Chapter 20
Twenty
That night, I practically crawled down the passageway to the Hollow King, tears trailing down my cheeks. I didn’t stop to wipe them away, just let them fall and mark my way like a trail of breadcrumbs leading back to the palace.
After Sacred Mother had released me, I’d felt numb. Boneless. I’d lain on a bed while great sobs shook my body, then slept past the dinner hour. Somehow, I’d made my way down to the dungeons, knowing how ruined I was, but unable to stay away.
One day with Sacred Mother, and I already knew she could destroy me, body and soul. She wanted a puppet, not a woman, to dance for her, and I had an inkling that Airen knew the truth.
I entered the room with the velvet couch and the dusty piano, the desk strewn with papers, the walls that let me in and closed around me. I slumped against stone, knees drawn up, gasping for breath.
“Gazelle.” A strangled curse came, then the thud of Airen’s footfalls. He fell to his knees in front of me, eyes wide, hands going to his hair as he studied me. “What happened?” His jaw was set, locked. “Who did this to you?”
I tilted my head back. Trying to keep my eyes from rolling up to my skull. Parts of my body still felt out of my control. My limbs spasmed. “Sacred Mother.” I gasped for air. “She’s wicked, isn’t she?” I sucked in another deep breath. “Tell me what you know.”
“Gazelle.” His tone was tender as he lifted me in his arms.
I let my head fall to his chest and closed my eyes as he carried me.
It wasn’t sleep I needed, but rest, to lie down and not move for a long, long while.
Strange to think that the thing I loved most, dancing, she had turned into a weapon against me.
The ritual felt ancient, and my old doubts of Airen had gone silent.
Here, in his arms, he felt less like my ruin and more like my salvation.
He removed my dress and lowered me into a tub, its back sloped to cradle me, the water scented with rosemary and lavender.
I let him, too spent for modesty, but I did not miss the careful way he looked at me, full of care.
I briefly wondered where Airen had gotten the herbs from, but as the warmth soothed the pain in my limbs, I forgot about it.
I lay back, unashamed, unembarrassed, because I had finally come to trust him.
He trailed one finger through the water, and a light flared, a heat bloomed out from it.
The pain in my body loosened its grip, the exhaustion, the bone-deep weariness, draining away into the water.
He sat on a stool beside me, his expression somber.
At last, he straightened, looking past the marbled walls toward the lagoon beyond, the inky black waters surging in the distance, the blue motes hovering above it like guardians.
Vines tangled down around the tub, ivy creeping after them, and for one strange moment I felt like part of this dying kingdom.
“Much of what I will tell you is speculation,” Airen admitted. “But enough that I believe it to be true.”
“Tell me,” I whispered.
Those haunted green eyes found me. “You first.”
Shame. That’s all I felt as I lay there, helpless.
“She came to watch me dance the ritual. The one I’ve been dancing for years, the one that keeps the demons beyond the rift.
I was in the practice halls of the Sacred Palace, where I’ve danced hundreds of times before.
But this time, it was wrong. My limbs felt like they were weighed down and breathing was impossible.
I kept coughing, kept falling, and she kept demanding I go on.
Over and over and over again. Until I couldn’t.
Then she came to me, gave me a vial. I only took one sip, but now I know I shouldn’t have touched it.
It was something that made me numb, almost. I can’t quite explain it.
But it was only after drinking from it that I was able to complete the dance without falling down, without collapsing.
I danced until my feet bled, and I couldn’t move. Then she dragged me to her chamber.”
My voice cracked. I didn’t want to think of what she’d done to me then.
Unspeakable things. “She told me I was the last of the bloodline, and I could be like her, if only I were strong enough for immortality. I’d be able to dance forever, to stay young, to have whatever I wanted.
She made me think things I didn’t want to think, feel things I didn’t want to feel.
Going back up there, facing her again frightens me because she has the upper hand.
She has everything. I can’t dance without that vial.
I don’t even know what it is, but it’s not like you. It’s not like…”
I squeezed my eyes shut to hold the tears within. To keep them from falling out again. Not because I didn’t want to be weak in front of him, but because I’d cried enough. I felt small and shamed, and deeply afraid of what she would do.
“She came to take over, to become the next Rift Mother. To make this city her dwelling place. Everyone is terrified of her, and now I understand why. The dancers won’t survive her. I won’t survive her.”
Airen rose, hands balled into fists. He paced back and forth until I could feel the heat of his anger coming off him in waves.
“A name, does she have a name?”
“I was too out of my mind to think of asking her name.”
“Gazelle, I will gladly kill her, take away her immortality, and make her suffer.”
“How can you? Isn’t immortality a magic?”
He sat down again. “What she’s done to you is despicable.
She gave you a drug, hoping to get you hooked on it, addicted to it so that every day you’ll beg for more, you’ll believe you can’t live without it, but you can.
It’s likely she sabotaged your dance, making it hard on purpose so that you would willingly take the drug.
It’s in her nature to be deceptive, to think several steps ahead to ensure her goals are accomplished. ”
“But who is she?”
“I believe she is your ancestor.”
