Chapter 21
21
ROOK
T he iron gates of Auran-Helm shuddered.
The bells of surrender peeled through the decimated city, ricocheting off crumbled buildings and fallen turrets, drowning out the screams of soldiers who lay dying in the streets beyond the Citadel walls. Deep within the mountain hall, the women, children, and elderly took shelter from the onslaught of dark forces that had already taken the lives of so many.
The battle had raged for days on end.
Princess Cira propped herself up against a pile of rubble and gazed up at the smoke-choked sky. She clutched her ribs, several of them broken. With every heaving inhale, her body ruptured with white-hot pain. Dried blood and sweat clotted in her stringy hair. The once-polished bronze armor plates strapped over her calves were dulled with blood and dust. Her helmet lay discarded several feet away, cracked down the center. She closed her eyes and leaned back, listening as the monsters beyond the walls battered the gates. They’d swarm the Citadel soon.
The last words of her mother rang through her mind like the tolling bells: “Just give me time. I will come. Hold the city for us.”
But if the tiding feather she’d received that morning spoke true, her mother was dead now. The sirens had betrayed Basilia, just as they had betrayed Revelore. The Mer Queen would not be returning for her daughter thanks to their treachery.
The ground below Cira quaked. The rubble at her back shifted, loose stones tumbling down the pile to clink against her plated armor. At last, the Titans were coming, their footsteps reverberating through the earth like miniature earthquakes. They were coming for her.
After she’d killed the Titan of the Sea at the Battle of Darkwater Gulf, the three other Titans momentarily retreated to mourn the death of their sister, Charybdis. Cira could still feel the Titan’s hot blood dripping down her wrists and forearms as she held Charybdis’s colossal, twitching heart in her hands. The sputtering organ was as large as Cira’s head. She remembered how the life faded from Charybdis’s eyes as she fell backward into the ocean. Cira had held onto the dying goddess’s massive corpse as the waves rushed upon them. Her gigantic body dissolved into sea foam.
When the crashing waves receded and the froths of sea foam melted away, a dark pearl shone in Cira’s palm, the only piece of the Titan that remained. She had climbed out of the ocean, holding the pearl aloft as one might hold the decapitated head of their enemy. For the first time since the war began, their mortal armies finally had hope.
The Titans could bleed. And they could be killed.
In the wake of their victory, Cira’s mother had said she needed the pearl. Two weeks ago, she and the other three kings and queens of Revelore left the continent without sharing any information on where they were going. They’d vanished, abandoning their armies to Cira’s command. She was left to pick up the fragmented pieces of their armies with little to no information on where they’d fled, cobbling together a force of soldiers from Elor-Wyn, Terrahold, Auran-Helm, and Tel Mirsun.
Just give me time. I will come. Hold the city for us.
Cira had chanted those words back to herself when the Titans’ armies arrived at the gates of Auran-Helm. She’d inhaled and exhaled those words with every swing of her sword. When her soldiers fell around her and gore spattered the streets, she’d held tight to those words like a lifeline.
Now, her mother’s last words meant nothing as the three remaining Titans marched upon Auran-Helm, their dark armies swarming the forests at the base of the mountain. The earth continued to quake as the Titans drew near. They had formed the fabric of Revelore, had breathed life into their world.
And now they would unmake it.
Cira clenched her bloodied fists. The Four Kinsmen were supposed to be their salvation. For days, she’d held the city for them, promising her soldiers that aid would come. But her mother was dead and the other rulers had not returned. She was alone, and she would die today.
Cira forced herself to stand, her knees trembling as she rose. Lifeless bodies were strewn across the streets, crimson blood smeared over cobblestones like wet paint. When she’d killed Charybdis, hope had fluttered in her chest like a fire flaring to life. That fragile hope was reduced to cinders now, buried under the rubble of the city alongside the corpses of her people.
Cira withdrew her sword with trembling hands. From her vantage point at the top of the tiered city, the Titans rose like mountains from the earth, their divine forms towering over the trees they’d once crafted like artists. They were climbing up the mountain now. The rock below Cira’s feet vibrated.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath in, preparing herself for death and the realm of the Underworld. Gritting her teeth, Cira limped across the courtyard, ready to face the terrible gods at last. More soldiers rose to follow her, folding out of the shadows and slumping forward at her feet, their bodies weakened with injuries and their hope scorched to ash. But they followed her nonetheless, marching toward the last set of gates in a quiet procession.
