48. Elorie
Elorie
Blood drips from the bleeding blade. It glows brighter with every slice, pulling magic from Perame with every cut. With every crimson puddle pooling on the ground.
Sweat drips down Perame’s face. Her neck.
Her nails dig into her palms, slicing them open.
She tilts her head back in a scream, but her voice is hoarse.
“Stop,” I yell again, tears streaking my cheeks.
Beside me, Callum’s magic hammers against the void, but neither of us can break through. We can’t do anything.
Esen’s hands shake at her sides while she watches, her face drained of all color.
Perame’s leathers are sliced open at her thighs, the flesh flayed open. With every drop of blood, the blade sears with light. Somehow, it is taking the magic from her blood just as ravagers drain it with their teeth. It’s an instrument of death.
Perame’s legs are so bloody that Overlord Farseth struggles to find whole flesh, so he moves to her arm, tearing the sleeve and lowering the point of the dagger to her shoulder, slowly dragging down.
“Stop,” I beg, but it’s no use.
It’s like he hears nothing. Not even Perame’s piercing scream as it fills the room. That just makes his grin widen.
Perame’s head lolls, the pain all-consuming, rendering her silent. Her head tilts to the side, and her eyes meet Esen’s. A single tear rolls down Perame’s cheek, and while Esen doesn’t move, her own eyes turn glassy.
“Perame.” I reach through the bars, my fingers brushing her arm.
She’s yet to move beyond rolling her head from side to side. Half awake and half dreaming as the pain seemingly has yet to leave her. Blood mats her hair to one side of her face from how the overlord dragged her into the cell, pulling her through the pools of her own blood.
“Please stay with me,” I beg, clasping her hand.
Overlord Farseth finally stopped cutting into Perame when she passed out. He shoved her in a cell and left us in this damp dungeon without light.
Without hope.
“Hold on for me,” I beg, squeezing harder. “For Atlas, for Wilder. Please hold on.”
Her eyebrows relax, and she stops squirming, drifting from pain to sleep as I sit, holding her hand through the bars. My gaze moves to Callum, who watches us from his cell.
His teeth grit. “I’m going to kill him slowly.”
“You can’t.” A voice comes from the darkness when I didn’t even hear the door open, and I look up to find Esen moving through the shadows.
She’s an illusion, of course. Frowning as she pauses outside Perame’s cell, as if the iron stops her from entering. She squats down, her worried gaze focused on Perame.
“She’s still breathing,” Esen mumbles to herself, a hint of relief in her voice.
“Barely.”
Her eyes flick to me at the bitterness in my tone.
I know it’s not Esen’s fault that this happened, given that the overlord controls her as much as he controls us. But it doesn’t stop the bite of anger. At her, at him, at this situation. At the fact that my friend is dying in the cell beside mine, and I’m helpless.
Mortal wounds are nothing to the Fae back in Vaelier and Lyrichia. But here, without magic in the land to heal them quickly, Perame won’t survive much longer. Especially with how much of her power the overlord has stolen.
“Has he done this to you?” I ask Esen, my voice clogging in my throat.
Esen frowns, not taking her eyes off Perame. “No. There is no magic to strip from my blood.”
“But you’ve seen him do this before?” Callum’s tone is bitter.
“Only once.” She glances at him, standing. “It was… different from this, or so I thought. He said that Fae was sent by the queen to kill him. They were an enemy. But this—”
“Is torture.” I finish her sentence, brushing my thumb over Perame’s hand. “If she dies, it will be murder. You can end this. Find a way to break the tie—free yourself.”
“So I can help you?” Esen’s tone is cold, her gaze not meeting mine. “So you can use me like he does?”
“No,” I say, cutting Callum off before he can speak.
His brows furrow. “When we came here, we thought the void we were seeking was an object. A necklace, maybe. We didn’t know it was a person or that what we were after was a being of free will.
We didn’t know we were looking for you. I understand why you might have a hard time trusting us when you probably think we’re just like him, but I promise we’re not.
Please help us get out of here, and you can stay in your realm if you wish. You don’t need to come with us.”
“But your realm will die.”
“It will.” My shoulders sink.
“Why would you let me stay, then?”
“I know how it feels to be treated like a tool.” I swallow hard, my throat burning.
“For others to see what you’re capable of without seeing you.
For them to want to use you for it, not considering your own free will.
I understand what it’s like to have no choice in the matter.
A king used me once. I was nothing more than a means to an end for him. ”
My heart races as I remember standing on the altar during the Rite. Two realms fighting for their own survival, not considering the impact of my saving one of them. Not considering what they were asking me to destroy in the process.
“I was their weapon, but not anymore.” I take a deep breath. “When you have something special inside you, there will always be others who want to use it for their benefit. Sometimes, they may even believe they are right. But what’s inside you is not theirs to choose what to do with. It’s yours.”
I press my palm over the mark on my chest. Wilder is so far away, and yet, I feel him, nonetheless. He let me make my choice, even when I didn’t choose him. He gave me free will, knowing it might doom his kingdom. He trusted me, and I need to trust myself.
“You can help us if you want, Esen, or you can decide not to. It’s not my decision to make.
But I hope you do free yourself from the chains regardless.
There’s something great within you. Terrifying and powerful, but special beyond words, and it’s yours.
Only yours. You should be the one to choose what you do with it. Not the overlord and not us.”
Callum stands in his cell, listening, not taking his eyes off Esen, who stays focused on the slow rise and fall of Perame’s chest.
