49. Chapter 44
Chapter 44
Caelan
O ur travels took us through the streets of Havard and east into the countryside of the Flesh. We’d ride right past Massriel’s damned manor on our way to the Blood Lakes, which meant I had no choice but to take him up on his invitation to host me for dinner.
Massriel welcomed us before his gates with a deep bow and seemingly genuine pleasure. I could never understand the lords who fought over the ‘honor’ of hosting a royal party. It was damned expensive. I traveled with dozens of soldiers and my mother, Raven, and even that scheming priest, Farad, who claimed it would benefit me to allow him to offer absolution via Proof of Devotion to any rebels I caught before they were executed.
“The honor is mine to accept your hospitality,” I said to Massriel as I dismounted. I was trying to resist stretching until we finished the formalities, as conscious now of watching eyes as I'd been since we paraded through the streets of Havard. Crowds had gathered to gawk at Raven, who held her head high though her cheeks flamed, and at Arbaaz, the mascot of Havardian power, and at me. The one who commanded them both.
I enjoyed it less than I expected. The nights alone with Raven in my tent became the highlight of each day. I teased her and fucked her and hurt her until we each forgot that we were supposed to hate the other. I’d even taken to holding her in my arms after, before I sent her back to the floor to sleep. I asked her about her life before me—her real life. She’d still say nothing that could be used to identify other rebels, but she told me of her early years in my father’s dungeon. It was unsettling to think we’d grown up in very different parts of the same palace. She was beneath me for cycles and I never even knew it.
“Empress,” Massriel held out a hand to help my mother from her carriage. She'd insisted on coming along to see her sister, Lady Kostantina, who was married to Lord Najjar. I'd argued against it, worried for her safety in a territory battling rebellion, but my father didn't care for her life enough to protect it.
As my mother stepped out, I lifted Raven off her mount.
Massriel’s dark eyes drifted past her in a way I was sure was deliberate. No bow for my companion, the Traitor's daughter. I had a feeling this man could teach me a few things about politics.
“You must be tired from your travels,” Massriel said. “Please rest and wash. The bell will ring to announce dinner.”
I thanked our host and followed his servants inside his manor. It had been fashioned from stones that were abundant in the Flesh. Grey stone piled on grey stone, their uneven edges creating a pattern that looked unstable but actually had great strength.
The shape of the manor was unremarkable. No tall towers boasted of the wealth of House Fakoury. No ornate statues peered down at me from the roof line. A gate led into a large outdoor court. We were guided through another door into wide, straight halls made dark by the stone all around us. We went up two flights of stairs before the servant bowed before a suite.
The stone building may have lacked the grandeur of the Palace of the Suns, but the Fakourys were still a great house of lords and this suite had undeniably been built to host emperors. Large windows afforded me a view of the courtyard. The bed boasted posts made of rare, exotic wood. Sitting on tables and hung on walls were small statues, decorative blades, and intricate tapestries. Someone with a sense of the value of art had decorated this room. I wondered who it was as I gathered up all the blades and gave them to Baris to move elsewhere.
Raven crossed her arms and glared. The posture collar somewhat diminished the effect and I tried not to laugh.
“Do you really think I’ll grab hold of one of those and kill you in your sleep?”
I shrugged. “Me. Someone else.”
She did a remarkably good impression of being offended.
Truthfully, I wasn’t sure if the precaution was even necessary. Raven was a traitor and she’d made no secret of that, but she hadn’t tried to hurt me since we’d entered Vaharilar. Though I had men watch her around the clock, I hadn’t caught her doing a single traitorous thing.
Maybe I needed to loosen her leash. Maybe then, she’d betray herself. Or, if she didn’t, I’d know I could trust her.
Reaching across the desk for the last blade—a small dagger used for breaking seals on letters—my eyes settled on a small golden orb displayed on a stand. My brow furrowed as I made out the image etched delicately into the ball. A raven. I picked it up and spun it to see the whole thing.
