Chapter 80
The world doesn’t change…It shatters.
I open my eyes to everything I once knew fracturing like stained glass—turning to prismatic dust of a thousand colors.
And then the artist’s skilled hand renders it in a different way.
Everything is twisted, shifted, and reassembled.
It is a force beyond my comprehension. Seams invisible to mortal eyes are ripped open and rearranged.
There is a madness to it.
Yet it is also eye-wateringly glorious.
My mind cannot fathom this power, and yet I can feel it. I can feel my will bending the world. One heartbeat I’m at the font of the World, and the next I am elsewhere.
I draw in a shaky breath that tastes like stardust on a cold winter’s night.
Colors bloom around me like paint dripped into water.
I turn, watching the horizon curve slightly different.
The mountains I remember aren’t quite in their same positions.
The peak where the Stone Citadel was toppled is restored.
Sunlight gleams upon the gilded embellishments of what I knew as Arcana Academy, which now stands as regal as a palace.
Embellishments that I can only assume were always there but covered with years of grime.
Forgotten. Pushed aside by Naethor’s will.
The academy itself looks like one of the golden Majors that rendered this world. An homage to the power it contains.
It’s being rebuilt around me, stone by stone. Rooms form, hallways connect. The city and sea are blocked from view as I am encapsulated in a new construct.
Incense chokes the air as nobility gather in the castle’s main hall.
Nearly seventy chairs have been set out for High Lords and Ladies and other high-ranking nobles to bear witness to a ceremony.
Their distant murmurs quiet to a hum before vanishing completely as the last of reality settles into its new form—walls closing around me.
The weight of the ceremonial robes I’m now in is nearly smothering. I pick at where the lace itches my skin. It’s as if a thousand tiny bugs crawl all over me. No matter how hard I try, I can’t get comfortable.
For the first time, the clothes Kaelis has offered me don’t quite fit. The thought is rogue, as if it’s natural for me to have it, and yet also inserted by an unseen force. Unease gnaws at my stomach and hollows it out, leaving room only for churning bile.
It feels like waking from a dream. You’re somewhere you should recognize, yet it seems distorted. Nothing is quite where you remember.
I turn. The room is small, for preparations only.
I know it is not far from the main hall.
My head aches as the combined weight of the knowledge of two worlds threatens to split it in two.
But an unseen hand seems to silently relieve the pressure, as if forcing me to settle into this new shape and accept it as how it’s always been.
To not try too hard to remember things as they were, even if I can.
Kaelis stands in front of a mirror, adjusting his robes.
The coronation will be beneath the eyes of the World, I vaguely remember him saying, even though I know he’s never spoken those words to me. A whole history is still being written across my mind—things that happened in this world that I would know.
“Kaelis?” I say softly.
He turns, and I freeze. It’s him. It’s undeniably him. And yet…There’s something about his eyes that makes me feel like I’ve never seen them before. His stare pierces right through me. Void of the warmth I’ve come to know from him. He offers a brief smile that feels completely forced.
“Do you…do you know me?” I whisper.
“What?” The smile falls to confusion. “You are my wife, of course I do. Are you ready?”
“Do you know what just happened?” I take a step closer.
The furrow in his brow deepens. He looks me over top to bottom. “Did something happen with your robes?”
“I…” Words catch in my throat, choking me. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t remember.
I cross to him and grab his long robe. He tenses, not moving. I press my forehead to his chest and draw a shuddering breath.
“What is it?” His hands fall to my shoulders in a weak attempt at comfort. Hold me, I barely resist begging, let me know you’re still there. “Don’t tell me you’re nervous now?”
“No, no.” I shake my head. “I just…” I look up at him and search his face to find some trace of the man I once knew, but there’s none there. Cupping his cheek gently, I bring his mouth to mine. He obliges. Not reaches for me. Not kisses me as though I am the very air he needs to live. Obliges.
Do you not love me as you did in the world I surrendered? I can’t bear to ask. Tears sting my eyes. What have I done?
Breathe, Clara, I command myself. Kaelis would love me in every world. He swore it, and I will believe nothing different.
I’ve been here for only seconds, and I am disoriented. Everything will be all right once it all settles into place. Maybe he does remember, but his mind is still spinning, too. Maybe…
“Now, are you ready?” he asks.
“Yes.” Though I feel like I barely know what I’m agreeing to.
“Good. I will see you out there,” he says as he pulls away and leaves through the door.
A cold shiver trickles down my spine. It was like kissing a stranger.
I cross to a small table perched before the mirror Kaelis was using to get ready.
A familiar face looks back at me. Sophie Veillgar is gone, and Clara Chevalyer is before me.
My hair is a bit longer than it was my first year in the academy but shorter than it was with Sophie’s face.
It’s right at my shoulders—where I used to wear it.
I close my crimson eyes, heaving a sigh and hanging my head.
Give it a few days. A few hours. You’ll start to feel better, I tell myself. The best thing I can do is settle into this world. This is how things should’ve been so it will all be all right.
Steeling myself, I head down the hallway. I wait at another door that leads to the main hall, listening. Most of Kaelis’s words are muffled, but I don’t miss the moment he says, “…and my queen.”
I enter, and all heads turn my way.
The chairs are set up in a circle in the room.
It’s split in half by a walkway that stretches from the main entry of the castle to the door I just emerged from.
