Chapter 48
I pause at the top of the stairs to compose myself. It’s been a month since the Hellions retreated. Roiven and the others insisted I take the day to prepare instead of working on removing enchantments.
I agreed, reluctantly, since we’ve already gotten through the worst of it.
The Enchanted are all healing and have free will, even if there’s more magic to pull.
Most remain at the Tower but some have moved to the smaller hidden villages around the Wild Seas, preferring a quieter life as they heal from what the Empire put them through.
But tonight is the night I speak the pacts and become a member of the Coven of Ancients.
The large hall at the top of the mountain is dark, and empty except for one man. I smooth my dress with anxious hands and stride across the hall, toward the ramp that leads back down into the room where the coven meets.
Roiven leans against the wall at the top of the ramp, toying with something in his hands. The sun has set, and only moonlight filters through the slits in the tall ceiling overhead.
He straightens off the wall as I draw near, his orange eyes burning bright.
He’s dressed in a soft white shirt that billows off him, the lacing up the front loose to show off his chest, and black leather trousers.
And he’s holding a single clipped rose. Even after these weeks the sight of flowers still takes my breath away.
“Hello, beautiful,” he says.
“If you say so.” I shrug and look down at myself.
The silk blue dress ripples around my legs, caressing my skin with each step I take.
It's tight over my chest, hugging my muscular waist and my breasts, baring my shoulders and my arms: one living, one metal. I like the way the dress feels. I like being at a point in my life where I can wear one, without fearing it’s as silly as decorating a Hellion ship with frilly bows.
But I’m still not used to it.
“I do,” Roiven says. He tucks the rose into my hair, takes my face in both hands, and kisses me so hard my knees buckle.
“Ready, then?” I ask, trying to keep the wobble from my voice. I smooth my sweaty palms against my thighs as my heart pounds harder.
“Almost.” Roiven clears his throat and takes a step away. “I need to say something.”
“What?” I ask when he pauses.
“If you ever decide you don’t want me, we can build walls between us to block the bond. I could leave the Tower, even, so…”
I squint at him, my lips curling down. I can’t read him.
“Is this your way of saying you don’t want to be with me?”
“That will never happen. I just want you to know you have the choice. I never want to be the reason you feel backed into a corner again. You never agreed to be my wife. And with you joining the coven, I wanted to make sure you knew…”
I snort, grab his chin, and kiss him to shut him up. Roiven’s tense shoulders soften after a moment, and he pulls me close by my hips.
“Do I look like a woman who’d let herself be trapped, if she didn’t want to be?” I ask. He laughs silently, his shoulders shaking.
“No.” Roiven grins and lets go of me. “Then let’s go. I don’t want to be the reason my wife is late.” He turns and walks down the ramp ahead of me. I follow, and Roiven opens the door to the room where the Coven of Ancients meets.
I step through slowly, my breath catching. It’s brighter in here than the hall. A dozen lanterns hang off the limbs of the great gnarled tree that fills the room, glazing the branches in light and casting strange twisting shadows on the floor.
And in front of us, in a large semi-circle, wait nine witches, dressed in their finest. Roiven strides past me to join them, making ten, all that remains of the coven after the fight with the Hellions.
And I, the eleventh, slow and pause before them.
Aria hands Roiven an unlit pillar candle, like the others are all holding, and he turns to face me.
His expression is as serious and somber as the rest of them.
There’s a long moment of silence. Finally, the witch in the wheeled chair begins to speak.
“Long ago, when plague and pestilence threatened these lands, the first ancient, the gold dragon Eaanu, forged a bond with the witch Orelaya,” she says.
Her voice sounds distant and a shiver runs down my spine.
“The bond they forged made these lands safe and ensured both the witches and the ancients could continue to prosper.”
She falls silent. Torain looks up from the floor and fixes me with his green eyes.
“Over the generations,” he says, “our people have faced many threats, and so have the ancients. But we honor that first bond, and the pacts made by Eaanu and Orelaya. What was once a single bond is now a coven. What was once a single witch tonight becomes eleven, sworn to honor the ancients, to honor each other, and to protect this land—for all its inhabitants.”
My eyes roam the group of them as Torain falls silent. Aria speaks next, her eyes smiling at me.
“A bond, once forged, cannot be severed,” Aria says.
“A pact, once vowed, cannot be broken. All those who have joined the coven, since Orelaya’s time, have spoken pacts.
And now, tonight, we call on you to speak them, Caiteven, sea-witch, Hafgúa’s bonded, Queen by right of the ancient’s choice. Will you answer?”
I gulp, nod, and clear my throat.
“I will.”
“Then approach, and seal each pact with your power.”
I start on the right of the group, opposite from Roiven, my heart pounding in my chest. Avreen stands there. Tonight the warrior isn’t wearing armor. Instead, she’s wearing a black dress that clings and drapes, swirling like her shadows do whenever she moves.
I draw a deep breath and nod to her in greeting. Avreen’s face tells me nothing. She peers into my eyes, then holds her candle up.
“To speak truthfully and act fearlessly in matters of the coven.”
I reach out and summon a tiny flame to light the candle with. The edge of Avreen’s mouth tilts up in a hint of a smile, and I move to the next witch.
