Chapter 21 Sariel
SARIEL
T he night was dark when Sariel vaulted over the gray brick of the walled garden, easily clearing the spikes along the top. He landed in a crouch, hidden behind a row of roses. Redemption weighed heavy across his shoulders.
It must be done.
The Warmwind Mountains’ slopes were nothing like the grand spires that protruded from the earth at Spineridge, but what they lacked in beauty they made up for in survivability.
Multiple streams flowed from within the stone to exit as various waterfalls.
Most were channeled into communal wells and rivers, but not all.
At the highest portion of the Leyval Castle grew the Walled Garden, its many trees and flowers watered by an isolated stream.
Guards patrolled every entrance, and two more stood chatting with each other at the crossroads in the garden’s center.
Sariel bypassed them with ease, his footfalls silent across the lush grass.
He knew how to track the movements of a man’s eye, how to distribute his weight, and how to keep low and quick, his body wrapped in his black coat, so that even crossing open grass he was but a half-glimpsed shadow.
Sariel would kill the guards if he must, but better to leave them alive. The fewer the bodies, the longer it would take for people to notice a dead monarch.
At the innermost portion of the garden was a second wall, thinner and built of white marble imported from the nation of Kanth. No guards at this gate, thankfully. The sound of water roared steady and pleasant as Sariel pressed his back to the wall and glanced within.
Surrounded by the white wall was the initial source of the garden’s water, exiting from a carefully worked opening in the mountain now made to resemble three doves in flight.
The stream washed over their backs and wings before falling, distributing it into a wider spray as it fell to the little pool beneath.
Sariel saw four women in the water, three of them handmaidens still partially dressed, doting on the fourth.
Sariel’s eyes narrowed, and his heart quickened in his breast.
The newly crowned Queen Isabelle Dior, bathing after her coronation and the grand reveal of her blasphemous powers. Sariel pulled back and pressed against the wall, staring at the stars instead.
Radiance does not belong in the hands of humanity. It doesn’t matter how. You swore a vow, Sariel. Do not falter. She is always replaceable.
His grip tightened on his sword, but before he could turn about, the queen called out an order to the attendants.
“Leave me.”
He heard two of them exit the water, though a third tried to argue.
“Your Grace, are you sure it is wise to…”
“I said leave.”
Sariel followed the wall farther from the gate until the distance was enough that he trusted the darkness and his coat to protect him.
The three handmaidens departed, quietly whispering among themselves.
Sariel was glad to see them go. He would shed no tears for them, but neither did he wish to kill them to hide his involvement.
Your desire for solitude is your undoing , he thought, and climbed the second gate to land in the soft grass beyond.
Isabelle remained in the water, directly underneath the great spray of the three doves.
She crouched on a smooth, elevated stone, her back to him.
Her arms wrapped about her knees. Her head bowed low.
Sariel crept forward, each step silent upon the grass as he made his way toward the bathing pool’s edge.
He stopped just shy of the water, frozen for a reason he did not understand.
Isabelle.
She was sobbing.
Her entire body shuddered beneath the water, and finally believing herself alone, she let loose deep, chest-wrenching cries.
The water’s spray pressed her blond hair wide across her back, a blanket that provided no comfort.
The falls’ roar was no match for her sorrow.
It was almost savage, the way her sobs tore out of her throat, as if she was furious at her own tears.
Yet it did not stop them, only made them sound all the more pained.
Sariel felt something twist inside him, and he had to clench his teeth.
Radiance was for him and his siblings alone. Every time they had taught its use to humanity, it had ended in perversion and death. He saw the same inevitability in Eder’s foul preachers and their insect jars. Isabelle’s fate would be no different.
Only, who had taught it to her? And how did she wield it without any sort of focus?
Sariel stepped a single boot into the pool. The splash of water startled Isabelle, and she turned about, standing naked before him, the water cascading down about her. Her tears washed away beneath the flow, and when she spoke, her sorrow was gone, as was her fury. Only cold distrust remained.
“Sariel,” she said. “Why are you here?”
No reason for him to talk. No reason for him to explain.
But he could not take another step into the water.
“Your coronation,” he said. “I cannot forget it.”
Isabelle stepped down from the stone and into the pool, submerging herself up to her waist. She did not try to hide her nakedness.
“No one there will,” she said, slowly approaching him. “That was the point of it.”
The only light came from the stars, and in its glow, her golden eyes seemed alive.
Sariel knew it now, knew how she commanded the people so readily that they would offer her their lives.
Radiance influenced her every word. It empowered her every touch.
