Chapter 16 #2
Rulene nodded slowly. “Yes,” she said simply. Her eyes narrowed, again seeing far more than Mariah was willing to show. “In your dream, you mistook him for your Consort, didn’t you?”
That title. It made her shiver, some quiet place in her soul crying out in anguish. She swallowed again and dipped her head in affirmation, holding the goddess’s gaze.
“Fucking Enfara,” Matheo murmured.
At least now he knew why she’d woken up sick.
Rulene and Callamus shared a glance. “It makes sense,” he said softly.
“What does?” Mariah’s stomach twisted.
Rulene sighed, a sound that made the rainbows around them dance.
“Kol has always had terrible magic. The kind that controls the mind, that twists reality, that bends the will. He enjoys playing tricks that are designed to torment. To make people see and feel things they don’t mean or that aren’t real.
It makes sense, given who you are and the power you carry, that he would try to reach you now. ”
“But why…that?” She couldn’t say the words. They clung to her throat, begging not to be set free. “And what does it mean for Andrian?” The panic leeching into her voice at the end was real.
She’d burned away Kol’s connection the night they’d bonded. But if this was a power inherent to Kol’s magic and he could reach her here, then what was he able to do to Andrian, trapped at Kol’s side within the walls of Khento?
“Calm your panic, Mariah,” Callamus said softly. “I know why you feel it, but you must not let it win. Your Consort will not be harmed by Kol.”
“You can’t possibly know that.”
“We do.” Sympathy was already washing through Rulene’s golden eyes.
Mariah braced herself.
“Kol is prideful of the things he creates—the greatest of which being his reykr. He would never irreparably harm the last of them like that.” She paused. “He would never destroy his last son.”
The world blurred. Tilted slightly. The ground beneath her bottomed out.
“His what?” A croaked whisper was all Mariah could manage.
This wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. Andrian was good and warm and hers.
He couldn’t belong to anyone else. She wouldn’t allow it.
“It’s how he was able to trick you.” Callamus’s tone was cautious, as if he could read the rage writing itself across Mariah’s face. “It’s not because you’ve forgotten your Consort. It’s because they appear as two sides of the same coin.”
What?
“The first generation of reykr,” Rulene explained, “always take after Kol. So much so that the boys could be his twins.”
This was impossible. A nightmare made reality.
The room was silent as Mariah settled into this egregious truth.
But as her mind turned, she realized how much sense it made.
She’d seen Andrian’s face, but with Kol’s eyes. It wasn’t because she’d forgotten Andrian’s face or his voice or his scent.
It was because those things belonged to Kol, too.
In that moment, there was no one Mariah hated more than the God of the Sun.
More than the high priestess who’d tried to humiliate and undermine her. More than the lords who’d done all they could to ruin her flesh and destroy her mind. Even Shawth, who’d given the order to murder her mother.
“I came here with a request.” Mariah sliced through the silence like the blade of a knife. “And I don’t care what it will demand from me. Whatever the price, I will pay it.”
Rulene bowed her head. A cast of sadness fell over Callamus’s galaxy-filled eyes.
“I am going to kill Kol. Tell me how to do it.”
“Gods are immortal,” Rulene said. “What if what you ask cannot be done?”
Mariah waited, not answering. Rulene was testing her. There was something the goddess knew but was reluctant to share.
They stayed like that, the goddess and the queen, for a long moment. Rulene finally hmphed, tossing her pale blue hair over her shoulder. “Fine,” she said. “I will tell you what I know. But it will require delving into our history to do so, and I have things to do while we speak.”
Mariah’s curiosity piqued, even as she stifled a groan at yet another history lesson. “What kind of things?”
Rulene’s golden eyes flashed. “Goddess things.” She strode to the center of the chamber, where the four corridors branched away.
She knelt beneath the glass ceiling, rainbows refracting around her, and closed her eyes.
“You interrupted me earlier. I wasn’t quite finished.
So, I will tell you what I know, so long as I can work. ”
Mariah and Matheo shared a glance. Her Armature’s eyes were wide, and he shifted on his feet, as if he wasn’t quite sure what to do or where to go. Callamus appeared on Matheo’s other side, gesturing them both toward the center of the sanctum.
All right, then.
Mariah padded forward, following Callamus, Matheo on her heels.
Light had begun to shimmer around Rulene, a delicate glowing orb forming between her hands.
Callamus halted about six feet from his Consort, dropping to the floor at her side.
He again gestured for Mariah and Matheo to do the same, each the same distance from the working goddess.
Mariah didn’t even bother hiding her fascination. Maybe it was because her magic was still slumbering somewhere deep inside her. Maybe it was the way whatever Rulene was doing was clearly so very different from Mariah’s gifts or the magic of anyone else on the continent.
The orb between Rulene’s fingers grew, rainbows spilling from its surface. The air warmed around them, not unlike the heat from the sun. A gentle breeze blew through the room, stirring Rulene’s hair.
“What are you doing?” Mariah blurted the question before she could stop it. The air was thick and heavy with power, its tang tickling her skin.
Rulene cracked an eye, the gold glowing. “My duty.”
Callamus chuckled at Mariah’s confused expression.
Rulene sighed. “What, do you think the seasons change themselves?” Her hands lifted higher, sending the orb above their hands.
It grew, fed by tethers of rainbows flowing from the goddess’s hands.
“Whether I am here or on the gods’ plane, I have a job to do.
To coax the changes as we move through the year, spurring the world out of the rebirth of spring and into the brilliance of summer. ”
“Do you all have jobs to do?” Mariah asked. Matheo’s jaw was slack. The orb continued to grow, more warmth spilling into the sanctum.
