Chapter 10

CHAPTER TEN

I’d expected the guards to kill me. I hadn’t cared. I’d gotten justice for my sister, and I had nothing left to live for without her anyway. Of course, fate had a much crueller destiny in mind for me in the end.

I shivered in the dank cavern where I’d been left to rot since the night I’d killed the emperor, his blood still staining my clothes and skin, the sound of his pleas still ringing in my ears.

I had thought it would feel better than this. I had thought that gaining this vengeance would have earned me at least a little solace. But it hadn’t brought her back. It didn’t change what he had done. My sister was still lost to this world, her children still left to cry themselves to sleep night after night, her husband left to raise them alone. And me? Well, I was just…left.

I thought of Aren and focused on him and the two beautiful little creations they had made together. I wondered if they were in Souvion yet, where the guards of our city held no jurisdiction and the queen who sat upon the throne there would be all too welcoming of someone who’d had a hand in the emperor’s death. Though they would keep that secret to themselves if they could. If they were there, then they’d be safe. It was the one good thing in all of this.

All I had to do was keep the secret of their destination secret if I was interrogated, and I would embrace any and all forms of torture willingly before I ever spoke of their location.

I wondered if I could still lie. If that gift had been left with me or had only worked that once. If I could, then perhaps I could use that to my advantage, send the royal guards in the wrong direction altogether. Though I didn’t dare speak aloud to test the theory.

The sick feeling which pressed at the base of my throat had become normal after days of being shackled in iron and left to starve down here in the dark.

I’d slept twice when exhaustion had forced me to keel over, the iron manacles cutting into my flesh as I hung from them, and even the bite of the cold, damp stone which surrounded me did nothing to keep me awake any longer. Not that I had gained anything in sleep. All I’d been gifted were the memories of my sister’s cold hand in mine, of the discoloured bruises around her neck in death.

Water dripped in an endlessly changing rhythm somewhere close by, a small pool just out of sight around the bend. My feet were still damp from when they’d dragged me through it when they’d brought me down here days ago, the cold, wetness of this place making certain they couldn’t dry. No doubt the skin within my silk shoes was suffering for it, but I hadn’t been able to bring myself to try and remove them. I hadn’t even tried to remove the iron shackles which were secured around my wrists.

The thin, once pale blue silk of the gown I’d worn when I’d snuck into the emperor’s bed clung to my body and did nothing to help banish the cold from my limbs, the fabric near translucent now and stained with so much blood that you could hardly even tell what colour it had once been.

The sound of heavy footsteps approaching made me crack my eyes open, my head raising from where it had fallen to hang against my chest in the most comfortable position I could maintain while my arms were stretched out towards the walls either side of me.

“Has the heir decided what to do with her then?” a guard inquired, his voice familiar to me after days of hearing him and the others exchange words. They maintained a position guarding me out of sight, nearer the exit of the cavern beneath the palace where I was being held.

“Savinia has decided to allow me the honour of doling out punishment,” a cold voice replied, letting me know what the emperor’s daughter had decided should be done with me, the sound of his words seeming to slither across my ears, forcing a trickle of fear into me which I hadn’t even realised I was capable of feeling anymore.

I knew who approached me. Kalir, the emperor’s former advisor and Royal Prophet. He took the magic of the gods and wielded it like it was his own. Many spoke out against the things he and his kind practiced, but the emperor had always been too selfish to care for the fears of his people. He wasn’t worried about angering the gods when he believed he had been blessed and favoured by them since his birth so very long ago.

I wondered if he still believed himself blessed now that he was lingering in the after. Who knew if he had found paradise or eternal torment, but I hoped with all that was left of me that it was the latter.

“Come to execute me?” I asked impassively, my voice a brittle thing as Kalir and the guard rounded the corner, the light of the torch the guard carried making my eyes prickle and sting after days left to linger in the dark.

“That would be all too simple an end for the Fae who killed our great emperor, would it not?” Kalir asked, the eerie brightness in his eyes making my skin pepper with goosebumps.

It wasn’t natural what he was or what he took from the gods. I didn’t care what justification his kind used; we shouldn’t have wielded the power of our creators the way he did. Sorcery went far beyond the use of our Affinities.

