Chapter 19
Time passed.
And Ezer minded the raphon beautifully. With every ounce of determination in her soul, until Kinlear was certain she could carry on into the future without him. He told her of their plans, their mission...but not that she would be the rider.
He wouldn’t. Not until Six did the choosing. To interfere with the natural rhythm of their bond? It felt worse than sinning, worse than paying any amount of penance.
It was her path to take.
He wouldn’t step on it...not in that, at least.
By day, she worked with the raphon. And by night, she trained with the younglings... in part, because Kinlear wondered if she would Settle into her magic.
He still didn’t know who her father was, but he wouldn’t take that chance from her, either. It was for the gods to decide which pillar they might push her in.
The downside was his brother. He saw the way Arawn looked at her. He saw how he trailed after her -- or, in Arawn’s trademark way, stomped...the way he’d once done with Soraya.
Kinlear wouldn’t think a thing of it.
He wouldn’t allow himself to slide into that dangerous thing called jealousy, because it made a man weak.
And Kinlear needed every ounce of strength he could get. His cough was getting worse. As the days passed, he found himself sitting far more than he found himself standing while he watched her work...even after the chains were removed, and Six was well and truly free with Ezer inside the cage.
He tried to stay strong, stay present.
He’d expected to wake up seeing her, eager to bring her a gift to thank her for her boldness, for he wasn’t a monster. He could play the proper prince, too...could begin to show her the gentler side of his soul...
He never made it to the catacombs.
He fell out of bed, on a particularly frigid morning in Augaurde.
His legs were too weak to hold him. The cough came on as it often did, too strong to fight off, and he knew he was fading, tumbling fast into another episode of his illness.
No, he begged the gods. Please, let me stay here a while longer. Let me see what lies ahead, let me taste it, let me—
He couldn’t hang on.
He scribbled a note to her, as hastily as one could, and left it by his bedside, trusting that his servant would get the note to Ezer.
And then he crawled into his bed, heaving for breath that would not come.
And wondered if today was the day he would finally die.
He woke in the sky.
Falling, as he always did, towards his future.
He saw the same visions, felt the same descent. He’d gotten used to the flashes of his past, for now many of the things he’d seen had come to pass.
Like his father, growing old and feeble as he deserved.
Like Arawn, tearing through the sky after the winged figure he now knew to be Soraya.
At that part, Kinlear now looked away.
He refused to stare at the evidence of his failure, a vision he hadn’t seen or understood until it was already too late.
The sky shifted, and he saw the rest of his visions play out, as before. Ezer on the cliffside, standing beside a prouder and older version of Six. And there was his hellish mother again, reminding him of how unworthy she thought him to be.
How dark was her soul, Kinlear wondered, for her to look at her own son like she hated him?
The vision shifted, tugging him away.
He smiled as he felt his fall end with a thump, and then he was on Six’s back with Ezer...soaring towards the Acolyte’s domain.
He expected it to stop there, as it always did.
He expected to wake up, and be back in his normal body, weak and hardly recovered with fading stasis runes upon his skin.
But tonight, when he and Ezer soared through the shadowstorm, the feeling of raw magic upon his skin...
The vision kept going.
And Kinlear saw beyond the veil of the Acolyte’s power for the very first time.
It was magnificent, the world of the Sawteeth. It went on forever, jagged black, snow-capped mountains as far as he could see. Beautiful, with flocks of raphons that tore through the sky. They were such powerful, lithe predators, and someday soon, Six would grow to be just like them.
The wind was so cold it bit like a frozen blade, so that every breath ached him. There was not a soft landing place, nor an open valley to coast down upon, like the base of the Citadel’s cliffs.
Menacing, this place.
A nightmare incarnate.
But in front of him, on Six’s back...Ezer was not afraid.
She belonged here. She was suited for this cold sky, this unforgiving landscape...
The vision shifted, and they were no longer in the sky. Now, they stood together in the darkness. It was lit by purple light, a soft, otherworldly glow that—his eyes widened – came from an enormous black door at the back of a cave.
The Acolyte’s domain.
They’d made it.
The answer to the kingdom’s questions was just on the other side. There were strange markings on the walls all around them, shapes he didn’t know to be runes, but as he looked at them...
He sensed that he’d seen them before. That they were a strange, different sort of magic, the kind that danced instead of marched, and he wanted to know them.
He longed to...but not yet.
“You gave her to me, Kinlear,” Ezer whispered.
Her hand was on his chest, just over his hammering heart, and the pressure of that touch? Gods, he wanted more. She was talking about Six, and he could see tears of joy shining in her eyes. “You are the reason she is free.”
He’d give her anything. Anything she wanted, if she would just keep touching him, talking to him, looking up at him like this.
Like she loved him.
She loved him, oh gods, she loved him, and it was everything he’d ever wanted from someone.
Not even Soraya had looked at him like this.
Like he was a treasure. Something to be kept close and held dear.
He slid his hand atop hers. His heartbeat crashed against her palm, and she pressed even closer to him, bridging the gap.
“A lifetime in the Citadel,” Kinlear said, “and you are the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me. Do you know that?”
He coughed, but she didn’t flinch. She just blinked up at him, as if she were hanging on his every word.
“All the waiting, all the hoping, the prayers for true healing that did not come. It was all worth it. Because of you.”
She was melting against him. She was pressing closer, closer, until he swore their lips were about to touch.
“Ezer,” he whispered.
She shivered at his voice.
“There’s something I want you to know, before I...”
The image shifted suddenly, just before he was sure he was finally about to tell her he loved her...for that was the face of a man who would surely bow before her for all his days. And then...
He saw himself kissing her.
He saw the way her hands curled into his hair, and her grip was desperate, and her lips were ravenous, as if she had been starved for this moment for so, so long.
As if he were the only thing holding her onto life.
He saw how her perfect body was pressed against his, how he was so tall and she was so small, but they fit, gods damn it, they fit.
She needed him, wanted him so fiercely it was palpable.
She was his, and he was hers, and there was nothing, not even death, that could tear them apart. He felt it in his chest, his blood, his bones.
Together, they would slay the Acolyte. Together, they would...
The vision shifted again.
“No,” Kinlear gasped, for he wanted to cling to it, hold it close and play it over and over again...for nobody had ever wanted him like this.
But now, they were inside a dark, cavernous space. The halls twisted like some kind of cold, frozen labyrinth, their breath forming before them in clouds. Six was with them, and...
Again, the image changed.
His heart raced, his eyes stung from the cold, and he could feel something roaring in his chest. His feet. His entire body...filled with the chants of an entire army of darksouls.
They were all around him. He almost yelped, until he remembered he was in a vision. They could not reach him here. Everything shifted, zeroed in on the image of a man upon a dark, shadowy throne.
A man without a face, for it was wrapped in slithering shadows, but Kinlear could sense what his future self was seeing.
He could feel the terror in his bones, as the darksoul crowd roared, and shadow wolves – enormous, larger than he’d ever seen – howled as they lifted their dark snouts to the sky.
The Acolyte.
It was the Acolyte, on his throne, the shadowstorm swirling in a pillar above him, and Kinlear and Ezer were edging towards him, nearing their destiny...
He saw who got there first.
It was him...a blade in his hands, glory about to be crowned alongside his name.
Kinlear Laroux.
Slayer of the Acolyte. Savior of Lordach.
A prince who was destined for so much more than the grave.
He woke up just before he thrust the blade into the shadow bastard’s chest.