“To use violence only as an ends to peace,” Torain says. That one might be hard, with how I was brought up, but I don’t disagree with it. I nod, reach forward, and summon a single spark to catch the candle’s wick. It burns.
“To be just and merciful,” the next witch says. I hope I can do that, but it doesn’t feel as easy as making a promise. I light the candle anyways, because I’m willing to fight for it.
“To honor and follow the decisions of the coven.”
“To vote with the good of all in mind, not just the good of self.”
On and on I move down the line, lighting each candle as each new pact binds me to these people, and this place, that I have already come to love. Before I know it I’ve nearly reached the end.
“To protect and care for yourself as fiercely as you do for the rest of us,” Aria whispers. I smile back, feeling sheepish, and reach out to light the candle.
And then I’m at the end of the line, and the last one is Roiven. He offers his candle to me.
“To believe in this place and these people,” he says.
It’s the same thing he asked me to do at Aveinor, before he took me down to see the village.
I’ve never heard a simpler request. I reach forward and touch a finger to his candle, then draw my hand back as a flame flickers to life there.
Roiven smiles, and for a moment the whole room brightens.
I gasp as a thousand voices fill my head.
For a dizzying second I can feel everything, everyone; all the heartbeats on this island, the dragons above us, the bright specks of life coursing through the Wild Seas like stars in the sky.
Eternity stretches in every direction but it is always rooted in the now, the here, and then it’s gone, and I’m just Cai, my head spinning with the momentary view I had of how vast and beautiful this world really is.
The rest of the coven blow their candles out simultaneously, and then suddenly I’m being crushed in an embrace, first Roiven, then Aria, then the others, all pressing around me and welcoming me into their fold.
I am, truly, one of them. Whether I believe I have any right to be the Queen of them or not, I am at the very least a member of the coven.
“Must we continue here, or can we join the feast?” Torain asks, and Roiven punches him lightly on the arm.
“There’s a feast?” I ask, baffled, because being welcomed by this group was already more than I could have imagined. I was ready to give up the Empire even if there was no home waiting for me on the other side, but now I don’t just have Roiven and Hafgúa. I have a family.
“Of course there’s a feast,” Aria says, slinging an arm around my shoulder. “We usually use the caldera, but tonight it’s on the south shore, so your large friend can join us if he wants to. I’m feeling tired. Can we please all use the lift?”
“It’s only for those who need it,” Avreen says.
“But it’s a celebration,” Aria argues. “Shouldn’t we all go down together?”
“Galia?” Avreen asks.
“I think it’s up to the weight,” the woman in the wheeled chair responds.
Just like that I’m being shepherded back into the hall and through a door into a small room that moves. Roiven grabs my shoulder and squeezes before I can scream about the floor dropping out from beneath my feet.
“It’s for those who can’t manage all the stairs,” he whispers into my ear as the lift rattles down through the mountain.
“Someone could have mentioned,” I hiss back. Torain laughs.
The south beach is huge, and low, and more than that, it’s one of the few shores in the Wild Seas that’s sand instead of rock or pebble.
When we reach it, I gasp. The big space is full of witches, most of whom I don’t know yet, and former Enchanted, all of whom I’ve met as I work to heal them.
Two huge bonfires roar on the beach, taller than my head.
I can smell food grilling and hear music playing.
Out in the dark sea, Hafgúa rises up from the depths, a distance from the shore, and watches.
Well, this is nice, he says. It’s been a while since I’ve seen so many of your people out in the open.
“It is nice,” I whisper back under my breath, as Roiven pulls me out of the path of a group of children running with a ball.
Enjoy yourself, little knight.
“I’m not a knight anymore.”
Of course you are, my familiar says dryly. All that changed is who and what you’re defending.
“Is he giving you a hard time?” Roiven asks. In the distance I hear Sava roar a friendly challenge. Aria’s red dragon passes overhead, followed by Roiven’s black, her injured wing patched over with more of Torain’s craftwork.
I shake my head.
“He says I’m still a knight. What if I want to be more than a weapon?”
Roiven’s eyebrows raise.
“Gods, Cai. What made you believe that’s all you are?”
“It’s why you needed me,” I say with a shrug.
“Yes, it is,” he admits openly. “But you’re also the most stubborn woman I’ve met, soft-hearted, a relentless learner, unimaginably brave, a sore loser at cards, clever-tongued, fiercely loyal, wickedly sensual, my wife—and my Queen.”
“Quite the list.”
“I’ve no doubt you’ll keep adding to it, beautiful.” He tucks my hair behind my ear, and I look up at my beloved with a smile.
“It really is all going to be alright, isn’t it?”
He smiles, and pulls me close, and kisses me deeply. We’re interrupted by a flood of people coming to say hello. Not just the Enchanted, either. Witches. Welcoming me despite everything I’ve done; everything I’ve been.
Roiven’s right. There’s more than one side to me. And when the War-Father emerges again from across the Empire’s barrier, I’ll be the most brutal weapon the Exalted has ever seen. But tonight? Here, with these people?
I can be anything I want.
I grin, grab Roiven’s hand, and drag him down towards the sea.
Thank you for reading Rage of Krakens!