Chapter 29
Jesamin
We burst into the day, out into open air beneath a clear blue sky.
The grass, the trees…deep in my heart, I’d believed I would never see them again.
And the sun, blinding as it reflected off Talos’s gold and iron hide—
Líadan screamed, throwing up an arm to cover her eyes and jerking backwards in pain. The back of her skull hit my face, smashing my lower lip and filling my mouth with a burst of coppery blood.
Blinded by the glare, I flung my hand over her face, protecting eyes that hadn’t seen the sun in more than a millennia.
Talos spun, prancing like a true horse, alarmed by Líadan’s sounds of agony.
I had the brief impression of the world spinning around us, a group of strangers watching in fascination and apprehension, and a massive, brilliant form coming towards us with arms outstretched.
“Jesamin.”
Wroth’s voice was a beautiful balm after endless hours in the abyss. Talos finally stopped, coming to a restless halt as the fiend approached with arms outstretched.
I gave him a bloody smile, tears of relief pricking at my eyes. “Wroth, we did it.”
“I see that.” He smiled back, and in his eyes I could see the slowly-fading fear transforming into ease.
I desperately wanted to fling myself from Talos’s back straight into his arms, but Líadan quaked against me, pressing her hands to her eyes so hard her knuckles were white. “Take her,” I urged him. “Her eyes—”
We were suddenly swarmed. Hands reached to bring Líadan down, and a red-haired woman covered her shoulders with a coat and tied a makeshift blindfold around her eyes.
Another fiend—a man as tall as Wroth, and with that bat-like face, glimmering gold eyes, and the curving black horns he could be none other than Lord Bane—helped her, murmuring assurances to Líadan as they led her away to a tent where a young man who looked deeply similar to Marrion guarded the entrance.
Her parents, I assumed, and one of her brothers. I was too blasted to even begin to comprehend the magnitude of their presence.
In my mind, I dismounted Talos and gracefully fell into Wroth’s arms.
In reality, I slipped to the side and collapsed in Wroth’s arms, whimpering with pain as my stiff, locked legs were forced to move and bear weight again.
He held me upright, wrapping me in a tight embrace, burying his muzzle in my hair. I clung to his shirt, knees wobbling from exhaustion alone.
“We did it,” I whispered again, almost unable to believe it.
The destruction of Liuridar was like a fever dream, only snippets of it coming to mind when I tried to think on it; had I really been in those darkened depths only hours ago?
Had I truly watched the green radiance of the miasma creep up like the tide, filling the dark spaces below us?
“The city is gone, and no one can ever set foot there again.”
“I knew you could do it,” he murmured, stroking my back, and I realized I was shaking. Everything was a confused mess; I was elated and nauseous and relieved and terrified all at once. “Where is Marrion?”
Bram appeared at my side with the silent grace of a wraith. “She’s sleeping, Jesamin. Drink this, it’ll do you good.”
I licked my dry lips, tasting the dust of Liuridar, and accepted the tiny bone china cup. The tea inside was dark and innocuous. I drank it off in one gulp, wanting to erase the taste of Liuridar and never think of it again, and handed the cup back to him.
“I’m so glad we…we made it,” I said, smiling up at Wroth, but my face felt oddly numb. “We—what? Why?” I stopped myself, my tongue thick and confused.
“Sleep tight, love,” Wroth said, and the last thing I felt before my eyelids betrayed me and fluttered shut was Wroth scooping up my collapsing body.
I woke to the dawning of a new day.
Dawn. A soft, cloudy haze of golden light, ripples of warm pink and a dusting of lavender in the wide window before me.
Gods, it was beautiful. The sun illuminated the mother-of-pearl ceiling.
My beatific joy became a frown. This was not my bedroom ceiling.
I sat up slowly, pushing back a lush, cornflower blue blanket, wincing as pain twinged through my arm. My entire left forearm had been plastered with a bandage, soaked through with bloody sigils. Marrion’s work; I’d become quite familiar with her shorthand in the Below.
“While you were sleeping, she tested you for every disease or toxin we know of,” a deep voice rumbled.
I looked up, and there was Wroth, sitting on a velvet settee by the window.
He was clean, wearing a white shirt and dark blue trousers, watching me pensively.
“We’ve all undergone the cleansing, and you’ll be pleased to know that every Lonmire resident rescued has survived the initial treatment and healing.
