Chapter Thirty-Four
Thirty-Four
Nightmare Dream
The anger shook him. The pain. The grief.
Shadach’s hands were like water in an earthquake, unable to stop their shivering. He sat down. He stood up. He wanted to punch something. He wanted to scream. Deydra’s apartment became impossibly small, the lushness and wealth caving in on him.
Suffocating him.
He hadn’t planned to confront Aoife then. He had planned to wait until she had testified, but it had all slipped out. That look in her eyes. The sadness. The love. How had her gaze been able to lie so convincingly? It had been too much.
Good riddance, Shadach thought. Followed by a pain in his heart that made him wobble on his feet. There should have been no pain at all. He should have been rejoicing. He had saved himself from being used. Destroyed. He had shattered the darkness before it had shattered him.
Why didn’t he feel better?
A knock on the door. His heart skipped. Was Aoife back? Why would you want her back?
Shadach told himself it was Kesra. Or Deydra. What was he going to tell Deydra about what happened to Aoife? Her statement hadn’t been signed and she was gone. Because he’d let her get the better of him.
He’d figure something out. He always did. Shadach told himself this as he walked to the door, as he opened it, as he was knocked-out cold.
~*~
His mouth was dry and bloody, his limbs weak. Shadach registered this as consciousness came back to him. He heard the sound of chains clinking together when he tried to sit himself up. Thick iron bands were clasped to his wrists and linked to the stone wall behind him. A prison.
A cage.
Resting his head against the wall, Shadach blinked to clear his vision.
No one else was here. This was not the first time Shadach had been in a prison.
He was Halcin, of course it wasn’t. But it was the first time he’d been in a cage due to his own stupidity.
He should have known better. He should have acted faster.
He should have gone after Aoife and stopped her.
Instead, his feelings had overwhelmed him and he’d let her run straight to Aristen.
“Sorry about the accommodation.” Aristen’s voice sang through the air like a death curse. “There’s no love for murderers nowadays.”
Aristen’s golden armour shone in the darkness, his bright hair like a faint torch. He rested his hands on the bars of Shadach’s prison, a solemn expression on his cold face.
“Is that why I’m here? Murder?” Shadach laughed through his hoarse voice. “Funny, I thought it was because you’re a bastard.”
Aristen’s face softened, his grip on the bars relaxing.
“Two things can be true at the same time.” Aristen sighed, and it was then Shadach noticed the darkness under Aristen’s eyes, the dry cracks in his lips, the lack of blood in his cheeks.
How long had it been since Aristen had had a proper night’s sleep?
“It doesn’t have to be this way, Shadach. My offer still stands.”
“The offer to be your puppet.”
“Not my puppet. My friend.”
“As long as I’m less than you.”
“Don’t be so self-righteous.” Aristen’s laugh was cruel, cynical. “You could do a lot of good for your people.”
“Only what you let me do.” Shadach’s mocking tone was equally not amused.
“Shadach.” Aristen exhaled Shadach’s name, suddenly sounding weary. “A Halcin Emperor? Honestly? Are you that stupid?”
“Don’t give me that nonsense.”
Aristen’s glum expression faltered, his sharp gaze searching Shadach’s face. “Excuse me?”
“It doesn’t bother you the God chose a Halcin. It bothers you he chose me.”
Aristen’s laugh was part defeat, part amusement. “Can’t I simply hate the idea of having a Halcin on the throne?”
“You’ve never been simple.”
“Life would be easier if I was.” Aristen scratched his thumb against a steel bar, flakes of rust sputtering to the ground.
He stared at the rust as if it would give him answers to a question he couldn’t bring himself to ask.
“We all keep certain things to ourselves, don’t we?
Things we’d rather die than let them be known.
If people knew, what might happen? How might we be destroyed?
” Aristen looked at Shadach as if expecting an answer.
When Shadach didn’t give one, Aristen sighed, gripping the bars of Shadach’s cell.
“I wanted to be a Halcin when I was a child. I never told you that, did I?”
No. No, he had not.
Aristen shrugged. “I never told anyone. I would have become a social outcast. The Selat with a boner for the dirty thieves. Besides, what I really wanted was to be a pirate, a sea-faring scallywag like in the Tales of Rasa the Renegade.” Aristen paused.
“I told my father that once. It didn’t go very well.
” Aristen’s tone went as lifeless as death at those words.
“But,” he said, more cheerily, “from where I’d stood, a Halcin was the nearest thing to a pirate in the real world.
In my world, at least. No one expected anything of the Halcin.
No pressure, no standards. They were free as the wind to go and do and be.
Your people were my dream.” There was a softness, a kindness in Aristen’s eyes that Shadach had never seen before. Then, it disappeared.
“But I wasn’t Halcin,” Aristen continued.
“I was Aristen, the high-bred Selat. Destined for greatness. My role in life was to put up with the suffocating pressure, the humiliating pageantry, the selling of my very soul to be what I was bred to be …” Aristen’s hands choked the metal of Shadach’s cage.
“You never appreciated what you had. All I wanted to be was you and all you ever did was run away from who you were, going on and on about how the Halcin used to be great. They are still great! You were just too stupid to see it. Then in you swoop, stealing the one thing, the one thing, that was supposed to make all my pain worth it. The only thing that could give me my freedom.”
“You’re talking like you’re the one in a cage.”
“Not every prison is literal.”
Shadach sat quietly in his chains. He knew that better than most.
“Come on, Shadach. It’s meant to be me on that throne. I know it, you know it, your people even know it.”
Shadach squinted in the darkness. A leaky pipe was dripping in the distance. “What does that mean?”
Aristen’s smile was flippant. As if Shadach were a child who needed two plus two explained to him.
“Kesra’s an interesting woman,” Aristen said. “So practical.”