Just give me time. I will come. Hold the city for us.
A horn cleaved through the air, stopping Cira in her tracks. The horn blew again and sparks danced over the embers of her faded hope.
She turned around to see Aris, the warrior-king of Auran-Helm, soaring over the Citadel, his outstretched wings gilded with the rising sun. He spiraled down to the courtyard, his face flushed as though he’d just flown for days on end. His golden sandals hit the stone and he sprinted over to her. Normally he favored a small dagger as his weapon of choice, but the longsword he brandished was unfamiliar to her. The metal blade glowed with ethereal light.
“Wait! We can stop them!”
Cira opened her mouth and turned toward the Auran-Helm king: “Rook, wake up.”
“Rook wake up.”
Rook was vaulted into consciousness, Cira’s phantom voice melding into Aurelia’s. The Mer captain was bent over him with a crease of concern between her pale eyebrows. He blinked up blearily at her. His present reality and the scene from his dream blurred in and out, the two planes of existence shifting between each other. He could feel the ground vibrating beneath him just as Cira had and could feel her cracked ribs in his own body. His nose was filled with the scents of battle: charred flesh, suffocating smoke, metallic blood. The primitive iteration of the Citadel was scorched into his mind, the ancient version of his city both familiar and foreign all at once.
Hel’s teeth. What was happening to him?
As he focused on Aurelia, the sensations of the dream faded from the tangible world, replaced by the wooden walls he found himself enclosed by. The pain in his side was not from broken ribs, but from the throbbing wound in his abdomen. The vibrating floor was not caused by the marching of ancient gods, but by the unruly, glacial wind that battered the small merchant shop he and Aurelia had taken shelter in. The wind howled fiercely outside while swirling ribbons of snow glistened in the light of the moon.
“Are you all right?”
Rook forced himself to sit up. He didn’t remember falling asleep in the first place. He must’ve dozed off after they’d made camp.
“I’m fine,” he answered when his head finally stopped spinning.
“You didn’t sound fine.” Aurelia sat back against her bedroll, a skeptical eyebrow arching upward. “You were screaming. Did you have a nightmare?”
Rook flushed under her scrutiny. She’d heard all that? How humiliating .
“It’s fine,” Aurelia assured him, as though she could hear his internal dialogue. “I’m a soldier, remember? I have my fair share of nightmares. No need to be ashamed.”
She slipped out of her bedroll and knelt before the smoldering embers of the dying fire in the hearth. She added a few pieces of kindling and coaxed it back to life. Gradually, the flames rose and lit the small room with a soft, comforting glow.
Rook pressed closer to the fire, hungry for warmth. He couldn’t find the words to describe what that nightmare had been. It was his dream, yes, but it was also a memory from another life. Or maybe it was simply a figment of his own imagination, his knowledge of the Myths of Old threading a lifelike account in his mind. He was exhausted, after all. Perhaps he was simply going mad.
Cira, the daughter of the first Mer Queen of Revelore, had been as real in his mind as Aurelia was now, her green-tinged scales glimmering in the rising sun as smoke trailed over Auran-Helm. In the dream, Cira had claimed her mother Basilia was killed by sirens, mythical aquatic creatures said to have lived in harmony with Mer at the dawn of time. The betrayal Cira spoke of led history to remember the sirens as deceptive creatures even after their extinction. Recognition glimmered at the back of his mind. Where had he heard the term ‘sirens’ recently?
“Rook,” Aurelia interrupted. “Where did you go? Your eyes drifted off somewhere else.”
“I’m sorry. I must be more tired than I thought I was.” He should tell her about the strange dream. Her earlier words echoed through his mind: If you want us to trust you, you must learn to trust us . Opening himself up again after he’d been so vulnerable with Raven was a daunting prospect.
“There’s something you’re not telling me.” Aurelia’s perceptive eyes narrowed. “Remember how you promised not to keep secrets anymore?”
Rook tore his gaze from the fire and forced himself to meet her eyes. “I’ve been having dreams,” he finally confessed. “Most of them strange and nonsensical. Sometimes I dream of moments from my own life. Other times I glimpse memories from other people’s lives. And lately, I’ve dreamed of scenes taken straight out of the Myths of Old. They started happening after Hasana brought me back to life. I think it has something to do with the blade Selussa stabbed me with. Maybe she cursed me.” He braced himself, waiting for Aurelia to question his sanity just as Raven had.
