60. Chapter 54
Chapter 54
Caelan
M y death did not come. Instead, a sound that wasn’t quite like metal on metal rang out just before the enemy blade fell. Another blade turned it back. A dragonstone blade.
Raven.
I tugged myself back to awareness. It was like dragging my heavy body through sinking sands. I’d lost too much blood. I’d used new magic and had no idea of its cost. Had it worked? Did my mother live?
My hand snaked out to check for her pulse. It was there. Weak, but regular.
Then Raven’s face appeared before me. Her voice pierced the fog. She was saying my name.
"I’m fine,” I lied.
“Caelan, I’m so sorry. I can explain. Just…not now. We need to get somewhere safe. Somewhere close. Where can we go?” Raven’s eyes were full of worry. Was that worry for me?
“Too many traitors in the Blood Lakes," I said wearily, thinking fast. "Back to the Flesh.”
Raven nodded. She scanned our surroundings.
“We came in a wagon,” Lady Kostantina, my mother’s sister, supplied.
“Good. And we have supply wagons we can clear out and use to transport wounded,” Raven said. “But it’ll take days to get back to the Fakoury manor.”
“Take Nahome.” My vision was spinning. Arbaaz cawed above me, venting his disturbance with my condition. “Use…your chains. Put her…cell.”
“I will,” Raven said solemnly.
“My mother—”
Raven’s earnest eyes were fading as blackness came for me but I felt the press of her lips on mine. “I’ll bring her. I’ll get you all back there safely. I promise.”
She rose and addressed my father's soldiers as my world grew small.
“I know my own name,” she said. “I didn’t choose it. I chose to fight beside you today. I chose to cut down that man—” she pointed but I was too weak to turn and look at who it was “—who raised and trained me. I will take Lady Nahome Obsan, leader of this rebel force, in chains to Lord Massriel Fakoury, where she will face punishment for her treason. I chose to be Prince Caelan’s companion, and I will carry out his commands.”
“He’s a fucking demon!” one of them said. “I heard the lady say it and I saw what he did.”
“Prince Caelan didn’t choose his blood any more than you did, or I did. He is still your prince, the man you know and respect,” Raven said.
“I’ll never serve a demon,” the man retorted and others cried out in agreement.
Damn it. I had to stand. I had to help. I tried and tipped sideways. Blackness flooded my senses as my head hit the grass.
Raven…
A new nightmare came for me. My father stood at the window looking out over the Sea of a Thousand Torches.
“They’ve come for him, you know. He's what Marcus wants. This is all for one damned boy. They say if I give him up, they’ll leave peacefully. I don’t believe it for a damned moment.”
“I know,” said my mother quietly. “They will storm the palace either way. But don’t worry, Emperor. I’ll never let them take him.”
The emperor snorted. “You’ve grown too attached to him, Vasiliki. What if I had decided to give him up to save my throne?”
“You wouldn’t. He’s your blood.”
“He may be the bird that ends the damned world,” my father muttered. “I swear to the Father, if he ever sets one foot in the mews, I’ll kill him myself. He’s certainly the child in the prophecy. Marcus thinks the child and the Rider are one and the same.”
“Marcus Rosa does not know everything,” my mother said in her imperious voice.
“Yes. For instance, he doesn’t know that he’s going to die tonight. And I’m having every damned copy of that prophecy burned and every scholar and priest who has ever read it declared a traitor. They will not come for my blood again.”
My mother looked on him approvingly. It was a look so foreign, it convinced me this dream could not be real. It could not be a memory.
But Amon slithering up beside me changed my mind again. I remembered this moment. “Why are you so special?” He spat the words in my ear. “Why does Father always protect you? Why do armies want you?”
I didn’t know the answer.
I did now.
The rocking of a wagon woke me. A hand was holding mine and I tugged out of its grip, afraid to hurt them. Afraid to burn.
Then I slipped back into slumber.
The next time I woke, I was in a plush feather bed in a room I recognized. We’d made it back to the Flesh.
There was a hand in mine again. I jerked away but the small fingers tightened to stop me.
Raven.
I opened my eyes.
She sat beside me on a chair. Her hair was clean and braided. She wore pants in the Losian style with her daggers on a belt around her waist. There was pink in her cheeks and she looked healthy and uninjured. Thank the Father.
More amazing than any of that was that the delicate metal collar I'd given her still adorned her neck. She could've taken the key from me at any time and she hadn't.
“My mother?” I croaked.
Raven passed me water. “Alive and awake. She lost a lot of blood, but you saved her life.”
“I doomed her to more burns.”
Raven hesitated. “Her burns are—”
“They’re bad,” I finished.
“Yes. The healers say if toxins get inside them, she may not make it. But so far, they’re healing.”
“How long?”
“Five days.”
