Chapter Thirty-Four #2
I looked around. There was a ring of empty space between me and the soldiers, and then the bulk of the crowd who still looked on.
I might be able to lose the soldiers in the crowd, but the number of bodies would slow me down.
The better bet was surprise: over the dais, through the neighborhood, sneak through the eastern doors and into the foothills. And then we’d see.
“Manor,” I told her. It was in that general direction and was enough to explain the plan without giving it away.
She reached back, squeezed my hand, and touched my thumb to hers. “Survive the day.”
“You, too.”
She turned her body and raised her windblade, preparing to split the soldiers in front of us and give me a path. And a heady silence fell across the crowd, the air thick with anticipation. I rolled my neck, let myself have one more glance at the prince.
But before I could meet his eyes, the ground rumbled and light flashed like the sun had doubled. I raised my arm to cover my eyes as the ember began to warm, the heat began to spread gorgeously through my limbs. This was going to be either very bad…or very good.
A raven’s call split the silence, and a shadow fell over the soldiers. A white raven, wings gleaming in the brilliant light, arced above the crowd, which began to whisper again.
The world shook again and the light faded. Still squinting, I found beside me the form of a man in a haze of shimmering Aether.
He was taller than me, long silver hair pulled back at the temples.
He wore a black leather tunic with a high collar that fell to his knees, with armored panels of gold and silver.
But he shimmered with Aether, white as the hottest flame, and I could feel the depth of the power he commanded like a second heartbeat, my ember pulsing in time.
“ ‘He guides the Luminae,’ ” I said quietly, “ ‘and they look upon him as a protector.’ ” A line from the curate’s record I’d found in the library.
The Aetheric god had returned to Carethia.
The crowd was terrified, thrilled, awestruck, horrified. A few strongholders ran. Others fell to their knees in fear or tribute, or both.
“Who are you?” Nik demanded.
He looked at the prince, unbothered by the tone. “I am everything and nothing. The man whose dreams fuel the Aetheric. The Emperor of Souls. The King of Ghosts. You may call me”—he paused, looked down at me—“Lochryn.”
The voice I’d heard in the fog of the Aetheric hadn’t been a Guardian but the god himself. “Fuck the moons,” I murmured.
“Didn’t you once have a dog named Lochryn?” Wren murmured.
“The god has returned!” someone called out, and that set off a wave of movement.
Some in the crowd fell to their knees. Others backed away even farther, apparently not keen on being quite so close to a god.
The imperial soldiers looked at the god, then the messenger, apparently unsure of the chain of command.
They’d been prepared to deal with a disobedient prince, not a deity.
The god looked at the prince, then Catalaya. His gaze lingered there a moment, and there seemed to be confusion in it. Then he turned his gaze to me, his eyes silvered and shimmering with stars.
“You escaped your prison?”
He nodded. “You opened a doorway, Fox, allowing my soldier—the one you call Luna—to find me. You helped me find my way back.”
I nearly asked how much he was willing to pay for the service but managed to bite my tongue.
Slowly, he turned his gaze to the assorted royals and representatives. “She is one of mine, and you will not take her.”
“Get away from her,” Nik bit out. “You will not take her either.”
I looked back at him, his body rigid with fury. But Red and Galen had each taken one of his arms to prevent him from jumping into a fight with a god. I couldn’t blame them for that.
“Naturally,” Lochryn said, then looked at me again. “She has much to learn, but it will be her choice. She can stay here with you in the human prison you construct for her—or she can go with me to learn who she is.”
“She knows who she is.”
Lochryn began to glow, as if the Aetheric responded to his anger. “She does not yet fully know, because those of your realm made it too dangerous for her to exist.”
Then he turned back toward me, scenting the air with smoke and lavender as he moved. He whispered, “Ashentis Fuerest.”
Souls burn brightest.
There was power in his words, and that power flowed through me. The ember flared, and Aether burned away the seal’s remaining stain. There was no pinch now, only relief, like I’d been immersed in the palace bath again.
“She’s glowing,” one of the imperial soldiers said, and his sword clanked to the ground.
“You’re clean now,” Lochryn said. “The scar of the seal now gone. This is what you ought to have felt your entire life—if the tapestry had not been woven thus. But fate weaves what it will, and now you must make the choice. Stay here, and become a prisoner of the emperor or his son. Or go and become.”
“That’s not a choice. There is no choice.” My voice was a whisper, dying in the murmurs of the crowd. The plans we’d made, the freedom he’d bought me, dissolved just as quickly.
“Fox,” Nik said, and pulled himself free of his guards. He dropped down from the dais, even the line of imperial soldiers parting at his powerful and imperious stride.
And I knew as surely as I knew the god stood beside me: He would be emperor one day.
He ignored the god, the messenger, the crowd, Catalaya. And when he reached me, he put a hand around my waist, pulled me toward him, and kissed me.
The kiss was a performance, and a promise, and the crowd erupted with shock. After a moment, his hands on my face, he dropped his forehead to mine.
“I can’t be an excuse that your father uses to hurt you again,” I said. “I won’t.”
He nodded, kissed me quickly again, then moved his lips to my ear. “I swear on my own life, Fox, that I will fix this. And when it’s time, we’ll find each other again.”
I tried to memorize his face: the curve of his lips, the intensity of his eyes, the soft silk of his hair. And I hoped fate hadn’t snipped this thread.
The soldiers were getting restless, and I was running out of time. I glanced at Wren.
“You aren’t just a girl who sees ghosts,” she said. “Not anymore.”
I swallowed down the last of my fear and looked at Lochryn. Nodded.
And then his arm was around my waist, his skin hot enough to burn even through his armor, and the world disappeared.
