73. Zarek
Zarek
AND YOU CAN LIGHT A CANDLE
“What?”
Lilias’s question drops like a crystal vase on a marble floor, and I wince. Gods, I should have told her earlier.
“Zarek, you can’t,” Lilias continues. “That’s absurd!”
She turns to Petrys, who looks uncomfortable but doesn’t say a damn thing, and then to Gerard.
“You saw what happened,” she says. “Varitan has horrible magic! There’s nothing we can do against magic!”
Gerard glances at me, clears his throat, and then turns to Lilias.
“Uh, Princess,” Gerard begins. “What did you see in Vsenrog?”
My wife frowns. Blinks.
“Varitan attacked us,” she says, as a crease appears between her eyes. “The whole ballroom collapsed in front of us. That had to be part of the weapon, right? It had to be magic.”
“Right,” Gerard says, narrowing his eyes. “Varitan attacked. Is that really what you saw?”
“That’s enough,” I say.
Elrick is looking at me like he’s starting to regret treating me civilly this morning, and Lilias is frowning in a way that makes me think she’s revisiting her memories of that night for the first time. I take a deep breath, then hold up my right hand, my empty palm facing the ceiling.
All elves have magic, Varitan told me. Fire, illusions, healing.
And this morning, while life bustled around me in the old hunting camp, I ducked into the old shed where I once found a dagger, pulled the door closed, and tried to use the magic clinging to the silver chain. Fire seemed the simplest, so I started with that.
It was easy. Much easier than I’d expected. The magic in the silver chain leapt to my hand like it was just waiting for me to ask.
“What is this supposed to—” Gerard grumbles.
Petrys hushes him. I frown at the open space above my hand, then tug on the thin whisper of magic that hums inside the silver chain. I shiver as magic dances across my skin.
And a single flame blooms in the air above my upturned palm.
Elrick leaps backward, his chair crashing to the floor. Anura holds both her hands over her mouth. There’s the low rasp of metal against leather as Gerard pulls his blade from its sheath.
I let the magic go. The flame vanishes. Elrick curses under his breath. Slowly, almost against my will, I turn toward my wife. Lilias stares at me with wide eyes.
“H-How?” she stammers.
I glance down at the table. The muscles in my arm ache, just like they did this morning when I first practiced that trick. It always takes a toll, Varitan said. It is never easy to wield magic.
“Varitan,” I admit.
And then I tell them everything.
Varitan’s private chambers. His training.
Silver chains falling to the floor. His horrible description of elven ancestry.
I leave out the part about my mother, my real mother, but it hardly matters.
I still feel raw and exhausted by the time I’m finished, like I’ve stripped naked in front of them and counted all my scars.
When I finally fall silent, the sky outside the window is black and the tiny, silver flecks of the stars dance above the mountains.
Lilias’s eyes shimmer as she stares at me.
I swallow; my throat feels raw. Elrick shakes his head, and the lamp on the table flickers in the soft breeze coming in through the open windows.
“Shit,” the prince of Marion mutters under his breath.
When he looks up at me, he seems older, somehow, than when he greeted us in the courtyard this morning with a streak of flour on his cheek.
“Zarek,” he begins in a low voice. “You don’t need to do this.”
I blink. That’s so far from what I expected him to say that it takes my mind a moment to catch up.
“Like Gerard said,” Elrick continues, waving a hand at Gerard, “Malrik’s damned weapon. It isn’t our problem.”
I open my mouth, then close it.
“Even if you could stop this weapon, this magic,” Elrick says, “no one would ask that of you. Hells, you saved our lives in Ethiria. You got my sister and Gerard out of Vsenrog. Maybe this elf taught you how to do a few things with, uh, magic. But that doesn’t mean you could stand against the armies of Vsenrog. And it doesn’t mean you should.”
I look down at the table, where long shadows dance across the polished wood. I think about screams splitting the air, dust rising to blot out the sun. And then I think about the pale pink rosebuds climbing the blackened walls of what was once the palace of Dungal.
“Vsenrog destroyed my kingdom,” I say in a voice that’s almost a whisper. “They murdered my parents. They ruined my entire life.”
“I know,” Elrick says, almost gently. “But you have a life now, don’t you?”
I don’t dare look at Lilias. Telling a roomful of people what happened with Varitan was horrible; I don’t know how much longer I can hold myself together.
Weak.
Malrik’s voice whispers through my mind. I’ve always been weak. Never a fighter. Never a hero. I killed with poison, with a blade in the shadows. Because Malrik told me to. Because he threatened the people I loved, and I was too much of a coward to stand up to him.
Sure, I gave as much information as I could to Petrys, and he fed it to whoever was waiting in his dark, secret network. But even that feels weak, cowardly. Like a dagger in the night.
“I— I have to do something,” I say. My voice comes out thin and ragged, like it’s being dragged over stones.
Elrick gives me a strange look. He opens his mouth, but it’s Petrys who speaks first.
