Chapter 24 Daesra
DAESRA
SADARé ASSISTS Isha to his throne, walking with him limping the rest of the way down the carpet and up the dais steps, and then she seats him upon the dark, towering chair.
She even straightens his robe on his shoulder, as if that might help him pull himself together.
Despite how ruined he looks—his sculpted face tight and sunken with pain, his once-perfect hair in disarray, his golden blood still soaking his chest—I still want to crush him until there’s nothing left.
But all I can do is follow behind her like a lost child, though I stop at the base of the stairs.
I tell myself it’s because I don’t wish to join Isha up there, not because I don’t feel welcome.
But then Sadaré rounds on me from the atop the dais and snarls, “What did you do?” Her beautiful features are contorted, her eyes blazing with anything but love.
She might as well have hit me, for how stunned I am. “I didn’t—I stopped!” I raise my sticky gold-coated hands and then drop them. “Because I thought you didn’t want me to become him—”
“I didn’t want him to become you!” she cries, stomping her foot, her entire body tight with fury.
“All right,” I breathe, trying not to panic, even though nothing is all right.
I feel as if the ground is no longer under me—like the bridge except worse—and yet the throne room is entirely too stable.
I wish it were crumbling instead of the fragile hope that’s been sustaining me this entire journey. “What changed?”
She takes a moment to calm herself, closing her eyes briefly and taking a breath, and then she says simply, “I did.”
Since that’s not possible, at least not by her own will, I turn to Isha, slumped on his throne. “What did you do to her?”
“He did nothing,” Sadaré snaps in exasperation, stepping forward before he can say anything—partially in front of him, as if to protect him from me.
She gestures down at herself, her figure wrapped in black silk and delicate silver chains, her wrists and hands cuffed in silver.
There’s an iron collar around her throat, daintier than the one she once put on me to bind my power, with the ring I gave her dangling from it just as I’ve seen in Isha’s memories.
My hands ache to touch her, but her presence is both familiar and entirely foreign.
“Of course you would assume this isn’t me.
You’ve only ever seen what you wanted to see in me, but this is who I am now, Daesra. And I’m better off here.”
Without you. She doesn’t speak the words, as if to spare me even in her anger, but I can still hear them.
“But I came here to save you,” I say desperately.
“I don’t need saving.”
“I told you,” Isha murmurs. But he doesn’t sound triumphant. Only exhausted as he leans forward in his seat, planting his elbows on his knees.
He should be exhausted after what I did to him.
And this must all be an act on Sadaré’s part.
But then why did she save Isha from me? If this is some sort of game she’s playing to gain the upper hand with him, she’s taken it far beyond what’s necessary, especially now that I’m here. Unless she’s still terrified of him.
Game. It gives me an idea.
“Cistern.” I enunciate it clearly, staring up at her.
Isha gives me a quizzical if impatient look, his fingers pausing in the middle of massaging his forehead. “Pardon?”
I don’t answer, because I’m not talking to him.
I’m talking to her in a way only she would understand.
In the maze’s cistern we ravaged each other outside of our own control, and yet the word has come to mean something else for us since.
It’s a way to ask if any game we’re playing has gone too far.
A highly specific word that we would never use in such a carnal context.
The word that would stop me even in the middle of wildly thrusting into her if she spoke it, and make me pull out, throbbing and cramped and unsatisfied, without hesitation.
It was especially important for games involving pain, when I could easily push her mortal body beyond its limits.
I even spoke it to her at times—a question when she couldn’t speak, either because she was gagged or too pain-drunk for coherence.
She would flap her wrist at me to respond: Once for me to stop immediately.
Twice to slow down or pause. Three to signal she was perfectly fine and to keep going.
A muddied response was as good as the first, which meant frantic waving certainly counted.
No response at all was cause for great alarm.
She’s not responding.
“Cistern,” I repeat, my desperation rising. It’s less a question and more a plea. Can you still hear me, Sadaré? Can you answer me so I know you’re there? Just flick your wrist.
Finally, she says, “This isn’t a game of ours. People change, Daesra—even if you don’t.”
