Chapter 21 Rae
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
RAE
“What was that?” I whisper, rubbing at my throat, as the king pulls me along dark passages. The guards hurry after us, lighting sconces on the walls. “Why did the shadows hurt me when they hurt you? Why is the mark doing that?”
He doesn’t reply. Doesn’t bother to explain.
He doesn’t need to. The truth is inescapable. He has bound me to his own life and I’ll feel any pain he feels.
The problem is… betrothal marks don’t work that way. Shouldn’t work that way. One should hear echoes of thoughts, feel echoes of feelings, feel splinters of pain, but not this. Not this cruel tether.
And Mars… I didn’t expect him to use and abuse me like this. The betrayal chokes me.
I want to ask if he’ll have Jai hanged for trying to kill him, but he can’t, can he? Sweat beads on my forehead. It runs down my neck. I feel cold at the thought.
But no, not possible. The ancient laws of the tournament say that Jai has to fight in all three trials or die in them.
The king can’t get rid of him until the tournament is over, and even then…
if he needs Phaethon to open the gates, then he can’t get rid of Jai at all, unless Phaethon can jump to another body, another mind…
Is it possible? Would anyone else be strong enough mentally and physically to contain the strongest Eosphor? The king would have found another vessel, if that were the case.
Gods, why can’t I think of the king as Mars?
It’s Mars.
Mars.
I’d like for him to take my hand as we hurry through the palace. Or at least slow down to match my pace. My feet may not hurt like they used to at first, but after cutting up the soles of my feet in the first trial and the snake poison in my leg, I’m not that fast.
Why is he doing this? And why does my heart feel like it’s bleeding? The awe I’d felt when I realized it was him is starting to dim, and yet how can I forget about my first love?
I jog to reach the king, acutely aware of the presence of the guards behind us. “About Athdara…”
“He’s jealous,” the king says, his eyes glittering like the jewels set in his tall crown.
“What? Jealous?”
“It’s understandable.”
I frown. “I don’t… It doesn’t matter. He said you stole from him… what did he mean?”
“He is a disturbed man. He makes up stories about his past because he doesn’t remember it.”
“He doesn’t remember… It’s true, then.”
“I don’t… recall everything about the past.” Jai had said that.
He never told me any stories about his past, real or made up. Why would he? We haven’t had much time together, other than running for our lives or getting off.
And the last thought warms up my neck, bringing back not only images but also sensations, and that feeling of coming home—
“We have to talk,” the king says, turning a corner, leaving me once more to hurry after him, his guards following us.
“Of course we do,” I rush to agree. “Why did you put such a mark on me? What are you trying to achieve?”
“Let us not speak of this in the corridors of the palace,” he says. A reasonable request, I suppose. “Follow me.”
He strides on and stops in front of a set of bronze double doors inlaid with gems, forming symbols. Before I have the time to admire them more, he opens them with a mighty shove and enters, his pale hair billowing behind him.
“Is this another part of your hidden apartments?” I ask as I step inside, “or a…” My breath catches. “A library?”
By the sleeping Gods…
Shelves that stretch from the floor to the two-story-high ceiling, a skylight of glass and filigree bronze making up the roof.
A rolling ladder stands on one side. The shelves are made of dark mahogany that match the long table and chairs standing on one side.
On the other side is a fireplace and a set of comfy-looking armchairs.
“This is the Sacred Palace library,” he says. “Much smaller than the one at the Royal State Palace which contains the knowledge of many worlds.”
“A small one? The other one is bigger?”
“It is,” he confirms.
Be still my heart. We need to talk. But libraries make me weak. I haven’t been inside one… since I was alive.
I walk over to the nearest shelves and look up lovingly at all the colorful spines with their curling calligraphy and stamps from old royal printer houses, from the time before the fae arrived in our world.
Looks like you can kill a girl but you can’t kill her love of reading.
For a moment forgetting everything else—the shadows and the icy mist, the mark that almost killed me, the shuttered expression in Jai’s eyes before he walked out—I set out to explore the shelves. I can’t help it. I have to take a quick look.
It’s like escaping into sleep and dreams. My mind needs this. It did before, and it does now. After I’m truly gone from this world, my spirit will probably haunt a library somewhere and be happy.
“You like books.” He says it as an observation, but as the silence stretches, I realize it’s a question.
Doesn’t he know already?
“I used to love books,” I whisper. “I told you about our library. About my favorite book.”