Lords and ladies occupy every seat—the rulers of the noble clans and many nobles just beneath them in rank.
The way they look at me with reverence and loathing almost has me wanting to run.
I’ve been so wrapped up by this idea that Kaelis and I were destined to rule that I never really gave much consideration to if I even wanted it. Or how others might feel about it.
If it was my destiny, then of course I would, right? Of course everyone would adore me as their queen.
How pathetic and childish I was to even think it.
It’s too late to run now. Kaelis stares at me expectantly. Want this or not, it is what I have—what I bent the world for. And I have him. I have the power to change things the way I want. I’ll be a queen, after all. I can build my dream world with decrees and laws. How could I want anything more?
Crossing, I scan for Arina or Thal, but find neither. I come to a halt in the very center of the room, at Kaelis’s side. He collects a beautiful crown, custom-made just for me with a sapphire that I last saw set into the ring he proposed to me with, and settles it upon my brow.
“With this,” he says, “the world is at long last set to rights. The traitor Naethor has been ended.” Kaelis turns to the gathered nobles.
My mouth parts, and for a second, I think he’s remembered.
“Long ago, there was a great war among the noble clans. At such time, they’d fashioned themselves as kings and queens.
Our land was torn apart by petty feuds, much like the tiny kingdoms beyond our borders.
It was an endless struggle in which no real power was gained.
Fragmented resources. Arcanists treated like tools.
A time of chaos. But one rose from the madness—one thrived in it.
One who was destined to rule. My mother, Elari Revisan. ”
Kaelis utters his late mother’s name with such longing—such admiration. There’s a desperation there, too. Something that has my heart knotting for him…but also worry igniting.
“But the traitor King Naethor killed her in cold blood. He bedded her to take her powers, using his own ingenuity to woo her and many who are here among us—buying those who were not with his machines.”
The mechanical mill. It was—is real, in this world. The history is solidifying for me—the history of the world I now live in. The world I made is similar to what I knew, yet altered ever so slightly. Revised histories are coming into clarity with near-sickening speed.
“We have ended his stolen reign and now set things to rights. She was your true queen, and I am her sole heir.” He stands a little taller.
The nobles move from their chairs at the indirect command and slowly, almost begrudgingly, drop to a knee. A few are faster than others. I scan the faces, looking for the Ventalls. They’re not here, along with a handful of others I would’ve expected to see. Why?
These were the traitors, a voice that is my own but not reminds me.
“With the kingdom in my hands,” Kaelis says, “I will ensure that never again will there be another clan war. Never again will I, or my family, suffer treason.” His voice drops, and a shadow crosses over his expression.
The lanterns hung throughout the room seem to dim. “Never again.”
Without warning, every lantern flickers, extinguishes for a blink, and reignites with violent lilac flames, casting the room in a sickening glow. I look to Kaelis for some kind of clarity.
He’s not the man I recognize. The miasma of shadow is back, layered atop him.
His features seem distorted, as though I’m looking through a fog.
There’s something sharper to him. More ominous.
And everyone else sees it, too. The atmosphere in the room changes.
Some people rise to their feet. But no one speaks. Our collective breaths are held.
Then the first scream shatters the silence.
No one has time to react before a tongue of purple flame lashes out from one of the lanterns, hitting the High Lord of Clan Chariot.
He writhes for a moment and then goes completely still.
His body is consumed from the inside out with living shadow before it disappears entirely.
They scramble. Cards are cast in Kaelis’s and my direction, but they don’t reach us. They burn in midair, consumed by this terrible power. Some reach for weapons. One tries to race toward us.
“Kaelis!” I grab his hand, my right arm stinging at the touch.
But he doesn’t even look my way. The wicked satisfaction in his eyes has me releasing him, staggering back.
I reach for my own deck, but I can’t bring myself to draw a card.
I can’t bring myself to attack. I’m too confused.
Reeling. “Stop. Stop! You’re killing them! ”
His eyes swing my way, and he has an easy, almost serene smile, as though this is what he’s been waiting for all along. “I am doing this for us.”
“I don’t want this,” I plead. His voice is vaguely familiar, like a nightmare come to life. A whisper from my dreams months ago.
Kaelis’s hand is on my cheek, almost a little too forcefully. The way his fingers dig into my scalp isn’t him. For a second, I think he’s about to kiss me, and my body rejects the notion violently.
“This is what you wanted, Clara. A fresh start, a new world—our world.”
Everything goes painfully still. Silence is the only companion of the dead. A room full of nearly seventy people is now a mass grave. I am numb in my horror.
“What have you done?” I stagger backward, pulling from him. Kaelis stands tall. Eyes gleaming with pride.
“I have begun our glorious conquest over the world itself. Now we finish what I started.” He stands with both feet planted firm, shoulders even and back straight with pride.
In my terror, I nearly miss it. But the dim yet persistent lamplight casts an odd shadow off him.
It extends from him only on one side. As though the shadow itself is trying to get away.
The figure is blown up unnaturally large on the wall behind him, overtaking the sculpture of the World looming over the main doors of the castle.
The figure in profile is mid-step. It’s so clear that it can’t be denied.
Yet I’ve no idea what it means. Who the man standing before me even is.
Metallic panic fills my mouth. My breath shudders. I cast the World. I did this…But what, exactly, have I done?
A laugh howls raw and ominous delight in the distance of my mind. The figure in Kaelis’s shadow is undeniable.
The Fool.