No Man's Land

by C D Beaudin

  “Did you love her?”

  His brow lifts. “Who?”

  “Kera. Did you love Kera?”

  He swallows. He’d had to do many things for this cause. He felt guilty for playing Kera like he did, but it was a necessity. They had fun, sure. He did enjoy laughing and talking with her, but he didn’t love her. He didn’t care about her like he does Nakelle. “No. I never did.”

  Something like relief seems to flood her eyes. “Do you love me?”

  “Right to it, then?”

  She isn’t amused.

  “Fine… Yes. I love you.”

  “And how do I know you’re being sincere?”

  “Because you know when I’m lying, and you’ll cut my throat if I am.”

  She smiles. “You know me so well.” She kisses him again, and he wraps his arms around her. “You’ve grown your hair longer since last I saw you.”

  “You like it?”

  “As long as it doesn’t reach past your shoulders.”

  Kepp chuckles and brings her lips back to his.

  Nakelle Silverlight. She’s a bit chaotic, a little unhinged. But he loves that about her. It’s partly what makes him an honest elf when he says he loves her. He’s a liar, sure. But she makes him an honest one. At least, with her, he is.

  The door opens, and the familiar click of high heels sends Nakelle scrambling away from him, but only a chuckle leaves Kepp’s lips. He smiles as Revera looks him up and down.

  “I assume you snapped?”

  “My brother’s lying on his bedroom floor unconscious…last I saw, at least.”

  “He won’t stay like that.”

  Kepp shrugs. “Thanks for the ride here. Teleportation…it’s a bit nauseating.”

  “Don’t tap into my power again, nephew.”

  “Is that what I did? I just fell to my knees praying.” He nods. “Interesting.”

  “It shouldn’t be, anyone can do it if they need it enough.” Revera’s gaze shifts to Kell. “Has Breel made any progress with his training?”

  “He’s on his way to making an excellent Knight, Lady Revera.”

  “Good.” She looks back down at Kepp. “Dear nephew, you must decide between long hair or short, this is an awkward look.”

  “I thought it made me look rugged. What do you think, Kell?”

  “I have no opinion.”

  He rolls his eyes. “Please, Revera doesn’t care.”

  “Don’t speak for me.”

  He looks at the sorceress. “Auntie, you don’t. And if you did, you’d just read our minds.”

  “Well, that’s true.” Her casual demeanor is amusing. “You three are going on a little job, in the morning.”

  Kepp groans, but Revera gives him a look that shuts him up.

  “What’s the job?”

  At the exact moment, Karak walks in, hands in his pockets. “We’re going to eradicate the entire Tanean race.”

  “You are insane!” Breel shouts at Revera, at Karak, at anyone who will listen. “I will not use my own hands to end an entire race!”

  “You will do as you are told, or you will be thrown to the Sanarx,” Revera gestures to the window in Nakelle’s room, and Breel clamps his lips shut. Revera’s raises her brow menacingly. “Anyone else have any reservations?” She eyes them carefully, and Breel hopes the others have senses and a conscience.

  But Nakelle diverts her gaze to the floor, Kepp’s reserved, but in defense of himself, the gaze of a soldier. He looks at Karak, and sees a casual, careless twang of a smirk on his pale lips.

  They’ve forsaken him. He should have been thrown to the Sanarx when he had the chance. Killing not during wartime, not for the gods’ purposes, is a high crime. It’s murder. And he’s about to commit it en masse. He can’t do this. He won’t do this.

  But his feet don’t move.

  Revera and Karak leave, Kepp following, a coy look at Nakelle, and quiet falls over them. Nakelle glares at him, looking like she wants to gut him.

  “You cannot question her like that, have you no sense?”

  “I have sense. And it’s telling me I can’t trust her,” he says.

  “Of course, you can’t trust her, Breel! Kepp doesn’t, Karak doesn’t. But trust has nothing to do with it. We’re following her because we believe in what she’s doing. And if she’s lying, then we have nothing to lose.”

  He looks at her with concern. “Do you honestly believe that? You have a family, don’t you? A home?”

  Anger flickers in her eyes. “I have. But my home burned and my family nearly with it. They…my parents…disowned me. That’s why I came to this cursed continent in the first place.”

  She tilts her head. “Honestly, do you think I’d come to this forsaken part of the world for the adventure? To fight in this ridiculous war? No. I came here because I stumbled on the wrong campsite and they trafficked me across the sea to this… Mortal is dying, Breel. Your home is dying. It doesn’t matter if Revera wins—it doesn’t matter if she loses. This world… Mortal won’t survive this. The people won’t survive this. That’s why I’m choosing this. Because if Revera does succeed, we won’t be wandering the Isle when we do die. My brother won’t be a ghost on that island anymore. We can…” She breathes out, a sigh of relief almost. Of longing. “We can be free.”

  “Is that what freedom is, though?”

