Chapter 33 Rae
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
RAE
The fury on the king’s face is chilling. Calling Athdara his pet is a calculated insult, obviously meant to call Phaethon to the fore. Jai’s dark eyes are narrowed on the king.
Waiting for more.
But the king doesn’t offer more answers or threats. He calls his guards to grab Jai.
And when the guards grab him, true to his word, he doesn’t fight them.
I want him to fight them, to raise his shadows and send them to swallow everyone. I can’t believe the king would do this.
And why can’t you? Because there were moments you thought you saw a kinder side of him? Is that enough to make you think he isn’t the monster you always thought he was?
You wanted to believe it. It wasn’t true.
The guards drag Jai out of the room, the king following, flanked by more guards, and I hurry after them. Just my luck that all the injuries I’ve received are on the same leg. Lucky in my unluck, I suppose, because at least I have one hale leg to depend upon as I hurry deeper into the palace.
“Please!” I shout. “Highness. Please, let him go.”
“He needs to be taught a lesson,” the king says without turning around, “and so do you. You and he have to learn that defying my commands comes at a price.”
I grab the hem of his tunic and he stops, turning his frown on me. “You don’t have to do this. He won’t—”
“What did I command you to do? Deny him, I said. What did you do? Slept with him. I’m the one who controls the threads of fate, not you.”
“You can’t control fate,” I hiss. “And the prophecy isn’t about you.”
He laughs softly, the sound cold. “You thought you could set my plans back? That you found a way to stop me? I’ve been preparing for your arrival, for its effect on Athdara, and for the changes it would cause in my path. But my path is true, blessed by the telchin and sanctified by the augurs.”
“No.” I shake my head. “No…”
“I’m going to drag Phaethon back to the surface. Jai will succumb, give Phaethon the reins of his mind and transform into what he must become to lead me across the sky.”
“Please.” I slide down to my knees, wincing when my injured leg protests. “I beg of you. Don’t hurt Jai.” I swallow hard. “Please, Majesty.”
He is silent for the space of a few heartbeats. “Bow to me. Bow lower. Press your forehead to the ground and abase yourself.”
“Don’t,” Jai snarls, twisting in the guards’ hold. “Rae, don’t—”
A force pushes me down. The mark on my wrist burns like ice and I hiss as I bow lower. Locking my spine, I try to stop and I grit my teeth as my forehead hovers over the pavement.
I manage not to touch it.
“Now you see,” the king says. “You see who owns you.”
“You don’t own me,” I snap. “And love isn’t about ownership.”
“For every time you defy me,” he says softly, “I will add ten lashes to his back. Consider that.”
Shit.
“You believe in fate and prophecy,” I say, laboriously, inch by inch straightening my spine. “Don’t you?”
“The prophecy is in my favor. And my mark on you is unbreakable. So beg all you want. It changes nothing. It means nothing to me. I’ll get what I want in the end.”
“It means nothing.” I’d thought that when Jai had first kissed me, and I’d been wrong. It triggered an avalanche, it changed everything.
And this… this action will change everything once again. Every move in any direction changes the game.
“The time of waiting is over. Phaethon will open that gate.” Turning his back on me, he resumes walking, his guards falling into step by his sides. “I’ll break the sky open.”
The whipping post is standing in a closed courtyard that looks nothing like the king’s walled garden. It’s surrounded by balconies and covered passages supported by slender pillars. People are jostling under the arcades and lean out of the windows.
The news that the king is about to whip Athdara has spread through the palace like wildfire.
Arkin appears and grabs my arm, trying to haul me away from the post, but I dig my heels in and elbow him in the stomach. He lets out a grunt.
“Let go,” I hiss. “I’m not leaving him.”
“Lady Rae… You don’t want to be very close. You may get hurt.”
“I don’t care.” I yank my arm free of his grip and stumble back toward the post. “I don’t give a damn.”
The king is there with four of his guards, their faces unfamiliar, watching impassively as Jai is slammed against the post.
He stands there, eyes narrowed, shoulders back, wisps of his shadows twining around his legs. Furious. Defiant.
It’s killing me to see him take this stoically, knowing he is so strong, so powerful. That he could defeat the king in a duel but has to suffer this.
For me.
Because this mad king wants Jai gone and Phaethon as the permanent owner of Jai’s body and mind. Because he has decided his needs matter more than the lives of others.
Just because he has the power.
I may lose Jai. Mars. I may lose him the same day I got him back. I’m breaking into pieces and nobody can see it.
