Chapter Twenty-Three
We’re back in the palace before it hits me. The weight of what just happened.
It doesn’t come immediately. My thoughts blur through the moments that follow.
They blur through the triumphant march down the streets of Faros, through the ringing of the temple bells and the singing of the people, through the speech that Ronan gives on the palace steps, declaring victory in battle but reminding the city that the war is far from over.
They coalesce into a dull hum as we enter the palace, as our armor is taken from us, as we walk down the stairs to the baths, my movements as automatic as they were in the fight.
Only when we’re alone there in the cave, the torchlights flickering in the quiet darkness, do I really feel it. The gravity of it all, the battle and the consequences and the fact that we’re still alive, still here, still breathing.
I feel the terror and the grief and the sick regret, feel the bodies fall to the ground beside me, behind me, in front of me. Some at my hands, at the end of my blade, under the cover of my shadow. I collapse into sobs, my hands reaching for the ground. I feel dirty and tainted and so, so alone.
And then Ronan’s hands are pulling me to him. He’s taking me into his arms and holding me tight. He’s brushing the tears from my eyes and pressing soft kisses to my head, to my hair.
He holds me like that, my body small against him. He says nothing, but he touches me with his light, stroking my back and letting it soothe me, letting it comfort me until I relax against him.
Then he guides me into the bath and washes the blood from my body. My own blood, the blood of others. He washes the sweat from my hair, the dirt from under my nails.
And then, when I am finally clean, he joins me in the bath, kissing me softly. “This is what I wanted to protect you from.”
“Does it get easier?” I ask. I know there’s more of this to come.
He sighs, looking over his shoulder at the cave walls.
When he answers, his voice is miles away.
“No. But you get stronger. Or harder, maybe. I don’t know if it’s a good thing.
I don’t think we were meant to go out there and do what we did today without feeling it, no matter how just the cause may be. ”
He leans forward and pulls me to him, cradling me against him. “I would do anything to keep you from it. I would do anything so that you never have to feel this way again.”
There’s only one thing that can make that possible.
“We have to kill her, Ronan,” I say, my voice small.
“I wanted to kill her in the throne room for what she did to you, but now, after this? I don’t just want to kill her.
I need to kill her. There’s no other way to stop her.
Does that make me a monster?” Am I no better than her, really?
Am I just the same, dreaming of revenge?
“No, my darling,” he says. He presses his hands to my heart. “You looked at war in the eye and saw it for what it was. The truest evil there is. And you’re willing to sacrifice everything, even the love you have for your sister, to stop it. That doesn’t make you a monster.”
He tilts my chin up and looks me in the eye. “That makes you the strongest woman I know.”
“I heard you saw our sister today,” says Seth as I take my seat at the table.
The war council has convened once more. Though Adria has been forced to retreat, the harbor is still blockaded, and no one knows how long we have before the fighting begins again in earnest.
Still, it’s hard to focus on what lies ahead of us with the taste of victory in the air.
I’m beginning to get swept away in it myself. The wine is flowing freely, a party raging loudly in the ballroom down the hall and a hundred more in the streets. It’s hard not to be taken by the city’s immense relief, short-lived though it may be.
But as pleased as everyone is, no one is as pleased with themselves as my brother.
He accepts the doting attention of the council with an almost sickening amount of gratitude, relishing their praise without the least amount of shame, without any guilt for being the cause of at least half of their grief up until now.
The only one who doesn’t share in the adulation is Taran. He joins us late after checking on Elia in the infirmary, bringing good news about her recovery but nothing but icy disdain for my brother’s good humor.
“Come on, General. You can go back to cleaning his boots now.” He gestures to Ronan, and I stand to defend him, to defend them both from my brother’s buffoonery, but Ronan takes my hand, holding me down. “No more battlefields for you,” continues Seth. “You can’t complain about that.”
“The war isn’t over,” Taran whispers angrily, trying not to create a scene. “If you could stop your gloating for five minutes, we might be able to begin making plans for what comes next.”