“What kind of dream did you experience just now?” Aurelia leaned forward. The firelight danced on the sharp contours of her face. There was no judgment or pity on her face.
Rook was emboldened by her earnest concern. “I saw the final battle between the Four Kinsmen and the Titans. Well, the beginning of it anyway.”
Aurelia’s eyes widened. “Do you think it was real?”
“I’m not sure. It felt real. It was like I’d just been transported back through time myself. In some parts of the dream, it was as though I was looking through Cira’s eyes. In other parts, I was seeing her as an invisible onlooker outside of my body.”
“Cira? The Mer princess? Isn’t she the one who supposedly killed the Titan of the Sea?”
“Yes. She was holding the city while the Four Kinsmen searched for a way to defeat the Titans. I assume they were in the Northern Wastes, using the Forge to enchant the Relics while Cira protected their mortal lands. But there was something off about the whole thing, some secret I couldn’t uncover.”
Again, he thought of where he had heard the word ‘siren’ recently. There was something mysterious about their betrayal of the Four Kinsmen, malicious or otherwise. But he couldn’t place a finger on it.
“Did you see the Relics in your dream?”
“No, I woke up before I saw all the Relics together or learned how the Four Kinsmen bound the Titans’ souls in the Stone Circle. Aris, the warrior-king of Aurandel, held a longsword that appeared to be enchanted, but I didn’t see any of the Relics.”
“Perhaps these dreams can be of use to us. What if you’ll uncover some secret that will be critical to our mission?”
“But I can’t tell what is real and what isn’t,” Rook sighed. “Nothing from my dreams has come true and I have no way to validate the accuracy of them. I could just be going mad.” He paused, recalling the brutal memory of the night his parents died. “Wait. There was one dream I had recently. It was the night my parents were murdered by Terradrin revolutionaries. Everything in that dream truly happened to me. It was real.”
All at once, the realization of where he had heard ‘sirens’ snapped into place. He recalled how Saoirse’s mother, Eleyera, had whispered with his parents beyond the carriage door, snatches of her hushed voice carrying on the wind: “ There is a secret. The sirens were ? ”
Rook pressed his mind for more details, coming up short. Was there any more to their conversation that lay locked away in the deep recesses of his mind? There seemed to be some hidden truth about the sirens and the war between the Titans, a secret Eleyera had uncovered eight years ago. He needed to learn more about the great betrayal that occurred, but all he had to reference were scraps of memories that may or may not be true.
“That’s good,” Aurelia was saying. “If the dream about your parents’ death was accurate, perhaps you’ve glimpsed real pieces of the past. Your dream of Cira must have truly happened.”
Rook’s mind was reeling. Just when he thought that they’d uncovered all there was to know about Revelore’s past, more elusive secrets emerged like a chain from the darkness, leading down into an unknown abyss. Would they ever unravel all the Myths of Old?
Despite the unease his nightmares inspired, Rook felt a measure of relief knowing someone else knew about them. He had to admit that it felt good not to bear the burden alone.
“Thank you for taking this so well,” he found himself saying. “I know it sounds mad.” After his own sister had accused him of being witless, he hadn’t expected the Mer captain to validate his nightmares.
“There are many things about you I don’t trust. I think you can be thick-headed, arrogant, and insufferable most of the time. But I don’t think you’re mad.”
“Thank you…I think?”
“Don’t get me wrong, I would’ve thought you were mad a few weeks ago,” she amended with a smirk. “But after everything I’ve seen, a few confusing dreams are relatively tame compared to ancient gods coming to life and zealots resurrecting a bloodthirsty witch from the Underworld. At this point, I’d believe anything. I mean, I’m currently hiding out in an abandoned merchant’s shop in an extinct city with the prince of Aurandel, on the way to some magical Forge that we don’t even know exists for certain. I would never have believed it before the Tournament, but here we are.”
“Fair enough.” Rook spread his palms before the fire, feeling warmth tingle in his fingertips.
