The Living God, page 30
The rage that consumed Saran broke like a wave crashing over the shore. It washed out of her, creating a void that quickly filled with regret. Her eyes finally saw Madam Ophelia bleeding out onto her bedroom floor.
The princess’s chest heaved with shock, and she broke with a sob, wrapping her arms around her stomach. Bile crept into the back of her throat. She went to Madam Ophelia and pressed her hands into the wound. The healer covered those hands with her own, smearing blood over Saran’s fingers. Saran’s lip trembled as she tried to form words. She willed her magic to mend the wound but could not call it forth to do so. Helplessness consumed her, ate at her until it stole what was left of her composure.
“I’m sorry,” Saran murmured, looking deep into Madam Ophelia’s gray eyes. “I …”
“I did it for you.” Madam Ophelia nodded. “You are what you need to be.”
Saran shook her head at those words. She was not her father. She would never be her father. “Guards! Someone, help!”
The healer smiled. “Sometimes … we do what we hate … to do what is right.”
Pain squeezed Saran’s chest, and she couldn’t breathe. As Madam Ophelia slipped away, her eyes went dull and lifeless, and her hands fell from Saran’s fingers. The princess shattered with a horrified scream that repeated until her voice grew ragged and silent. Raener, her guard, burst into her room. She didn’t register his presence, not even after he drew her away from Madam Ophelia’s lifeless body.
Every step Saran took down the lengthy hallway echoed with the clank of armored guards at her side and back. The familiar sound she’d known all her life ticked on as white noise in her ears. She stood stoic and regal between the lines of armed men, while she broke apart inside.
Saran had never killed anyone as coldly as she’d done to Madam Ophelia. Up until yesterday, she’d never really killed anyone at all. In her grief over losing Keleir, she hadn’t given it much thought. Now it consumed her.
Lost in the focus needed to keep putting one foot in front of the other despite exhaustion and emotional instability, she didn’t see Rowe bounding down the hall toward her until he grabbed her shoulders and stopped her.
“Ophelia knows where the key is.”
Saran’s eyes lifted, half hearing him. His nostrils flared, urgency and anger creasing his face. “I know,” she replied, turning her eyes back to the stairs. “She just told me.”
“Where?”
“My father has it. In him. In his leg.”
Rowe growled, his hands tightening on her shoulders. “I’m going to kill her.”
Saran lowered her gaze shamefully. “I already have.”
“I’ll get the key after the ceremony.”
“Now,” Saran whispered, tears in her eyes. “I cannot handle another moment of this torment. Find it now.”
The Lightning Mage nodded. “Now.” He touched her hand, gave it the faintest of squeezes, and rushed off down the hall.
Saran took a moment to collect herself. She swallowed the heavy lump in her throat, straightened her spine, lifted her head high, and carried on with her long walk to the throne room. The queen flexed her fingers at her sides, feeling the leather of the fingerless gloves worn with the armored bracers. She’d go down in history as the first queen to ever wear armor to a coronation. Her dress felt heavy, the corset too tight, and the red cloak she wore caught on the roughness of the stone floor. Every detail hyperrealized and dreamy at once.
The heavy doors to the throne room groaned open, and bright golden sunlight spilled into the hall from the large windows at either side of the throne. The room went silent, like a wave of mud washing over her. Her feet grew as heavy as lead plates, and she forced herself to meet the eyes of the coronation attendees.
She put one foot in front of the other, passing down the center of the room as gracefully as she could muster with the unmanageable tremble in her knees.
Darshan stood on the granite podium to the right of the throne, wearing a borrowed deep blue tunic. An Ekaru priest stood to the left of the throne, the same one who had performed the marriage rites with Keleir. The line of soldiers stretching the length of the aisle snapped to attention once her feet brushed the short steps leading up to the throne. She nearly tripped, but by some miracle or force of will, she caught her balance. She welcomed the throne, wanting to sit after exhausting every ounce of stamina she possessed, both physically and mentally, just getting to it.