Not just any raven. The sigil of House Rosa.
Strange…and worrying. Was it a sign that Massriel was one of the traitors I sought? Then again, I doubted he’d spent time redecorating this room since becoming Lord of the Flesh…and if he had, why put a sign of disloyalty in the suite where you intend to host a member of the royal family?
No, it was more likely that someone long ago had decorated this suite and no one since had noticed the traitorous trinket on the desk. Or maybe it belonged to Junaid. He was a traitor, in the end.
I palmed the small ball and turned to address the servant who had just entered to pour steaming bath water into a copper tub in the center of the room.
“Tell Lord Fakoury that my companion will eat from a plate at my feet,” I informed the servant. Her face pinked up prettily and she bowed before retreating.
“Will you take this off now?” Raven asked from behind me.
I grinned. Began to strip. I always bathed first. It was rewarding to be developing these rituals.
“Is your neck sore?”
“Yes, quite.”
“Good. Then you’ll remember even once I take it off.”
She glowered at the positive cheerfulness in my voice.
“Can you still feel my cum on your thigh, or did two days of riding rub it off?” I sank into my bath. I rolled the golden ball around in my hand, cleaning the old smudges of thumb prints off the surface.
Raven mumbled something.
“Speak up,” I snapped.
“It rubbed off my thighs but my chest is still tight where it dried.”
I grinned, luxuriating in the warm bathwater. I’d dreaded stopping at Massriel’s today, but perhaps a single formal dinner wouldn’t be so bad. I entertained myself with thoughts of Raven lapping ale from a bowl at my feet.
Then it was her turn. I unclasped the posture collar and she sighed as soon as it was gone, rubbing the sore muscles of her neck. Her face betrayed her exhaustion.
“Bathe,” I said gently. But that was the end of my kindness.
After her bath, I put her original collar back on. Though I adored watching her navigate the challenge of the posture collar, the simple metal ring I’d given her caused a warm feeling to flush through my body as I laid it against her skin. Perhaps after this trip was over, I’d lock it on and have her wear it permanently.
I attached a leash and chose a dress for her that left little to the imagination. Clasps gathered material over her shoulders, but the material draped and plunged in the back and front. The fabric was a single piece of silk, thin enough to cling to the depression of her ass and fall into every little curve. It was blue, the color servants wore.
“I hate you,” Raven said expressionlessly when she saw herself in it.
I swept up behind her and drew her to me. I ignored her gasp as I bent her over and lifted the thin dress. The liquid fabric ran like water across my rough fingers, which slipped between her legs, probing for something I knew I would find.
“Maybe, but you want me, too.” Arousal made my voice husky. But just then, the bell rang for dinner. “Fuck.”
She laughed as if she’d been reprieved. Little did she know.
I lifted the ball and held it before her face. She squinted to make out the pattern and gasped when she did. Her body tensed.
I grinned. “Open your legs.”
Her legs clenched shut and I delivered quick sharp slaps to each thigh. She gasped and released them.
“Good girl.” I found her opening. I slipped the heavy orb inside her, reveling in the little moan she released. It vibrated down my body, making me want to take her from behind. Perhaps I’d fuck her ass and leave the gold ball inside her. “You will wear this through dinner to remind you that your holes are mine, even when propriety requires my cock to be in my pants. Don’t let it fall out of you.”
She whimpered. Closed her legs tight.
She would have to bend forward to eat and drink while the weighty ball filled her. The fabric of her dress would cling to her shape. Though nobody but us would know anything, she’d feel on display the whole time. If it fell out, it would make a terrible sound on the stone floor. I imagined her cheeks lighting up crimson as every head turned at the sound. The thought made the prospect of dinner delicious.
Raven shuffled awkwardly through the hallways, trying to walk with her legs clenched together. Her face was a mask of concentration.
“Is it hard to keep in?” I whispered when we reached the door to the formal dining room.
“Yes.” She wiggled her ass as if such motion would help.
