Chapter 56 Sariel
SARIEL
S ariel fell silent in Isabelle’s tent, the hour-long tale told as best he knew it. His tattoo itched upon his arm, and he stood from the bed, needing to stretch his legs.
“You were the Heartless King,” Isabelle said. She had kept silent the entire time, speaking up only now that he was finished. “You… that would make you hundreds of years old.”
“Older,” Sariel said. “Though how old, we do not know. The past fades into a gray fog once enough centuries are past. We remember ourselves, grown as we are now, and we remember humanity, already built into little cities and kingdoms. Nothing beyond.”
The queen folded her hands on her lap, and she stared at her open palms.
“I know it mad to believe you, but given what I’ve seen, the monsters in Kanth, my own gifts…” She hesitated and looked to him. “The beauty in your eyes. How do I deny the possibility?”
Sariel blinked away the radiance within his irises, forgetting he had allowed it to linger during his tale.
“Believe or disbelieve, it is your right,” he said. “You asked for who I am, and why my brother would have you distrust me, so I have told my truth.”
“I care not for your brother’s opinion,” she said. “What you were… Do you regret it, Sariel? Do you feel guilt for your time as king?”
In answer, Sariel rolled up his sleeve to reveal the runic vows carved into his arm.
“Guilt?” he asked. “Shame? No. If my siblings and I allowed ourselves to feel regret for the decisions we have made, we would never leave our beds due to the crushing weight. Who I was then is not who I am now. That is all that matters. If it will ease your mind, know that even without these vows, I would never again sit upon a throne, nor seek to change your sinful nature. Let humanity rule humanity. I will live amid their unique brand of chaos. This war we fight, it is only to undo the damage Eder has done, and revoke the knowledge of radiance from those unworthy.”
“That vow…” She glanced at his arm. “I assume Eder— Mitra —never took it when he recovered?”
“Our brother fled into the wilderness, and none of us were willing to chase him. When he reemerged, he refused, correctly arguing he had never agreed to partake. The matter died, for among all of us, why would we fear Eder? Why would we think the one who suffered the most would seek to build a kingdom? And for our ignorance, it is Kaus that now suffers.”
Silence fell. Sariel crossed his arms, and he waited. He didn’t want to admit it to himself, but he was achingly curious. How would Isabelle react? Would she reject him now? Cast him aside and trust Faron to be her adviser in the coming battle?
She looked back to her hands, her fingers absently rubbing against each other. She was nervous. Why?
“How do you endure?” she asked softly. “The loneliness? The isolation? Everywhere you go, you are… different.”
Sariel sat beside her on the bed. A hundred lifetimes riffled through his mind like brittle paintings.
“Many times, we don’t,” he said. “Faron, for example? Every life, he falls in love. It’s inevitable as the rising sun.
He meets a woman, loves her, marries her…
and then she ages. He does not. She grows old and weary.
He remains young and strong. Sometimes he abandons her before it becomes apparent, but that’s rare.
Most times he confides his truth, and then they move about, disguising their true relationship with one another, until eventually she passes on. ”
He shook his head and sighed.
“My brother, the softhearted fool, wishes more than anything to be human . To live and love and grow old and die. But he can’t.
It’s a foolish dream, so he does what he can to pretend.
When his beloved dies, he burns himself upon a pyre.
His return takes decades. During that time, all the people he knew, the friends he made, and the relatives of his deceased wife, they age and move on.
He awakens, his memories dulled, and his pain eased into the past.” Sariel bitterly laughed. “And then he does it all again.”
Isabelle squirmed beside him, her leg bumping against his. “And what of you?”
“What of me?”
She sneaked a glance in his direction. “Is your cold heart ever warmed by a loving embrace?”
Sariel debated answering, and then relented. He had told so much of himself to Isabelle, did it matter if he relinquished this one last truth?
“Yes,” he said softly. “Unlike Faron, whose love spreads limitless and latches on to a new woman with every life, I cherish the same unique soul. I cannot remember when I first met her. I just know I have always loved her. Her name, her oldest name, was Isca. When she perishes and her soul is reborn, I find her. I learn her new name. I look upon her features, see the change in the color of her eyes or texture of her hair. Sometimes she learns to love me in return. Sometimes I am rejected. Each life of hers, a new face to remember, and yet I am always a stranger.”
