Chapter Thirty #2
Zhoric leans forward, close to my ear so the roaring wind doesn’t take a single word from his lips. “What have you done?” His voice is low, deadly. My stomach churns, unease taking root.
What I had to.
His anger, his anguish, rolls off him in waves, drenching me, pulling me down. “Ozias is a gods damned fool to have used you like this.”
Again, my insides twist and I’m half afraid I’m going to lose the hold on my shift.
Zhoric is still leaning forward, speaking into my high-pointed ear, though he could have whispered the words from a mile away and I still would have heard. “And because of it, you’ve doomed us.”
My heart stutters and I bank, losing my focus, my gaze going back to the sun that still hasn’t moved. What do you mean?
Zhoric is silent. The grip he has on my mane tightens.
Zhoric, I snarl. What have I done? The words are a toll in my head, but I’m sure he hears them ringing in his as surely as my own.
“All those years…I was holding back the gods. And now they’ll come to kill us all.”
I lose hold of my shift.
Back in my human body, Zhoric and I tangle together. He wraps one arm around my shoulders, the other scooping me up behind the knees. “Hold on,” he says into my ear, and then he’s shifting, soaring towards the Realm.
Somewhere in the shift, I end up sitting astride his neck in the soft folds of his cloud-wisp mane.
My fists grip his mane so tight they ache.
I have nothing to say. I know of Zhoric’s nightly struggles and it’s easy now to imagine that’s what he was doing in front of the gods eyes.
I saw for myself how it changed each night he tended to it.
And somehow, through the bond, or my draconem instincts, I know what he says is true.
I can feel it as sure as I can feel my dragon waiting inside me or some ancient connection to the gods stirring to life within me.
My jaw clenches, staving off the urge to scream.
I keep my focus trained on the horizon, on the sun that has refused to move, letting it burn my eyes.
The haze has grown thicker, making the sky look on fire, making the cardinal moon a wide, unseeing eye in the distance. An omen. Or worse.
As we near the Realm, the mists that normally shroud the towering forest kingdom are gone, and the full glory of the Realm is visible, from the tallest-reaching tree of the Alcazar, to the village that sprawls across the deep brown earth.
Surrounded by the dusty Sere, on and on until the mountains beyond.
It’s impossible, like a mirage on a brutally hot day.
Zhoric glides into the main atrium of the Alcazar, at the same time a painfully familiar dragon slips in from the other direction. Zhoric shifts just before he lands and I’m in his arms again, and Ozias is standing in front of us, hands curled at his sides, waiting.
Zhoric doesn’t put me down. I’m not entirely sure I can hold myself up yet.
Ozias’s eyes flit between us, before landing firmly on me. “You did it.”
My muscles tense and anger rips through me, shaking me from root to tip.
Zhoric’s hold on me tightens a fraction before loosening and I slip out of his hold.
I take a few steps forward until I’m standing between them.
I’m at the point of anger where I’m not sure if I’ll cry or start stabbing something.
Teeth bared, I say, “And just what, exactly, have I done?”
“Freed us all,” he answers.
“And the cost, Ozias?” I snarl. “What was the cost?”
“The fall out of Dyēus was worth it.” He’s calm, in control. My temper, by comparison, makes me feel small and na?ve, but I can’t contain it. I won’t.
“Did you know that would happen?” I ask, whipping my arm back to point to where Dyēus used to hang in the sky.
“I knew it was a possibility.”
“There were people there, Ozias. Good people.” I say, a sob catching in my words.
“There are good people here and in Nevoba and look at how we were treated all these years,” he says, gold eyes blazing. I understand his anger, his frustration. I do. But that doesn’t make it right.
“And the gods?” I demand.
Ozias’s gaze flicks to Zhoric. “What of them?”
“They are afflicted, Ozias,” Zhoric answers. “They are not the same creatures they once were.”
Ozias narrows his eyes, disbelief fanning his features, his eyes glancing down to take in the striations on Zhoric’s chest where the god scale used to live. “What are they now?”
