Chapter Thirty-Nine #2
I hesitate before I approach Kira. If I’m going to have to walk away from him for the good of the world, being in Ronan’s arms for the hours of the flight back isn’t going to help matters any. Feeling him against me drives me half wild under the worst of conditions.
But now? With all of this power flowing between us? With the golden threads of fate pulling taut, tying me to him beyond all the powers of this world and the worlds beyond?
Maybe it is inevitable. Maybe we are inevitable.
Because all I know is that when he holds his hand out for me to help me up, I can’t refuse him.
I don’t want to.
It’s late by the time we land. We should take our things to the castle, but I don’t want to go there right now, not until I’ve had a chance to talk to Ronan privately.
We find the others still in the other cottage anyway, Taran still too weak to move.
“Are you going to tell us what happened?” asks Quinn as we land near the well.
“In the morning,” I say, asking her and Seth to keep guard during the night.
When the door to our cottage closes behind us, Ronan asks a similar question. “Should we…should we talk about it? Try to figure out what it all means? Maybe if we go over the papers again, it’ll be clear—”
We barely spoke on the way back. I didn’t have the energy for it, and even if I did, I didn’t know what there was to say.
“In the morning,” I say again. I’m completely exhausted, and he can barely even stand. We’re too tired to even wash before collapsing into bed.
“Can I hold you?” Ronan asks, his voice quiet.
I take his arm and drape it over me, and he curls up against me, holding me close.
It’s incredibly comforting being in his arms in spite of everything. Feeling his warmth and weight behind me, listening to him breathe. He strokes gentle circles on my stomach, his touch soothing and intimate.
And yet, as tired as I am and as comforted as I feel, I don’t fall asleep for a long time.
I lie there trying to find a way to convince myself this doesn’t have to be the end for us.
Maybe Ronan’s right, and the answers are there in all of our research. Maybe there’s a way for us to wield this power for the good of the world. Maybe the prophecy isn’t literal; the first parts of it were certainly abstract. Maybe the entire thing is meant to be taken as an allegory.
Or maybe it isn’t true at all. From our research, it’s unclear where the prophecy even originated.
Some say an oracle in the first century; others claim a vision given to Queen Julia by Vayla herself.
Ronan has never seen or spoken to Vayla, so that seems unlikely.
He doesn’t believe in the majority of what the Codex says anyway, let alone some apocrypha that was struck from every book and parchment in the world.
And yet…it’s impossible to deny the power that flows between us. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever felt, unlike anything I’ve ever heard of, even. It is extraordinary in every sense of the word.
And the dreams. If none of it is real, how could we possibly have the same dream? That must be some kind of magic.
Or maybe we’re going insane. Maybe the stress of trying to find a way to retake Faros has gotten to us, and all the time we’ve spent together has led to shared delusions—
No. I know that isn’t true. There is definitely something magical at work here, and possibly something supernatural. The question isn’t if it’s real.
The question is what it means.
In the morning, I find Ronan at the table, shuffling papers and making frantic notes, his ordinarily perfect script gone messy in his rush.
“Look at this,” he says, handing me Seth’s palimpsest.
_described by High Priestess of Vahlo Lady Postuma of House Juni as ‘shadowbound,’ a unique form of sacrilege occurring only in certain shadow-born in which the sacred order of the Codex is torn asunder, granting extraordinary powers.
A threat to the very fabric of magic and therefore the world, the shadowbound must be sought out and destroyed, regardless of royal ties. See also Queen Julia I
“That wasn’t there before.” Ronan has underlined the missing text that has been revealed, but he didn’t need to. I’ve read this piece of paper a hundred times.
“It’s not the only one. Look.” Ronan hands me one of my mother’s journals, using his light to render the original text legible:
And lo, Vayla, the giver of life, decreed that into this world would be those born with the power to end it.
For all things must end, and all must turn to shadow, even her sacred light.
In this, she joined with her lover, Vahlo, the guardian of the underworld in the holiest of the holy lands.
And they delivered their message to the prophet, ‘Let not our holy disciples fear the end, for from this night a new day will dawn. And all will be reunited in the kingdom of the gods.’
