Chapter 6
Cleansed in the Waters
Elloven squinted against the harsh light when her kidnappers uncovered her face. Her body-wide clench slowly released. If there was light, there couldn’t be fiends.
But her glimmer of hope didn’t last as she spun around the small, circular room.
She was alone, and she was a prisoner.
Whoever had arranged for her imprisonment had also left her a change of clothing, which was a relief after having held what remained of her gown together with a hope and a prayer.
She glanced around, verifying she was alone, and slipped into the replacement dress, a modest garment of emerald and black.
Elloven moved to the lone window, the only reason there was light at all in the cramped space.
There was no pane, nothing to keep her in except good sense.
She took an unintended step backward at the dizzying sight below.
She was in a tower high above the world, so high she couldn’t even be sure she was still in the same area she’d been abducted from.
What, she wondered, happened to the dead when faced with another death?
She knew what happened when a flame was stolen, but what would be the outcome if she raced toward the unblocked opening and hurled herself to the ground below?
Would she wake in the same place, same predicament?
Or were there more levels to the netherworld, places more cursed, more disturbing?
“Aelloven.” A protracted exhalation flowed from a soft, deep voice. “How, dear one, has it come to this?”
She carefully turned with her hands out, to show she wasn’t a threat.
Had loungers and the plush fur rug been there before?
The man certainly had not. He was tall and broader set with shoulder-length hair, a striking blend of mahogany and scarlet.
His head was tilted in appraisal, but she found no judgment in his bright-blue eyes, only sadness.
“You’re...” Why couldn’t she say it? She knew it. Her heart knew it. Even had she never witnessed the Cry of the Ancestors, something inside of her was opening and coming together to form a story she’d been denied almost all her life.
Laxius’s eyes shuttered as he lowered his head. “No, no. Not like this. Will you sit?”
His incoherence introduced more disorientation, but she did as he asked. He passed earnest consideration between two identical chairs, like it was the most important decision he’d make all day, before settling into one.
For a while, neither said a word. His affected breaths carried the conversation. “Yes, I am who you think I am, and if this is not evidence of how terribly unfair both life and death can be, then I don’t care to know a better example.”
“You rescued me from the courtyard.” Elloven tried to stop obsessively studying his features, pairing them with her own, with Gennady’s. “But they told me I was a hostage.”
“Yes. Regrettably, that’s their spiel for everyone they escort. I’ve sent my feedback to the administrators, but nothing moves quickly here, as you might imagine.”
“How did you know I was there?”
He folded his hands over his lap. “All who pass through the Red Feather Gates are known to us. When you were ejected from Magna Annalis at moonrise, I saw no other choice.”
Elloven balked. “No other choice? I’m only here because you felt burdened to intervene?”
“When I received word you’d crossed the Desidero, I knew what had happened, who had sent you here.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“The truth answers as it must.” Then he... flickered. After a few strange seconds, it stopped, but part of him remained transparent.
“You’re not here at all, are you?” Elloven asked in disbelief.
She was finally meeting her blood father, and all he’d brought was more dishonesty.
More confusion. More disappointment. The foolishness was all her own, for expecting any different.
“All these years, all these deceptions, and you cannot even face me in person?”
Laxius shrugged with a sorrowful smile that barely moved his mouth. “None who enter Imperator Hall ever leave it.”
“Is that not where we are?”
“I directed the sentinels to ensure you never reach our steps. You carry the blood, the honor, same as I. But if you are trapped there, how would your necromancer find you?”
Elloven refused to ask how he knew about Jesstin. “Is it even you? Are these even your words?”
“It is me,” he said sadly. “It is me, Aelloven. Of that you can be sure.”
“Can I be? How?”
“Because you already know the answer.”
“I know you look like the man I’m told was my father.” He looked like Gennady too. “What do you know about this ‘necromancer’? Why did you mention him?”
“Ryquin’s bondslave has been busy with his ponderings. None of what he does is a secret.”
Did he mean Daire? “And what has that to do with me?”
“He speaks to the wrong individuals. He’s not as clever as he would like to be. Nor is Ryquin, though the evil in his heart was a disappointment. Even after all this... I never foresaw he would use you to lure the necromancer here.”
Elloven shook her head. “Meaning?”