“What comes next? What comes next is you give Felix a share of the gold profits to fuck off or even more to join your side, then you crush Adria when she comes back in the spring with the forces you’ve raised in the interim.
Hell, you can bring the fight to her if you want by then, if I’m still here to lead the charge. ”
A vein throbs on Taran’s temple. “To lead the charge. To lead the charge? You have never led any charge in your damn life! You are not a hero.” His voice echoes in the silence, the conversation at the table lulling at just the wrong moment.
“You are the laziest, most selfish, most detestable person I have ever had the displeasure of meeting, and if his majesty has any sense, now that you’re no longer needed, he’ll put you on the first boat home. ”
Oh, thank the gods. It’s such a relief hearing Taran stand his ground against Seth’s bullshit. He’s terribly embarrassed by his outburst, excusing himself from the table to get another drink, but I give him a nod of encouragement as he goes.
Seth is unaffected by Taran’s criticism or seemingly anything at all. Even Ronan seems content to let him have his moment.
But Ronan is troubled about something, and I can tell from the way he looks around the table that it’s all the unfamiliar faces in the room.
He knows them well, of course, but Cyrus’s deception has forced him to bring in the next tier down of advisors, and it’s making him nervous at such a critical juncture.
“No Quinn?” I ask during another lull.
“She refused,” says Ronan, his shoulders shrugging.
“I’ll talk to her.” I excuse myself—I’m not needed to discuss naval strategy anyway.
I pass the torch in the hall—the torch—and it reaches out for me. Something tingles in the back of my mind as I try to walk away from it, urging me back to it.
It wants me to take it.
I’ve passed it several times since we brought it here, and although it has always given me a comforting acknowledgment, it has never reached out like this to me before. Not since the first time, when I found it.
We don’t know what it is, not really, or how it works, but something in me trusts it, maybe because it seems so much like Ronan, and I trust him implicitly. For all I know, it’s truly the goddess Vayla reaching out to me, although why she chose this particular stick, I can’t really fathom.
The Codex doesn’t have any guidance on the matter that I can recall, no sections that explain what to do when the gods try to speak with you through very old sticks or any other type of inanimate object, but it does state that you should heed the word of the gods no matter the message or the messenger.
Who am I to deny their message?
I take the torch from the holder, tugging on it a little with my shadows to keep myself from burning my hand. It snaps back, annoyed with me for challenging it, but then it roars back to life in approval when I walk away with it.
The guards Ronan has sent with me are watching, so I don’t speak to it, but I send it feelings of acknowledgment, figuring it might be able to sense my moods as Ronan can.
It flickers, either in response or perhaps just from the wind.
Quinn’s chambers were once up in the eastern wing of the palace near Ronan’s, but a guard informs me they’ve been moved to the ground floor. I knock at the door, and she shouts out, “Go away, Ronan.”
“It’s Sylvie.”
There’s a long pause in which I think she’s going to tell me to go away too, but then she says, “Let her in.”
A servant greets me, leading me into an open living area. The new chambers are spacious, if a little empty, like a scaled-down version of Ronan’s if the bedchambers, dressing areas, and seating had all been condensed into one large room.
Quinn waits for me on a divan by the fireplace. A cool night breeze is blowing in through an open window, but it’s warm by the fire.
“Wine? You’ll have to serve yourself,” says Quinn, gesturing to a bottle on the table. “We’re out of the good stuff. You’ll have to drink some of our swill.”
“I’ll manage,” I say, setting the torch on the hearth and pouring myself a glass.
“What’s with the torch? Did you extinguish all the candles again?” Quinn asks, eyes mischievous.
My cheeks heat. “Who told you?”
“Taran. Well, he didn’t tell me, per se, but his denial was weak.”
“Traitor.” I swirl my wine around in the glass as Quinn chuckles.
“He’s been in a mood lately.”
“Taran?”
“All of them, really. The collective ‘him.’ Men really can’t handle their wars.”
I say nothing to this. Having just gotten a taste for war, I can’t say I blame them for reacting poorly to it.