Ronan watches me reading, his eyes hopeful. “See? It says not to fear the end. It’s not about death; it’s rebirth. Transformation.”
“In the kingdom of the gods?” That doesn’t sound a lot like the world as we know it. It sounds like the underworld or the realm beyond our own where the gods dwell. “Does that mean we all have to die to get there?”
“This was recorded a hundred years after the prophet supposedly received the message. I don’t think the literal words matter as much as the point. If this was an arrangement of the gods, their ambition for the world, then who are we to fight it?”
Ronan has dark shadows under his eyes. He looks as though he’s been awake for hours, reading by candlelight. I tuck his hair back behind his ear, and he closes his eyes at my touch. “Why don’t you have a bath? I’ll make us some breakfast. We can talk about it once you’ve eaten something.”
“Sylvie.” His voice is softly urgent. He grips my hand, and I know what he’s going to ask before he asks it. “Do you believe me? Do you think I’m right, and there’s a way we can use this?” His voice chokes in a way that crushes me. “Together?”
“I—” I don’t know. “Let me read for a while. I’ll catch up to you while you bathe.”
“You first,” he says, unable to tear himself away. He’s certain there’s something on this table that will convince me. And gods, I hope he’s right.
I leave him to it while I wash the blood and soot and dirt from my body and change back into my own clothes, trying to do something with my ruined hair. Ronan hears me throw the comb into the mirror and comes to see what’s wrong.
“You can barely even tell,” he says, coming up behind me and looking at my reflection. “If you just pin it behind your ear—” He picks up a pin from the dresser and slides it in place. It’s a little clumsy, some of the hair poking out at a weird angle, but I know he means well.
I look into his hopeful eyes, sensing the fear that underpins our every interaction. Gods, I love him so much. I don’t want to hurt him.
“Sylvie, please,” he says, sensing my shift in mood. He kneels in front of my dressing stool, taking my hands in his. He strokes the ring on my left hand. The ring he gave me when he asked me to be his wife. “Just tell me what you’re thinking. I can handle it.”
“I’m thinking…” My voice catches. I look away quickly before the tears can fall. Ronan tightens his grip on my hands as my voice goes tiny and weak. “I’m thinking that I can’t let you die, Ronan. I just can’t.”
“I’m not going to die—”
“You don’t know that! You can’t know that.
Those papers in there aren’t answers. They’re guesses, rumors, superstitions.
There’s only one answer to this, and it lies with us.
In what we decide. In what we do. I don’t know what this power is or what it means, but I know what it feels like.
It doesn’t feel like rebirth. It feels like death.
And I cannot let that happen. I will not let you die. ”
“It doesn’t feel like death to me. Search my feelings, Sylvie.
” He presses my hand to his chest, and I sob when I feel his heartbeat under my fingertips.
“I’m not lying. It doesn’t feel that way to me.
Maybe it feels that way to you because of Vahlo.
It said you were Vahlo’s child. Maybe you only feel the death part of this.
” He lifts my other hand to his cheek. “But feel this. Feel me. Tell me this doesn’t feel good to you.
It doesn’t feel like death. It feels like hope. ”
I can’t tell him it doesn’t feel good to me to touch him because that would be the worst kind of lie. And the feelings he shares with me are exactly as he says. Beyond it, even. “It doesn’t feel like hope, Ronan. It feels like home.”
He kisses me then, tentative and restrained. Uncertain of my response.
I kiss him back, hard. I wrap myself around him, holding him as tight as I can, never, ever wanting to let him go.
But I know that I must, and I know he can feel it too.
“Please don’t let me go,” he says.
“Ronan.” I sigh, trying to catch my breath through my tears. “Ronan, Selara needs you. This world needs you. You’re the only one who can save it, the only one who can fix things—”
“Selara needs us. We are the ones to save it. I know it. I’ve been certain since we met. It’s meant to be us. You and me.”
Since we met. Since he felt me in the palace.
Or maybe since he felt me in my mother’s womb.
We were drawn together, destined for each other, pulled together by fate for a purpose.
For this purpose, maybe. “But what if that’s all this is?
You can’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.
What if our destiny, this prophecy, what if it’s the only reason we’re together? ”