Shadach said nothing, his chest feeling made of lead.
“I know you, Shadach. I knew you’d go home eventually.
” Aristen leaned away from the prison bars, his tone light, carefree, as if explaining how to fry a chicken.
“So, I called ahead, shall we say. At first, she told my messenger to hang himself. Colourful, right? But then, after my soldiers nearly killed you all, she realised the truth.”
When Aristen didn’t elaborate, Shadach said, “And what truth is that?” through gritted teeth.
“You’re a delusional optimist and you would’ve gotten your people killed. You should be thanking me for stopping you.”
“What did you promise her?” Shadach’s voice rang hollow in his ears.
“Her brother. Free.”
“Free to be a thief and nothing more,” Shadach said. “Suffocated by the reputation of the Halcin.”
“From where I stand, that sounds like freedom. I don’t feel sorry for him one bit.”
Shadach felt empty as his hope for his people’s future drained out of him.
“Reconsider, Shadach. Tell me you’ll come with me. I’ll give you a seat at my table.”
“I eat at my own table.”
Aristen stepped back, a part of him looking truly sad. “I suppose you will. Just before you’re executed.”
Executed. Executed? For Aoife’s murder. But Aoife was alive … wasn’t she? If Kesra had betrayed him then Aoife …
Shadach clambered against his chains, but he was not stronger than steel. “Where’s Aoife?”
“She’s dead. You killed her, don’t you remember?”
“Aristen,” Shadach growled.
“All right, all right. Odd little story. I had finally found her, in the abandoned temple kitchen of all places, and then poof,” Aristen snapped his fingers, “she disappeared into thin air. But don’t worry, if she’s still alive, I’ll fix that.
Can’t have her declaring you to be the rightful Emperor, now can we? ” Aristen stepped back from the cage.
“Aristen,” Shadach said. Pleaded.
Aristen paused.
“You have me. You don’t need to harm her or the Halcin.”
“No,” Aristen said, drawing out the word. “But it would be irresponsible of me to let Aoife live. And if the people want the Halcin destroyed then who am I to refuse them?” He smiled, seeming to revel in the thought of the Kingdom’s praise as Shadach’s people burned.
“Aristen, you can’t,” Shadach growled as Aristen turned away. “Didn’t you just say you loved the Halcin, that you wanted to be one of us?”
“Yes, but now I get to be Emperor.” Aristen turned back halfway. “And that’s even better.”
“Aristen.” Shadach made one last, hopeless plea to Aristen’s decency.
“I’m sorry, old friend, but I gave you a choice and you chose wrong.” Aristen turned his back to Shadach. “I can’t help a man who doesn’t want to help himself.”
Shadach called after the man he’d once called his closest friend as the echoes of Aristen’s footsteps grew quieter, colder with each passing second. Soon, there was only Shadach and the cruelty of his chains. And the Shadows.
Always the Shadows.
~*~
Shadach wanted to kill them. The Shadows.
They taunted him, lurking near his body then fluttering just out of reach when he grabbed for them. They mocked him.
The seer of secrets who could not see what was right in front of him. The great Emperor who had sent the love of his life away, blamed her for his misfortunes, because … why? A Shadow had told him to?
Shadach had thought about it. He had nothing but time to think. The Shadow that had held Aoife’s secret, the one that had born witness to her betrayal, had not disappeared. He had not seen all it had to say.
Shadach jerked on his chains. Fool. Stupid, self-righteous fool.
The Shadows wanted him to be Emperor no more than Aristen did.
They liked this world they ruled, afraid of no one but the Halcin.
No one but him. And he had trusted those Shadows over Aoife.
Why? Because she’d hidden something from him.
As if he hadn’t hidden something from her.
A rat scurried over Shadach’s boot. It paused then ran back.
Stopping to sniff him, it hurried away. Shadach brought one knee to his chest, resting his arm on it.
All this time, he’d been trying to bring his people into the light.
He’d been trying to remind them of their history, to convince them to stop hiding their better past. Yet, he himself had done nothing but hide from Aoife.
You had your reasons.
Of course he had. Little good his reasons had done him.
His father dying had scarred him. Marred him. Broken him in ways unspeakable. He had vowed he would learn. He would become better. He would never let history repeat itself. He had not realised there were worse futures than one’s own past.
Love had found him. Love had dared him to be brave, to trust the world he had so long feared.
He had slammed the door in its face, hanging onto the lessons he had learned as a child until they’d suffocated him.
He could have told Aoife the truth about his power.
About all that he could do. He could have trusted her, her loyalty, her goodness.
Instead, he had trusted the selfishness of people like Hallus and Kesra.
Loathing and pity and anger fought inside Shadach, each one making a fantastic case for why it should be the emotion that drowned him.
Finally, anger pushed through and Shadach reached into the Shadows.
He called for the Shadow from the forest. It was already in the cage with him, revelling in his misery.
It fought his call, taunting his weakness. His uselessness.
“Shut up.” Shadach focused his eyes on the darkness, ripping the Shadow from the protection of its friends.
It came to him, flailing and screaming. The sound was like a knife scratching at glass.
Shadach reached for the Shadow. He touched it.
He read it. There were so many hidden truths in that one Shadow, as if a number of thoughts had run through Aoife’s head at once, a number of things she knew she could not say.
Her passion for Shadach, Aoife telling Hallus she would never betray Shadach, the heist.
The heist. When would Aoife have hidden the truth about the heist?
When she had been asking questions about Lord Patin in Everglade City.
Perhaps even when she had been talking to Lord Patin himself.
Regret and self-loathing weighted Shadach down like an anchor strapped to his boots.
Aoife had done her everything to save them.
To save him. And what had he done? He’d delivered them into Aristen’s waiting hands …
destroying his one chance at happiness in the process.