47. The Things We Want
The Things We Want
Idon’t understand how time is continuing to move. It should have ended there, when Cosmer – the last person I had left in this world – left me shredded.
Yet, still, the planet is spinning. Still, seconds are slipping by.
And once again, I know I need to make a choice.
Because Cosmer is already going back down the ladder. Already returning to the thing that has his heart now that I certainly don’t.
I wish I had been lost in the airlock. At least I would have died happy. Died knowing I still had someone who loved me.
I can almost hear the Sisters laughing.
You thought you could cheat us?
Cosmer hops off the last couple of steps of the ladder and spins around. It reminds me of how he’d spun out from his ship when we’d first arrived onto The Emperor. Taken a bow.
He does no such thing now.
“Why are you still here? Leave.”
“Are you positive you want to end our relationship, Cosmer?” I ask, my voice faint. “This isn’t just the osimidite?”
“I’m more certain than I’ve been of anything.
” He laughs an osimidite-fuelled laugh again.
“Because who would I be, Ara? To stand in the way of you marrying a prince? Stand in the way of the fucking stars?” He waves his hands over his head.
“I don’t even believe in gods, but they sure as hell seem to be trying to tell me something.
It’s over,” he says again. “Now, leave.”
I breathe in and out, deeply. The way I did for Drake, for the oxygen he gave me. Except now, I do it for Cosmer, and the pain I want to take from him.
The osimidite is flooding me. My heart rate slows.
“If we’re no longer together,” I begin, slowly. “Then I won’t feel bad for playing you,” – the phrase physically disgusts me – “one more time.”
He frowns. “What?”
My hands are fists.
In my periphery, sparks of my magic are dancing among the particles of gas.
I can’t outrightly end his addiction.
But I can still help him.
I sound heartless as I say, “You’re going to go to the infirmary now. You will tell the medic you are an osimidite addict—”
“No,” he says, shaking his head hard. “I just said, no more magic—”
“You will beg for her help,” I say, over him. “You will insist she keeps you locked in. You will accept whatever help she gives you—”
“I don’t want to do that. I’m happy down here—”
“You will be kind to her. You will work at getting yourself clean, and staying clean, every day, and every night. Even when we arrive in Rhavna. Even when you are lonely. Even when life is difficult.”
Cosmer is gawking at me, motionless now. The magic is holding him in place.
Softer, a single tear sliding down my cheek, I say, “I can’t make you hate osimidite. But I can make you love sobriety. And that’s what I want you to do. You will chase it. You will look at it like you do the sky. You will think of it the way you once thought of me.”
I take another breath.
Close my eyes.
And wait.
The familiar click sounds out in the back of my mind.
Opening my eyes, I see he’s swaying again.
He isn’t angry. Just disappointed.
His look tells me he will never forgive me for any of my mistakes, whether I meant to make them or not.
As he comes towards me, he mutters, “I didn’t want you to do this.”
“I know,” I say. “But there it is.”
I step down the ladder to let him pass. He climbs up awkwardly, without looking at me. I stay still. Just breathing.
The magic was complex. Maybe even more complex than freezing the ships.
But I know, with certainty, that it will hold.
Because I used the last of the love left in me for it.
I’m empty now.
And a funny thought fills me.
I can’t cheat the stars. But I can beat them, at their own game, fairly. Because Old Mother predicted it, didn’t she?
There were only two options for me.
Be the counterbalance to a tyrant.
Or be the tyrant.
And that’s what I will be.
I make a final choice.
Because osimidite would dull my pain.
But there is someone who can remove it completely.
Drake knows I’m coming. He’s waiting for me outside his cabin.
I charge towards him. I must look like something escaped from hell, my eyes flaring, and my hair flying out behind me. It seemed pointless to continue wearing my ribbon.
He says one word to me, and one word alone. “No.”
My pulse spikes. “You already offered to erase my pain. So, erase it. I no longer want to feel anything.”
Because these emotions are weakening me. Shackling me.
Drake was right. I’ve been thinking with my heart, not my head.
And it’s my head that is repeating,
I will be the tyrant.
I will be the tyrant.
He glowers at me. “A lot has changed since I made you that offer. And,” he says slowly, darkly, “you don’t mean this.”
My voice sounds off-key. “I do. This is the only choice I can make now.”
Now right in front of him, I feel new emotions coursing through my body. His.
I’d thought, at one point, since I could never read anything he was thinking, that he had none.
But these are powerful. Twisting. Raging. Rising. I choke under them like the smoke that kills you before the fire.