“There are too many competing intentions in Rivenholde.” Laxius glanced up and away, his words trailing. “My brother had other plans for you, but Ryquin acted first. He tested your necromancer, and your necromancer passed. And now he’s come here, just as Ryquin knew he would.”
Ryquin had seen what she couldn’t, amid the pain of misunderstanding... how far Jesstin would go to save her.
“You cannot let your necromancer open that door. Not even... not even for you.” Laxius’s gaze was so intense, it made her want to look anywhere else. “No matter what, Aelloven. As merciless as the Infinitum is now, it would be untenable under Ryquin.”
“But the door to free the dead isn’t Ryquin’s door.”
There was a flicker of surprise in his reaction. He didn’t know everything then. “He said that? Free the dead?”
Elloven answered with cool silence.
“You must tell him to abandon this foolishness.”
She hadn’t expected that. “Don’t you want to be free of this place? To move on? Or are you just reluctant to give up all this power you have here?”
“This isn’t a palace, Aelloven. It’s a tomb. Whoever has told your necromancer to do this doesn’t know what they’re asking. They’re missing vital information.”
“Such as?”
“Yes, I want to move on, very much,” he said. His melancholy smile flickered before the rest of him. “My brother is behind this. Even now, he cannot let it go.”
“Estelar has nothing to do with this.”
“You must disabuse yourself of the foolish notion that your necromancer is here on some heroic mission. He was manipulated. Lied to. Entertaining any other alternative will add mountains to your disappointments.”
“I’m numb to them at this point.” She was too flummoxed to decide whether Jesstin’s optimism or Laxius’s cynicism was more accurate, but she was getting her answer. “Why do you want him to find me, if not for that?”
He smiled wistfully. “So you’re not alone here, darling. Do you really believe he’d let you toil here by yourself?”
Elloven hesitated. She’d hoped to pose it as a question, but stating her intention might get her further. “I’d have Gennady.”
Laxius shook his head at the ground. “He’s not here.”
“At Imperator Hall?”
“In the Infinitum.”
She balked. “But he’s dead.”
“The answer is complicated and not mine to offer.”
“Your sordid library seems to agree.”
Elloven was on the back foot, and her frustration wasn’t helping.
Trust wouldn’t gain her ground, but if she could do what Jesstin often did, if she could read the situation while living it, maybe she could get somewhere.
“I could speak with Je—with my necromancer if I understood exactly what the dangers are.”
Laxius flicked his attention to his hands with a terse, wry smirk that knocked the breath right out of her. It was a Gennady gesture, down to the way his thumbs and pinkies bent inward, his lips lifting only at one corner. “Have you seen your mother?”
She laughed because his redirection was absurd, but it was perfectly in line with the characterization offered in his biography. He was no different from the others in Rivenholde. Their ambiguity was power, but she’d adapted to it. “You mean Shioven of Curia Duskmaw? Daughter of the pretor?”
“How long have you known?” His eyes knit inward in surprise.
Elloven shrugged and mimicked his smirk, but her thoughts were another matter. If Laxius was asking about Shioven, then she couldn’t be at Imperator Hall. So where was she?
Laxius nodded in understanding. “You don’t trust me, and you shouldn’t.” He leaned in, elbows on his knees. “But no trust is required for you to look within yourself and know when something is not right.”
“Nothing in that world or this one is right.”
“You yourself witnessed the spectacle of deception they cling to in Rivenholde,” he replied.
“Men are the same everywhere,” she said unemotionally, surprised at her behavior, her calm, which had been building into something useful—finally. “Rivenholde isn’t special nor unique.”
“They lured you there, Aelloven.” Laxius’s tenor shifted slowly to desperation. “They used you and had you killed.”
“Why am I here, Laxius?” She gestured around. “Why did you bring me here?”
“If you entered Imperator Hall—”
“But why do you care?” Elloven marveled at the man.
He should elicit within her some sort of longing for warmth, some deeply hidden desire to be cared for and protected.
But all she felt was annoyance and, even sadder, apathy.
He was a stranger. The best she could muster was fatigue for what was yet another dazzling disappointment in her journey of self-discovery.
“Three children you created with Shioven—and thought nothing of what their lives would be like. They say you wander the balustrades crying for her, but what of your sons and daughter? How many tears have you spared us? How much of yourself have you drained into the stones lamenting our fates?”