A deadly vow, p.31
A Deadly Vow, page 31
The slate of ice beneath us cracked, splintering into a thousand directions across this nightmare.
A wicked laugh crawled out of my chest. “And if the Prince is alive? I will bring him to you, just as you have asked. I will watch him shred you, limb from limb, and I will feed it to you until you choke from the suffocation of your own sins.”
My father’s laughter mimicked mine. “I do not fear your threats, because you do not even know what he is, child. Bring him to me.”
I clawed at the edge of the ridge, fighting against his weight, inching me closer to the hole cut in the crystalized ice, the river raging beneath.
“I know what his soul looks like.” A single tear traveled along my jawline and fell into the water below. “I saw its very core, the monster hiding underneath his skin, peering through the gateway of hell in his eyes. . . but do you know why I was not afraid?” My shoulders were punched forward, bracing my head to resist the christening of icy waters. “Because I am the monster you made me!”
A violent strike obliterated the crown of my head, my vision shooting an array of colors through my skull. I ripped open my eyes just in time to see his reflection staring back at me through the river. It was not my father who I saw in the glimmer on top of the water.
It was Keahi.
My limbs thrashed as my body gave way to the surface, resisting the rush flooding into my lungs as I gurgled out the remaining air I had left.
“Elias! She won’t stop seizing!” A female voice I did not recognize cried.
“Hold her head, do not push her limbs down. I need to pour another tonic into her,” Elias commanded. Hot liquid poured into my mouth; the acid mangled my tongue until I fought to choke it out. A warm palm pressed against my chin, forcing my mouth to stay closed.
“She wasn’t like this when we found her—why is she getting worse?!”
Drakkon?
“She’s still feeding her magic to Keahi. We must sedate her before she kills herself in doing so. She is overexerting her magic.” Elias released his hand.
“Why won’t she wake up?” The female voice was full of panic. Elias sighed out a long, loose breath. “She will. I can already feel it.”
A door slammed open. Iahni spoke with a tremor in her voice.
“Elias, hurry—please. Something’s wrong with Keahi. . . he’s losing it. He won’t stop screaming her name—the chains.” I could hear her swallow from across the room. “They’re not holding.”
“Zehra.” Elias’s voice surged with urgency. “Can you stay with Sabine? Are you well enough?”
“Elias, I did not forget years’ worth of knowledge in a month’s time,” the woman who Elias had spoken to responded. “I can manage—go. My brother needs you.”
Elias wasted no time, his staff tapping swiftly across the marbled floor. “Drakkon, come with me; Kane has not arrived yet. I am going to need your help.”
Drakkon’s footsteps followed Elias, but there was a lingering pause before the door slowly closed in on its hinges. “Zehra,” he called back. “Do not let her die. I need her alive just as badly as I do Keahi right now. . . I need to tell her I am sorry.”
“Sabine is safe with me,” she said, and then he was gone.
42
SABINE
The iron barred skylight steeped the walls in midnight. The moon hung low among the stars, unable to glisten through the ceiling window of my room in Kallahni. A gradient of the day slipped into a seamless slumber, undeterred, as I listened to quiet footsteps drift in and out of the room to check on my healing. This endless cycle of wakefulness, bleak and unforgiving.
It compounded with my agony until each beat of my heart became unbearable. In every breath, there was grief. In each movement, I felt his absence. But it was when I closed my eyes that I found him. These dreams were archived from another kind of pain, cutting deep into my soul, carving into my battered heart.
Dreams that were not nightmares, but a sanctuary to a soul that was not my own.
Each time I dreamed, honey-filtered rays combed through magenta skies, flecked with a thousand stars. Night and day were eternal as the phases of the moon lined the atmosphere, colliding with a stream of indigo and lilac planes of spiraled luster.
A soft breeze brushed through my hair, with the perfume of fresh rain and fields of spring. The crust of the earth beneath my feet suspended itself without anchor in the air, and many more clouds roamed beside me. I was gliding through a life filled with many strings, each strand of glowing light connected to every living thing.
And it felt like home.
As I slowly forced my body to turn, to wake, emerald eyes found mine in the mirror from across the marbled floor. The owner’s stare was full of tension. Her dark brows furrowed deeper as I kept my gaze pinned. The small expression sent a dull ache in my chest, because it was the same look Keahi gave me when he was worried.
A look I took for granted.
Missed.
Keahi’s sister. The woman Elias had asked to stay with me, who I had known to exist, but had not known was captured by my father. . . she had not left my side or this room. When I saw her on the battlefield with my father’s hands strangled around her long black hair, it was the same shade as Keahi’s. Drakkon’s determination to cross the river only confirmed my suspicions, despite the stark resemblance.
‘He’s alive,’ she had murmured each time she checked on my injuries in the following days. I was too weak to move. Darkness both flourished in and corroded my veins, staking its claim over me after I had set it free, and now I was forced to lie with it. But every syllable beneath her words was a promise of Keahi’s survival, an anthem. ‘Do not give up now.’
Alive, I repeated to myself, He’s alive.