  “Do we have the slightest idea what being free means, Breel? No matter where you go, there is someone with a crown, someone with a sword. Even in the most desolate desert, the elements will suffocate you until you fall. The coldest winter, on the tallest mountain. You’ll slip and fall. Or get taken by an avalanche. Freeze to death… I was wrong, before. There is no freedom in life, Breel. None. You are naïve to think there is. But maybe we can have something close to it.”

  “Is hope naivety?”

  Nakelle’s brow creases. Breel has observed she’s very outspoken about how she feels. But this…this is the darkest part of her mind. The darkness that threatens to destroy her own hope.

  “No. I have hope for peace in death.” She steps toward him, looking up into his eyes. “What is naïve…is believing that life gives. Life takes. Life threatens. It does not give. People give. Society can give. But life…” She shakes her head. “Life just wants to destroy.”

  “That’s a dark way to live.”

  Nakelle smiles. “Maybe. But I live honestly. I learned long ago that honesty can both free you and kill you. If I’m lucky—”

  “You’ll be free? Or you’ll die? Which one do you wish for at night, when no one’s watching? What do you ask your Spirits for?”

  Her lips tighten. Maybe he offended her? He doesn’t care, but she’s about the closest thing he has to a friend in this gods-forsaken place.

  “I ask the Spirits to kill Queen Awyn, the Nomarian heir Aradon, Kepp’s brother Eldowyn. I ask them to burn my homeland.” She looks toward the door, seeming to check if anyone’s listening. Perhaps satisfied, she turns back to him. “I pray to the Spirits they’ll strike Revera down with divine pain and suffering, and it never ends. That she burns in a lake of fire. And the Darkness accepts her into its jaws, chaining her with burning iron and never lets her go. She can scream, she can cry. But through all of her liar’s tears, I pray that she is never let go from that hell.”

  “Can she really do it, though?”

  Nakelle sighs, turning toward the door. “She has to, Breel. She has to.”

  Chapter Seven

  The royal crypt is deep under the palace, darkened, lit only by chandeliers that are too elaborate for a grave. They are too high in the tall hall, to have much effect. A glow on a graveyard that really does haunt. Walls of rock, floors of polished stone. This place was built—carved—by Rohidia’s ancestors.

  It holds memory, even without the stone coffins holding every royal whose body was ever found. Memories of pain. And joy…

  But all she sees is the memory of her father’s and brother’s bodies lying on that bed, the blood
-stained snow nipping at her slipper-dressed feet. Falling to the cold ground, tears making their way from her eyes to water the already frozen earth. The memory of pounding her family’s dead corpses with her fists because they’d left her. They left her.

  Abandoned her to rule, to die in this frozen world that she no longer recognizes. Why even go on? Why try? Giving up seems easier, freeing. She should just give up. Break her promise to her people to be a brave queen and be the coward her father was as he cut his own guts out. Why would he do that? Because Haydrid died?

  Brega’s hands gently trail along the stone of her father’s coffin, the lid of the large rock containing the bed of an equally hard and gray King Atta, his carving that of great handiwork. He was stone even when alive. The master carver captured him well.

  She sighs. “Too well…” Even at a whisper in this empty crypt, her voice carries loudly. “Too soon, Father. You left too soon.” She looks at the stone face, pressing a hand on the carved cheek. His eyes remain the same—cold, distant. His mouth is still haggard. A neat beard and hair as he always had it. She never realized how much it would hurt when he left. When Haydrid left. She knew it would, but this is unbearable.

  Brega once asked Adriel, while the battle was raging outside Rohea, how anyone’s heart can bear the torment that love causes. When they die, when they leave…how could anyone survive?

  Adriel had simply said, “Because they’d be worth it,” but she also added that Awyn knew a thing or two about it. Brega hadn’t quite known what she meant, thinking maybe it was Neodyn. Had she loved him that much? She was only a child. Maybe her feelings carried into the cell with her? And while Neodyn might be the love she agonized over, Brega has thought much about it, wanting to draw something from her own loss. Now, she knows.

  It was the death of her father, Daron. Her beloved father. Awyn never saw him like Brega did, like her brother, her father. Awyn didn’t see the adultery. She saw the smile. Felt the warmth of his hugs and heard the beauty of his laughs. Brega misses Haydrid’s laugh, the warmth of her father’s hugs before her mother died. She misses her mother’s smile. That gorgeous smile that warmed a room. Brega can feel tears well in her eyes. This pain… Her family was worth it. Having them—for as long as she did, at least—was better than any crown, any throne. It brought more than any true love she may find. And even rivaled what pleasure it would be cutting Revera’s head off herself.

  But the serenity of her revelation soon subsides as anger bubbles within her. It rages, it screams. Anger for her father, that he died, that he left her alone. So alone. How…how could he do that to her. How? The longer she stares at the rock face, the angrier she gets. Brega can feel her face contort as tears fall, and the heat of her lividness and pain flood her cheeks, set an ache into her head. She doesn’t care how much it hurts as she pounds her fist onto the stone.

