Chapter Twenty Seven #2
At her legs, staining the unspoilt snow with an aggressive redness, was blood. Seeping with no end in sight from her thigh, where a crystal arrow was embedded deep into her flesh.
The Eternal had not missed.
‘Sunsi-’
‘Do not move!’ the Eternal snarled.
Gedeon froze.
Sunsi’s pounding and wildly irregular heartbeat was now all he could hear, resounding in his ears as though he were inside her chest with it. Panic began to set in. He knew how that poison worked: he had felt it once before himself.
But Sunsi was human. It would kill her quickly without a shadow of remorse.
‘Please,’ he begged the Eternal, not daring to move, for he knew she would not hesitate to let her arrow fly if he did. ‘Get her to your healer. This woman is… she is good. She does not deserve this fate.’
‘I recognise the sigil above her breast. I know what it stands for,’ the Eternal said darkly.
‘That is not who she is!’ Gedeon exclaimed hotly. ‘She is innocent, more innocent than you could imagine.’
‘More innocent than the children who perished in the city you burned?’
‘Please,’ he pleaded again, his voice on the verge of breaking. ‘Do not punish her for my crimes. She is the bright future of the south and everything the Empress is not. Please… you cannot let her die.’
A red-haired Eternal stepped forward, lowering her bow. ‘Nys, it is not the Eternal way to kill without-’
‘Hold your tongue, Zuriel!’
‘I assure you, we are of far more use to your order alive than dead!’ Gedeon told them desperately, and it was completely true. None knew the insides of his mother’s mind better than he, and none had sacrificed as much for the rebellion as Sunsi had.
The red-haired female took another step forward. ‘Nysari, think about what you are-’ She paused and stared at Sunsi.
Her heartbeat was significantly slowing. The tell of the poison taking its hold.
‘Please,’ Gedeon whispered again. ‘Have mercy on her. Please… I beg you.’
For a moment, they all were silent. And in that moment, Gedeon truly believed he and Sunsi would die in the snow there and then, that the Eternal leader would loose the arrow at her bowstring, that her anger and hatred were too palpable to calm.
But then she ripped her bow away with a low snarl, and ordered, ‘Bind him.’
Two Eternal’s rushed forward to obey, forcing Gedeon’s arm behind his back and immobilising him with an unpleasant, stiff spell.
‘If he tries any magic, shoot him. If he talks, cut out his tongue.’ She turned to the red-head.
‘Zuriel, you are the fastest. Take the woman straight to Maida. Tell her who she travels with. In Naal’s absence, Maida will decide what becomes of her. If she survives the flight.’
Zuriel nodded right away and scooped the barely breathing Sunsi into her surprisingly strong arms, then shot off into the sky at the speed of an arrow without a look back.
Gedeon’s gut twisted as they pulled further and further away, and he prayed Sunsi’s heart was strong enough to make the journey.
If ever there was a servant of the Fire Mother and her people, it was Sunsi. For all she had done, for all she had given in her short time in this plane of existence, Eraura could not take her life away. It would not be right. It would not be just.
He clung onto that belief as the Eternal’s hoisted him up and flew him all the way up the Floating Mountains. He clung onto that belief even as they threw him in a cell of thick ice adjacent to their Mother’s temple.
They left him alone in that box of frozen death. Completely empty of anything that might keep him warm in the days, weeks, months that would follow.
He did not despair in that cell. Instead, there was freedom. Now, he was a blank canvas. Now, he could begin anew. A darkness purified. One that could only be penetrated by a true, unyielding light.
Just as the cold would surely numb his body, now in his heart, he felt nothing.
No fear. No hatred.
He was not Gedeon Dewmaul. He was not a prince. Nor the Fire Warden.
He was nothing.
As though a veil had been lifted, he heard her.
The Mother of Fire, as he had never heard her before.
A deep, divine whispering voice flitted in and out of his ears like slow moving magma.
It was a gentle caress, a light nudge to understanding.
And he knew the words she sang were meant only for him to hear:
‘When the earth cracks, and the sun hides behind the moon, then shall she of light and land be born.’
There was a warning encrypted into her spectral song, willing him to understand. The voice continued, but the words were muffled and incoherent, as though a hand covered the mouth of those uttering them.
The Empress had spoken those words before, though it had made little sense to him then.
On the Fire Mother’s tongue, however, he finally understood. It was the answer to a question that had not been asked.
And in his memory loomed a face, beautiful and glowing like the sun.
Submerged in his nothingness, Gedeon waited.
This magic would not cause him pain for it was ancient, far older and far cleverer than the power of the Old Gods and even the Four Mothers who had thwarted them.
Timeless. Pure. Tangible.
His spirit soared through the veil of the world. He needn’t be guided. He knew he would find her. That one female who would either destroy the world as they knew it, or help him forge the way to a better one.
He needed to see her. To talk to her. To be sure of what he thought he knew.
‘Kyra,’ Gedeon whispered, then watched as the sleeping Earth Warden stirred in the darkness.