A heartbeat later, Lochryn and I were standing in the middle of a well-trodden dirt road.
Around us were skinny trees that rose from mossy ground, their canopies so high and thick they nearly blocked the sun.
The air was damp and smelled of growing things.
Somewhere among the trees, birds sang songs I’d never heard before.
Luna appeared beside the god and nodded at me.
“Where are we?”
“Intarha, at the edge of the Thieves’ Forest. I took you through the Aetheric.”
“That’s impossible.”
Intarha was in the middle of Carethia—more than a week’s journey from the stronghold—and then only if the pass was clear and the weather good.
“Not for a god. Or for you, if you learn the skill.”
I followed him toward a stacked stone wall that rose to my shoulders and badly needed tending. Rocks had tumbled out into piles in front of it, leaving gaps like grinning teeth. He pushed an arched wooden door, left open and hanging from a single hinge, and waited for me to walk inside.
The wall enclosed a square garden a little larger than the back courtyard at the Lady’s manor. It was a tangle of brown, reedy weeds killed by winter and not cleared away, and new spring grass that peeked through them. There was no sound but for the rustling of dead leaves.
In the middle of the space stood a polished gray rock, rounded to an oval, like a thick egg in an overgrown nest. Light filtered through the trees that shifted with the breeze, and reflected off something resting atop the stone.
I moved carefully through the greenery, my skirt snagging on the hard edges of old thorns, and picked it up.
It was a golden half mask, similar to the one the Aetheric practitioner had worn. But instead of jagged edges, the sides flared into delicately engraved feathers, and it was cold and heavy in my hand.
I looked back at Lochryn and Luna. “What is this place?”
He walked forward and put his hand atop the stone, which shuddered and began to glow, as if he were filling it with Aether.
“It’s a shrine to those who serve two realms: the Guardians and the Luminae. It wasn’t tended while I was imprisoned, when Aether mostly disappeared. It’s time for it to be tended again. For you to steal things that aren’t mere trinkets.”
“Such as?” My voice was barely audible. Maybe, if he didn’t hear the question, I wouldn’t have to hear the answer.
“Countries. Crowns.”
“What?” I looked at Luna, and there was sadness in her eyes. But in Lochryn’s I found only vicious determination, hard and sharp.
“Luna says you have no memories of life before the seal was placed.”
“Almost nothing before I was delivered to the manor. And after I met the Aetheric practitioner the first time, when he accidentally cracked the seal, only a few images that came to me in dreams. My mother was killed. My father took me away.”
“The Emperor Eternal and other leaders of his ilk decided they did not want my interference in their realm. They care too much for their own power, and too little for those they rule. They found a Guardian, an Anima once loyal to the Carethian throne. And with the help of Enshrined Monks who wanted more power in this realm, they used old magic—Creators’ magic—to imprison me.
” He paused. “And then, when I was gone, they decided it was necessary to remove any remaining humans with Aetheric powers.”
There was a look in his face that I didn’t like.
“I can’t give you back your memories,” he said. “But I can show you.”
And then I was falling, and the world went white, and I landed in the grass. I saw a child—myself—playing with flowers and singing a song to myself while clouds moved in the sapphire sky. My father sat on a bench at the edge of the courtyard, tossing seeds to the birds that gathered there.
And then there was shouting, and the birds jumped into the sky.
My father rose, frowning, and walked toward the cottage.
The door opened, and my mother came out, blood soaking through her tunic, her hands across her belly.
She staggered across the courtyard as my father ran toward her, catching her just before she fell.
She touched his face, smearing blood, and whispered something I couldn’t hear.
My father called her name, then looked up, horrified, at the men who emerged from the house.
Soldiers in dark armor and scarlet capes. The Emperor Eternal’s soldiers.
“Run,” my mother screamed, and they surrounded her.
And then I was falling again. I opened my eyes, back in the forest, the trees standing solidly around me.
But even they wobbled, and I hit the ground on my knees.
That quick, bright pain was nothing compared to the ache in my heart.
The ember warmed, as if it hoped to give me consolation, to heal me from the inside.
But I couldn’t stop the rising tears, the heaving sobs, the sudden and swamping grief.
I cried until my body shook, then I looked up at him. “The Emperor Eternal had my mother killed. The prince’s uncle would have been involved. They called him the Aetheric curate.”
“Yes.”
“Why?” I asked, pleading in my voice. “She didn’t have magic.”
“To protect you,” Luna said. “Your parents knew you had Aetheric skills, even as a child. You spoke to Anima, and the white raven—the god’s familiar—recognized you.
Your parents were afraid of what might happen to you—and rightfully so.
So your mother placed her name on the register instead of yours, and we placed the seal on your magic—or as much of it as we could manage.
As a result, you lost most of your connection to the Aetheric, and your memories. ”
“This is why you warned me away from the Lys’Careths?”
A single nod.
I don’t know how long we stood there in silence, but it was long enough that the shadows moved and the dappled light that flickered through the trees shifted as the world turned.
“What do you want from me?” I asked quietly.
“I want to make this realm safe once again.”
“How?” I asked, my voice barely audible.
“I want you to kill the Lys’Careths.”
Lys’Careths had killed my mother, forced my father to hide me. Put me into bondage. Reported me to the crown. Betrothed the man I’d come to love to someone else. Sent soldiers to arrest me.
One of them had freed me. One of them had loved me.
For the first time in my life, I had freedom. I could make choices—to be the hero or the villain. To be more than what I’d lost, or suffered. I could be more than people expected.
Maybe it was time to take a dagger to fate’s tapestry.
Or set it aflame.