Chapter 28
Melia
Amron picked her up and ran through the fiery nightmare towards the exit.
Melia thrashed and sobbed, trying to break his steely grip, ready to burn alive just to avoid being touched by him.
A violent bout of grief for Ferisa clutched her chest—not for the woman who lay in the courtyard filled with burning rubble, lit by the blaze she’d kindled, but for Ferisa as she had been when there was no one else but the two of them.
For the hope she’d had, that the worst of her father’s plans could still be undone.
For herself, who’d opened her heart just once, only to be betrayed.
She beat her fists on Amron’s chest, sobbing without tears in the infernal heat, feeling her hair crackle.
He stumbled, wheezing, then ran on into the thick smoke under the arch.
They shot out of the burning embassy as something crashed behind them.
Outside, in the gathering darkness lit by flickering flames, no one paid any attention to them.
People were rushing, carrying buckets of water, trying to prevent the fire from spreading to the neighboring buildings and swallowing the whole street.
Amron dropped her unceremoniously as her last punch landed on his shoulder. “You should’ve told me all of it, from the beginning,” he rasped. “I would’ve helped you.”
Someone pushed a pail of water towards her, and she dipped her head in it, drinking, then poured it over her head. “Murderer,” she spat at Amron as soon as she got her voice back.
He froze, speechless.
Wild recklessness overtook Melia, the feeling she had nothing to lose. “I loved her,” she said. “I would’ve left you for her in a heartbeat. Do you understand that?”
Water plastered his hair to his forehead, covering his singed brows; his lips were chapped, the skin peeling off. He swayed, his usual cool poise shattering. She aimed to hurt him, but his eyes only looked exasperated.
“Do you think I care about that?” He grabbed her shoulders and shook her.
“How was that more important than a conspiracy to burn this kingdom to ashes? Melia, we’ll all be dead before dawn if this doesn’t stop now.
” He shuddered and removed his hands from Melia’s shoulders, taking a step backwards.
His eyes traveled the length of her, hard and unforgiving.
“It’s useless, you’ll never be on my side.
” He shook his head as a shadow of dejection ran across his face.
Then he turned on his heel and pushed his way into the crowd.
She didn’t follow.
She knew, she knew Ferisa wouldn’t have stopped until one of them was dead. She had been beyond reason, beyond any leverage Melia had once had on her. It didn’t matter, though. The threads that bound them were stronger than betrayal, stronger than death.
She pushed through the crowd in the opposite direction, wishing to be as far away as possible from Amron, from the embassy, from the flames that devoured Ferisa.
Sobs raked her body as she ran, yet nobody paid any attention to her.
She was just another distressed, grieving woman on the streets of a bleeding city.
Abia was a battlefield tonight; the stage her father had set, and she’d helped him do it. Armed people ran through the darkness, guards on horseback, mobs with knives and clubs. Someone sat bleeding in a doorway, nursing a broken arm.
As a band of king’s guards rushed down the street, she pressed herself against a house to avoid being squashed.
In the torchlight, she saw a tall man with golden hair, but it wasn’t Amron, it was his brother, shouting orders as they passed.
She pulled a rag over her face, waiting for the darkness to swallow them.
The world she knew was falling apart, and she had nowhere to go.
Curling up in some dark spot seemed like an attractive idea, and yet her body kept moving.
Out, she thought, out of here. Out of Abia, out of this damned kingdom, there had to be something more out there.
Perhaps there were ships in the port willing to sail out?
She still had her jewelry, she could pay for a passage.
She could still run away and start a new life, anonymous, free.
She pushed towards the harbor but the damned city was a maze, set to trap her like a wild animal until she threw herself at the walls, smashing her bones, bruising her flesh, bursting like an overripe fruit, bleeding over the white stones that never cared for her, a stranger, an enemy.
Tonight, all the paths led to the main square, to the chaos of fire and steel blurred by her tears.
No matter how many times she turned, her feet always took her there, a puppet on a string, propelled by a force she couldn’t fathom.
Men and their swords, her father and his hatred, the war and all its dead, a mountain of bodies, surging up into the sky.
Her mother in the crowd, her face ashen, dark curls soaked with blood, reaching out for her with a skeletal hand.
And Rovin, surrounded by blades, screaming in never-ending pain, his wound open and festering with the dark rage that fueled the conflict.
And Ferisa, finally, in that vortex of faces, still burning, her skin peeling off her charred flesh, her hair a torch, her eyes two embers in blackened sockets.
She opened her arms, inviting Melia to her fiery embrace.
Perhaps it was better this way, to perish, even if it meant endless torment. At least she wouldn’t be alone.
The desert wind, high and sharp like a woman’s wail, filled her ears, drowning the cries and the clash of steel. Ferisa, wait for me, I’m coming.
A hand gripped her shoulder and pushed her aside. “What are you doing here, stupid girl? Run home!”
She was sucked back into the crowd, nostrils filled with the stink of blood and offal.
Angry screams rose from the square, the blaze of torches painted sharp against the night sky.
Blue uniforms of the king’s guard, black and red Elmarrans, and the sea of other people, fighting without any semblance of strategy.
The chaos boiled before the main gate. Melia tried to turn, but the suffocating press of bodies pushed her towards the fire and the blades.
She desperately elbowed the people around her to get a breath of fresh air, moving forward, forward.
The mass was a live, brainless, writhing thing.
Where one body was pushed away, two sprang up to replace it, closing all escape routes.
There was no turning back now, only plowing on, towards the fires, the clamor, the voices.
The golden head—Amril again—screaming something, his voice swallowed by the noise.
And a man in black armor, towering above the crowd.
She knew him.
It was all coming together now, the pieces of the nightmare finally forming a picture. Her father, on a horse, in front of the palace, torchlight on his face like the blaze of doom.