He clenched his hands.
“These last few lives, I have not had the heart to try. I am not my brother. I do not need a pyre to endure the pain. But there is pain. Every time.”
She reached out, callused fingers settling over his own. “Have you found her in this lifetime?”
He nodded.
“Her name is Tara. A simple farm girl in a town called Barkbent. I’ve watched over her since her parents died of plague.
A protector to her. I can do no more. To watch her age and die, cradle to grave, again and again, sometimes remembering me when the radiance shines brightly in my eyes and I call forth memories of her prior lives… our time together, so fleeting…”
Her grip tightened, and he closed his eyes and focused on the pressure.
“I cannot do it anymore. That is what I tell myself. I cannot. But what does it matter, my protestations? I still love her. I still look upon her soul, collected of a dozen lifetimes of us spent together, and I see moments of happiness, friendship, and love. I yearn to hold her in my arms once more. To protect her from this horrid, miserable world, and all the hardships that would assail her.”
He laughed.
“Faron is right, Isabelle. I am equally a fool. I only pretend otherwise.”
“You are not a fool.” She leaned against him, her head turned and her golden eyes swallowing his gaze. The soft touch of her hair fell across his neck.
“Not a fool,” she insisted again, quieter this time. “Just hurt in a way time will never heal, for time is the reason for the wound.”
She was so close, he could feel the warmth of her breath against his skin. Her leg pressing against his. Her eyes, enrapturing.
“Is that what I am?” he asked. “Forever wounded?”
She pressed her lips to his. He froze at the shock of her boldness. Undeterred, she gently curled her hand around his neck, her fingertips lightning against his skin. His shock eased, and he returned the kiss, enjoying the softness of her lips. Even so, his mind cried warning.
“We shouldn’t,” he whispered, breaking the contact.
“I don’t care.”
Again, pressing against him, one hand about his neck, fearful to let him go, the other tracing lines along his cheek and jaw. Sariel felt a stirring in his groin, felt his heart speeding, his resistance fading.
Isabelle leaned back onto the bed, and he fell with her, maintaining the kiss as his weight settled atop her. He pressed harder, self-control threatening to break, as he briefly slipped his tongue inside her mouth. She shivered beneath him, even as his mind screamed for sanity.
Stop, stop, stop!
Sariel withdrew from the kiss for a gasp of air. He gazed down at Isabelle, looking unreal in her beauty with her hair curling about her face and neck.
“Are you certain?” he asked.
The light in her eyes flared brightly, and she answered not with words.
The faintest of golden tendrils spread from her hands.
He felt her presence pulse into him, only this was not an overriding command, as they were so often used.
This was a sharing. Isabelle’s emotions flooded into him, and Sariel gasped at the desire.
She wanted him. Needed him. It was an overwhelming flame that burned away what remained of his resistance.
Yet amid it, like a coal of ice in the heart of a campfire, he felt fear. Fear of rejection. Fear of loneliness.
“Isabelle,” he whispered, and then gave her his own emotions. His awe at her beauty. His admiration of her resolve. And yes, a desire to be accepted, and known, in a way only Isca ever could. Forever living. Forever alone. She gasped, and he braced himself for shock, for pity, even repulsion.
Instead, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him close so she might resume the kiss.
Sympathy flooded inside him, so strong it nearly brought him to tears.
Her lower back arched, and she moaned beneath him.
Her legs curled around his waist, pulling him closer so his crotch ground against hers as her exhalations grew rapid.
Her desire reached a fevered peak, for it was meant to drown out her own lingering sorrow.
Since the day of her birth, she had been different.
Sometimes, she had hated herself for it.
Sometimes, she felt guilt, or fear. But with him? In his arms?
“Not alone,” she said when the kiss ended, both a promise and a confession. “Not tonight.”
He was naked to her long before she grabbed his trousers and pulled them down to his knees.
When he thrust into her, he dug his fingernails into the muscles of her back, and he shifted his kiss so it latched on to her neck, then trailed downward toward her breasts.
She pushed him upward, removed her blouse, and then lay back down so the path of his kisses might continue.
He tasted sweat. His tongue felt softness.