Chapter Thirty-Six
Thirty-Six
In The Name Of Love
The night had been long. Shadach feared the morning would be far too quick. Knowing Aristen, he would execute Shadach shortly after Aristen’s inauguration and show the people how committed he was to them and to justice. He would even execute his former best friend.
Shadach prayed. He prayed to the God in whatever form he would listen. He prayed for his people. For Aoife. Even for himself. He knew it was too late for him, but the God was the God. Perhaps, he would work a miracle for Shadach one more time.
Not likely.
The God had given Shadach a chance. Many chances. Shadach had squandered them. Why would the God give him another?
“I must say. You do look good behind bars.”
Shadach went as still as stone at the voice. That wretched, backstabbing voice.
“Hallus,” Shadach growled. “Come to gloat?” Shadach couldn’t believe he’d been stupid enough to think Aoife would fall for this man.
Hallus grinned, leaning into the bars, his blond hair a sharp contrast to the darkness and Shadows. “Now that would be fun, wouldn’t it? Finally sticking it to the bully who used to make fun of me for being half a Selat.”
Shame pricked at Shadach. “Is that what this is about? Revenge?”
“It could have been.” Hallus shrugged, stepping back from the bars. “But let’s face it, everyone made fun of me. Even the Selats. No, I just hate your self-righteous ass.”
Again with the “self-righteous.” Was Shadach really that bad? “You would do all this, subject the Halcin to Aristen and his whims just because you don’t like me?”
“Don’t forget the money. I was paid loads and loads of money.”
“You bastard.” Shadach pulled against his chains. “Have you no sense of—”
“No, I don’t. Whatever it is, I clearly don’t.
Now,” Hallus put an arm above his head, resting it against the bars and leaning into it, “tell me how you didn’t see my betrayal sooner?
Honestly, I knew five minutes after meeting Aoife where she was from and what she was about.
I’m a little insulted you didn’t do the same with me. ”
Shadach stared at Hallus, his anger melting into confusion. “What?”
“You didn’t bother to read my Shadows. Honestly, what kind of idiot are you?”
Read. His. Shadows. Shadach sat there. Motionless. He tried to think of something to say. Anything to say. How could Hallus know Shadach could read Shadows? No one knew. Unless—
“What, you thought you were the only one who was special?” The smile on Hallus face was smug and vile.
Yes. In fact, he had. Shadach leaned forward, bracing against his chains. “You can read Shadows?”
“I can, and I apparently read them a lot more often than you do.”
Shadach wasn’t alone. Someone else could read the Shadows. Hallus of all people. The realisation was making Shadach dizzy.
“Now,” Hallus pulled something from his pocket and started fiddling with the prison door, “I don’t think the guards upstairs will stay knocked out for much longer.” The door swung open.
“What?”
Hallus knelt beside Shadach, working away at his chains with a lock pick. The chains came loose with ease. They shouldn’t have, but Hallus was a professional.
“You’re helping me?” Shadach said when all his chains were unlocked.
“No,” Hallus stood, “I thought I’d free you before killing you.”
Shadach hesitated.
“I’m kidding, you idiot, now hurry up.” Hallus motioned to the open door.
Shadach got to his feet and hurried out of the cage, Hallus beside him.
“I don’t understand.” Shadach followed Hallus up the stairs, wanting to get as far away from the underground prison as possible.
“Aristen was fool enough to pay me before you were dead. What else is there to understand?”
Shadach stopped. “You never meant to kill me? You just wanted Aristen’s money?”
“Don’t get me wrong.” Hallus slowed his pace up the stairs but didn’t stop, not turning around as he spoke. “I wouldn’t have cried if you had died, but I knew Aristen wanted you alive. The chances of that happening were low.”
“And Aoife? Kesra? What if they had died?”
Hallus stopped and turned to Shadach, looking bored. “Collateral damage. Now, can we go?”
“Tell me why.”
“Why, what?”
“Why are you helping me?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
Hallus exhaled, loud and annoyed. He leaned against the wall of the staircase, staring at Shadach.
“Because I’m tired of having to shut off half of what I am, all right?
I’ve been doing it my whole life and I’m tired.
I may not like you, but if anybody is going to make that possible for me, it’s you. ”
Shadach listened for a hint of sarcasm. Of a lie. There was none. “I’ll get that for you.”
“You better. Now move your ass.”
~*~
“Shadach,” Hallus stopped midway down the hall. They had escaped the dungeon undetected, disguising themselves in the unconscious soldier’s clothes in order to escape the prison and get into the temple.