“I don’t know what it is to have a choice. Not anymore.” Esen’s eyes move to the vines on the walls. “I had one once, and I made the wrong one.”
She wrings her hands in front of her, not meeting my gaze. Her illusion pulses, reminding me she’s not really here. Still, her emotion makes her form flicker.
“Where are you right now? With him?”
“Yes.” Her eyes dart up, but her gaze is distant as if she’s seeing something beyond the dungeon. “He’s sleeping fitfully.”
“Good,” I grumble, and the corner of her mouth lifts.
“What choice did you make that was wrong?” I ask, careful not to push too hard but relieved to see her softening.
“Where do I even start?”
“At the beginning.”
Esen focuses on a spot on the wall behind me. She’s quiet for so long; I think maybe she won’t speak. Finally, her gaze meets mine.
“The beginning.” She shakes her head. “For me, that might be farther back than you bargained for. I remember it all. I’m told it’s impossible to remember your own birth, but I do. I remember being nothing more than a speck of light, content and peaceful. I was somewhere else.”
Her voice drifts, and she glances away.
“Then there was this darkness that tore me in two. Something broke, and after that, I was plummeting for so long that time was nothing. I was nothing. Until I came here, to this place. To this body.”
She holds her hands out in front of her, rolling them over as if her skin is not her own.
“My memories blur after that. I was too small and fragile to keep them. But I was told about the reaping, how my parents offered me to the gods in return for a good harvest, but that the gods rejected me. And so I became this.”
The fine dark webbing on her face shifts as she moves, as if it blows in an invisible breeze.
“My parents could not forgive me for what I’d brought on our family—our realm.
So they cast me out. But I stayed close, not able to let them go as they’d done to me.
I had been floating so long, but here I had a place.
I was someone even if they feared me. And I promised to keep them safe. But then I made a mistake.”
“What kind of mistake?”
“I was barely eighteen, and all the crops had died. They were starving—I was starving. I meant to simply bring them a gift. They were so hungry, and my father was so sick.” Her voice catches; her eyes gloss over.
“The local watch from the queen’s army thought my father stole their grain, but he didn’t.
I did, trying to keep them fed and healthy.
The watch came to the house and they—” She shakes her head, her voice shaking.
“My parents were in so many pieces I could not bury them all. It was then he found me.”
“Overlord Farseth?”
“Yes.” Esen clears her throat. “He said he knew what I’d done.
I don’t know how, but he knew. He promised to protect me.
To never tell them of my crime, all I had to do was help him.
He said it was the queen who ordered that fate for my parents.
That the queen was desperate in her dying realm, and that he knew how to save it. I wanted to believe him. I needed to.”
“I understand that.” I glance down, thinking of Malachi’s words at our first meeting.
I wanted to believe him too. I thought he understood his people’s suffering, and he truly wanted to save them. More than anything, I wanted to believe we were helping.
“When the overlord gave me this ring, he said it was a promise to each other. A tie to keep me safe. A tie—when I’d spent so long floating.” She rubs the back of her hand, pressing her palm to her chest. “I don’t know why I remember all that, but I do.”
I glance at Callum, but he shrugs, hinting he doesn’t know how she could remember that either.
“I was visiting my parents’ crypt that night you saw me,” Esen says. “It’s all I have left of them. As if they are actually there in the bone and dirt.”
“It doesn’t matter if they are there or not if that’s where you feel closest to them.
My father is gone. I lost him, and now he’s been burned, and there is nothing left either.
No grieving pillar, no belongings.” Tears sting my eyes.
“It does not matter what we hold in our hands, only what we hold in our hearts.”
Esen presses her palm to her chest, her eyebrows pinching, as if she’d forgotten she had a heart at all. “I’ve done too many things I regret.”
“We all have,” I tell her. “To live is to hurt in so many ways.”
“Then why fight it?”
I glance down at Perame, squeezing her hand and remembering what Letia said to me in Vaelier.
“Because we don’t just live for ourselves.
We do it for those we love. Everyone makes mistakes.
We all do bad things, but we do good things as well.
We do it for the people we care about. For our family and friends. ”
“I’ve not had either.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, meaning it.
Loneliness is worse than any sickness.
Esen frowns. “Is it true what you said? That I am hurting this realm? That what I am destroys it?”
“Not what you are, what you possess. And the more he forces you to use it, the more it will drain what little is left.”
Her lips press tight as her gaze slides from me to Callum, who has been quietly watching. The anger that once tensed his shoulders has relaxed, sympathy returning to his gaze. But not pity. Callum looks at her with understanding.
“Elorie,” Perame’s voice is raw as she speaks.
“I’m here. I’m here.” I squeeze her hand, tears blurring my vision as she blinks up at me.
She tries to shift, but pain lances her expression as she takes a sharp inhale through her teeth.
“Don’t move, not yet.”
Perame nods barely, her eyes moving from me to Esen, whose ghostly form holds the iron bars. For the first time, I notice how thin Esen is. All skin and bone. Hollow dips make caverns on her cheeks, while shadows cast dark circles around her eyes.
“I—” Esen’s words catch in her throat.
“I know,” Perame says. Her grip on my hand tightens, but she doesn’t take her eyes off Esen. “I know.”
Esen’s breath hitches, and for a moment, I think she’ll say something else. Until a crashing sound rocks the stone around us. Shadows torrent around the room, and then Esen is gone.