Soon, they’d be reunited with Saoirse and Hasana. Rook’s stomach clenched at the thought. He recalled Aurelia’s words from the beach, blunt and scathing as a knife: Have you ever considered that allowing yourself to love again might bring you the most healing? You’re being selfish. To withhold yourself from Saoirse after she gave up everything for you is cruel.
Aurelia had been right. He was being selfish. He was licking his wounds like an injured animal, keeping everyone at arm’s length just as Raven did with him. He was a hypocrite. He accused his sister of being close-minded and blinded by her own hatred, but wasn’t he being equally obstinate by putting walls up against Saoirse? He felt oddly guilty at the prospect of tearing down those barriers with her, of allowing himself to love her. It was as though he was choosing Saoirse over his sister. Besides, he didn’t deserve happiness after betraying his kingdom and abandoning Raven to the madness of the Elders, did he?
“Do you think?” Rook began. “Do you think Saoirse will forgive me for being such an ass?”
Aurelia smiled, her face illuminated by the warmth of the hearth. “Now those are the real questions you should be asking.” She pulled a blanket up around her shoulders and stretched her fingers to the fire. “Should she forgive you? No. Will she? Yes. Saoirse is good like that.”
Rook felt a flutter in his chest. He didn’t deserve her, that much was clear.
“Why are you so afraid to be vulnerable, Rook?” Aurelia looked at him with an expression that seemed to pierce right to the center of his soul. He found it extremely unsettling that she could read him so easily.
“Everything I love turns to ash,” Rook replied after a beat. He’d already confessed to the strange dreams he was having. Aurelia had proven herself to be trustworthy so far, and he had nothing to lose. And oddly enough, he felt lighter with each confession.
“I loved my parents fiercely. They were taken from me before my very eyes. My best friends, Eros and Veila, kept secrets from me and tried to kill me in the end. Saoirse?a girl that I was falling in love with?was secretly trying to kill me. And my sister…” his voice thickened with emotion.
Tears gathered in his eyes, hot and mortifying. He tried to blink them away. That familiar claw of anxiety lodged in his throat and threatened to pull him under. He couldn’t let Aurelia see him this way. Couldn’t let anyone see him this way. He had to keep everything locked away inside.
Where his heart was safe.
To his utter shock, Aurelia stretched her hand across the space between them, settling her fingers reassuringly over his own. She urged him to continue with an encouraging nod. That small act of kindness broke something inside him. She was supposed to hate him, to loathe everything he’d done to her best friend. Instead, she offered him a listening ear and an earnest gaze. He’d been so hungry for any scrap of honesty that Aurelia’s genuine concern opened the floodgates of all his pent-up emotion. Tears burned trails of fire down his cheeks.
“My sister’s betrayal somehow unearthed all of the trauma from my childhood, I think,” he confessed, voice hitching to a mortifying sob. “When Raven chose the Crown over me?over her brother ?, I began to see all the ways that she’d manipulated me in our youth. I started seeing the hollowness in our relationship. All the unhealed pain of my parent’s death rose to the surface, made even more painful knowing I was alone. Seeing the vision from the night they died showed me I never really processed their murders.”
He wiped at his damp cheeks, feeling oddly relieved as his pain was brought to light. Even so, he felt mortified to be blathering in front of this Mer captain who barely knew him. “I don’t even know why I’m telling you all this. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize. You’re telling me because you need to. You’ve reached the end of your rope. You can’t go on like this any longer. If you don’t ask for help, the grief and sorrow will consume you.”
Rook realized he hadn’t cried since being rescued from the Stone Circle. He hadn’t allowed himself to weep over his friends’ betrayal, nor over Raven’s rejection. He had hardly even mourned his parent’ deaths now that he thought about it. He’d always been told to be strong and impenetrable, to never let anyone too close.
You have a good heart, little brother. You always have. But it has been your weakness for far too long.
Raven was wrong. He wanted to have a good heart, he realized. He wanted to be good like Saoirse and Aurelia. Like Hasana. None of them were weak. They were the strongest warriors he knew. Did he even have the capacity to heal from his pain? Could he learn to trust again? To ask for help?
“Vulnerability is not a weakness, Rook,” Aurelia said, seeming to read his thoughts again. “I can be hard-headed and stubborn. I’ll even admit that at times I can be vengeful. I’m prone to giving into foolhardy impulses. But I am always vulnerable with the people I love. There aren’t very many I love, mind you, but I gain nothing from building up walls between those I care about.”
