Twenty One #2
For a long moment, no one moves. I think about Marissa. Then I nod. “Fine. Works for me.”
Kael makes a strangled sound, but I don’t look at him.
“No grand rebuttal?” Nyxen asks.
“Only a condition.” My voice sounds dead even to me. “I get to kill Atheron.”
Kael looks like he might break apart. He balls his hands into fists, the veins on his forearms bulging like blue streaks of lightning. “No,” he gets out, voice rough. “There has to be another way.”
“There’s not,” I say.
“I don’t believe that,” he snaps.
Vaelis cuts in again, his tone calculated and indifferent. “This is senseless. The rules of the Blood Rites cannot be circumvented. Seventeen deaths. That is the only way to end it.”
I don’t care about any of this. Not really. I just want to hurt Atheron. To see his smile stripped away. To see him bleed.
Kael slams his fist on the table. “No!”
Vaelis looks at him, genuinely confused. “You are the Shadow Prince. You must win.”
Kael lets out a breath that isn’t quite human. “At what cost?”
The room goes silent.
“At any cost,” Nyxen says.
I look at Kael, but he’s struggling to meet my gaze. “I am no one, Kael. No one at all.”
His eyes meet mine, tears gathering before he blinks them back. “That is not true.”
“I have nothing more to say,” Vaelis says, standing and heading for the door.
Nyxen follows, but not before glancing at me. There is something in his gaze. Pity, maybe. Or relief.
The room feels suddenly airless. Kael sits there, head in hands.
I don’t go to him. Going to him now will only make the end cleave deeper. Instead, I let the silence hang.
“I won’t allow it,” he says, after a while.
I shake my head. “You don’t have a choice.”
He looks at me, broken. “There’s always a choice,” he says. “Even here.”
For a breath, I genuinely believe he means to challenge a god.
The hum climbs and a pressure blooms behind my eyes. She doesn’t like that.
He stands, taking a step towards me. For a moment, it looks like he might kiss me. But he doesn’t. He just leaves, the door shutting softly behind him.
I sit there on his bed, staring at the wall, wondering what it would feel like to win.
That was never meant for me.
The alcove where Marissa used to hide is smaller than I remember. Or maybe everything else has just grown too big around it.
There’s nowhere to stand without remembering her.
Kael has followed me here, shoulders hunched, tension making his muscles bunch. He slides down the far wall, planting himself on the floor, knees apart, his arms draped over them.
I stand in the centre, circling, desperate to find some sort of remnant of her presence, but the only person who has marked these walls is me. Kael proved that before the first trial. How long ago that seems. Mere days in reality.
I trace my fingers over the walls, remembering when she cried in here, and how small everything before this seems now that she’s gone. Forever.
Part of me thinks she’s going to come around the corner at any moment, but there are so few of us left, the Embrace feels barren.
I close my eyes and remember the sound of her laugh, the way it filled my ears. All gone. I think of the others who have gone. Lyssandra and Theon, Callen, Morwen, Fen and Alaris. The words they spoke, the stories they shared, the promises they passed on. It’s too much.
I try to hold all of them in my head at once, but they slip away, replaced by the cold truth of what comes next.
I break the silence. “Marissa liked you, you know.”
He stares at me, wide-eyed. “Is that so hard to believe?” he asks.
I blink. “Well. You can be a bit... prickly.”
“I see.”
My cheeks warm. “I just mean—”
He cuts in. “No, no. I understand.”
“You’re very—” I grimace. “—intimidating.”
He raises a brow. “Wow. Anything else?”
I—Fuck. “You’re also... very handsome.”
He huffs a laugh. “There it is.”
I smile. For the first time since the trial ended, I think. “I really tried, you know. To protect her.”
The words hang in the air, heavy and strange. He waits, not saying anything.
“I’ve not been able to protect anyone here," I say.
He sighs and crooks a finger at me.
I go, sinking down into the space between his legs. He puts his arms around me and pulls me back against his chest, his chin settling at the nape of my neck.
“You’ve saved me countless times already, and you don’t even realise it,” he says.
I don’t know what to say. I don’t believe him for a start.
“I’ve seen a lot of bad things,” he whispers. “My father is… a difficult man.”
“Did he hurt you?”
Kael’s mouth twitches. Not quite a smile. “That would be the kinder version of it.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, because I have nothing else.
“What for?” he says. “You had no part in my past.”
My heart sinks. It’s true, which makes it worse.
“I hope you can be in my future,” he says.
Impossible.
I look away before I can fall into the thought. “Do you have dreams? Of her?”
He looks at me, wary. “Of who?”
“The Mother Shard,” I whisper, as if she can’t hear everything in this place.