“Stop fidgeting.”
She obeyed. “I have to keep my muscles tight or else it will fall out.” There was a pathetic note of begging in her voice. I fucking loved it.
As requested, the chair beside mine had been removed. A bowl lay on the floor in its place. Raven’s face pinked and she clenched her jaw as she sank gracefully to the floor in her proper place. Every eye was on her, and there were more eyes than I’d expected. Massriel had invited some of the lesser nobles in his territory to join us.
Thankfully, my mother carried much of the conversation. I fed little bits of food and drink to Raven and kept most of my attention on her, though I observed the social niceties.
After dinner, I was eager to return to our room. I would take the golden orb out and replace it with my cock. Maybe first, I’d make Raven squat for me and force it out of her body. It would feel so wrong to her after hours of trying to hold it in.
I was working to keep my cock down when Massriel approached.
“A delicious dinner, Lord Fakoury. Thank you very much.”
Massriel inclined his head. “If you might indulge me with just a bit more of your time before you retire for the evening, Prince Caelan, I have a gift for you.” Massriel’s eyes roved over Raven, scanning her up and down and narrowing. I wondered what his particular problem was with her as I bit down my frustration.
“You honor me yet again,” I said smoothly.
Massriel began to walk away and I leaned in to whisper in Raven’s ear. “You keep that in until I get back to take it out.”
“What if you don’t come back for ages?” she whispered back furiously. Her eyes darted around, worried someone would hear. The anxiety in her wide eyes made my cock jump.
“Then you sleep with it in.”
She squirmed again, a slight frown of concentration on her face. I knew she was feeling the heavy ball filling her up, worrying it might fall out as she walked back to our room.
“It stays in until I take it out myself,” I said, firmly enough to silence her complaints. I motioned for Baris to return her to my rooms. He’d guard her there until I could get this over with.
I followed Massriel alone through the stone halls. While the manor had clearly been built by master craftsmen, to my eye it lacked sophistication. I was too used to the showy bright tiles and filigree of the Palace of the Suns and the rugged, rough-cut chambers of the Fortress of Archeon’s Last Breath to appreciate the simple man-made structure.
“In the wake of my father’s death, I seek to honor him and the memory he’s left behind,” Massriel said. His voice seemed strangely loud in the empty halls. Few tapestries hung on the walls to swallow sound.
“I’m sure he was grateful to have such a son.”
“He was. His trust in me when he was alive has made the transition since his death rather easy. I managed the affairs of the Flesh for a decade while he was in Havard serving your father as councilor and commander. It’s comforted me to know he died in battle, as he would’ve wished. The hardest part—” We reached a set of double doors, deep mahogany in color, decorated with the deep shadows of fine carvings. Heavy doors like these, made of real wood, were priceless in value. An ostentatious display of wealth. Massriel pulled them open. “—has been going through his things.” He smiled at me sadly, as if I might understand, though I’d never suffered such loss. “Memories, you understand.”
“Of course,” I said softly. It was hard to talk past the lump of guilt in my throat. I followed Massriel into the room. The doors slid silently shut behind us.
The room was a library. An incredible wealth of thickly bound tomes filled wooden shelves carved with similar artistry as the door. The crown’s collection in the Palace of the Suns was hardly more impressive, and I’d never seen so much wood in one place before. Not even in my father’s library.
Without thinking, I moved to a shelf and ran my fingers along the carved wood. I wouldn’t touch the bindings of the books in such a sentimental way—the oils of my hands would damage them. “Incredible. Where did they come from?”
Massriel wore a curious expression as he watched me stroke the shelf. “I’d heard you were well-read, Prince Caelan. It’s rare to see in a soldier of your caliber.”
“Or your father’s.”
“Indeed. Though of course, the collection was not his alone. My family has gathered it over generations. We’re rather dedicated to history, you see. That is most of what you’ll find here, though the collection naturally reflects the tastes of the individual men who built it.”