The throne didn’t look the same as the one her father occupied all these years. Times had changed. This one, the one her father sold to pay for wars so many years ago, had finally returned to where it belonged. It was ornate and gold, with a plush red cushion.
Maybe the spell she’d woven to reverse Keleir’s curse was not just of time, but also of purpose. Maybe the castle had everything exactly where it belonged, even herself.
Despite her hatred for the idea of a preordained life, she couldn’t help but feel that everything she’d ever done led her to this moment, to this end … or this beginning. She was the heir to the throne. Her kingdom was tied to the Core and she to her kingdom, and thus that connection sustained the life of Adrid. In that moment Saran knew she could never bring herself to leave her home because she was tied to her world and this throne as surely as if someone had bound her with rope.
She passed the last step and stood before her throne. Taking a deep breath until the corset pulled uncomfortably tight, she turned to face the people. Her people.
She expected to see angry faces, for flying vegetables to rain down and pitchforks to rise up with torches. Darshan’s presence soothed them. The hopeful expressions they wore were not for her—she knew that. They were for him. She’d fought so hard for them, endured the punishment of her father for them, and yet they hated her. She’d sacrificed her life, Keleir’s life, in order to see them freed, and they wanted Darshan for their king.
Saran sat stiffly as the Ekaru priest began his ritual. He announced, in the old tongue and the new, her right to the throne, her lineage. When he touched on the Vanguard line, the lines of their faces eased. It gave her some hope that in the future, after many years as queen, she might win their favor. That they might love her as much as they loved Darshan.
Her fingers curled over the arms of the chair, and she clutched it as the incense wafted from the brass thurible the priest waved back and forth. She disliked the strong smell and held her breath as it passed.
Normally in a coronation, the crown would be placed on the head of the ruler, but Adrid’s crown for its queen had been made so intricately that it needed to be woven into the hair. It proved to be a tedious process that she had no intention of enduring every morning. She would wear the crown meant for the king instead. Another could be made for Darshan, now that there was gold in the vault.
Gold.
Everything had changed in a day. No more debt. No more corruption, at least for the most part, and they were no longer at war with themselves. Everything had been made better, and yet she could not find happiness in it. She could not feel joy at her accomplishments, not when her husband lay waiting to be put to the pyre. She’d failed to keep her promise.
Her heart grew heavy in her chest, and her throat closed tight. She found it hard to breathe but focused all her attention on remaining as calm and controlled as she could. She kept the facade but felt it cracking with each second she had to look out at the faces watching her. She didn’t want to be there anymore. She didn’t want them to see her break. Saran fell into a void so deep that she didn’t hear the celebratory bells tolling or the cheers from the crowd as the Ekaru priest finished his ritual. The world blurred as Darshan took her hand and led her from the throne, down the short steps and through the crowd, to the eight men with Keleir’s wrapped body balanced on a flat board resting against their shoulders. She followed them numbly, staring at the deep blue linen, clutching Darshan’s arm painfully tight.
Her breath came too quickly. She felt light-headed, almost drugged as she forced one foot in front of the other, scraping them against the floor. Saran stayed with Darshan at the top of the steps leading into the courtyard, while the castle emptied out around her and filled the space around the pyre.
“It is okay to grieve,” Darshan whispered to her. “You loved him.”
Saran turned teary eyes on the older man, wanting to choke the life from him, wanting to turn back time so far that he were never born. She could not stomach the thought of marrying him, of binding herself to him and only him for the rest of her life. She looked away, back to the eight men as they carried Keleir’s body up the steps to the flat place where he would rest atop the wood. The place where he would burn.
Beyond the pyre and the castle walls, the sun began to set.
FORTY-NINE
KELEIR KNEW IT wasn’t night. He knew that the deep unfeeling darkness around him, so quiet and still, belonged to the hollowness of the Under, where the dead rested for eternity. He’d lain in it for hours, or at least it felt like hours. He felt no ground at his feet, nor soft bedding at his back, nor even the brush of air across his skin. He called out in the darkness, cried out for someone to hear him. When he’d begged for death, he hadn’t expected it to feel so isolating, so unending.