The Royal Prophet was terrifying in his stature as well as his gifts. He was a huge man, both tall and broad, his head fully shaven and eyes two pits of nothing. I hated what he was and what he represented with his white robes which he never removed in public, the stark, bright colour a contrast to the deep stains I knew lined his rotten soul. Almost all of his power was taken through methods which weren’t even whispered of, for all folk knew how twisted and depraved the Prophets were.

“I will die shortly either way,” I muttered, not caring for their plans, only wanting one thing now. “And then I will finally be with my sister again in the Eternal Garden where nothing can touch me anymore.”

“You think you will be welcomed into the Garden?” the guard scoffed, and I turned a cold look his way. “You’re a murderer.”

“I saved the kingdom from the rule of a tyrant. I stopped a monster from hurting anyone ever again. I believe I will be welcomed into the Garden for that,” I assured him.

The back of Kalir’s hand smacked across my face, throwing me to one side as I tasted blood and felt bone crack from the unnatural strength he held. My shoulder roared with agony as my weight was forced to hang from the shackle securing that arm, but I didn’t let so much as a breath escape me, much less a cry of pain.

I rocked back around to face him, spitting my blood at his feet as the magic I had been gifted upon my birth sprung to life within me, my healing Affinity flaring as the power raced along my jaw and healed the wound. It was much harder than it should have been with the iron encasing my hands, but I came from a long line of powerful Fae, and even that beastly metal couldn’t fully contain my magic.

Kalir’s lips lifted in a savage grin as he watched my magic work, his overly bright eyes pinned to me as he nodded.

“She is perfect,” he breathed, greed lighting his eyes.

“What do you intend to do with her?” the guard asked curiously, not like he cared or wanted to protect me, more like he was genuinely interested in what torture I was destined to endure.

“I will remake her,” Kalir said, imbuing my limbs with fear as I wondered what he meant by that. There was no way he intended to offer me anything close to kindness or redemption, so I was certain any plans he had would only be designed to aid in my suffering. “I will bind her and create her in the image of a god itself.”

“Why?” the guard asked as I frowned, not wanting anything at all other than death now.

“She is destined for power only ever known by the gods, but the price of it will be her will, her freedom, and her soul.”

“What?” I breathed, my pulse picking up, though I didn’t understand his words at all.

“You, the woman who disrespected the highest of all Fae in the most despicable of ways, will only ever know a life of servitude and submission from this day forth,” Kalir said cruelly.

“You cannot break my will,” I assured him, my jaw gritting with the knowledge that I would never bend to whatever he thought to force upon me. I would die first. And if not by their hands, then I would do so by my own.

“I won’t give you the luxury of a choice.”

Kalir jerked his chin at me before I could respond in any way and the guard moved forward, drawing a key from his pocket which he used to unlock the shackles which held me.

I let myself drop to my knees as I was released, the cold stone cutting into my skin and making me bleed once more, before my power rushed to fix it just as fast.

I feigned weakness, waiting for the guard to move behind me and haul me to my feet, while my attention fixed solely on the blade hanging from the sheath at his side.

I didn’t intend to waste any time on whatever plans they had for punishing me. I was done with this world and all it had taken. I was done with this endless life. Because without Aalia in it, I was lost. She was the one constant I had held tight to, the one truth that had ever really counted for me. And now she was gone.

The guard heaved me up and I twisted sharply, slamming my fist into his jaw hard enough to knock him back, grasping the blade from his belt before turning it on myself. The steel brushed against the flesh between my breasts, and my muscles tensed as I moved to impale myself upon it. I only had to strike my heart and even my gifts couldn’t save me.

But before I could go through with what I ached for so desperately, a strange and unholy power locked around my limbs, freezing them in place.

A gasp of fear escaped me as the guard lurched forward, ripping the blade from my frozen fingers before taking hold of me and squeezing my arm tightly. The power holding me fell away and I shuddered as I was whirled towards Kalir.

The Prophet was panting heavily, the dark skin of his bald head and brow speckled with beads of sweat, his gold embroidered robes dampened with it too. Whatever power he had just used to contain me was no Affinity I had ever known of. That was some twisted sorcery which he’d stolen from the lap of the gods themselves.

