Chapter Sixteen
Darkness Will Prevail
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Dracyg Dominion, Zarynth.
Gedeon.
He’d seen her again. Standing on a ship with the wind whipping her thick hair about her heart-shaped face.
Why? Why was the Goddess connecting them so?
But then she’d faded, and he was elsewhere. In a hellscape of promised death.
Through shadows and wisps that had no end, Gedeon ran, following the sound of a male voice that pleaded with an enemy. Over and over and over again.
It wasn’t darkness like his own. Not a homely, comforting blanket of blackness. No… it was lethal, impure shadows that threatened to envelop him and never set him free, never allow him to see the sun again, or fill his lungs with sweet breath.
The male was going to die and he knew it; Gedeon could hear it in his voice, but no matter how fast he ran, or which direction he turned, he couldn’t find him. Could not save him from his deadly fate.
‘Wake him.’
The wisps stirred at another voice, as if it called them home. Shadows began to lift and Gedeon looked around frantically for the male. If he could see, if he could just see through the smoke, he could save him, he would not have to die after all-
Magic that was not his own tingled through his body, setting his cells alive, bringing him back to a world that was not consumed by smoke…
His eyes flickered open.
Upon the flaming black throne was his mother, clad in a thunderous grey gown and staring down at him, her expression unreadable. He was on his knees, and as he fully awakened, the spell that had been holding him upright was lifted.
Sekun moved from his side to stand by the Empress, hands gripped behind him, chest puffed with importance. His sneering face was set with sickening retribution.
Hot anger coursed through Gedeon upon realising his brother had kept him unconscious for the entire journey back to Zarynth. The wound from the arrow twinged underneath his bloodied shirt as he slowly stood.
Sentries lined the Throne Room, but not one of them looked his way. None apart from Sunsi, who was impossibly still at the Empress’ other side, her hard gaze fixed on him. Duchess Ysabell stood next to her, staring down at the floor.
Gedeon lifted his wrists to his mother. ‘No chains?’
Her eyes flashed. ‘You are not a prisoner.’
‘Then why am I on trial?’
Her glare was cutting. ‘Your brother tells me you could not do as I asked. You… would not do as I asked.’
The flaming blue, smoldering city assaulted his mind’s eye. He blinked it away. ‘I would not do it,’ he said slowly, ‘because it was wrong.’
The Empress’ fingers gripped the throne arms so hard they turned white. ‘How can I expect my legions to follow me into war, if my own son will not obey a simple command?’
‘And how can you expect the entire world to bow to your new proposed order if you destroy innocents in cold blood?’ he countered recklessly.
Silence followed. The whole room seemed to hold their breath.
Gedeon took a defiant step forward. ‘I am with you, mother. I serve you, my blood, my queen. My flame and sword are yours and always have been. This is not a betrayal. You knew of my hesitation before we departed. I stand by that doubt now, and implore you to listen. Be the leader future generations will remember with awe and pride. Show the world your might, your vision, without slaughtering those who will one day be your subjects.’
Never before had he dared speak to her so plainly. Especially before the eyes of so many others. The room was still silent, save the crackling flames.
She stared at him.
Calculating.
At her side, Sekun’s gaze flicked from her to Gedeon, as though he was inwardly praying she would explode with rage and kill him right there and then.
When the Empress spoke next, her voice was deathly quiet. ‘And you’ll be with me, will you, Gedeon?’
‘Yes.’ He dropped to one knee and bowed his head. ‘I will be by your side through it all, and proud to serve the mighty Empress who united the four continents.’
‘Words,’ she said slowly, ‘are meaningless without action.’
Gedeon lifted his head, brow furrowing.
After a beat, the Empress nodded to her right at the two sentries guarding the side door, who exited immediately, as though they’d been awaiting her signal. Within seconds they returned, but with a third, much smaller figure between them.
A child, thin and trembling. A cloth sack covered her head, and rope bound her slim wrists together.
Gedeon rose to his feet. They left her a metre or so away from him, but he knew who it was even before they removed the sack from her head.
Amala. Quivering from head to toe with all-encompassing terror.
He stared at her for a moment. Then, and with enormous struggle to keep his cool composure, he looked back at his mother. ‘What is this?’
‘Your brother tells me you have a connection to this girl,’ the Empress said. ‘That you have… shown her kindness.’
Sekun’s smirk was widening. Gedeon gritted his teeth. ‘Is that a crime?’