I swore and tried to stand. My head spun and I gritted my teeth and ignored it. Got on my feet and stumbled across the room. “Where’s Nahome Obsan?”
“Safe in the dungeon below the manor. Caelan, slow down. We need to talk.”
I was ripping open one of my bags, trying to dress, but my hands slowed at her words.
Yes, we did. I rounded on Raven and was rewarded with a flash of apprehension in her eyes. “You stabbed me,” I said quietly.
“Yes. I’m sorry. It was a mistake.”
“You said that. How was it a mistake?”
Raven took a deep breath and let it out. She closed her eyes and, incredibly, a smile stole over her face. “I suppose we can finally be honest with each other. Priest Farad was my handler after I was taken in by the Coterie. He and Lady Lusa Kassimi raised me to be a spy and an assassin for the rebellion. Or at least, that’s what I thought they were doing. I think now that I was never meant to be anything more than a symbol. An advantageous marriage for the rebellion’s next leader, whoever that proved to be.”
I needed to sit down. I sank into the closest chair. Lusa Kassimi was a rebel? Father fuck me. They were everywhere. “But she and Farad outed you,” I argued.
“I know. And look what happened. Immediately, the rebels rallied around my name. I became a symbol, just like they wanted.”
“Where’s Farad now?” I said sharply, suddenly remembering he’d been with our party.
“Dead.”
“How?”
“I killed him.”
“Why?”
Her expression grew fierce. “He was going to kill you.”
I swallowed as my heart soared. I wanted so badly to believe those words. To believe that she was mine now—body, heart, and soul. But she’d tried to kill me.
“Tell me why you stabbed me.”
“Farad told me that you were destined to be the Arbiter from a prophecy called The Tapestry Unweaving. It warns that a great immortal force called the Ravager will rise to consume the world, aided by his Chosen, the Arbiter of the Reckoning. Farad said that my father and mother believed this. They started the rebellion to try to kill you. He said I could make my father proud by completing his mission.”
I dug Junaid’s books from my bags and held the one containing the prophecy in shaking hands. “Have you read it?”
Raven’s eyes shot up. “Have you?”
“Yes. Only recently. In Los, Junaid Fakoury didn’t die by a demon’s hand. He died by mine. He attacked me after I revealed that I’d used Arbaaz to fight Tanead. He said, ‘The Traitor was right about the Tapestry. The Ravager must not be allowed to find his Rider.' After that, I went looking for what he meant. I finally found the answer when we were here, though I didn’t fully understand it yet.”
Raven read the prophecy, her voice rising excitedly when she reached the middle. “ ' When the threads of bird and dragon birth abomination, The schism opens and the Rebirth is near.' That’s you. The abomination.”
“Thanks,” I said dryly.
Her face softened. “I’m sorry. You know what I mean. Farad said you're a demon—the child of bird and dragon. I saw your mother’s wound. You cauterized it. You’re a Tajawl, aren’t you?”
I nodded. Would it make her see me differently?
But Raven’s gaze had already sunk back into the prophecy. “'The one who flies to him with bloodied hand and broken heart will be his servant, the Arbiter of the Reckoning.'”
She looked up, racing thoughts enlivening her eyes. “My parents thought the halfling child and the flier referenced later were the same person. But they’re not.”
“How do you know? For all we know, Junaid’s fears were right, and I’m the Arbiter and abomination both.”
“You’re not,” Raven said fiercely. “The Ravager told me himself.”
The air suddenly felt like ice on my too-hot skin. A burnt smell rose from the silk cushion I sat on. I stood and swore when I looked. I’d burnt it.
“Don’t touch me,” I warned.
Raven hadn’t moved. “Newly unlocked magic is hard to control,” she noted. Her eyes raked me and took on a playful expression. “Good thing you’re naked.”
“The Ravager has risen?”
“Yes.”
The heat in my blood only rose higher as I tried to shove it down. I didn’t know how. Didn’t know who I was anymore.
“Are my eyes red?” I asked Raven.
“Yes,” she murmured.
I gasped in breath but it scalded my lungs.
“The fire cannot harm you,” Raven said. “It is a power that belongs to you. You already know how to control it. Your mother taught you when you were a child.”
“Not my mother,” I gasped.
“It doesn’t matter. She was for you, as the guard Eymen was for me. Now count.”
I closed my eyes, imagining stars. Imagining the simple freedom and fresh air of my mother's balcony, the open sky above me. I counted until the air felt refreshing against my cooling skin.
I opened my eyes to see Raven too close. I stepped back but she closed the distance again, her body tantalizingly near. Desire and promise filled her eyes.
“Don’t touch me,” I said again. “I’m not safe.”
Raven smiled. There was something in it I’d never seen before. A tender fondness that had nothing to do with sex or wanting. I knew the word for it, but I wouldn’t believe it until it spilled from her lips.
“I’m always safe with you, Caelan Havard.” She kissed me.