“I’m not letting you escape this fate, Esworn,” he growled, the use of the cursed name stilling any words I held on my tongue. The Esworn were the worst of the Fae, those who had done atrocious things and had forfeited their right to even hold a name any longer. I wasn’t like them. What I had done was no crime. “But I will make it easier on you if you give up the location of your brother-in-law and his children.”

“I’ll die before I give them up,” I spat, and his eyes widened because he knew I spoke the truth. There was no lying for our kind. At least not so far as he knew. Which meant he really would make it easier on me if I spoke of their location too, but I meant what I said with every fibre of my being. I was already dead. If they wanted to cut me apart piece by piece before I met with death, then so be it. I had already faced the worst pain I could ever endure anyway in the loss of my sister, and no physical agony could be a match to that, nor enough to ever make me give up her remaining family.

“We’ll see about that,” Kalir muttered.

My heart began to race as I was hauled away from the cavern where I’d been held for days.

“Herdat, take me,” I begged of the goddess, but I hadn’t so much as imagined the presence of any of the gods close to me since I’d left that place of blood and death. She didn’t answer me, didn’t so much as acknowledge my request for death, and in the pit of my gut, I still felt that wrongness in the world which had begun with me speaking a lie. Something had changed with that act which she’d encouraged. The gods had been in uproar and now they were all too quiet.

We headed out into the brightness of the sun, the guard carrying me as the strength I’d managed to summon fled and I paid the price of days without nourishment while clad in iron.

I slumped against my captor, the ripe scent of him filling my nose as he carried me towards some unknown destination. I knew I should have been fighting harder. But it didn’t really matter. Whatever was done to me now would still end the same way. I would find a way to end my life if they didn’t do it for me. I would find a way to join her in death.

We strode away from the palace through the cool spring air, more guards surrounding us as we went and the sound of their booted feet on the ground carrying to me. The pastel shades of the blossoms blooming around us made my chest lighten, the trees swaying in a light breeze and the scent of spring caressing my senses, focusing on that instead of my destination.

We headed into the forest, following Kalir’s directions until the light of the sky began to darken once again with the thickness of the canopy overhead.

We finally arrived in an open patch of woodland, the trees parting for it as if the hand of a god had swept the ground clear in this spot alone for some unknown purpose. Maybe even for this very moment.

In the centre of the space was a heavy wooden chair with an iron collar, the inside of it lined with sharpened spikes, locked to the top of it. There were carvings in the wood which made my skin prickle, effigies of the gods in their purest forms, the lines simple and yet endlessly intricate. It seemed as though every single god and goddess were represented in those carvings, each of them offered the same amount of space as a sign of respect to their power.

I began to fight as I was carried closer to that chair, the sight of the collar attached to it lighting fear in me beyond what I could even understand right now. I had never seen anything like it, but I could feel the power it held, sense the eyes of countless deities turning this way, and I knew in my soul that I wanted no part of this at all.

“Stop,” I gasped as the guard’s fingers bit into me, another coming to take hold of me too as they fought to contain me.

“Please,” I begged, even though I knew it would do no good. I began to kick and fight, my nails catching and tearing on the metal of their armour as more hands gripped me and forced me to bend to their will.

Many hands pushed me down, their power overwhelming mine as I was shoved into the chair, forced to sit with my spine straight and my neck roughly strapped into the confines of the contraption at the top of it.

My head filled with the sound of a thousand whispers, their voices powerful and brimming with a range of emotions so potent that I could feel them rattling through my skin. The gods were all around me suddenly, some curious, some eager, others horrified or angry. It didn’t seem to matter though; not one of them appeared to make their feelings known, and if the Fae surrounding me realised they were close, they paid no attention to their presence, instead focusing on me.

A scream escaped my lips just before the iron collar was locked into place around my throat. My breath stuck in my lungs as I felt a ring of sharpened points cutting into my neck from within the iron collar, and I stopped thrashing as the wounds forced the metal to make contact with my blood, every movement only driving them deeper into my skin though they weren’t close enough to offer me the escape of death.

I tried to call on my healing power to aid me, but with the iron piercing my flesh there was nothing that it could do, and my stomach roiled from the taste of iron which coated my tongue.

“Tell us where your brother-in-law took his children,” Kalir demanded calmly, as if he thought this would be enough to change my mind.