“It’s impressive, and a valued insight into a man I believed I knew well,” I said humbly, stepping back, ashamed I’d shown so much of my true reaction to this shrewd-eyed man I didn’t know.
“I’m glad you think so, but it’s not what I came to show you.” Massriel stepped behind a desk that sat before the back wall. Ranged about the desk were comfortable chairs with small tables beside them. A thick carpet warmed the space and muffled sound. Massriel lifted a flat rectangular object from the floor and placed it on the desk. I expected a portrait before he pulled off the protective fabric, and I was not disappointed. But I had not expected to see the face that was revealed.
“That’s me.”
Massriel’s gaze lingered over the artist’s rendering, though he must have seen it many times before. “Yes. You were about ten cycles old, I think, when it was done.”
My brown curls twisted around my ears and fell to my shoulders. My hazel eyes were strong and fierce, as if I’d glared down the artist as he painted me. I wore formal courtly clothing in my house colors of red and gold. My chin jutted out, pointed and prideful. I didn’t remember having so much fire in me as a child. Perhaps the artist had taken licenses.
“I don’t even remember sitting for it.” I didn’t ask the obvious question: Why was it here?
“My father was very fond of it. For many cycles, it hung in a place of prominence, here.” Massriel indicated the wall behind the desk. In such a position, it would have been the first thing to draw the eye whenever anyone entered the room. Massriel’s ever-curious eyes studied the now-blank space on the wall before sliding back to me. “I admit to some jealousy of you once, Prince Caelan, when I was a child. I believed my father loved you more than me.”
I nearly laughed. “Fathers who love you don’t try to kill you,” I wanted to say. That was no good, and neither was the second response my mind thought of: “It seems he loved me more than my own father does.”
“Your father honored your house words,” I said instead. “Loyalty. He served the crown with great loyalty all his life. I am sure this portrait is merely an expression of that.”
“I’m not,” Massriel said frankly. His eyes were narrow slits, dark as the night sky in the dim light. They drew me in, magnetic in their intensity. “He used to sit in one of these chairs,” he indicated the ones that faced the desk, “for half a night looking at it. I’d come in here, thinking to find him reading, hoping to impress him with some fact or another I’d learned from one of his books or my lessons, and I’d find him sitting alone, staring up at your portrait. Why do you think that is, Prince Caelan?”
A fist clenched in my chest and my fingertips tingled. I wiggled them—a soldier’s natural impulse. I met Massriel’s stare. “I don’t know,” I said honestly.
“Neither do I.” For a moment, Massriel seemed very far away, lost in long-ago memories, and then his mask snapped back on. He smiled politely and held out the portrait. “Obviously it seemed right to return the painting to you, Prince Caelan. I’m sure it’s what my father would have wanted.”
I reached out to take it from him. My fingers felt cold as they scraped the metal frame, though both metal and air were warm. “Thank you.”
I wanted to burn the thing. Every glance at it and I saw Junaid’s blood spilling from his throat.
Massriel bowed. “If you don’t mind, my prince, I’ll leave you to find your own way back. I have some unavoidable business to attend to tonight. I’m afraid your evening is likely to prove much more fun than my own.”
“Of course,” I said smoothly. I nodded with respect and sagged with relief when the double doors closed. But I didn’t go back to my rooms. Though thoughts of Raven called me, the mystery of the portrait and the unexpectedness of the library had sunk their hooks into me. Since my return from Los, I’d sought answers to the question of Junaid’s betrayal. There was no better place than here to find them.
Overcoming my resistance, I made myself look at the portrait. An angry boy stared back. What had Junaid seen in that face that had made him stare at it—at me— for hours in the seclusion of his private library?
I left the painting and perused the shelves. As Massriel had promised, they were mostly history, some old enough to have flaking covers and fading ink. Patches of the collection explored other interests. Theology and religion. Economics. Farming practices—that was a large section. I circled behind Junaid’s desk. I opened the drawers, but they were empty. Cleared out by Massriel already, no doubt.
