Chapter 25
Lavender.
Its pungent stench scorches the inner walls of my nose.
Am I dead?
There would be no other reason I smell the ceremonial flower of death.
I open my eyes, but everything is dark. Squinting doesn’t help. The room I’m in has no windows, no cracks for light to enter. Where am I?
Starting slow, I feel for my limbs. First, my right hand, which is lying flat next to me. My left hand twitches next, still functional despite the soreness flaring along my bicep. My legs roll from side to side. An ache shoots through my back, forcing it to arch against a hard table.
I don’t seem to be strapped down. So I haven’t been abducted, at least.
What happened to me?
The last thing I remember…
My head shoots with a numbing coldness, and my eyes are hot flames in my skull.
Groaning, I prop myself up. My left arm feels somehow stronger than the right, buzzing with a slumbering, out-of-reach power. I make a fist and relax my fingers, my pulse flowing wildly to my fingertips with each flex.
A voice grumbles in front of me, and my body stills.
“What?” My voice cracks as I speak, dry as though my mouth has been open for a while. My tongue tastes like sand.
“—a disgrace,” the voice booms, ignoring me.
I flinch at the sound of the king’s disdain, my posture crumpling like an old document, soft and malleable as it folds into the hard table.
I blink. My lids come together tightly, my eyelashes pressing to the skin underneath, yet I see nothing. My heartbeat quickens in panic. I turn my head from side to side, but everything is still black as midnight. I’m unable to focus on anything.
“Did you blind the boy?” The rage in my father’s voice is surprising, but a malignant amusement accompanies it, and that makes his tone familiar.
“I did not, Your Majesty,” a slightly higher voice replies, firm. It sounds familiar until a warm, non-visible pulse undulates from him like a beacon, sifting through me like I’m not really here. I know it the second I feel it; it’s a strange, visceral embodiment of magic. An eluviam .
I try to remember again how I got here. The last thing I recall is my spar with Ether. Our bond gradually tearing me apart, unraveling me. After that… I angle my head as the icy pain takes over my memories. What could’ve possibly happened to get me here ?
“Then find out who did. He shall be drawn and quartered.” Anger seethes through the king’s order, like a river breaking into a dammed lake, crashing across an even surface, and flooding into a surrounding forest. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’s outraged that I’m hurt.
But I know better. Something else bothers him.
“It was your court mages, Your Majesty,” the familiar voice says steadily.
A shrill sound thwacks through the air, and I know my father has hit whoever he is talking to. Somehow, though, the assaulted makes no sound, no moan or groan or grumble as he takes the hit.
“Silence! Speak again, and you will have committed treason against your king,” my father seethes.
A deafening stillness hangs heavy in the air before the familiar voice speaks again, this time impossibly more careful.
“I mean no ill will, Your Majesty. However, it is under oath that I proclaim the following truth.” The speaker pauses, clears his throat, then continues, “Prince Ramiel’s maid and I were outside during his…procedure, and the last ones we saw enter were mages.”
“Your oath also requires you to obey the authority of your king,” my father grumbles, more annoyed than angry. “Leave. Now!”
The air whooshing around a door breaks the stagnant heat of the room, and the magical being leaves.
“Ramiel,” the king says. He must be facing me now, because my name sounds louder, crisp with disdain.
I sit upright again. My left arm sizzles with a foreign power, and the insignia on my right is a warm comfort. Ether must still be alive. Otherwise, my body wouldn’t be this content in my father’s presence.
“Yes, Your Majesty?” My throat is still dry, filled with fatigue.
“Tell me what you see.”
I “look” around, but there is only the impenetrable pitch. No light appears anywhere, almost as though the windows have been sealed with slabs of rock, blocking all brightness from entering.
Or he’d been right, and I’ve somehow lost my sight.
My father’s words from before ring in my head—but still, blind ? As in, I’m the only one who thinks the world has been made into an abyss? Or is he trying to make me believe the world has vanished so I might bow down to him, begging for answers?
If he is asking me what I can see, he must not know for certain whether I have been blinded.
“I’ve never been in this room before,” I guess, steadying my head in the direction I think he’s standing. I even move my eyes up, hoping to angle them toward his face.
For a second, I am confident I’ve feigned my sight, but then a cold slap cuts across my cheek, heavy and rough like sandpaper, and I tumble from the table. Hard ground greets me like a vengeful enemy, my limbs sticking to the cold and damp. I cough against the stone, face pressed to it.