Rook felt the barrier in his heart crack under the weight of her scrutiny. That carefully constructed wall began to weaken. But instead of feeling exposed, he somehow felt stronger. Perhaps being vulnerable really was a strength.
“If you love Saoirse, you should tell her,” came Aurelia’s soft voice. “Do not run from your feelings for her. I know you’ve made mistakes?we all have?but that doesn’t make you any less deserving of love.”
Rook wanted to roll his eyes when a new wave of tears poured down his face. It seemed his body was revolting, forcing him to give in to the alluring vulnerability Aurelia spoke of. He almost wanted to laugh at how quickly he’d fallen apart. To his surprise, that shadow of anxiety had dissolved into nothing.
“Thank you, Aurelia. For letting me cry and not condemning me for it.”
“I’ll only condemn you for your shoddy swordsmanship and your cocky attitude,” Aurelia laughed. “And your stupidity, of course. I’ll never miss out on the opportunity to call you a numbskull.”
Rook smiled to himself and buried deeper in his bedroll. The mystifying scene of Cira and Aris played out behind his eyelids. In Revelore’s darkest hour, hope had returned like a blooming sunrise along the horizon. If hope had been restored then when all had seemed lost, perhaps he did have some light left in him. He vowed to face his fears when he saw Saoirse again. Perhaps she would find something worth loving in the rubble of his heart, something that could be redeemed.
And if she couldn’t find something in him worth fighting for, he’d find it himself.
For the first time in a long time, Rook slept through the whole night. On a threadbare bedroll in an abandoned merchant’s storefront, he had the best night’s sleep he’d had in years. But even though he felt a thousand times better than he had before, Saoirse and her companions still hadn’t arrived. As the pale fingers of dawn crept over the frosty dockyards of Raj’s Point with no Tellusun merchant ship in sight, Rook mentally prepared himself for the arduous flight ahead.
He would be lying if he said he wasn’t nervous. Joya had given him several jars of golden root salve to use daily on his wound. Though the salve helped to reduce the pain, he knew that flying for several days on end would take a huge toll on him. He prayed no nightmares would spontaneously attack him mid-air. So far, he’d only been plagued by visions of the past when he was asleep. But he had no way of knowing how his decline in health would progress, nor if the side effect of having strange visions would get worse as his wound festered.
Only time would tell.
“You’re leaving then?” Aurelia’s turquoise eyes shone in the sunrise that trickled in through a broken window pane. She peered out at the empty harbor and blew out a breath when she didn’t see Saoirse’s ship. Her exhale fogged in the cold air like a cloud of dust.
“Yes,” Rook replied as he counted the jars of salve in his leather satchel one last time. He stored a few other provisions in the pack, including strips of salted meat, a dense loaf of bread, and dried fruit. He had no idea how long it would take to locate Saoirse and the others, so he had to be prepared for an extended trip.
“Be careful.” Aurelia pressed her lips together in a thin line. “Do what you can to bring them back, but do not be a fool. Remember that you can return and seek help if needed.” Dark purple circles sat heavily under her eyes. It didn’t look like she’d gotten a wink of rest last night, worrying over Saoirse instead of sleeping.
“Noted.” Rook slung the satchel over his shoulder and flexed his wings. His shoulders already felt sore. Not the best way to start a journey. “I’ll start searching for their ship on the eastern coast of Terradrin. I’ll try not to do anything foolish in the process.” He was doing something foolish just by volunteering to fly solo across the continent, but he kept that to himself as he pushed open the door and stepped into the frigid air.
The golden sunrise sparkled over crystalized frost coating every surface. Rook inhaled, savoring the feel of cold air filling his lungs. A surge of energy pulsed through his blood as he unfurled his wings in the dawn.
It was going to be a difficult flight, but he was born to do this. He’d always felt more at home in the clouds than on land. He looked back over his shoulder one last time, taking in the sight of Aurelia standing in the doorway with an expression of concern painted across her face. Oddly enough, the vulnerable conversation he’d shared with her last night had armored him with strength. Though his body was weakening with every passing day, he felt more confident now than he’d felt in a long time. Where Raven had criticized his vulnerability in the past, citing his empathy as a weakness, Aurelia had proven it was a strength.
“Be safe.”
He gave her a short nod and launched into the air.