I went to the chair Massriel had indicated and sat down. I stared up at the blank space on the wall where the portrait had once hung. Had Massriel taken it down in order to return it to me, or had Junaid, at some point, gotten tired of looking at it and removed it himself?
So many questions and so few answers. I settled deeper into the chair, seeking the mind of a man already dead, and my elbow bumped a pile of books stacked on the small table beside the chair.
The Great Houses of Pre-Havardian Vaharilar.
Demon Blood: Riders and Their Descendants.
The Tapestry of the Future: Visions of the Touched.
Memory of Junaid’s last words intruded, and my fingers moved on their own to the last title.
The Tapestry of the Future was no history book. It spoke of what awaited us in the future, according to seers of the past. Lady Nahome must’ve read it, for it spoke of the Rebirth at length, warning of the eclipse. But if Nahome had read this before advising my father, then she had severely undersold the dangers ahead.
My fingers shook as I flipped through the pages to find The Tapestry Unweaving. The text said the prophecy was spoken by a seer almost a thousand cycles ago, a Touched so powerful, she could see into the past and the future. She claimed that the words were channeled directly from the Mother herself, whose spirit now rested in the Crust.
Finally, I’d found it.
The first half was menacing but clear. I'd already stood on the glass plains of Los as the sky turned red and the Mother's Womb shook with birth pains. This prophecy was in motion.
Which is why the second half of the prophecy left me cold.
Another being rose alongside the dragons: the Ravager referenced by Junaid.
I read the words over and over. This prophecy foretold the end of the age of man.
My contemplation of this made me feel very small, a spider caught in a vast web. No, not a spider. Not the weaver of the web. An ant, perhaps. A bit of prey in a tapestry littered with prey. What could we do to change the course of destiny when the pattern had already been woven? Asherah was already reborn.
Suddenly I felt senselessly angry that I’d not read this sooner. If we had understood how imminent and dangerous the Rebirth was, perhaps we could’ve stopped it.
But how? Even a gathering of my father’s largest force would not have been enough to collapse the Firecap Mountains.
The sensation of helplessness returned as nausea in my stomach.
I read the rest of the short book. I hoped, of course, to find words to comfort me. Perhaps later chapters would speak of the unreliability of the seer’s other prophecies. But no. Evidently, a later seer had confirmed the initial seer’s predictions. It was generally agreed upon by theologians that the Ravager and his servant, the Arbiter of the Reckoning, would drown the world in fire unless the vague and unhelpful 'hopes and prayers' in the last stanza came true.
So where were those theologians now? Why weren’t they screaming in the streets? Why did they not flood my father’s court and council? Why was this the first time I’d ever read this text?
The answer to that question was, I suspected, the answer to the mystery of Junaid’s final treachery. I was closer than I’d ever been to the answer I sought, but more lost than ever.
I lifted the second book. I had no sense of time. The lanterns burned down and I absently offered them more fuel and kept on.
Next to the first book, The Great Houses of Pre-Havardian Vaharilar was practically light reading. It was comforting to read names I knew. My mother’s house, Hagos. Tajawl, of course. Theuban—I wasn’t as familiar with them. They were the Tajawl’s primary rivals for the throne in pre-Havardian Vaharilar, fierce Riders with their own magic.
But only the Tajawls could burn.
Anecdotes filled page after page. The Tajawl queen who’d walked out of the conflagration unwisely chosen as her method of execution. The king who’d laid his hands on his enemies and seared them into charred meat before eating them as his evening meal. The melted corpses that hung on the walls of the palace for so long, the bugs they harbored created a plague that wrecked the city. Undeniably, this magic was the source of the Tajawl family’s power, as bird-magic was for my own.
I lingered on the pages dedicated to the Hagos family, remembering the touch of Tanead’s palm against my cheek. The surprise on his face when nothing happened.
But there was only one story that spoke of the Hagos house words.