Only after hours of silence, of lying in the blackness of his ever after, did he finally accept his death. But just as he accepted his fate, a spark of orange light lit off in the distance. Keleir ran for it, a fleeting hope of escape buried deep inside him.
He ran until his feet trod across molten, swirling lava. He did not sink beneath it but stood upon it as he often had in his dreams. The Core beneath his feet lived, a bright and thriving beauty to behold, a vision he’d never been allowed before. Was this a gift for ending himself and saving the world? Keleir bent and touched the molten rock with his bare hand, smiling at the way it wrapped painlessly around his fingers.
“You’ve always felt tied to it,” a voice whispered to him, coming from just behind him. Keleir tilted his head up to the black-clad figure standing next to him and to the face that was his own. “That’s what they say of Fire Mages, right? That you are closest to the Core. Favored by her.”
“I thought I’d endure death in peace,” Keleir muttered, standing slowly. “It seems you’ll be allowed to torment me well into eternity.”
The Oruke frowned. “I never meant to torment you.”
Keleir laughed. “You just made my every day a constant battle. You desired to murder my wife. You tried to force me out of existence!”
The Oruke tilted his head at Keleir and then glanced down at the fire. “I was wrong to do that, but I knew no other way. You weren’t meant to exist, Keleir. I can’t imagine that torture, you being in here when it was only ever meant to be me. Now I have the chance to do away with you completely, and I cannot bring myself to extinguish you.”
“We’re dead.”
“You’re dead. The body lives on. I keep it going. I’m a creature of time, Keleir. Not even the Core’s curse can stop that. Right now, they place this body on a pyre to burn, but it will not. I will rise. It is your choice whether you rise with me.”
Keleir glowered at the Oruke. “So not even that could stop you? Not even death?”
“I told you,” the Oruke replied, “this body will live on.”
The Fire Mage’s calm demeanor melted into rage and sorrow. “So you’re just going to wake up and slaughter them all? Conquer the world? Enslave humanity? And nothing I did mattered?”
“I’m going to save the world, Keleir. But of course you don’t believe me. You’ve never believed me. You’ve never listened to me. I’ve tried desperately to show you the truth, and you refuse me!” The Oruke stomped forward across the rippling Core. “You can continue to exist, or I can crush you. It is your choice.”
Keleir laughed. “Now you’re giving me a choice?”
The Oruke seethed. “You were never supposed to exist! She created you, and I grew to love you as my kin. I feel pity for you, because I understand what it is like to live a half life. I need you, Brother. I want you to exist alongside me. I know of a way that we can live separate from each other, if you would only follow me.”
“What do you mean, she created me?” Keleir sneered.
The Oruke stilled. “Let me show you what you’ve refused to remember. Then decide whether you want to live or die.”
Keleir appraised the mirror image of himself for a long time before he gave a harsh nod. “Fine. I don’t have much to lose, do I?”
“Simply much to gain,” the Oruke replied and waved his hand out away from them, toward the darkness.
Fire erupted across the earth and swallowed him. The darkness rippled and reformed into burning buildings lining a main road through an indiscernible town. Keleir’s body moved of its own accord, lifting a hand and spreading the fire. He heard screaming but saw no one. The smoke blotted out the stars in the sky, and through it he could just begin to make out the shadows of his army surrounding him. He saw their faces, a mixture of horror and awe, and he looked each one in the eye until he found Saran and Rowe.
Rowe looked thin, sickly thin. He knew Rowe had been ill. Those were his first memories after waking with control over his own body. This moment, where he stood, was at the beginning of the rebellion against Yarin and before Rowe had healed from his illness. Before Keleir knew Saran as his lover.
Rowe held the princess back as she struggled to escape, glaring through the flames at him. In his heart, the Oruke hated her. He loathed her. But underneath that, the Oruke felt longing. Desire.