“Yes,” Callamus answered. “Though they are all different, and some are not required to be done every day. Rulene, though, must constantly be guiding the changes. Weather is fickle and needs a firm hand.”
“Thank you for that, Cal,” Rulene murmured. She sent a final burst of dazzling light into her orb, then dropped her hands, watching it hover. The goddess leaned back on her palms, tilting her head as a reflective expression stole across her face.
“It was near the end of the First War,” she mused. “Xara’s forces were failing. We knew we did not have much time left. Choices had to be made. Impossible choices.”
Mariah’s attention sharpened. She sat forward, forgetting for a moment the glowing orb hovering in the sanctum like a miniature sun.
Rulene lifted her hand again, giving the orb a spin with a twitch of a finger.
“We knew Kol had to be stopped. We could fight until there was no one left, but he would just keep making his shadow-wielders. This was before humans could wield magic—despite their hearts, they were unprepared and overpowered.”
“What do you mean,” Mariah interrupted, “before humans could wield magic?”
Callamus answered for Rulene, the goddess twisting another rainbow glimmering piece of power into her orb.
“I know humans call magic ‘blessings,’” he said.
“But it was simply a result of us resting our physical bodies in the earth after the War ended. Our power fused with the soils and eventually made its way into the blood of the people who lived upon it.”
Mariah’s brow twisted. “But then how—”
“Questions after, perhaps?” Rulene said, more magic toying with her orb. “I will want to rest when I am done with my task. If I don’t tell you all that you need to know by the time I am finished, then you will have to come back another time.”
Matheo shifted uncomfortably. Mariah glanced up at the orb, then back at Rulene, and nodded.
Rulene studied her orb. “To aid the humans, we decided to create an item. Something fused with the power of eight, with the hope that it could kill one.”
Mariah quickly counted all the gods. “Wait. Are you saying that Kol contributed to this? That he was one of the eight?”
Rulene huffed. “By the maker, no. His power was used in its creation, but he did not contribute it willingly.”
“Then…how?” It felt impossible. Kol was many things, but capable of being manipulated was one Mariah would not have predicted.
“Why do you think he holds such a deep hatred for Zadione, when once he loved her?” A sad smile played at Rulene’s lips. “But that is a story for another time, to be told by another voice.”
Questions burned inside Mariah, but she forced another nod. She wanted those answers, but not more than she wanted to rid the world of its sun.
Rulene spun up another piece of light into her orb, and Mariah asked the only question that mattered.
“What did you make?”
The silence that answered was tense, strained, and uncomfortable.
Rulene dropped her hands to her lap, still studying her orb, refusing to meet Mariah’s gaze. “We do not know,” she said finally, her words resigned.
Mariah blinked. “You…don’t know.”
What was this? Some sort of godly game? Did Rulene want her to guess?
“It was a spell, Mariah,” Callamus added gently, seeing the frustration rising in her.
“We made something that could kill a god, then cast a final spell. One that made us forget. We remembered what we made, but the details—what it was, what it does, how it works, where it might be—we spelled ourselves to forget.”
Emptiness settled around Mariah, cold and distant.
Then the anger came.
“Then what’s the fucking use of all this?
” she seethed, jumping to her feet. Matheo scrambled up, his brows lifting with surprise.
“I come to you, asking for help. You promise me an answer. All so you could tell me that what I seek exists, but you don’t know anything else about it?
” Mariah scoffed, hands clenched into fists.
“Come on, Matheo. Let’s leave Rulene to her magic tricks. We’re done here.”
A clap split through the sanctum.
The orb exploded. Light and magic and heat speared through the room, toward the glass ceiling, into the sky above.
Mariah could barely move fast enough to cover her eyes against the brilliance, the gust of power knocking her off balance and sending her staggering backward.
A hand gripped her forearm, calloused and warm—Matheo.
Rulene’s voice thundered through her sanctum, rich and filled with all the colors of a rainbow.
“You misunderstand me, child,” the Day Sky Goddess said. “We are spelled to forget. That is true. But that does not mean our knowledge is lost.”
Mariah’s eyes fluttered open, spots peppering her vision.
Rulene and Callamus stood now, the former wreathed in the might of her domain.
Her golden eyes glowed brilliantly, her sky-blue hair floating delicately around her shoulders.
She raised her hands, drawing in the scattered magic around the room.
With a final exhale that boomed like the western wind, Rulene pushed her magic up, through the glass roof of the sanctum. It sparkled in the sky, flickering amongst the clouds, then vanished from sight.
The sanctum plunged back into normalcy; the tang of magic was gone from the air; the breath of otherness still and silent. Rulene’s aura retreated, her skin dulling to its normal near-mortal complexion. Though now her eyes seemed darker than before, like she was exhausted and trying to fight it.
“I understand your anger,” the goddess said. “I feel it, too. I have felt the same rage for thousands of years. You come asking for help, and we still hope to give it.”
Mariah was rooted to the floor, fighting to catch her breath. Matheo’s grip on her arm was tight, almost painful, as if he was fighting to remind himself that they were amongst allies.
Her heartbeat slowly calmed, air pushing through her lungs with deep regulated breaths. She rested her free hand on Matheo’s shoulder, his hazel eyes snapping to hers.
“I’m all right,” she said quietly. “Let me go.”
He blinked, as if just now realizing that he held her, and quickly released her. “Sorry,” he muttered sheepishly, rubbing the same hand over the back of his neck.
Mariah smiled, her rage from before cooling after the goddess’s outburst.
“Okay,” she said slowly, taking a tentative step forward. “You don’t remember.” Rulene lifted her chin, tired eyes holding a glimmer of fierceness.
Mariah met her with resolve of her own. “Tell me what you do know.”