“We do not burn” was taken as the Hagos house words in pride of their independence, for they lasted longer than any other house after the Tajawls took the throne of Vaharilar. Rulers of a small eastern territory bordering the Endless Desert, the Hagos family had few resources. They would have greatly benefited from the trade opportunities offered by admittance into the Tajawl Empire.
But the Hagos family believed a Tajawl queen to have been responsible for the castration of one of their sons. It was said that she burnt him during sexual relations. Though the Tajawls claimed it was an accident and offered compensation, the Hagos family refused and insisted on maintaining their ancestral throne.
That they did so successfully for several generations is surprising, given their lack of power and resources in comparison to the giants who rode gods and ruled an empire. According to their own mythos, the burnt boy’s younger brother was responsible for the victory. It is said he fought the Tajawl queen, Merneith, and her dragon, Gula, and survived unscathed. From this, the family took the words, “We do not burn,” though it is not known whether the boy was actually immune to fire. As this is the only reported case of a member of House Hagos being immune to fire, it is thought that the words were meant symbolically, rather than literally.
No, that couldn’t be right.
I knew that story. My mother had told it to me many times. In her version, the boy, Abrax, young Lord of the Waste, slept inside Gula’s fire and awoke to claim his victory, unscathed. She spoke the story as if it were truth, proud to come from a family that had magic of their own.
“You don’t only belong to him,” she used to whisper when I was small and she thought me asleep.
I closed the book and stared gloomily at the last. It was thicker than the others and my eyes already burned. Beyond the physical exhaustion I felt, a deeper emotional exhaustion drained me.
Gathering the book up, along with the others, I wrenched my body from the chair and stretched out aching limbs. With the books under one arm and the portrait under the other, I left the library.
Raven was asleep when I arrived back in my room. As instructed, Baris had chained her to the bed post; she lay on the floor on a thin mat, mouth slightly open and eyes firmly closed.
I was too tired to wake her. Toying with her would have to wait until tomorrow.
But wait. She still had the golden orb inside her.
Gently, I knelt at her side and pulled back the sheet she’d draped over herself. Beneath it, she was naked. My heart quickened at the sight of her curves but my head throbbed and my very soul felt tired. I put a hand on her knee and opened her legs.
Raven gasped awake. Her hand groped the empty space beside her, seeking a dagger that wasn’t there. She blinked wildly before her eyes settled on me.
Her head fell back and her eyes closed in what I imagined was relief.
“Oh,” she said sleepily. She opened her legs for me. She was always more pliable when tired or loopy from pain.
“You were good tonight.” I licked my fingers and then slid them inside her. They took hold of the ball and tugged it gently out. I tried to ignore the little moan that escaped her as it slid free. “Now go back to sleep.”
She frowned adorably. “That’s it?”
“I’m sorry, yes.” I pulled the sheet back over her and leaned on my knee to rise. My body felt as stiff as it did after a day in the yards. The room was spinning slightly.
Raven raised herself onto an elbow. “What happened?”
“Nothing.”
I fell into bed.
“You’re a bad liar.”
“Go back to sleep.”
I expected sleep to claim me immediately. I braced against the coming of my habitual nightmare, sure it would appear tonight. But instead, a set of words intruded, repeated over and over, more horrifying than my old childhood trauma.
“The Traitor was right about the Tapestry. The Ravager must not be allowed to find his Rider."
Junaid’s final words to me. At the time, I’d had no idea what he referenced, but now I was sure I knew: the Tapestry of Life. He spoke of the Tapestry Unweaving.
The Traitor was right about the Tapestry.
But what did Raven’s father have to do with any of this? Why did Junaid keep a childhood portrait of me in his library? And why did he try to kill me?
I drifted away, too tired for even these questions to keep me awake, but Tanead Tajawl’s red slitted eyes haunted my nightmares. He jutted his chin forward and tossed his brown curls, spitting at me with his forked tongue. “Come, Brother,” he said. “Let’s dance.”