“You loathe me,” I state, disbelieving. Then, “You loathe me?”
His jaw ticks. “My magic – prophesised to be world-shattering – was split without my consent. And now the inane girl it was put into is holding me – us – back from achieving what people only dream of—”
“Inane girl?”
“What else would you be?” he growls. “You are attracted to me. Yet you fight me at every opportunity. Reject me, often humiliatingly. Expect me to do things I would never do for anyone else. And, sometimes, I am happy to do them. Sometimes, I do them of my own accord.” He exhales, as though I am in his lungs, and he is trying to expel me. “But I am not a machine.”
“Let’s take this conversation inside.”
I push past him, into his cabin.
He follows. The door shuts, but he comes no closer.
“You don’t want me, Drake,” I say, feeling the way his emotions are knotting around me, as if his magic is trying to enter mine. “You want my power.”
His black eyes devour me. “How would you know, Ara? You have never, not once, asked me what I want.”
The force goes out of me. My body loosens, as if he’s untied me like a ribbon.
Is that true?
Have I really been that selfish?
“Show me,” I croak.
He clears the gap between us. Clamps his hands around my wrists.
And we’re falling.
We land in the courtyard in the Palace gardens. They don’t look right – I suppose this must be how he thinks they will look, having never seen them.
It’s our wedding day. There’s a version of me in white, and a version of Drake opposite her, in black. He looks handsome in his fitted jacket, tailored trousers, silk shirt and scarf knotted around his neck.
And I look spectacular. My hair is braided elaborately.
My sleeves fall down to the floor. The train of my dress, which has a tight bodice but plumes around my legs, is yards and yards long.
Ten court ladies in Rhavnan blue help to carry it.
In tradition, the longer the train, the longer the happiness in a marriage will be.
Hundreds of guests are watching from chairs covered in white feathers. But the Queen is nowhere to be seen.
Drake’s mind tells me we poisoned her. It was fitting. She poisoned our country, with her greed. Could have poisoned us, with her hubris.
The swans are flying behind us, as if just for us. The sun is emerging over the glittering dome.
We are happy.
The image changes. We’re in a breathtaking bedroom. The versions of us are naked. He has me bent over a four-poster bed bigger and more ornately carved than anything I’ve seen.
I’m beautiful. I look different to how I see myself. My hair is thicker, shinier. My skin is smoother. My body looks healthy, more womanly.
And we’re in the throes of pleasure. I’m grasping the silk sheets. Crying out or whimpering with every thrust. His face is twisted. His mouth is open. Panting, he pulls my hair, and it only makes me louder.
I realise we’re increasing each other’s pleasure. Our skins are teeming with tiny white lights. Mine are over him, his are over me. We could be two stars being made.
The image changes. We’re beside each other on our thrones in the Throne Room. There’s a queue of people waiting to come in to speak to us. They’ve travelled from all over Rhavna, because we have been opening the dome, and allowing it.
And we will help them, as best we can.
The final image.
We’re in the gardens again. The other version of me is pregnant with our child – our heir. My stomach bulges in my exquisite black dress. We’re looking up at the dome. Our power has never been stronger. We can do things people thought would never be possible.
Technology had overthrown magic.
But our magic will overthrow technology.
We hold hands.
We look like the Card of the Soulmates.
Together, we channel our magic, and we split the sky.
The dome, from end to end, shatters. For minutes, we are drowned in a rain of tiny Rhavnan diamonds.
We hardly feel them on our faces and bodies as we turn to each other and kiss, ravenously, tongues and teeth, with everything we have.
Because it’s the end of an era, and we are at the forefront of it.
Magic is releasing outwards exponentially. The humidity is escaping, like a door has opened to the outside.
The Palace will be weaker.
But our country will be stronger. And that’s the real inheritance we’ll give to our heir – the real inheritance that anyone gives to their children.
We will not be declared war upon again.
We will not be bled for our magic.
Our enemies are defeated.
And we stand with pride.
Because if we made mistakes, it is because once, they were good ideas.
If we made bad choices, it is because once, they were the right ones.
If we feel any pain, it is because once, it was love.
He wasn’t the tyrant.
And neither was I.
We both were.
We all are.
“You want all of that?” I ask him, through heavy breaths, in his cabin.
We’re still connected by our hands. Mine are tingling. His eyes are blacker than his favourite colour.
“I want it,” he says, stroking my wrist until goosebumps cover me, “so I can give it to you.”