When his chest stopped moving, his magic died in my heart—I felt him leave. Keahi was gone from the realm, and no matter how many times I begged him to stay, he would not come back. But it was the same recurring dream I had that finally made me believe he was truly alive.
There was no home without him, and I had not known one existed until I felt his return every time I dreamed. The Prince of Solstice’s eyes were made of fire, but his soul was my oasis.
If my bonded had not died. . . where did he go?
The hearth flickered, and a flare of amber heated the side of my face. A swirl of embers floated away from the fireplace, dancing through the night lit room. The magic drifted in sparks, gliding across my frame, and over the bridge of my nose until she whisked it away. “Welcome back, Lightbringer,” she whispered. “Or so I have heard, but it would seem to be the opposite. . . would it not?” She lowered her palm, and the embers curled into smoke between her fingertips. “My name is Zehra Aldeer, Princess of the Solstice Kingdom, but I have already foreseen you know of that.”
I was frozen. Not by what she said, but how she said it—empty. Zehra’s mouth thinned as she crossed her legs, her knees tapping against the ornate metal frame of the floor-length mirror. The mirror I avoided when I first woke up in this room after my travel with Keahi. I had feared my reflection then and refused to see myself or the scars on my back from the ritual.
Zehra turned and stared into the mirror straight on, like she had been doing so this entire time just to make peace with what she saw on the other side. But as her hands trembled at her sides, her chest faltered with her breath. It did not look like fear, not the kind I knew. Her features echoed with hatred.
“You have not talked for days despite us telling you my brother is alive. . . but I am going to. I need someone to listen, and I’m afraid—” She paused, releasing some tension from her shoulders as she took a deep breath. “I’m certain you already know what it was like.”
The thought lingered in the firelight: what he was like. A deep burgundy bandeau wrapped around her chest, crisscrossed right beneath her bony shoulder blades in the back. The tips of her fingers lightly pressed against the tops of her thighs, her left hand steadily circling an obsidian dagger belted against her black tights.
“I feel like I already know you.” Zehra swallowed.
Unbeknownst to her, I felt the same. The scream she made when my father had thrown her into the dirt was enough to remember her by, so different from the fragile rasp of her voice now. I shut the memory away.
“He talked about you, your father. I wish he hadn’t. Because when I look at you, I see him. Worst of all, I see what he has done to us.”
Zehra shook her head as she reached up, roving her hands over her dark raven hair. The tremor in her hand steadied, her grip tightened on the hilt.
A chill traveled up my spine, and my stomach sank as she slowly lifted the knife. My body screamed as I shifted upright, but she swiftly held up her hand to stop me from injuring myself further.
“It isn’t fair, is it?” She whispered with a tainted smile. “To be at the hands of others.” Confusion fought to the surface as her hand went to the dagger and pulled a section of her hair taught. “Fairness is only as valuable as the mirror they place in front of you.”
Zehra raised her dagger to the side of her chin and sliced the strands of her hair at an angle. The gasp on my lips disintegrated. I quietly listened to the sheer of the blade, and I heard what she needed to say until the final lock of hair fell to the floor.
She pushed a portion of her fringe behind her ear as she turned to stand and face me. Her frame was long and lean as she stood, but her ribs protruded like someone who had been starved. “I could not look at it anymore. . .” Her voice grew quiet. “. . . knowing he touched it.”
My voice was weak, out of practice, from the time I had not used it. I looked back up to her emerald eyes in the mirror. My lip cracked as I forced the words past my heavy tongue. “You look so much. . . like them.” Her brothers.
There was so much more I needed to say, but my weakened body refused. I stared at Zehra’s hair on the floor, the strands now dull and lifeless. At every turn, I had wanted to cut myself free of the fate my father had tied to my body; a phantom string I could not grasp hold of or forget when I had felt him through the siphoning crystal tugging the other end. But even if I had the chance to cut it myself, it would have never been enough. It still was not enough.
She cleared her throat after my long, unfinished pause. “I hope you do not blame them for not telling you about my capture. The Volkans were as shocked as you were.”
My chin slowly tilted up to her face as she carefully made her way to the side of my bed, her jagged ends swishing just above her collarbones. “Why did they not want anyone in the capital to know?” I managed to ask.
A sleek arched eyebrow rose. “Drakkon said to be careful when you woke with questions, but he refused to tell me why,” she responded almost amusedly, but her tone was hollow. The corner of her lip twitched, and sadness muddied her emerald eyes.
The darkness faintly whispered to me as she drew closer, but it was not strong enough yet for me to hear. After what I had demanded of it in battle, it would take its time cultivating my offering—we would become one.
I strained between words, using her as a crutch when she extended her hand. “It feels. . . like I am bruised from the inside out,” I huffed.
Zehra lifted me the rest of the way to a sitting position. I released a pained groan as I moved to dangle my limbs over the side of the bed. Her hands propped up against my shoulders and she gently squeezed them.
“My brother is not easily killed. . . and neither are you,” she said uneasily. “I can only hope you’re not just as stubborn.”
“More so,” I panted. “Depending on the day.”
A hint of an honest smile finally broke through. Zehra’s eyes were knowing and wise, despite the young appearance in her cheekbones. The pit of my stomach sank deeper. It was never a good thing to see someone both young and wise. I was not much older than her, but I too had been stripped of my youth far too soon.