He says nothing.
“Did you establish a new printer?” I ask absently as I browse the shelves. “Is it at the new capital in—”
“We don’t have time to produce new books. We collect the books that offer knowledge about the gates, the Eosphors, the dragons, and the other worlds. It is our mission to discover how to reconnect the worlds.”
I turn to stare at him. “No novels? No romances? No great adventures? All these books… they only contain stuffy information about the four topics that interest you?”
“You sound surprised.”
“Of course I’m surprised. Back when I knew you, you loved stories.
We talked about myths and fairytales and long serial novels written in the days of yore.
You said you had discovered the Tale of the Serpent that Swallowed its Tail and were fascinated.
You said your favorite story ever was the Book of the Maze and the—”
“Stop trying to return to the past,” he says softly, but there is a new hardness to his voice. “This is the present.”
Shit. He’s right. I’m trying to go back in time, but time doesn’t turn back, just like Jai said. Time isn’t a tide, not for us. It’s a path leading to a cliff and there’s no telling what comes after.
“I just wanted to know what happened to you,” I say, hating how my voice grows small. “Why I was told you died. Why—?”
“A misunderstanding.”
I frown. “Misunderstanding? How can anyone misunderstand something like that? And why didn’t you tell me you were fae? And the heir to the throne?”
“I had to keep it a secret. Nobody would have approved of me courting a human girl.”
Courting. That was what he’d done, wasn’t it? But the word feels too shallow for what we used to have. Soulmates. That’s what we were.
And these half-answers don’t satisfy the ache in me. I observe his handsome face and try to find the boy I loved there. His features have grown harsher, sharper. I barely recognize him.
“What do you want with me?” I whisper.
“I want you to help Athdara find his true power. To help Phaethon remember what he lost and what he can do.”
“But Athdara is controlling him.”
“Barely.”
“I—”
“Remember the prophecy. When the old dragon falls through the sky and a soul thought lost returns to life, watch for the signs in the shifting stars: a new order will come. He has a name written on his chest. She has an eye on her back. The dragon will stand on the sand of the seashore, as the vault of the sky opens to another world and—”
“The Pillar will slow its endless rotation,” I whisper, “the gates will open to great exultation, behold, behold! The dead will return. Return changed but the same, in glory reborn.”
“Yes.”
“But what does it all mean?” I ask, frustrated. “And why do you care about the dead returning? I thought you wanted to cross back to your world.”
“Exactly.”
“You speak as if… as if you’re dead.”
“Crossing the gates changes you.”
More half-answers.
“And what do you need me for? Why put this mark on me, why declare me your beloved in front of everyone and when you’re with me you only speak of prophecies and gates?”
“Who is Athdara, really?” he asks, and I sigh, defeated. “How come he has Phaethon in him? History says that only one man ever merged with the great Eosphor Astar, the great king Phaethon, but then…”
“The dragonking Marsyas swallowed him.”
He turns his narrowed gaze on me. “How do you know that? Wait, don’t tell me… The telchin told you the story.”
“I didn’t realize it was a secret. Yes, he told me the story.”
“… good. Well, we don’t know what happened to Phaethon between the last battle and now.”
“How did you find Athdara? How did you know he was so powerful?”
“Oh.” The king waves a narrow hand as he walks to the window. “He called a dragon to him. The villagers talked. Rumors reached me.”
“A drak?”
“Oh no. I wouldn’t have much bothered with that. No, he called down a Great Dara.”
“Really?”
“Amazing, I know. Nobody has ever managed to call down one of the great dragons in an age. And he was young. Orphaned. The mere act of calling the dara almost killed him. I plucked him like a rose and brought him to my court. He went insane for a while as Phaethon fully awoke in his mind, but I managed to restore him. The problem is… he is holding Phaethon’s power back.
I do understand that he is afraid to lose himself in Phaethon, and that is why he accepted my aid.
” He tsks. “Phaethon alone cannot open the gates. Not only does he need a body and a mind to work with, but the shadow power seems… linked somehow to Phaethon’s command of dragons and gates. ”
“A power coming from darkness and death.”
“Yes.” He nods, tapping his fingers on the windowsill. “Yes, exactly. They are bound together. I don’t know if Jai could live without Phaethon, either.”
A pain seizes my chest, even as I’m relieved to hear confirmation that the king wouldn’t kill Jai. I realize that deep inside I’d hoped there was a way to yank Phaethon out of Jai and…