Startled, I sat up straight, then remembered my nakedness and settled back, letting the water hide me again. “Why? How?”
“You said it yourself, she offered you the gift of immortality, which means she has achieved it. And she only came when you started to show signs of weakness. Your time of dancing is coming to an end, and as you told me, you are the last of your bloodline. Which makes me wonder if the ritual is doing more than I first thought.”
“If the ritual is being used to keep the rift sealed, trap the demigods, and give her immortality?”
“Yes,” he said bitterly. “That is what I wonder, and if so, who betrayed my people and gave her the steps to the ritual. Because the Lead Dancers always die, because they give pieces of their soul with each ritual. But she must have learned how to become a Soul Drinker, to absorb it, and keep herself young. Only a god, or a demigod, would have that knowledge, would share that knowledge.”
“Was this the same woman, the queen who made a deal with the Hollow King to teach the demigods a lesson and seal them away for a time?”
“I believe so.”
I studied him. “But you were not king at that time?”
A sad smile came to his lips. “No, I wasn’t born.
Not then. You see, my court didn’t fall asleep immediately.
It’s just when the days became intolerable that my father lay down on his deathbed and used his magic to send us all to sleep, until a time should come when the seal broke.
Then the king would wake up and free his people. ”
“Then you are a new king. You haven’t had the chance…” I broke off. “You’ve never been outside.”
The same sad smile. “No. I’ve only heard tales of how glorious it is.”
Tears rolled down my cheeks. I’d never felt so selfish in my life. “And the sleeping gods you showed me last night?”
“Oh, they are much older. They told me stories, they were heartsick. I believe they will remember—they learned this lesson. Will there be some who choose revenge? Yes. But it is for me, as king, to keep my court in check.”
I closed my eyes, letting the pain of his story sink through me. “And my ancestor, why do you believe it is her?”
“I studied the scroll you gave me.”
“The one I found in Rift Mother’s room.”
“Yes. It’s the right family line. It extends back far enough, and it makes sense. If the deal was sealed in blood, only members of the same family line, of the same blood, can keep the rift sealed, and when that bloodline is gone, it will open.”
My eyes went wide. “So, it doesn’t matter who leads the dance or who comes after me. If I stop, the rift opens.”
“I assume you have no children, no other family line?”
I stared at him, horror on my face. “That’s why Sacred Mother wants to keep me dancing, keep me alive, so I can keep feeding her immortality and keep the rift sealed.”
Airen nodded.
“Then my family’s death doesn’t sound like a tragic accident.
” I took a deep breath. “I’m not sure what to believe right now, but it almost seems too convenient that they would be killed, and I was left to live.
Almost as if someone wanted the rift to open, but they were caught, stopped before I could be slain too. ”
I kept my gaze on him, studying his expression.
Because if the rift was open then, and demons had come through, then his people could have come through with them.
He could have had a chance to slay my family, for freedom.
But he did not flinch; he did not waver.
This new king, a demigod untested, only looked back at me, steadily.
“I have puzzled over it too. Why kill your family? The bloodline is too important? Was it really demons who attacked, or the Sacred Mother’s people, who knew just how to do enough?”
“That’s a wicked assumption,” I snapped.
“And hopefully not true, but we are dealing with a murderer. We must ask all questions, even the ones that are hard to look at.”
“Could someone have escaped from your court to do it?”
“A fair question. I believe we were all asleep; the rift was sealed then. But humor me a moment. If it were this Sacred Mother, what was she to gain from you being alive?”
“My commitment to the dance.” I paused. “But I wouldn’t have been committed to the dance, not with my family. I don’t know what I would have become. I had one brother and a younger sister.”
“And with them gone, you felt responsible, as though you had nothing else to live for, nothing else to do but seek revenge on those who took them from you. Because once you have something, for it to be taken away is the worst tragedy of all. She didn’t orphan you by accident, Gazelle. She forged you.”
I was crying again. I couldn’t help it. “Say she did it, why kill Rift Mother? Why kill…oh. I didn’t tell you, they killed my Warden.
The one who sat outside my door, guarding me.
When I got back.” I took a breath and told him about the blood, about the scent, of being locked inside and the panic that filled me.
Airen groaned and put his head in his hands. “Fear is a powerful weapon. Careful, Gazelle. I don’t believe you are in any danger, but there might be a third person taking action, muddying the waters so we don’t understand what’s happening here and blame it all on Sacred Mother.”
“What should I do?”
He took my hand, squeezed it gently. “Sacred Mother needs you alive, and she needs you to dance. Anything that impacts the dance will not please her. Your declining health will not please her. So use it against her. That’s what she wants most. To keep her immortality by siphoning off your soul.
And when she is done with you, it’s likely she has a plan for an heir.
But she needs time to extend the line. Unless she’s already found another vessel.
Regardless, the power lies here, in this city. It’s just a matter of finding it.”
I squeezed his hand back. “Thank you, Airen. I am living in a dark time, but it’s clear your life has been darker than mine, struggling for freedom.”
“We will find it, together.”
He released me and took up a towel and held it open. “Come, no practice tonight; you should rest.”