“Do you. . .” Zehra hesitated. “Would you like to see him?” More than anything, but it had to wait.
“There’s something I need to see first,” I said, on the verge of reluctance, slowly nodding toward the mirror.
Zehra stiffened beside me. “Sabine, before you look in the mirror, know Elias said it would go away. It is just going to take some time.”
Elias had always known my truth. This part of me was hidden beneath my skin, and I refused to fear any longer. I pressed my eyes tightly and shook myself. Zehra guided me closer to the mirror after I gave her a silent nod. I caught a glimpse of my bare thighs as I fought to take my steps across the room.
“Is it all over?” My breath shook.
“Yes.”
The woman I looked up to face was unrecognizable, but I had never felt more connected to the reflection I saw. This is what I had felt alive beneath me, when I had been nothing but a hollow shell.
Black veins spread from the center of my torso and branched out like tree roots into my limbs. The curse from the Veil of Seven had planted its seed in the garden of my soul when it contacted my chest. The darkness would not wither; it would grow, and there was nothing my father could do to stop it now.
“I don’t remember.” I swallowed. “If Elias said anything about my hair.”
On the right side, my hair reflected that of my father’s lineage. Porcelain white strands made of starlight tapered at the top of my hip bones.
Zehra tensed at the back of my arm. “He was not sure about the hair. . .”
My magic split itself in half when the vessel of my power broke inside of me, forced to share a home with its opposite. The left side of my hair, now pitch black, darkened into a shade as lightless as the sorcery itself. The sides of my cheeks were met with hot, steaming tears.
It was time.
“Can you turn me around, please?”
Zehra gave me an unsure nod in the mirror as she rotated my frame, my back facing the mirror for me to see out of the corner of my eyes.
The red angry welts had turned black from the magic. I dropped the white sheet I held onto lower, exposing the symbol my father had carved into my skin with an enchanted blade; an attempt to destroy us both by igniting a sorcerer’s bond.
My heart clenched, remembering the matching mark my shadow had developed on his chest. A black dragon, wrapped in front of the sun’s flames, engulfing the sun into an eclipse.
The urgency to see him heightened, but exhaustion buckled my knees instantly. Zehra reached beneath both of my arms and helped me walk over to the bed. I was not the only one who kept secrets in our alliance. His conversation with Kane pushed its way to the forefront of my mind: ‘We did not finish the bond.’
“Elias has not been able to leave his side,” Zehra said as she helped me lie back down. I had made no mention of Keahi out loud, but the worried look on my face was enough. Zehra added, “He will make a full recovery thanks to you.”
“Because of me?” I mumbled, my vision fading. I wanted to remain awake enough to see him, but I was losing sight of the room. The whispers from the darkness grew louder, but not loud enough. My head collapsed onto the pillow.
Tired. I was so tired.
Zehra’s weight settled next to me on the bed. “It was possible he could have recovered on his own, but you healed him faster than he would have healed himself. Elias believes you transferred some of your power to him.”
The whispers silenced.
“He can heal himself. . . what kind of sorcerer has that ability? But he has—”
“The scars?” She knew the direction of my thoughts before I went quiet. “Only elements crafted by the Gods can truly mark him.”
I touched the side of my face, goosebumps trailing along all the places I had witnessed the touch of a blade on his skin. Then to my mouth, remembering the kiss I had planted on the single scar I had given him. I had marked him with the staff of malachite the night we had first met, the weapon my father had given me when I became his General.
Desperate and confused, even still. “Strange,” I echoed my thoughts, “I have never heard of such magic existing.”
She tilted her head. “Some might say the same about you. I have never seen someone be able to wield magic as black as night. Though no one in this castle will be brave enough to try and question you through your marriage to my brother, not even me.”
My eyes drifted close, even as I fought to keep them open. If I was to recover, to see him, I needed to keep fighting this constant cycle.
“Tell me something, anything,” I pleaded. “I need to stay awake. I keep falling asleep.”
Zehra tucked the soft fur blanket underneath her chin, and after a long silence she took mercy on me. “I will tell you a story then, Lightbringer. One I rarely tell, because it is not just my story to tell. You must promise to keep it until the other half is given to you.”
My eyelashes attempted to flutter shut, but I nodded my head. “I promise.”
“My mother was a powerful seer,” she whispered, as if someone was in the room to hear us. “After the Veil of Seven was destroyed, the messages from the fates were broken. Her visions became erratic and painful. In the end, she lost her ability to piece the future together. My mother took her own life, and Keahi was the one who found her.”
I held my breath. Elias had told me of her death, but not why. There was both guilt in hearing of her passing from everyone but Keahi and shame because he had never told me himself. Worse, I never gave him the chance to.
“My first vision appeared the day after she died; the gift could only be passed on through a female sorcerer’s lineage. The visions did not affect me the same way. I have never been able to see the future, only bits and pieces of what could be. It is like staring into a shattered mirror, each piece reflecting its own path through fate, but I could never see the entire image emerge. There was always one piece missing.”