“You’re a fool to lie to me, boy!” The king’s voice is laced with scorn and disappointment.
My chest heaves for air.
Burning tears spill down my cheeks. My breathing is no longer measured, no longer confident, as I choke on the truth.
I’ve been blinded. Made vulnerable.
Pathetic.
Worthless.
The list builds as my tears get thicker, weightier.
Without my sight?—
I’ll never be like Xavelor.
“Your expression reveals too much. You might as well scream your worst fears to the heavens. Yet my condition still stands, bleak as the outcome appears.” His voice is tight, still enfleshed with obvious distaste.
“You have two months before the Feast of Undying. Will you forfeit your birthright? Or will you do everything it takes to seize it for yourself?”
His words come rushing into my brain, crashing into one another, but the words I selectively hear are “forfeit” and “birthright,” and a bitter laugh gurgles in my throat.
“Since when have you considered me as your son, such that you would honor my birthright?” I spit, scrambling to my feet.
“Has your opinion of me so greatly improved in the time we’ve been apart?
That you would support me in the Feast?” Though I can’t see him, his movements are audible as he shifts back a step. Good.
“Ramiel—”
I put my hands out, signaling for him to stay away.
“No,” I spit, “you’ve never supported me.
Saying you do now would be a pitiful, blatant lie.
And even if you would stoop so low as to commit to such blasphemy, I still would never believe you.
Deep down, you despise me. I’ve always known it.
I’m sure you’re part of the reason why I’ve lost my sight.
And you sit across from me, dramatizing your innocence on the matter. ”
The king is silent. Whether in rage or rendered speechless, I care not.
My body is weighty from the words I’ve just pounded into him, my chest heaving with every heartbeat.
“Leave me, and bring my maid,” I grit, keeping my arms stiff. “Not Bernadette. The one you apparently spoke with while I was busy piecing together the cause of one of your Sanvira’s deaths.”
The king moves, his armored feet scraping across the floor. Not toward me, but away to where the door must be. Before he can go farther, though, I say, “Wouldn’t you like to know what I’ve discovered?”
“Ronan tells me all is well, that it was accidental.”
“Oh, did he, now?”
A grunt from the almighty king.
Maybe it’s because I can’t see him, but I feel I have the overwhelming upper hand in our conversation, so I wave him away. The door scrapes open.
“Two months,” he repeats, voice gruff. A tinge of sadness, or maybe something closer to regret, makes him strain his words. “Or less, if our temporary peace with Midra is compromised. Prepare yourself.”
With his parting words, the door slides shut.
Relieved, I drop my hands to my sides and sidestep carefully until my hip reaches the table. I grab the surface, hoist myself up, and sit.
Not a moment later, the door opens again.
I sense no magical energy, not like with the previous guest.
Light taps against the floor grow louder as the entrant moves to my side. Soft, medium-sized hands take one of mine, cupping it like it’s a precious, rare prize.
Though I’d told my father to send Ether, I can’t say I’m not comforted knowing Bernadette is still alive and well, ever the doting woman.
“Rami,” she sobs, stroking my knuckles with force. “You— Arioch save us , what happened to you?”
She struggles to release the words, and my heart constricts in horror. “What, do I look as terrible as I feel?” I rub a hand along my arms and legs. My left arm is wrapped in a thin, damp bandage. But there’s no lingering soreness beneath it.
She takes a shaky breath as she pats my hand mindlessly. “Oh no, of course not, dear. I just…”
The door opens again, and even though no footsteps accompany the rush of wind that filters through the humidity, I know Ether has entered. The mark on my arm is a molten thing, responding to her bright, pure eluviam. I blink once, then gasp when I… see her.
Though it isn’t her physical form, I do recognize the eluviam swirling within her, bright and iridescent, exactly as the tallup had glowed. In the expanse of darkness swallowing me whole, her light turns me into a moth drawn to flame. I can’t help but stare at the writhing sphere of energy.
When I close my eyes, her eluviam disappears.
It’s as though my sight has shifted to an alternate world, one where only my mate’s soul exists.
Bernadette moves away, her warmth leaving my grasp, and new, slender hands fold around mine, smaller than my dear maid’s.
My breath hitches, and an intense heat fills me.
Touching her… It’s almost too much to bear as it is calming.
“How are you feeling?” she murmurs, stroking my palm. Each brush is a scorching whisper.
The door opens again, and I’m sure Bernadette has left.