It felt like a ghost temple. Not a person in sight.
“The coronation hall is this way.” Hallus pointed in the opposite direction to where Shadach was going. “Everyone must be there already.”
“I can’t go yet.” Shadach opened the nearest door and looked inside. Nothing. His heart dropped. He knew it was a long shot, but a long shot was all he had.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for Aoife.”
Hallus stopped Shadach from opening another door. “I did not risk my neck breaking you out of that cage so you could reunite with your world-jumping lover.”
“Too bad.” Shadach reached around to open the door. “I have to find her first. I have to make things right.”
Hallus grabbed Shadach’s arm. “She’s probably back in her world.”
“I know,” Shadach said, no matter how much it pained him, “but I have to try. And if you need a reason to help, we need her to testify for me. I have no claim to the throne without her.”
Throwing back his head, Hallus groaned. “I hate you.” Opening the door, he looked inside.
Nothing.
They searched the temple, rounding towards the coronation hall as the noise and cheers grew louder.
It was nearly time for Aristen to be made Emperor.
Shadach could still make his claim after Aristen was crowned, but it would make things more …
complicated. The Kingdom didn’t have a history of successfully taking away an emperor’s crown without killing him.
But where was Aoife? Shadach looked and looked and looked. Nothing. How was he supposed to lead a nation if he couldn’t even make things right with the woman he loved? If he couldn’t even get the chance? Shadach prayed as hard as he had when he’d asked the God for a way out.
No, harder.
“What are you looking for?”
Shadach froze. And then he melted. That voice. His heart leapt into his throat as he turned. There she stood in the candlelit hallway, fire-red hair and a deep blue dress glowing in the flames, her emerald eyes alight with passion. With promise.
“Aoife,” Shadach breathed. She had come back to him. “You,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you.”
He went to her, closing the distance between them in three great strides. Taking her in his arms, he spun her around then pressed her against the wall, kissing her silly. Her body was pressed so tightly against his it was as if she were a part of him. After all, she was.
When he finally broke the kiss, he said, “I was such a fool,” at the same time as she said, “I was an idiot.”
He tried to speak again but so did she. He laughed. “You first,” he said before she could.
Aoife wrapped her arms around his waist, looking him deep in the eyes. “I thought everything I wanted turned to ashes. I was afraid of how badly I wanted you,” she said.
“Aoife—”
“All my life, I’ve been told what I want is the wrong thing.
That I can’t trust my own desires. I’ve never desired anyone as much as you.
I thought I needed to leave, to listen to all the voices saying we were no good for each other.
I thought if everyone was saying it then it must’ve been true. But I don’t believe that anymore.”
Shadach rested his forehead against Aoife’s. Feeling her. Breathing her in. “Do you want to know what was really wrong?”
She nodded. And he told her. Though it felt like swallowing glass, he told her about the Shadows. How he could read them, see the truth they hid. That he had read her Shadow and had been led astray.
“I was so quick to judge, to believe that I could not trust you I didn’t even stop to question the Shadow. I almost lost you forever because of it.”
“Does that mean you don’t want to lose me forever?” Aoife looked at him then, a hesitation, a worry in her green eyes.
“It means I refuse to lose you again. Aoife, you have my heart. You are my heart.”
She gazed at him, a smile on her face, tears in her eyes. “And you are mine.”
She fell into him, her body against his as she—
“Look,” Hallus interrupted. Shadach had forgotten he was there. “As much as I enjoy how nauseatingly romantic this is, can we go kill Aristen, now?”
~*~
The coronation was happening in the main hall where Shadach had first signed his name in the God’s book.
The hall was decorated with all the extravagance the Kingdom could buy: banners of gold hanging on the walls, priceless candlesticks lighting the hall, and a once-in-a-lifetime feast waiting for after.
No doubt they had slain more than one Torellian ox for the occasion.
Crowds of anyone who was anyone in the Kingdom flanked both sides of the aisle, all eyes fixed on the grand occasion at the front.
When Shadach, Aoife, and Hallus burst through the doors, Aristen was kneeling at the front of the hall, the white and purple robes of royalty draping his body, the High Priestess holding a crown of gold.
She was reciting the sacred texts, the holy words that would make Aristen the Emperor.
Shadach had about two seconds to stop her from finishing the last of the rites.