“No,” my brother says.
I turn to see him shaking his head.
“Absolutely not,” Petrys announces in a tone I haven’t heard in years. “This elven weapon, what? It rips the earth apart? Swallows armies whole?”
I nod. Petrys stares at me in a way that makes me feel every single minute of the five years he was alive before I was born.
“And you,” Petrys continues, “with your magic, can light a candle.”
“Wait,” I stammer. “The ballroom—”
“No,” Petrys says again. “I saw what happened in Vsenrog. The elf attacked us, and you, what? Parried? Deflected his blow?”
I can’t even respond.
“Hells,” Petrys continues, “even if you could knock a wall over by yourself, that’s a far cry from burying an entire army. You can’t stop him, Zarek.”
“Wait—” I start.
“You wait,” Petrys snaps. “Sending you up against Vsenrog is a terrible idea, and if it was anyone but you suggesting it, I’d hit them.”
I shut up.
“We should go to Lisal,” Petrys finishes. “Like the prince suggested. There might be a way to defeat Malrik, but it’s going to take the Allied Kingdoms. Not magical parlor tricks.”
“Parlor tricks?” I cry.
“No,” Lilias says. “This is even more reason to cross Vederill Pass! This kind of magic has been used before. Someone has to remember what happened! Maybe they could work with Zarek—”
“Were you even listening to his story?” Gerard interrupts. “Because it didn’t sound like that fucking elf was very keen on working with him. More like torturing him.”
The entire room explodes in frantic, shouted arguments. I sink back in my chair, exhausted.
I feel like I’ve been running for my life since I was twelve years old.
I glance at the window, at the moon’s thin smile rising above the jagged teeth of the mountains, and I wonder what it’s like to watch the moon rise over the lake by what’s left of Dungal.
Would I even know it was beautiful, if I’d gone there at twelve instead of having to pretend to be a prince in a hostile kingdom?
Or would it just be a lake, and just another moonrise?
Would I have a wife and children, like the real prince of Dungal has now?
Maybe I’d spend nights like this watching the moon rise over the lake and wishing my life had a bit more excitement.
“Zarek?” Elrick says.
I turn away from the window and run my hand over my face. Gerard growls and rolls his eyes. Lilias crosses her arms over her chest and leans back in her chair. Elrick is staring at me like he’s expecting an answer. Everyone in the room looks unhappy.
And suddenly, I realize I do know where my loyalties lie. Maybe Petrys is right, and the strange magic Varitan beat into me is nothing more than a parlor trick. Maybe it will never stop Malrik, and honestly, at this moment I’m too exhausted to care much one way or another.
But my wife is here. And I’ll support her.
“I agree with Lilias,” I declare.
Even Lilias looks surprised by this. I smile at her as I continue.
“We should go over the pass,” I say. “That’s where Varitan is going, so there’s something over there he wants. Or needs. And, whatever he’s after, we should find it first.”
I leave it at that. I’m too exhausted to think about the implications of meeting another elf like Varitan.
Elrick and Anura both frown. Gods, I can see how unappealing this sounds.
They just escaped from Ethiria, and now, instead of traveling to a meeting of the Allied Kingdoms like the civilized nobility they are, I’m suggesting we throw ourselves over the mountains and into the realm of dragons and elves.
“I don’t think that’s wise,” Petrys says, delicately.
“Fine,” I reply, turning back to Elrick. “You travel to Lisal, then. You and what’s left of your court. Show that Marion is still one of the Seven Allied Kingdoms, and demand the support you’re owed. Lilias and I will go over the mountains—”
“We can’t,” Anura says.
She looks almost sad about it. Elrick shakes his head.
“She’s right,” the prince says. “We can’t go to Lisal without you.”
“Malrik started this war,” Anura continues, “with the lie that you left Vsenrog to marry the prince of Ethiria.”
Oh. Shit. My jaw clenches as I realize where Anura is going with this. Elrick glances at his wife, then at his sister.
“If we show up in Lisal without you,” Elrick says, “then it’s our word against Malrik’s armies. Who would dare support us?”
I exhale slowly. The room fills with silence.
“I see,” Lilias finally says. Her hands twist together in her lap.
“You need us in Lisal, both of us, to prove that I never left my husband or ran from Vsenrog. That Marion never broke our word.” Her voice trembles.
She swallows, then begins again. “And, if Marion never broke our word, then the war is unjustified, which gives the Allied Kingdoms even more reason to support us.”
Elrick nods.
Lilias gives me a sad smile. “So, it’s another unity tour?” she says.
I laugh, but it comes out cold and hollow. And then I reach across the space between us and take her hand in mine.
“I’ll go wherever you’re going,” I promise my wife.
I try not to notice the way Petrys glances at Gerard, then at the floor. Elrick clears his throat.
“Okay,” Elrick says. “It’s decided, then. Tomorrow, we’ll start preparations to leave for Lisal.”