Chapter 22
Chapter
The following days passed in grayness and sorrow. Everyone was shaken by the Plague attacks. Mirabel had become a shadow of herself, and the sight of her tore at my heart. She had always been so full of life, now crushed beneath the weight of grief.
I walked through the arcades to meet my father. He was to show me old maps and scrolls. Temples, paths and traces of the past. The sunlight filtered through the columns, and for a fleeting moment, the world felt at peace.
From afar, I noticed a tall, familiar figure.
Aidenar. He wasn’t alone. Beside him stood Jasmine.
The same Jasmine I had seen at the ball, the same girl who had stumbled out of the bushes after him, fixing her gown and hair.
My heart tightened so sharply I lost my breath.
I tried to ignore the feeling. Aidenar was free to speak with whomever he pleased.
However, my jealousy was a wild thing, untamed and stronger than reason.
I stopped midstep. Their silhouettes moved, but something in their posture felt wrong. Jasmine’s gestures were too sharp, too frantic, her stance too close, too tense.
And then.
Aidenar collapsed to his knees.
“Aiden!” I cried and ran toward him.
Jasmine fled, disappearing among the arches. I didn’t see her face, only the glint of steel in her hand and a streak of blood smeared across the marble. I dropped beside him. Blood spread across his shirt in a crimson bloom. He fell into my arms.
“Help!” I screamed, but my voice broke. “Help!”
“Nerissa…” he rasped. “Jasmine. She stabbed me. I couldn’t… move.”
“Hush,” I whispered, my voice trembling as I pressed my hand to the wound. “You’re safe now. Stay with me.”
His blood seeped through my fingers, hot and sticky. Every part of me screamed to stop it, to stop time itself. I heard guards shouting, running, but deep inside I feared it was already too late. I couldn’t heal his body. But perhaps I could slow the bleeding. Stop the life from escaping him.
I closed my eyes and reached for the water within me. A cold pulse shivered through my hands and flowed into him. Aidenar drew a ragged breath, his heartbeat slowed.
“I didn’t even get to have dinner with you,” he murmured, trying to smile. “You know, properly.”
“Don’t say such things,” I hissed, tears streaming down my cheeks.
“Took me too long to see that I need you,” he whispered, his breath growing shallower. “Far too long. You’re so beautiful… I’ll miss your eyes. And that fierce scowl of yours.”
“Oh, hush,” I said, broken with despair. “Don’t you dare die in my arms, do you hear me?”
“You’re even lovelier when you’re angry,” he breathed, a faint smile ghosting across his lips.
I kept talking, as if words alone could bind him to life.
“What would we eat?” I asked softly. “At that dinner of yours.”
“Whatever you wished,” he whispered. “The servants would have prepared it. I am, you know after all, the Regent’s son…”
“Hold on just a little longer, please.” My fingers brushed his cheek. His beautiful, perfect face, the one I had seen every night before sleep.
His silver eyes grew dim.
“Healers!” I shouted my lungs out when I saw them rushing closer. “Healers!”
They came armed with their Elementars, cutting his shirt open, pressing glowing stones against the wound. Their hands trembled with focus. I held his head in my lap, barely breathing. And then his body went still.
“No, no, no…” I whispered. “Please, no.”
But the healers were already working. The blood stopped flowing. One of them nodded. There was hope.
“We must move him!” said the eldest.
They lifted him onto a stretcher, surrounded by guards. I stood there, drenched in blood once more, my empty hands still remembering the weight of his life. Peter, his personal guard, approached me with care. Gentle-eyed, ever silent, always near Aidenar.
“Lady Veymaris,” he said softly. “Please, let them do their work.”
I looked at him wordlessly. He was right.
I knew nothing of healing flesh. There was nothing more I could do.
I only stood there, watching as they disappeared down the corridor.
Whispers rose among the gathered crowd. I felt their stares, the iron scent of blood on my skin.
I turned and walked away to my chambers.
I washed mechanically until the water turned red. Then I simply fell onto the bed. I do not remember when I closed my eyes. Only that his touch still lingered on my hands.
That night, nightmares came. I saw the attack again, but this time there was no one beneath the arcades, only me. The marble glistened with blood, yet silence reigned. A dark crimson pool spread across the floor, gleaming in the moonlight. My hands were clean, my gown black as midnight.
A man stepped from behind a column. The same dark-haired stranger I had seen in my dreams before. He smiled, that calm, chilling kind of smile that makes the air grow heavy.
“So close,” he said, tilting his head. “Ah well, perhaps next time. I dislike the way he looks at you. Though Rava wants him for herself…” He paused, glancing aside. “I’m not certain that’s wise.”
His voice carried strange echoes, as if more than one soul spoke through him. Then I heard it. Bubbling sound, thick and wet, like something boiling beneath the earth.
I looked toward the Inner Court. In its center stood a bowl upon a stone pillar, the same as those in the catacombs of the elemental temples. This one brimmed with black, glistening ooze. Slowly, it began to overflow, as though something within it breathed.