Marrion expects a full recovery from all of them. ”
I smiled, easing my legs out of the bed and onto the chill, shell-and-stone embedded floor. “You know exactly what I want to hear when I start my day.”
But even as I stood, he didn’t extend his arms to me, and something fluttered in my gut, anxious and sickening.
I covered for it by grabbing my spectacles from the nightstand, looking out the window like that was all I had intended to do.
Most of the wall was a window, and it opened on a view of the Aurore River, its frothing waves painted with the dreamy colors of dawn.
“Where are we?” I asked. These were not the quarters I’d stayed in before, stripped to basic essentials; the bed was a four-poster of carved pale ash, and the fireplace was taller than I was, inlaid with a thousand shells and pearls, a fire crackling in its hearth.
The cream carpet underfoot was soft, thick, and toe-wriggling. This was a room fit for a princess.
“The Tower of Waves,” he answered slowly, eyes fixed outside. “It is yours, as promised.”
My mouth went dry. “The bet was a jest. It’s not really mine.”
He waved a hand. “A lord keeps his promises. And you won it, fair and square.” He finally met my eyes.
“I would have told you no, a thousand times over, had you not convinced me that you would be the one to achieve what hundreds of us failed to do. Jesamin fel Arron, you are a marvel to outshine all other wonders.”
I wanted to smile, but that sick feeling only grew, threatening to rise up the back of my throat. “Wroth…”
He rose from the settee, staring at me with his ice blue eyes a thousand miles away.
“Líadan is being kept in the cellar for her comfort,” he said.
“She’s well, but the sky is…too much for her yet.
Bram and Marrion will be aiding her through the acclimation.
And the men and women of Lonmire are, against all the healers’ advice, ready to go home, wherever home might be for them now.
The high nobility have gathered to witness the sentencing of Alvar and Rasmus lai Orros tomorrow morning, and your father sent a message. He is heading here as we speak.”
Wroth moved for the door, and I reached out, nearly touching him. So close, and yet so far. My fingers fell just short.
He paused, and I took a deep breath. “Wroth, I—”
I…what? I did not wish for this to end? I only wanted to be here if he would look at me, touch me? I wanted him to abdicate the throne and give up his world to come away with me forever?
And yet I could not ask for any of it. It wasn’t mine to ask for.
“Do you still feel something for me?” I blurted, my throat tightening. “Anything at all?”
Wroth turned, fire burning behind his eyes. “More than I could ever put into words,” he breathed, and though he reached to cup my face, he stopped himself short just as I had. “But to have you above, alive and breathing…that is all I can ask for now.”
He clenched his fingers, and strode through the door, leaving me alone in a tower I would never keep.
I made it through the sentencing like a sleepwalker.
As Alvar sat before Wroth, giving his account—Rasmus interjecting pointedly, despite the disapproval of the noblemen crowded into Owlhorn’s throne room—I thought only of how soon I must leave the Rivers.
I had visited Líadan, who was comfortably ensconced in a root cellar hastily converted to a bedroom with the addition of a thin, narrow bed, but she didn’t seem to mind. She was clean, smelling of violet soap, her moon-white hair brushed in a shining fall down her back.
She was happy to sit with me, blinking owlishly at the warm lamps hung in the cellar and at the simple Veladari words in a children’s picture book on her lap, but as we didn’t share a language yet and she refused to leave the cellar, the visit didn’t eat up all the empty hours of the day.
After ensuring she was as well as could be, I visited those few humans we had rescued, distributing bowls of clear soup and fresh water, helping Marrion and her fellow bloodwitches change bandages and apply salves.
A woman named Meropi clutched my arm. “We can’t go back there,” she said, her eyes hollow and frightened. “Everyone is gone.”
“You don’t have to.” I dampened a cloth, wiping sweat from her forehead. They had been physicked to death, sweating out all manner of toxins since the healers had taken them into custody. “My father will certainly help in whatever way he can.”
My words were wooden, meant to comfort and falling far short of the mark; how could I possibly comfort these people who had lost everything, from their homes and families to their very dignity, while I had my own family and manor to return to?
It seemed almost obscene, but I supposed I had lost something.
Not just my heart, given fully and freely to another, but the purpose that had driven me Below.
I would go home, and take them all with me. I hoped they would be able to build new lives in the Rivers, but if not, I would sell a few pieces of Artifice, make a choice between east or west, and take any who wanted to come with me.
West was the Moor, but could I stand to see any fiend? Or should I go east to Foria, and perhaps search out my mother’s people?