He hesitates, then nods. “I dream of you,” he says, “but she always appears and takes you away. Sometimes in ways I can’t bear to describe.”
I shiver. “I dream about you too,” I admit. “She uses your face, but your voice and your eyes are wrong. Then you kill me, or you hurt me. It’s different every time.”
Kael’s mouth quirks, anger held behind a thin veil. “Maybe that’s what she wants.”
I think of the death counter, the way it pulses—indifferent and cruel. “I don’t think she cares who wins. I think she likes the spectacle of it all.”
He nods, but then his face goes blank. “I’m scared for you,” he says.
I’ve never heard him use that word before.
His grip tightens a fraction. “And I don’t intend to let that fear be justified.”
I sink further into his embrace. “I’m scared too,” I say. “Not of dying, not anymore. But of losing myself. I don’t want to become a monster.”
Kael’s jaw works, and he looks away. “Some of us were monsters long before the Rites.”
It should be easy to believe. I’ve heard enough from his own mouth, and from Nyxen’s. I know he is dangerous. I know there is blood on his hands. But he has only ever been kind to me. Protective, even.
A monster?
The image gets further away all the time.
“Nyxen and Vaelis—do you think they’ll really kill me?” I ask.
He almost laughs. “They’re supposed to do nothing unless I order it,” he says.
I shudder. “I suppose it’s their duty to make sure you win,” I say. “I guess I’d probably kill me too. If the roles were reversed.”
He makes a noise, low and wounded. “I wouldn’t.”
I look up at him, surprised.
“I wouldn’t,” he repeats, as if saying it louder will make it true.
A memory surfaces—Kael, broken, dragging himself toward me in the clearing, eyes on me, always, no matter that the world was burning around us.
He means it. That’s what hurts most.
“I don’t want to kill Atheron,” I say. “But I will. I want him to suffer for what he did to her.”
Kael nods, slow and deliberate. “I’ll get it done,” he says. “I’ll do it.”
We sit in silence for a while, two bodies in a cocoon of each other’s warmth, plotting a man’s death.
“I had a sister,” Kael says, out of nowhere. “My father said she was too weak. Just like he said of me. She never even made it to the Rites.”
I picture her—small, black-haired, shadow-eyed like him. A version of Kael before cruelty had finished shaping him.
“That’s awful,” I say.
He shrugs. “I barely remember her now. Sometimes I wonder if she ever existed at all.”
He pauses. “That’s the worst part.”
I want to squeeze him harder, to let him know that I’m real, but I don’t. It would be too much.
“Do you really think there’s a way out of this?” I ask, instead.
He doesn't answer for a long time.
“I think she wants a show,” he says. His grip tightens slightly. “And I think she sees us as a problem.”
My mouth is suddenly dry. “What do you mean?”
He considers it. “The dreams,” he says, eventually. “I think she is trying to poison you against me, to make you doubt me.”
That makes me laugh, a thin, brittle sound. “She’s got a sick sense of humour.”
He smiles, and for a second, it’s almost real. The silence that follows is different. Not empty, but full of things unsaid.
“What about the Overseers?” I ask.
“What about them?”
“They overpowered Alaris in a heartbeat,” I say. “I should have told you. I saw. If they’re fragments of her—”
“Then they’re not untouchable,” Kael cuts in. He exhales slowly. “And if they’re not untouchable... neither are the rules of the Blood Rites. Look what you did to your room.”
I can only stare at him. He can’t possibly think I’m the solution. It’s just a few cracks.
The walls hum, low and irritated. Not louder—different. Like something in this place doesn’t like what we’re saying. Like we’re skirting too close to a truth she doesn’t want spoken.
“You think they can be killed?” I ask.
“I think anything can be killed.”
Could it be true? Marissa would have agreed. She had rebellion racing through her veins.
I smile. “She was so brave in the end,” I say. “Marissa, I mean.”
He sighs. “You are too, you know.”
I roll my eyes. “No. I’m not.”
He leans in, brushing his lips against my hair. “Yes,” he says, voice warm. “You are.”
We sit there, in the hush of the dead, together. The pulse of the Mother Shard vibrates all around us, as if she’s listening, waiting for me to crack.
But I won’t. Not this time.
“If she wants a show,” I murmur, thinking of Marissa—of how hard she fought, even at the end. “Maybe we should give her one she doesn’t expect.”
The Dome is empty when I arrive. The silence is a presence all its own, pressing against my ears, thinning the air. Only the monotonous hum of the Mother Shard’s Mana breaks it. Every footstep echoes, the sound chasing itself around the high ceiling.
I’m alone, but I can’t stop looking over my shoulder.