Even her physical features were tainted by it, her hair so lustrous, her smile bestowed with unnatural charisma. Beautiful, in every sense of the word.
And for it, she had to die.
“The light you wielded,” he asked. “Who gifted it to you?”
Ever nearer, her approach silent, the water flowing across her muscled abdomen.
Her frame was strong, resembling Sariel’s much more than that of any of the handmaidens who had recently left, and yet she carried herself with surprising grace.
Even naked before him, she moved with all the dignity in the world.
“The goddess, Leliel, granted it to me on the day my blood flowed and I became a woman.”
He pointed his sword toward her. “You lie.”
Her eyes narrowed, the golden sheen in them flaring. She grinned, exposing her teeth. It felt like the smile of a predator. It seemed impossible that this was the same woman who had wept, broken beneath the waterfall. She was enjoying this.
“Will you kill me, Sariel?”
“I would hear the truth from your lips.”
Another step closer. Her voice lowered. No longer boastful, instead quiet, a volume appropriate for sharing secrets.
“Leliel blessed me in the womb. I was born as I am and have always known myself different.”
Sariel blinked, radiance turning his eyes to stars as he met her gaze. It should have let him know whether she spoke the truth, and yet those golden orbs denied him. They, too, possessed a gift of radiance.
“Impossible,” he said. “That power, it has been taught to humanity before, but never been born natural within them.” Redemption shook ever so slightly in his grasp. “Whatever you are, it cannot be.”
Isabelle closed the space so that his sword was now within reach. Her tone shifted again, keeping him off-balance. Gone was her soft whisper. What followed was worse. This… this was an accusation. He could feel disappointment in her every word.
“You fear me.”
“Shouldn’t I?”
She tilted her head so her neck pressed firmly against the edge of his blade.
“You wield a sword, and yet I do not fear you.”
Sariel’s mind spun and twisted like a windstorm. Their vows… even now, Sariel felt the itch from the tattoo on his arm, but it was subdued. They had sworn to never teach humanity how to wield radiance, but if she possessed it all on her own?
But that couldn’t be.
In all the hundreds of years Sariel had walked the island of Kaus, humanity had never been born possessing the power he and his five siblings wielded. Whatever Isabelle was, she wasn’t just a once-in-a-generation anomaly. She was once in a millennium.
Sariel pressed the sword tighter to her throat.
The tiniest trickle of blood mixed with the water clinging to her skin to run down her collarbone to her breast. It would be so easy to kill her.
So easy to end these questions and let the mystery die.
He and Faron could start again. They could find a new leader to wage war against the Astral Kingdom.
But that leader would not possess a fraction of Isabelle’s resolve. They would not be fearless, like her. They would not command the love of her fellows and the fear of her enemies, each emotion heightened by her radiance.
He tightened his grip on Redemption’s hilt, shocked by his sudden revelation. Aylah. Isabelle looked like his sister Aylah, only with golden hair instead of his sibling’s raven black. Was that why he hesitated? But how could that even be? What meaning was there in such a resemblance?
“My brother and I can ensure your victories, Isabelle,” he said, his resolve breaking. “Your conquest will be absolute. But if given that power, what would you become?”
Isabelle’s savage smile vanished. She took a single step forward, forcing Sariel to retreat lest his blade cut her.
The distance between them shrank ever further.
He could smell the oils the handmaidens had washed her with, blue roses and lavender.
He saw the curves of her amid the muscle.
He felt his resolve weaken, even as her conviction swelled to match the roar of the waterfall.
“I would be a servant of my goddess, Sariel Godsight, as I have been all my life. My every rule and law shall be set by her hand as we exalt her upon high. With her guidance, my people shall blossom, and the Church of Stars be banished to the deepest corners where hide the roaches and vermin.”
One final step. She reached out and cupped his cheek with her hand, cradling him with her touch as if he were beloved. His skin burned hot beneath her fingertips.
“Will you serve me true, Sariel? Will you be a blade to wield against my foes? Or will you be afraid of all that I am, and all that I may become?”
So easy, to take her life.
So easy, and yet impossible.
“I have seen so much more of this world than you can imagine,” he whispered as he lowered his sword. “And yet never have I met one such as you. Where will your gifts lead you, Isabelle? Will they lead you to glory, or to misery and slaughter?”
She laughed. Just a little laugh, enough to curl the right corner of her mouth into a smile. Despite all his years, she spoke as if she were the one with true wisdom.
“There is always misery and slaughter amid others’ glory. I only pray to Leliel that mine are worth the cost.”