The sludge crept across the marble, spreading wider, slithering toward me like a living thing. I wanted to summon water from the fountains but they were dry.
The man took a step forward.
“I learn from my mistakes, Nerissa,” he said softly. “Never to leave you water to play with.”
Panic constricted my chest. The black liquid touched my feet, cold and viscous as tar. I forced myself to move, one step, then another, then I ran. The palace corridors twisted before me like a labyrinth, walls bending and shifting. His voice echoed behind me.
“You cannot run from me.”
I ran until my lungs burned then woke, drenched in sweat, my heart racing.
At dawn, I went to the infirmary. They wouldn’t let me in, but they said Aidenar lived.
He had lost much blood, but the bleeding was stopped and the wound sealed.
He breathed. That was enough. I stood there in silence, not knowing what to do with myself.
Worry would change nothing, so I turned toward my father’s “temporary office”, since he and Roderick had been working with the royal cartographers for two days, poring over maps of the Dominium.
I entered without knocking. My father stood bent over the table, parchment and maps spread before him, marked with dense symbols. The air smelled of wax and old paper. When he looked up, weariness shadowed his gaze, yet alertness lingered there too. The same sharpness he bore at sea before a storm.
“Any news of the Young Regent?” he asked without straightening.
“He lives,” I answered quietly. “Barely, but he lives.”
“Fortunate indeed,” he muttered. “I heard you slowed his bleeding. I didn’t know your power had grown so strong.”
“Neither did I,” I admitted.
“That pleases me,” he said. “I remember when your gift first awakened. I thought it would take you from us. That we’d lose you too.”
“I thought the same,” I said, bitterness threading my voice.
He cleared his throat and turned back to the maps, eager to leave the memory behind.
“We suspect one of the temples holds answers to our questions,” he said, his tone shifting to business.
“And the fourth chosen? Has anyone come forward?”
“No one rushes to boast of a bastard child,” he said dryly. “The archivists are searching the genealogies for possible heirs.”
“Must it be someone of noble blood?” I asked.
“Not necessarily. But the Families were not formed by chance. When the world was younger and the elements raged untamed, it was those who could wield them who claimed lands and built dynasties. Their bloodlines thinned over generations, but their descendants still bear the strongest affinity.”
“How can you be certain it’s someone young?”
“Each sacrifice passed its power to a descendant,” he said without hesitation. “I expect no different now.”
I studied him in silence for a moment.
“How can I help?” I asked at last.
“I know the elements call to one another,” he said, a spark of excitement in his tone. “All things seek unity. Perhaps your power can guide us. We shall try something unorthodox.”
He uncorked a flask and let a few drops of water fall upon the map.
“Try to feel it. See if it leads you somewhere.”
I closed my eyes and placed my palms upon the parchment. The droplets trembled, joined into a thin silver vein, and began to move, sliding across the map like living mercury. They shimmered, circling the Dominium until they came to rest… upon White City.
A chill brushed my skin, but nothing more.
“It returns to where it began,” I whispered.
We tried for hours, on different maps. Water was usually flowing to all well-known ancestral fortresses in the Families’ cities. Nothing new, nothing revealed.
By dusk, exhaustion weighed on me. My father remained with Roderick and the maps, I withdrew to my chambers. When I closed the door behind me, I swore I still felt the pulse of water beneath my skin.
The next morning, on my way to my father’s office, I met Dricus. He stood beneath an archway, leaning against cold stone as if waiting. When he saw me, he straightened and approached slowly.
“I heard what happened,” he said softly. His eyes held no false pity. “It was close. Had it not been for you, he would be dead.”
“Perhaps,” I murmured, lowering my gaze. “Jasmine fled the palace. They believe she’s one of the worshippers. They say she must have wielded a dark Elementar, else she could never have struck him so easily.”
“Do you trust your own people?” he asked after a pause.
“Yes. I’ve known them since childhood. And you?”
He nodded. “I trust mine. But this palace…” he glanced up at the high ceiling “is full of strangers. I’m not certain how long we should remain here.
I must soon return south, the attacks are growing, and the people are afraid.
” He sighed. “But thanks to your father, the Families may finally understand the gravity of this war. Some Lords have promised to send their armies to help.”
“That is good news,” I said, though my tone lacked joy.
“But you, Nerissa…” His voice softened with concern. “You shouldn’t be here. It’s too dangerous.”
“And where would I go?” I lifted my brow. “Nowhere is safe. We must find the fourth heir. But I doubt the Gathering will succeed. Most Lords cannot see beyond their own borders.” I stepped closer. “If that person hides, or doesn’t know who they are, no map or archive will reveal them.”
“It is no wonder,” he said quietly. “Who would wish to be a part of this?” His gaze drifted, as though counting ghosts. “My parents. Your brother. Lord Cavareth.”
He shook his head.
“Even so, your father’s words…” His voice faltered. “I always felt none of this was a mere chance. But now, at least, I may hope that I was not the cause of it all, only its consequence.”
There was this one note in his voice, that I hadn’t felt before. Relief.