“But yes, Taran. Your brother has truly gotten under his skin. And into other places in his body as well.”
I nearly spit. “What? Please don’t tell me—”
Quinn laughs loudly, throwing her head back. “I know he’s your brother, but you can’t expect him to be celibate. Not with a body like that.”
“Quinn.”
“I’m just saying. Taran’s got it bad. I’ve never seen him this worked up.”
I think of Taran’s recent outburst in the library. “Ronan thinks so too, but I’m not sure. He seems to genuinely hate Seth.”
“Remember what I said about the people who hate you? Well, it goes for the people that you hate too. There’s no one hotter.”
“Is everyone hot to you right now then?”
She grins, tilting her glass to me. “Everyone is always hot to me. Well, most people at least. But more people than usual now, I guess.” She sighs, setting down her wine and shifting her unmoving legs with her hands. “Did Ronan send you to bring me around?”
“No, I offered. I couldn’t take much more battle talk. And I wanted to see if you’re alright. I know things have been hard.”
“Understatement of the century.” She groans and throws her head back against the couch, looking at the ceiling.
“I don’t know why I even defended what Father did.
I always knew he didn’t trust Ronan, but I never thought he’d act against him so brazenly.
I still don’t understand it. Alchemy, magic, relics.
It all seems so silly and unimportant in the face of war.
Maybe if Ronan was different, maybe if he was open to some of the more questionable methods, it would have mattered, but he was never going to be that man. ”
“Which is why Zara wanted him dead,” I remind her. “Are you certain your father didn’t reach the same conclusion?”
“I’m not certain of that, no. He’s never cared for Ronan, never understood our friendship.
But it changed during the Festival. I thought maybe the success of everything had finally won his respect, but now?
Maybe it was all part of his plan to help Zara.
Maybe his interest in Ronan was really more of a way to say goodbye to him. ”
“Have you asked him? What did he ask about Ronan?”
Quinn shakes her head. “I don’t know. He wanted to know where Ronan had travelled. If I remembered him going to Nithyria at all, if he ever talked about his time there.”
What would it matter to Cyrus if Ronan had been to Nithyria?
“Did he somehow know the war was coming? Did Typhon know and tip him off?”
“Typhon definitely didn’t know. The only thing I can think is that it has to do with that list of relics. He found it and gave it to me to give to Ronan. It’s over on that table.” She gestures to a desk, and I retrieve a scrap of paper.
It’s parchment again, a thick, old piece of animal skin that has been folded and unfolded many times.
Torch of Vayla – Port Limin Cathedral (stolen)
Sickle of Vahlo – Minar, last seen circa 4th century
Trident of Arnan – Enez Islands. Irretrievable
Golden Arrow of Kerensa – ?? Possibly purely myth
Sword of Sai – Melted down and reforged ~year 250
“The sickle is in Minar, or it was once. Ronan and I had a dream that had a sickle in it. At least, he thinks it was a sickle. I didn’t see it.”
“You’re sharing dreams now?”
“Just the one.” I tell her about it, and she’s a bit disappointed that it isn’t a sexy dream.
“I mean, it’s all very weird and spooky, but I still don’t really see why it matters.”
“Could you ask your father? I’m convinced there’s more that he knows, but I don’t know if he’ll tell us. I’m not sure Ronan is going to be in any mood to hear him out any time soon, even if he does.”
“I’ll ask him tomorrow.”
Quinn seems like she’s ready for me to go, our business now concluded, but I can’t help but try to offer her someone to talk to, as much as I know that she still hates me. “Are you alright? Not just about your father, but about. You know.”
“My stupid fucking legs? No, I’m very much not alright. But I’m dealing with it—”
She’s interrupted by a pounding knock on the door, so loud it shakes on its hinges.
Quinn turns suddenly, trying to see what’s going on. “What the fuck?”
“Open up!” shouts an unfamiliar voice.
I look at Quinn in terror. “I don’t think we should—”
“OPEN UP NOW! The city is under attack!”