingers into fists
at my sides. “I wish I could believe that, Raithe,” I whispered. “I really do.”
Raithe let out a quiet breath. When I turned back to him, his expression was blank, though the flickers of pain in his eyes left cracks in the expressionless mask. “What can I do,” he asked in a low voice, “to earn your trust again?”
My throat ached. I wanted to tell him everything was all right and he didn’t have to do anything, that all was forgiven. But
that wasn’t true. Even if Raithe did feel something toward me, he still served the Deathless queen. Just as Vahn had served
the king. I couldn’t go through this a second time. I would have given anything for the Guildmaster to choose me, to tell
me everything was forgiven, that he would never sacrifice me to the Deathless King. That blind hope had nearly cost me and
the others our lives, when Vahn had proved—very definitively—that serving the Deathless always came first.
I swallowed hard and looked at Raithe, hating what I was about to say next. “Maybe it’s better that you don’t,” I whispered,
and saw the split-second flash of dismay in his eyes before they iced over completely. “For both of us.”
“I see.” Now his voice was that of a stranger. He took a step back, not angry, offended, remorseful, anything. His expression
was a mask once more, the cracks in it vanished entirely. “Then forgive this intrusion,” he said, and gave a formal bow. “I
will leave you in peace, Fateless.”
He turned and walked away, leaving not through the door, but out of one of the narrow open windows on the far side of the
room. Without looking back, he slipped over the sill, vanishing into the darkness, and I was alone.
I sat on the bed, uncaring of the cool silk beneath my fingers. Pulling my knees to my chest, I wrapped my arms around them, and in the quiet stillness before dawn, with no one around to see, I let the poisonous tears burn a path down my face and soak into my sleeves.
Dawn came slowly, but a faint golden light finally began poking in through the windows as Solasti began her climb into the
sky. I was still sitting on the bed, dozing in and out of the nightmare realm, when a knock outside my door made me glance
up.
Opening the door, I was faced once again with a tall, beautifully elegant iylvahn, who offered a smile and a perfectly polite
bow. “Forgive the early awakening, Fateless,” she said. “But Chancellor Llorek has bid me to inform you that your meeting
with the queen will be at peak suns rise. Please make all the necessary preparations for your meeting with Her Majesty, Queen
Sahmessyia.”
Fear spiked through me, but I nodded. After the iylvahn left, I shut the door and turned, wondering how one prepared oneself
for a meeting with royalty. I had time for a bath, though I was still leery about being naked and helpless within the palace.
Especially after last night. Not that I believed Raithe himself would do anything, but I had certainly lost any protection
the kahjai might’ve offered while I was here.
Thinking about Raithe made my throat hurt again, and I pushed down the lingering emotions, shoving them to the back of my
mind. This was for the best. Now I didn’t have to worry about Raithe having to choose between me and loyalty to his queen.
Vahn had taught me better. I wouldn’t be in that position, ever again.
I finally gave in to the temptation and took a bath.
The water had cooled overnight and was lukewarm instead of steaming, but it still felt both amazing and decadent to be completely submerged.
Afterward, I dressed and ran a pearlescent comb I found on the dresser through my hair, untangling it as best I could.
Hopefully, I wouldn’t look like a complete urchin when I met the queen.
When I opened my door again, Chancellor Llorek stood there in his resplendent robes, smiling down at me.
Halek and Kysa waited behind him, the former looking noticeably cleaner than before, his hair gleaming a bright gold under the lights.
Kysa appeared the same in her stark black chiton armor, and from the grim expression on her face, she would not be taking it off anytime soon.
“Fateless.” The chancellor offered a slight bow and raised a billowing white-and-gold sleeve, gesturing down the hallway.
“This way, if you would. Her Magnificent Majesty, Queen Sahmessyia, is waiting for you.”
We followed the chancellor down the long, splendid hallway, as my heart continued to crash around my chest. When I’d lived
in Kovass, any of the higher classes noticing you was considered a bad thing. You did not want to catch the attention of a
guard, a noble, a merchant, and especially not a royal. Nothing good came of it; guards were likely to arrest you, nobles
were likely to send their guards after you, and royals were notorious for demanding executions for real or imagined crimes.
If someone like me was ever caught inside the palace walls, or even in the home of a merchant prince, they would be dragged
off to prison or the execution block. No hesitation, no questions asked.
And here I was, on my way to meet not only a queen, but an ancient Deathless who had the power to split me in half with a thought.
The last time I had seen a Deathless, he was toppling a city.
In the aftermath, his ma’jhet servants had sent terrifying dreams, hulking abominations, and an undead army after me.
What would this queen do, if she discovered I couldn’t—or wouldn’t—give her what she wanted?
The corridor ended at a pair of truly massive arched doors, stretched nearly to the ceiling. They seemed built for giants,
gilded in gold and almost too bright to look at, looming over us poor mortals on the ground. As we approached, they swung