“Stop the coronation!” Shadach’s voice bellowed, bouncing off the high ceilings and reverberating through the hall. A gasp lurched through the crowd, the High Priestess jumping at the interruption and nearly dropping the crown. Aristen’s face was made of murder as he turned to look at Shadach.
“This man has no right to the crown,” Shadach said.
Aristen snapped to his feet. “Behold! The Halcin who killed the Messenger. You can believe nothing he says!” Another gasp from the shocked, but excited, crowd. Nothing so scandalous had happened at a coronation for centuries. What gossip this was going to make.
“The Messenger,” Aoife stepped forward. “You mean me?”
Yet another collective gasp.
“That’s her, isn’t it?” A voice rose from the crowd. “I was there, I remember that hair.”
“I remember her, too,” another voice said.
Then another. And another.
“It’s a trick!”Aristen shouted, striding towards Shadach. “The Messenger is dead! Murdered by this man, right here!”
Shadach moved between Aoife and Aristen.
“It’s not a trick.” Deydra stepped forward in her long, thin robes. “The High Priestess colluded with General Holt to usurp the God’s will. This Messenger,” Deydra pointed at Aoife, “chose this man,” Deydra motioned to Shadach, “at the God’s behest.”
More gasps. More shock. More excitement.
“Lies!” The High Priestess said. But the eyes of the crowd said they were inclined not to believe her. The High Priestess’s scandals were many. Perhaps she was one of the reasons Shadach had been chosen. The God had grown weary of her.
“General Holt has no right to the throne,” Deydra continued. “The second choosing was a sham. This Halcin is the one to be coronated this day.”
A mix of cheers and whispers of disbelief dispersed through the crowd. Right now, no one would object to a Halcin Emperor. It was all too dramatic and scandalous for anyone to interrupt. The pushback would come later when the excitement had quieted. But now was all that mattered.
“You son of a bitch.” Aristen withdrew his blade with the speed of a lightning bolt, slashing at Shadach.
Shadach dodged, saving his neck by a thread, a thin trail of blood trickling down his chest.
“You just couldn’t let me have this, could you?” Aristen struck at Shadach again, but this time Shadach was ready for him.
Shadach bent low, letting Aristen’s blade swipe over the top of his head.
“This isn’t about you, Aristen.” Shadach pulled a knife from his boot as half the crowd cheered Shadach’s defence. “This is about the God.”
Aristen attacked again, the other half of the crowd cheering. “Of course it’s about me! The God isn’t real.”
Quick on his feet, Shadach dodged another blow. With every escape Shadach made, Aristen’s fury increased. Fury made for sloppy footwork.
Shadach struck at Aristen’s leg when he misstepped, then slashed at his hand, making Aristen drop his sword. In one flawless movement, Shadach knocked Aristen to the ground. Bending over him, Shadach held his knife to Aristen’s throat.
There was silence in the hall, but Shadach could taste the crowd’s thirst for blood. The thirst for the ultimate scandal.
“Do it,” Aristen laughed through eyes of hate. “Emperor’s need to make hard choices. Do you have the stones for it?”
Shadach studied Aristen. He saw the revulsion in his gaze, the quick breathing in his chest, the fury in the set of his mouth.
Beyond that, Shadach saw his friend. The practical jokes, the laughs, the mischief.
The boy who had been there for him through thick and thin, who had seen Shadach’s tears after his father’s death and held him instead of judged him.
Shadach saw a man whose true mistake was letting his Shadows drive him to near madness.
“No.” Shadach stood, kicking away Aristen’s sword. “I’m not going to kill you.” Disappointment whimpered through the crowd. “I’m going to give you what you’ve always wanted.”
Aristen sat up, rage pouring from his voice as he said, “What?”
“From this moment on,” Shadach said, “you are banished from the Kingdom. If you ever set foot here again, you are to be killed on sight.”
“How is that giving me what I want?” Aristen hissed.
“You said you envied the Halcin because they were free of expectations. Now, you are too.”
Shadach motioned to the guards. They hesitated, but when Deydra nodded, they brought Aristen to his feet and dragged him away. Shadach looked for the High Priestess, to have them drag her away, too, but she had conveniently disappeared.
“My Emperor,” Deydra said, the crown in her hands. “It’s time.”
Shadach looked to the crown, he looked to Aoife. She nodded, gesturing for him to go. But how could he do something so important, so vital, without his heart?
He held out his hand to her. She took it, entwining her fingers with his as together they went to Deydra and walked into the God’s will.
Into a new Kingdom.
Into a vibrant future.
Into love.