“Worse than the ravaged,” Zhoric answers.
A muscle tics in Ozias’s jaw. “What will they do?”
“Unleash themselves upon the earth and devour us all,” Zhoric says, calm. Factual.
Ozias’s chest heaves with his breath. And then finally, finally, Ozias appears as enraged as I am. He seethes through his teeth, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“There wasn’t a reason. Things had changed and there was no going back. No fixing it.”
“You could have fixed it. You could have given the gods their power back all those years ago and ended this.”
Zhoric’s eyes flash. “You think I didn’t try?”
“Then you could have made the dragons bond! You didn’t have to let it come to this.”
“It was too late. The gods’ vengeance began the moment I took that,” he says, pointing to the scale still in my hands.
“You can’t blame me for this. I may have orchestrated this scheme to free my people, our people,” Ozias growls, throwing a hand out toward me, “but exactly whose fault is it that the gods have gotten so vengeful?”
“Mine,” Zhoric all but shouts, a small crack splintering his voice, making my heart ache. “You think I didn’t try? Everything? After my sister?”
“My bonded,” Ozias rages.
Shock twists my nerves into a tight knot. Zhoric’s sister. Ozias’s bonded. They are one in the same.
“I know. I know,” Zhoric says, breathing heavily. “The elites were strong. The god’s were weakening me. One slip and all that was bad with this world I’d created would become so much worse. So I bore the burden. Alone. And everything was fine.”
That’s exactly what I used to say, used to feel. Fine. But then I wanted more than fine, better than fine, but not like this. Not when it means the end to everything and everyone we love.
“But it wasn’t,” I say to Zhoric, finding my voice.
“We were dying, slowly, painfully. And you,” I turn on Ozias, and take a steadying breath, “and I have just thrown us all into the fire.” I flick my gaze between the two of them, tension straining my muscles, adrenaline pouring through my veins, making my head swim.
Ozias’s breaths are ragged. Zhoric turns his face away, staring out to the burning sky.
“What’s done is done,” Ozias says. “What can we do to stop it now?”
He’s waiting for Zhoric to answer, but my mind races to find the solution. I look down at the god scale in my hand. I close my eyes. I search for my dragon, but she’s already there, waiting. She presses her forehead to mine.
Whispers cascade through my mind, sissing like the grasses banking the plains of Nevoba.
In my mind I see hazy images, two-faced figures, warring with one another, with themselves.
I see them clawing at gates, jaws gaping.
A figure, no two, small and meek, stand before them.
Swirls of black, smoky mist race out of the two-faced gods and into one of the figures before channeling into the other, cycling again and again.
Then a new mist, clear and effervescent, rises from the figures and settles over the two-faced creatures.
They fold themselves down and become something new.
A hand reaches. The god scale pulses in my grip.
Oh. I see.
I open my eyes. Both Ozias and Zhoric have their eyes trained on me.
“My elahi…” I meet their gazes. “I can’t just take energy. I am a fathomless well that can hold it.” I focus on Zhoric. “I can take all the god’s power into me. We can cleanse it. Together.”
His nostrils flare. “No.”
“It’s the only way.”
“They will consume you,” he snarls. A wave of protectiveness surges off of him into me.
I hold his gaze. I will not bow. I will not break. I will not bend.
Then, his face crumbles, defeated. Unbearable sorrow in his expression grates against my soul, his suffering a tangible thing, like the weight of his choices has brought this down on all of us.
And though in part that’s true, the other truth is that a million other choices followed his, and I know, better than most, that our decisions aren’t always what they seem when viewed from the outside.
A drifting thought crosses my mind: If I could steal the sky, I can make the sun move—I will mend the gods.
The thought vibrates out of me, an energy all its own. My breath rises in my chest, steeling my spine.
“You will take me to the gates of the gods.” My words are hard and resolute.
Zhoric’s eyes narrow, cautious, but he doesn’t refuse me.
He doesn’t push me away, or placate me with soft words or hopeful musings, or warn me against the dangers and the odds we’re up against. “Together, we’ll end what you started. ”