23. A Graceless Collapse of Tangled Limbs
A Graceless Collapse of Tangled Limbs
I thought I understood devastation.
I believed I’d felt it the night I found out everything I’d been told about my existence was a lie. And utterly convinced I’d experienced it when I realized the people I trusted planned to kill me.
But this was something else entirely. This was hope holding you up only to realize you now had that much further to fall.
So foolishly certain that I could save us, I actually believed that the one thing I was good at was enough this time.
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe past the pressure in my chest.
Griffon tensed beside me like a bowstring ready to snap at the king’s words and shifted even closer to my side.
We were going to die at dawn.
“However,” the king continued, “something else was.”
He motioned toward his advisors. One of them was holding a small brass-plated box. But it was Malik who unfurled a rolled scroll I didn’t realize he was holding. The paper was yellowed with age; the edges crumbling.
Malik began reading. “Where, like Caster and Pollux, Helios and darkness hold equal reign.”
I waited for him to go on. And then he looked at me expectantly.
Wait. That was it?
Everyone was silent as the words hovered in the still room. My coordinates were correct. But instead of the headpiece, Hermes left behind a riddle. I guess even dead monks couldn't resist cryptic one-liners, even when there were lives on the line.
King Faisal pulled my attention back to him. “Does that mean anything to you?”
My mind raced, trying to parse the meaning. Castor and Pollux, light and darkness. That’s what they were. There was no mystery there. But it says “like” Castor and Pollux. Not them specifically. Maybe balanced like them?
“May I hear it again?”
With a slow, measured voice, Malik read it again.
I worked through the last part, Helios and darkness holding equal reign. Helios was the sun personified. When are sunlight and darkness balanced? My pulse sped up as the answer came to me.
“An equinox.”
“An equinox,” repeated Malik, nodding his head.
“Which one? Spring or autumn?” The king leaned forward, a flicker of hope raising his brows.
“I don’t know.” The admission tasted like ash, but the riddle wasn’t specific.
The king’s expression hardened as he looked at Malik for confirmation. “That’s it?”
“I’m afraid so, Your Majesty.”
The king’s shoulders dropped. “So it means nothing.” The brief spark of possibility fizzled out.
Oh no. That can’t be it. “I’m sure I can work through it if I had more—”
“The bargain,” the king interrupted, his voice hardening, “was for the return of the relic, not another riddle.”
“But—”
“The execution,” he continued, dropping each word like a hammer, “will proceed as originally scheduled.”
Before we had time to react, the three guards behind us simultaneously drew their swords. The rasp of steel echoed through the hall.
The ground shifted beneath my feet.
Griffon turned his head, his eyes flickering toward the point of a sword so precariously close to the back of my neck that I was afraid its edge would give me another haircut. His jaw clenched.
“I just need more time.”
“I will not delay the festival for an unsolvable riddle. Too many have failed to find the relic over too many years. One more failure changes nothing.”
“Please.” My voice cracked in desperation.
The king’s expression softened slightly, but his resolve didn’t waver. He slowly shook his head. “My decision is final.”
The walk back to our cells felt longer than before. Like each foot sank into the sand dunes of what dawn, in this star-forsaken desert, would bring. My mind wouldn’t stop spinning through the riddle’s words. Turning them over and over like stones I expected to suddenly transform into gems.
Griffon walked ominously silent beside me.
His coiled tension felt heavy in the surrounding air.
I knew he was cataloging exits, analyzing the positions of the guards, calculating odds.
But more than anything, his attention was concentrated on the sword that had not left the vicinity of the back of my neck. He’d all but ignored the one at his.
Once we were locked back in our cells and Griffon’s manacles were removed, unable to stay still, I began to pace immediately. Muttering to myself and brainstorming different interpretations, I began wearing a track into the stone floor.
With a dark expression, Griffon sat against the wall, watching me go back and forth. After several minutes, he finally spoke. “Sit down, Wren. You’re spiraling.”
Stopping mid-stride, I turned to face him. “I can’t. I have to figure this out.”
Lowering his voice, he said, “You aren’t dying at dawn.”
I stepped closer. “What are you talking about?”
“When they come back to take us, I’m taking them down instead,” he said matter-of-factly. Like we were discussing the weather.