His mother smiled, and it was anything but gentle. ‘Of course not, Gedeon. But this girl is the daughter of a rebel. She herself has shown traits of a rebel too. Does treachery run in the blood, I wonder? Or is it learned?’
‘Her father is dead,’ Gedeon said coldly. ‘Sekun saw to that. Amala is not her father and should not be condemned for his mistakes.’
‘This girl has been known to wander the castle without permission,’ the Empress said.
‘She asks questions that do not concern her, and yet she asks them without thought or consequence. If we allow this behaviour to go unchallenged, I allow my power, my influence to be weakened.’ She straightened her back.
‘One small opposing voice can threaten an entire empire if it is not silenced. For the greater good… her voice must be eliminated.’
Abhorred, Gedeon hissed, ‘She is a child.’
‘A child whose ambitions and ideas will only grow as she does!’ the Empress thundered, her face reddening with rage. Her voice dropped low. ‘You will be the one to do it.’
Amala squeezed her eyes tightly shut, whispering something to herself over and over again in the curling language of the Agni people.
‘You wish for me to prove myself to you? By doing this?’
‘You refused to burn Phaenon city to the ground for lack of justification,’ the Empress said, her turquoise eyes burning with the flames around her. ‘But this order has been justified. If you are with me, if your loyalty remains true, then you will not hesitate in fulfilling it.’
A sentry moved from her formation, pressing a longsword into Gedeon’s hand. He looked down at it, realising it was his own. The lava rock coated hilt was unmistakable. His fingers wrapped around it with welcome familiarity.
It had been planned, then. This sickening arrangement had been put in motion from the second Sekun had disembarked the ship with his limp body in tow. It would not surprise him if the entire meeting had been his brother’s idea. A seed planted in their mother’s mind.
At the Empress’ side, Sunsi’s face was stricken. She subtly shook her head from side to side. Duchess Ysabell still stared, expressionless, at the floor.
Amala lifted her chin high, and Gedeon’s gaze locked with hers.
She did not beg for her life. She did not even look frightened anymore. It was as though she had submitted to the caressing hand of death already, as though she was ready to see her father again, if the Gods were good.
He knew what he had to do.
The grip on his sword tightened, both hands grasping the hilt. Amala’s gaze did not waver as he lifted it high, ready to strike.
But Gedeon did not swing his sword. He did not cleave Amala’s head from her body.
He threw his palm skyward, to the ceiling where Xados glowered down at him, and rained unyielding night down upon them.
All light stripped from the room with that surge of power as darkness rippled from him like an unforgiving current. Not even the throne’s flames could penetrate it.
Pain pierced the base of his spine so intensely, he doubled over with a gasp.
A voice of unabated fury screamed through the thick blackness: ‘TRAITOR!’
Gritting his teeth against his throbbing back, he reached through the darkness and scooped Amala up with one arm.
The other hand gripped steadfast to his sword.
‘Hold tight to me,’ he ordered before sprinting through the Throne Room, vision unimpaired like the feline eyes of a cat in the night, as he dodged the sentries fumbling through shadows in an attempt to locate him.
‘DO NOT LET HIM ESCAPE! I NEED HIM ALIVE!’ the Empress roared.
He blasted the front doors open and grunted against the pain it brought him, but he did not stop.
Through twisting corridors of the Black Castle, he ran with the fledgling girl in his arms, leaving everything he knew behind. He was weak and drained; magically, physically, emotionally.
But he did not stop.
The darkness he had cast in the Throne Room would not hold much longer. The sentries were sure to find their way out soon enough.
The front gate loomed closer. If he could just get past it, he could reach out to Tanwen and she could get them out, or at least get Amala to safety-
He rounded the corner to the open courtyard behind the front gate but stopped dead as they arrived, chest heaving with adrenalin.
Rain poured down from the compact clouds above, the deluge mixing with Mount Morkun’s ash and clinging to their bodies like gnats, and through the showers stood four sentries clad in their blood-red armour, their sharpened spears in hand and all staring at him with blank confusion.
‘Get behind me,’ he instructed Amala, setting her down. She did so without hesitation.
‘Prince Gedeon?’ one of the sentries said with uncertainty, gaze flicking from his rough and bloodied appearance to Amala hiding behind him.
‘Open the gate,’ Gedeon rasped. The sentries exchanged uneasy glances. ‘I am your prince. That was an order. Open the gate.’