I spat at him, wincing from the movement as it made the iron spikes sink further into my flesh, but at least my point had been made clearly.

“I will never tell you,” I hissed, my truth sizzling in the air and making itself known.

Kalir eyed me for several moments, then nodded, accepting that much and seeming to realise there wasn’t a power on this earth that would break my resolve to keep this secret.

The guards disbanded and Kalir came to stand before me, taking a plain metal coin from his pocket and holding it up for me to see. It was big enough to fill the centre of his palm but completely smooth and unadorned, unlike any coin I’d ever seen. It wasn’t currency, and the strange glow it emitted suggested it was so much more than a simple piece of precious metal.

“This coin shall be the master of your destiny from now until the end of time, Esworn,” he purred, that unnatural light to his eyes burning more fiercely, and I could do nothing but stare up at him. “Prepare yourself,” he added as he placed the coin on the ground before me and took a step back. “The power I am about to call upon will be anything but gentle with your cursed soul. But I can make it hurt less at any point – all you have to do is tell me where they are hiding and I will let you sleep throughout the process. Or keep your secrets and pay the price of them in suffering.”

A whimper bled from my lips, a heavy kind of power building all around me which made the guards shift uncomfortably, but I still held my tongue, knowing nothing he could do would force their location from me.

“I suggest you all leave,” Kalir told the guards. “For I am about to steal a slice of power from each and every deity in existence and place it into this unworthy host, and I doubt they will be happy about it once they realise what I am doing.”

The guards exchanged concerned looks as the billowing power continued to build, and they all took off at once, abandoning me to this fate even as I called out after them for mercy.

“Please,” I begged, looking up into the face of the only man left standing before me.

He drew closer, an iron blade in his hand which was marked with the symbol for Steelion, the god of metal, stone, and strength.

“The time for any kind of begging is long past, Esworn,” Kalir said softly, closing in on me, and though I tried to recoil, that only made the iron collar cut into my flesh more deeply. “Now you shall reap the true reward of what you’ve done and forever pay for it with your servitude.”

My heart beat faster and faster as he closed in on me, that power swelling and growing endlessly until all I could see was the fervent brightness in his eyes and before long, even that was stolen from me by the agony of the magic which he forced beneath my skin. He began to carve the symbols of the gods into my flesh, my healing affinity chasing after his blade and healing the wounds as he made them.

The gods screamed as he ripped a slice of power from each of them, forcing that magic into me with every slice of his blade, their curses striking against my ears, not one of them turning my way to offer any kind of help as their fury grew and grew.

“The world will pay the price of what has been done here.” They hissed and spat at me, Kalir not seeming to hear them or care for their warnings as he focused on breaking me apart and remaking me in the image he had designed.

I couldn’t make out their words between the agony consuming me, but I felt them, one by one I felt them cursing our kind and the way we had squandered what they’d given us. They snarled at us for twisting their rules and skirting them entirely, and they sniped at me for turning to Herdat in my time of greatest need, for taking her deal and speaking that lie.

The gods had been on the brink of forsaking us for years, and as the pitch of my screams grew louder and louder, Kalir slicing away at their magic as if doing so meant nothing at all and would come at no cost, they began to turn from us.

One by one I felt them, like splashes of acid against my skin, the burn of their rejection sinking down to my core. They were our creators, our deities, our salvation. But we had finally pushed them too far.

Agony seared through me as Kalir hissed words of magic and theft, cleaving me open and forcing the stolen essence of the gods inside me while I screamed with the agony of my immortal life being torn from me one bite at a time. But death didn’t come to claim me as it should have. Instead, my magic pulsed and flared and consumed all it could as it fought to keep me breathing through every agonising second.

I lost all sense of time and space, my mind cracking apart like a lightning bolt had seared straight through me. I wasn’t good or evil, I wasn’t kind or cruel, I wasn’t light or dark. I wasn’t anything anymore. And as the roaring well of power reared up inside me, filling me so deeply that I was on the brink of losing every last scrap of myself to the essence of it, I found myself falling.

Down.

Down.

Down.

Until I hit the ground before that throne of destruction, the golden coin winking up at me as I careered towards it then fell through it, into it, tumbling impossibly further before landing on the cold, hard floor of gold at its centre.