She pressed through the throng, oblivious to the pushing and punching, ignoring the pain.
“Clear the palace of the Seragian traitors,” Roderi of Elmar cried while his men attacked the king’s guard. The predator posing as a defender.
The mob roared, at least those who could hear him. The others were scrambling in the dark, punching, stabbing, getting trampled. Locked in a dance with Death, even though they didn’t recognize the tune.
“We’ll never let the Seragians take the kingdom,” the Black Lord shouted. He raised his hand towards the group of king’s guards surrounded by the mob, Amril among them. “Where is the king? What happened to him? Have you conspired with the emperor to put his daughter on the throne?”
“No!” Amril cried, but his words were swallowed by the furious roar.
“When you wake up tomorrow, you won’t have an Amrian king ruling you, but that Seragian wench, sent by her father to bring you to heel.”
If Melia could reach her father, what would she do?
The tide of bodies lifted her and spat her paces away from the Black Lord. All you do is lie, she wanted to say to his damned armor, to his merciless eyes, to his insufferable smirk. But who would hear her, who would believe her?
“Capture the traitor!” her father ordered. “We’ll force him to open the palace gates for us and show what he’s done to the king!”
Melia cared nothing for Amril and his haughty Seragian bride; she had no compassion left for the sniggering courtiers and cruel ladies, for Amron’s sister with her scathing words and his cold, cold mother.
The palace was nothing but a place of torment and sorrow for her, a stillborn life that never took a single breath.
She had been nothing but miserable there.
And yet, the idea of her father getting what he wanted was unbearable: the slaughter, the endless war, the eyes of Seragia turning upon this corner of the world, its proper armies, not the starved border brigands marching over the plains of Elmar, crossing the White Mountains, driving their blades into the soft belly of the kingdom.
There was no way—no way—her father could win.
But then, he had never fought in order to win, he’d fought for the love of conflict. To feed the rage and spread the pain.
Amril disappeared beneath the wave of Elmarran guards, his men driven up against the wall, trampled by the mob, killed by her father’s lies.
“Tear down the gate!” her father roared.
Melia looked up to the top of the wall, to the palace roof lit only by the moonlight—but neither were built for defense, and if there were archers there, they didn’t want to shoot blindly into the rolling mass of people.
The sturdy iron and wood of the gate endured the pressure until someone dragged a wooden beam to the square and the men used it as a ram.
Every strike reverberated in Melia’s bones until the heavy cedar gave in.
The massive gate broke with a thundering crash and the current pulled Melia into the courtyard of the palace.
A group of guards stood in the yard, in a pool of torchlight, their swords unsheathed. Melia’s heart sank when she saw the man leading them. Amron.
“Stop!” he cried in that clear, commanding voice of his, but there was no miracle this time, no charm to hypnotize the mob, they were too far gone in their madness.
The mass hit them like a tidal wave. Melia screamed his name in horror, but her voice was swallowed by the noise. They were going to die, they were all going to die.
Somewhere, her father roared in triumph.
And Melia, the frail, hollow-boned Melia, no heavier than a straw doll, surged with the crowd, like a leaf carried by the current.
At that moment, light flared on a balcony on the second floor of the palace—a dozen people with torches stepped out. Trumpets blared, cutting through the roar and the clash of metal. A familiar tall figure appeared in the light—the unmistakable golden hair and beard, the bulk of his royal presence.
Like an explosion, awareness spread through the crowd: shouts, cries and then sudden, stunned silence as all the heads looked up. All but Melia. She turned and slipped among the unmoving bodies toward her father.
“I am alive,” the king shouted.
Roderi of Elmar pressed his lips together, an unmistakable sign of rage. Resisting the urge to duck behind the armed men and melt into the night, Melia stepped forward and caught the reins of his horse.
“There is no Seragian conspiracy,” the king cried from the balcony. “It’s all lies!”
“Father,” Melia said. “Father, listen to me.”
“Come meet the carevna,” the king said. “She had to escape the burning embassy tonight, you should go there and help put the fire out, not linger here. The palace is safe, I promise you.”
Surrounded by the king’s guard, Amril pushed through the crowd until he reached the circle of torchlight beneath the balcony. When the guards moved, Melia saw Aratea was with him, a little worse for wear. Holding her husband’s hand.
Roderi of Elmar watched the scene, his face a storm cloud.
“Father, Ferisa is dead,” Melia said, gripping his reins.
He refused to look at her. Jumping down from his saddle, he yanked the reins out of Melia’s hand and handed them over to one of his men.
“Father,” she tried again. “Please, stop this, there’s no point anymore. They know what you did.”
“Go home!” the king ordered the mob.
Everybody in the crowd was looking up, everybody but Melia and her father. And she suddenly knew where she’d seen this scene before.
An unfamiliar courtyard. The flagstones were slick with blood, the people around her pushing, fighting, crying for help in the flickering light of the burning buildings.
Amron stood before her, smeared with blood and ash, with a bemused expression on his face.
Her eyes slipped down to his hand pressing his belly, black blood pouring through his fingers, soaking into the blue silk he wore, dripping on the flags.
He opened his mouth to tell her something, but no sound came out as his legs folded and he fell.
Her father pushed forward through the crowd, and Melia ran after him.
Amron stood beside his brother and the carevna, his sword back in its scabbard. The guards were all looking up as the king addressed the crowd. The Black Lord reached beneath the folds of his cloak. He was aiming for Aratea, but Amron must have seen the movement and turned, pushing her behind him.
Too late, Amril and the guards lowered their eyes, only to see the flash of steel in the torchlight. In that moment, Melia finally caught up with her father, overtook him, threw herself before him. Before the blade.