Love.
Saran snatched away from Rowe and ran into the flames. The Lightning Mage screamed for her to stop. The fire burned her clothes and ate at her skin, but her eyes lit white, and her flesh regrew. Each lick of flame burned her, and she replaced it with new skin. The agony wrote itself in the tension of her face, but she did not scream. She walked through the fire to him, twenty yards of slow and agonizing torment. She let her clothes burn away and focused her energy on repairing her body.
“A terrible way to die,” Keleir’s voice growled without his control.
Saran didn’t reply. She took one agonizing step closer to him, reaching out her left hand toward his heart. He tried to move, but her power froze his arms to his sides. The Oruke panicked. Time had never affected him so strongly, him of all people, a creature of time itself. He struggled against her power as her hand pressed in against his chest. He felt her fingers reach inside him, wrap around his heart and his soul.
Saran’s skin burned away and regrew. Her eyes brightened until it blinded him, and he could only look down at her hand inside his chest. A pale glow wavered around the hole she’d made, and he could almost see his heart thumping in her hand. He lifted his gaze to her, growling and thrashing, but Saran held him fast.
Realization dawned, noted in the faltering expression of her face. She could not protect herself from the fire and finish what she’d started. So she chose. He felt the full force of her power settle over him, and her skin burned. The fire took layers of flesh from her legs and her hips and her chest, until the flames licked at her face and melted her hair down to the scalp. She screamed as she clutched his heart and pressed her will upon him until the darkness in him receded.
“By my will … thee be mine!” Her smoke-damaged voice cracked, but the words were no less powerful. The Oruke receded, and Keleir replaced him. The Fire Mage remembered this part, the part when he woke from his dark slumber to find a burned woman withdrawing her hand from his chest. The fire snuffed out, and he had his first real memories after thirteen years with the Oruke at the helm.
He stared down at her crisp, black, flame-ravaged body, realizing now what he’d never thought to wonder before: Why he found it so easy to obey her when she asked him to. Why he felt drawn to her so intensely. Why he could feel her in the air around him. She mastered him. She created him.
“Now do you see?” the Oruke whispered.
Saran’s burned body disappeared from his arms and the world returned to the molten landscape of the Core. The Fire Mage stood hollow on its surface.
“I’m …”
“An Alikon.”
The Fire Mage watched the orange swirling beneath his feet, unable to find words to express the complexity of emotions warring in him.
“There is a way to make you real, Keleir. The Book of Kings will lead us to a power that can separate us and make us both very real. I offer you this, Brother. I offer you truth and life, a real life. Saran manipulated you and tormented you with the illusion of existence. I will never do that to you. Nor will I question you or distrust you as Rowe has done. He planned to kill you, you know.”
Keleir covered his ears and clenched his eyes. “Shut up.”
“She never loved you.”
“Shut up!”
“She controlled you. You were her pet!”
“STOP!”
“The fire’s being lit, Keleir. It is up to you whether you live or you die. But when I wake, if you have not chosen, then I will let you disappear as you were meant to when her power over you broke! It is by my will alone that you still exist. Choose. Live or die. Exist or disappear.”
Keleir turned tearful eyes on the white-haired Oruke. Excruciating pain tore his heart asunder. Anger filled the void, anger so hot he couldn’t speak. He breathed panicked, heated air into his lungs and pressed his hands harshly to his eyes. He roared, indecision tearing him apart.
Who could he believe? Which was the liar? He loved Saran, couldn’t bring himself to believe that his life with her had been a lie. Yet it made more sense now than ever before. Why his dreams of the Oruke got worse when her father Bound her. Why his control slipped the moment the Bind wrapped around her wrist. Why Yarin wouldn’t yield to her release until after the Oruke woke. The old bastard knew. He knew …
“Have you chosen, Keleir?”
The Fire Mage dropped his hands slowly, embers burning in his eyes. “Yes.”