So she remembers what the word means. I don’t know if that’s better or worse.
“I’ve changed. I have,” I insist, gesturing down at myself. “I’m not a god of chaos. I know this now. I’m the god of freedom—and I came to free you.”
Isha’s lip curls into a sneer as if he found everything I just said offensive, but I ignore him.
Sadaré herself doesn’t appear moved. “And I told you, as well: I don’t need freeing. Not anymore.”
“And I know you,” I carry on doggedly, throwing my hand out at her. “This isn’t you. It can’t be.”
“But it is. I even warned you that I was afraid of this—of my feelings changing. And, look, it happened.” She lets loose a disparaging little laugh, hugging herself, and then swallows it.
“But I shouldn’t have been afraid. I’m sorry to have to tell you like this, but you’ve forced me by coming here.
The truth is, Daesra, I loved you… but I don’t anymore. I love Isha.”
I pivot back to Isha, unable to accept what she’s saying. “In the River of Hatred, my mother acted as if she hated me as well.”
“But then Arinae would hate you entirely,” Isha says, not looking at either of us now that he’s gone back to rubbing his forehead. “She doesn’t, Deonyus. As much as I wish she did.”
“That’s not my name, or hers,” I growl.
It’s she who answers. “But it is Arinae again.” She folds her arms to stare down at me from the dais, making me feel far smaller than I am. “I was Sadaré for a time, with you. But not anymore.”
I want to clutch at my hair, since the grip I have on any calm is fast slipping.
I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe this is her.
This is something out of my worst nightmares.
It’s like finding her dead all over again, except she’s alive enough to taunt me at the feet of Isha’s throne. Which reminds me—
“He killed you!” I shout. Never mind what he’s done to me, but she might not care about any of that anymore.
“He freed me,” she declares, and then gestures at me as if wiping me away.
“From you. You’ve been this… weight… I’ve been dragging behind me.
My past was so dark, and you were such a heavy piece of it.
I used you, betrayed you, and felt such remorse.
Rightly so, but then I never knew if my love for you was only borne of guilt—an apology, of sorts, more than anything real.
And after the passion of the maze…” She sighs.
“It faded. I didn’t know how to tell you, so I didn’t.
I was a coward. I felt even guiltier over that—that I was once more living a lie with you.
Letting you believe something that wasn’t true.
That’s why I never put on your ring. It would have been the biggest lie of all. ”
She’s confirming all my worst fears, just like Melé did while trying to drown me in the River of Hatred.
Except Isha is right; Sadaré isn’t hateful.
Her look of soft pity is worse than any spiteful glare.
It’s the delicate knife that slips through my defenses, because it tells me she might truly be wielding it.
Despite his long years of immortality, I’ve never seen Isha demonstrate such subtle cruelty.
But I have witnessed her employ such tactics in the past… against me.
“That was who you were,” I protest, “but you changed—for the better. That’s how we ended up in the maze in the first place.” I feel like I’m arguing with myself as much as her.
She shakes her head, still with that sad, pitying look. “Isha helped me change. He saved me from myself.”
“He saved you… by killing you?” I say in disbelief, unable to keep from running a hand through my hair this time, seizing it simply for something to hold on to. “This can’t be real.”
She presses her fist against her chest in a more passionate display than I’ve ever seen her use.
“This is more real, purer, than anything in my life ever was. My time here has been incredible.” She glances back at Isha, and her face lights up, damn near glowing.
And it looks real. So painfully real. And then the light fades as she looks back at me.
“At first I felt guilty, of course, about what he and I did together, telling myself I had to do it in order to deceive him and escape. But then, when I realized I wanted to do it… that I wanted to stay here… I felt free. Free from deception. I let go of you like I had my past life. Without anything weighing on me, without doubt or recriminations or fear to hold me back, I fell in love for real, for the first time. And it’s wonderful.
” Her sparkling laugh, as if surprised all over again, makes me want to scream.
“Those cuffs don’t weigh on you?” I jerk my chin at her. “That collar?”