The king turns around to face the gathering crowd, the jostling, hungry-eyed fae and humans avidly watching. “You have waited a long time for this, have you not? My loyal subjects, wondering how I let this savage, this madman sit by my side, eat and drink and speak to me like an equal.”
The crowd falls silent.
“Well, for those of you not in the know, it’s not him I consider my equal but the Eosphor living inside his head!”
This elicits some murmuring and more jostling.
“And this man, this human, has crossed a line. He has committed hubris, the sin of pride. This human I collected from humble origins and elevated to the rank of general. To whom I offered a chance to be loyal to me and aid me in giving our people a new life. Therefore I tell you, my equal, my ally is not this human vessel, but the brilliant creature he has imprisoned inside him. My goal is to set him free. Set Phaethon free.”
Set him free. Holy wights. The king has lost his mind. He is the one committing hubris, the one believing he can control fate.
I step closer to the post. To Jai. He shakes his head at me.
“We are gathered here to punish the man who defies us and celebrate the Eosphor who will join us in opening the gates and returning to our world. Let us proceed.”
The king lifts a hand and the post grows branches that twine and shiver. Vines burst out of the thin soil between the cobblestones and rip through Jai’s shirt, leaving it in shreds.
Before I have time to even gasp, they wrap around Jai’s arms and legs. They jerk him against the post, slamming him against the wood, parting his legs, tying his wrists together over his head.
Putting him off-balance.
It’s indeed a spectacle. A show the king is putting on to display his power and dominance. It makes me so angry on Jai’s behalf. So scared.
Jeering from the windows draws my attention for a split second. I see familiar faces.
Neere is grinning, leaning far out of a window. Other fae women point and cover their mouths. Not everyone is happy with Jai’s punishment. Many—both women and men, both fae and human—look sad and scared.
I think I see Mera and Amaryll—but then I also think I see Axwick, which can’t be real, since he died in the second trial.
I think I see my brother’s face.
My mind is playing tricks on me. Too much panic and fear, too many revelations crammed in the space of a day and a night.
Then I see Tru and I flinch, remembering his face as he pushed me off that balcony. Dizziness hits me, a sense of disorientation. My body aches in a million places, burning where the poison of the sea serpent got me, just above where the snakes bit me in the first trial.
He was trying to protect Jai, I remind myself. Wouldn’t I have done the same? Sometimes you tell yourself you’d never go for blood, but when the time comes, you’d do anything to protect those you love.
And still I can’t help the pounding of my heart and the trickle of fear in my veins, though it pales in the face of my worry for Jai.
“Let’s start with twenty-four lashes.” The king gestures and a burly man enters the yard, the whip coiled in his hand. A human.
He bows and snaps the whip, but all my attention is on Jai.
“Rae,” he says. Just my name, but the sound holds so much emotion my eyes prickle.
“I’m here.”
“You should run away. Please, run away from here and save yourself.”
“I can’t do that.”
He sighs. “Then close your eyes, makhair, and close your mind to me. I don’t want you to see or feel this.”
But I do. I want to feel everything he does. I don’t want to be spared.
“I’m here,” I repeat. “Right here. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I know,” he says softly.
His dark eyes flash with those streaks of gray I’ve seen in them before. Now I know he’s Mars, I wonder if the true color of his eyes is showing through the shadows. Velvet black or pale gray, they are arrows through my soul every time he looks at me.
When the first lash falls, his body jerks and I gasp.
“If you won’t close your mind,” he says, “you will be hurt. Please.”
“No.”
“Phaethon may surface and drive you craz—” His body jerks again.
Another lash has fallen.
And another follows it.
My back stings. It reminds me of the burn of poison. Pain is poison. As more lashes fall, whispers fill my head. I know I’m getting echoes of Phaethon’s voice speaking to Jai. I don’t understand the words. They slither inside my mind.
How many lashes?
Twenty-four, the number of humans collected and brought here to be fodder for the fish and the Gods.
Twenty-four humans whom Jai rounded up and accompanied to the palace.
The symbolism can’t be lost on anyone watching. The king’s goal is achieved. It screams, This man only works for me. He isn’t my equal or a good person. This is your reminder of that fact.
“Stop!” I scream, my power rising, my voice warping. “Stop now!”
The flagellator hesitates, his arm arrested mid-air. I struggle to funnel my power, but out of the water, still weak from having almost died, my mind tearing me in all different directions, I’m not sure I can stop this nightmare from unfolding.