“But they have weapons.”
“I’m faster than they are. Stronger.” He rose to his feet, muscles coiling as he pushed away from the wall. “They may think I’m just a skilled fighter, but they don’t know what we really are. They won’t expect it.”
“But there are too many of them.” Despite trying to stay calm, my voice rose with each word. “Even more so for an execution.”
“You underestimate me. I can distract—”
“And then, what?” I threw up my hands. “Somehow make our way out of the city? Across a desert? Somehow keep from getting picked off by those massive ruhks? And then from being chased down by an entire army? With no water? No shelter?”
He surged to his feet and crossed the space between us in two strides. Crowding me back into the wall, his hands slammed into the stone on either side of my head. “I will not allow you to die for my wrongs!”
We stayed frozen like that, our chests heaving. Faces only inches apart. I looked at the desperate intensity in his green eyes, and in that moment, I knew. Blood froze so thoroughly in my veins that I could barely get the words out. “You don’t plan to survive the escape, do you?”
He closed his eyes as if he couldn’t look at me any longer. “This is my fault.”
The tension that had kept him upright drained away. The cold, rough stone snagged at the silk of my kaftan as we both sank to the floor in a graceless collapse of tangled limbs.
He pulled me onto his lap and wrapped his arms around me. It wasn’t gentle. It was with a desperate, crushing intensity that squeezed the air from my lungs. With my knees tucked against his ribs, his arms banded around me, locking me against him.
I found the nook between his shoulder and his jaw and buried my face there, inhaling the crisp scent that was unmistakably him. Echoing the chaos of my own, his wild pulse thundered against my cheek. His chest hitched with each inhale as if he were fighting for control.
One of his hands moved to cradle the back of my head with a tenderness that contradicted the fierce way he held me. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, the words cracking in the middle.
I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling the sting of tears I refused to shed. “It's no one's fault.” Pressing closer, I savored the solid warmth of him, the steady thrum of his heartbeat gradually slowing beneath my ear, and the way his fingers trembled slightly where they grasped my shin.
He shook his head, his stubble scraping against my forehead. But he didn't speak. Instead, he just gripped me tighter, as if he could hold the world at bay with sheer will alone. Could keep the sun from rising. Could unmake all the choices that had brought us here.
That was how they found us hours later as dawn threatened its arrival.
First, it was the shuffle of boot heels.
Then it was the rattle of weapons as they drew closer.
And this time, it was more than a few guards.
As Griffon quickly pushed to his feet with an air of determination, I knew he was preparing for whatever escape attempt he’d been calculating all night.
But the guards came prepared. With not just swordsmen, but archers.
They both lined their nocked arrows through the bars with precise aim. At me.
My breath caught.
Griffon’s shoulders broadened as he sidestepped in front of me and backed me protectively into the wall.
There was a rough chuckle from the other side of the bars. “So predictable, King Killer.” It was the same guard who held the knife to my throat when we were captured outside the tunnel exit. “We will not hurt the girl if you cooperate. Now, hands.”
Standing utterly still, the muscle in his jaw ticked. This wasn’t going as he’d hoped. He had no choice, and he knew it. Finally, he stepped forward and extended his hands through the bars. The manacles snapped around his wrists with finality.
“Now the girl.”
Griffon took a half-step to the side, never taking his eyes off the guards.
But before I could even register that the heavy metal cuffs were cold against my skin, from my opposite side, a hand snapped through the bars and grabbed the hair on the side of my head.
I screamed as my head was yanked back violently.
When I managed to open my eyes, I found Griffon frozen next to me. He leaned on the balls of his feet, every line of his body so taut it looked like he would snap. It took me a disorienting second to realize there was a blade at the pulse point of my throat.
“Now, King Killer, you are going to be a good prisoner and come out of the cell nicely. No sudden movements. No heroics. Or I’ll paint these bars red.”
And just like on our first trip to the palace, I again had a blade to my throat as we left it. It was really becoming an annoying pattern.
The dark sky was edged with the dusty indigo of the coming dawn.
A small army of men with long, curved swords escorted us across the courtyard to a large, domed building.
Above the crowds, in their ivory and gold finery, filing through the arched entryway were the engraved words “Daystar Temple of Helios” and under it, the number ‘144’.