  “He wasn’t your only child! He wasn’t…” She chokes. “I was your child! I was here too. You left me in this war by myself. What? Was I just not good enough for you? Was the voice in my head right all these years? Am I not special, is that it? Am I not enough for you?”

  Her teeth clench, and she pounds her fist on the stone again.

  “Am I not good enough?” she screams into the darkness, the memory, and the past. She screams at her father’s gray, stone face. Her shouts echo off the walls, and she screams back at them. She hits the rock again. And again. Her bones feel like dust, her hand tremors. But she just cries—the pain distracting.

  “You left me!” Her screams hurt her throat, but she doesn’t care. She’d be lying if she said she hated her father, no matter how much she wants to. He killed himself because he couldn’t bear to live in a world where his son didn’t. But what about her? Did she mean less to him than Haydrid? Even after the years they’d been on edge with each other?

  She’s had to put on a brave face. A mourning, but brave face. She would tell those who asked that she missed her family. She mourns for them in her room. It is all true. It is all so true…but it isn’t the whole truth.

  What she keeps behind closed doors—as it turns out, she herself couldn’t open them until now—is the anger she feels toward her father. And her brother. They deserted her. Atta made her feel as if he didn’t love her as much as Haydrid, and Haydrid abandoned her. Soldiers who saw him fall assure her he fell nobly. That he never stopped fighting. But he still abandoned her, and she cannot forgive him for that. Atta gave up, Haydrid ran away. They were supposed to survive this war together. They should have gotten through this tunnel together. But they forsook her.

  Her tear-filled eyes drift over to the next coffin. Haydrid’s. She wishes she could go over there, but unlike her father’s, she cannot bear to hit her brother’s resting place. She lifts her hand, studying it. The fleshy edge of her palm is a bright red—it’ll be bruised tomorrow. The bone is sore, skin would be cut if it was an older, rougher coffin. Closing her eyes, Brega feels the tears stream down her cheeks, freeing themselves from the well behind her eyes.

  “Now what?” She lets out a choked breath, almost a laugh. “What am I supposed to do? I have a crown, a throne. An army is at my disposal. But what am I supposed to do with that?”

  She looks into her father’s stone eyes. “You never prepared me because you never foresaw that you’d need to. But…no, that I can’t blame you for. Leaving me to be the one to rule?” She scoffs. “Oh, you bet I blame you, Father. You were selfish. For giving up, for dying. Haydrid tried. He fought. Fought to live…”

  She lowers her face closer to his, as if he’s still breathing, and can see her anger and feel her tears drip onto him. “He died a hero. You died a coward. So kingly, Atta? Not so much. You always cared so much about ruling, about keeping your throne. You were a coward, Atta. A coward in a shiny hat. You never deserved the crown. Haydrid did. Maybe even I do. But I’ll never get the chance to realize it because I’m stuck with it!”

  She swallows, clenching her teeth. Brega shakes her head, backing away from the coffin, as if it is something she can turn her back on, that if she says no to…anything, then hers wouldn’t be the head the crown of her mother sits on. “I can’t do this,” an admittance under her breath. A useless one.

  She leaves the crypt quickly.

  In her room, the emerald marble walls tower over her as she grabs a fur coat from her wardrobe and pulls it on, doing the same with her boots and gloves. Brega wraps a scarf around her neck and leaves her room. Her guards immediately come to attention.

  “My Lady, where—”

  “I’m in need of a ride. Alone. I will be safe.”

  “My Queen, we cannot let you—”

  “You are correct. You cannot let me do anything. But I can. Stand down, Breker, Steele.”

  They give a short bow and she heads out of the palace, toward the stable on the mountainside behind it. The stables are large, numerous horses for the generals and cavalry, the ones belonging to the royals in a private section of the building. Her boots clap against the wooden boards, horses nickering and snorting around her. She’s never been much of a rider. When she was little, all she wanted was to braid their manes—but she knows how—and right now she just needs to get out of Rohea. But it would be stupid to go without a horse—a safeguard, a quick escape if something was to go wrong. Or if someone unwanted showed up.

  She recognizes the red mare immediately, even if the last time she saw her was when she was a filly. But the white muzzle is unmistakable. A small pouch hanging on the stall door holds sugar cubes, and she grabs one, holding it out for the horse.

  “Manon. Do you remember me?” The horse gives a small whinny, and Brega smiles as it licks up the cube. “Good, good.”

  She tacks up the horse and climbs on, heading out of the stables, cantering down the mountain path that wraps behind the colossal emerald palace. The wind cuts her face as her hood flies back. She rides around the outside of the city wall, and her eyes set on Canaan. She remembers warmer days, when the forest was bright
with red, orange, and yellow leaves, the grass turning yellow, the crisp and beauty of autumn. It was a different cold. Even winter is a different cold than this magic Revera has set upon Mortal. This eternal freeze is an imposter of the revered season her people loved.

  They danced during the Festival of a Thousand Lights, when Rohea would dazzle with colorful flames and lamps for the first day of winter. The snow would fall, music would be playing, and they’d whirl in their colorful attire, dancing with only joy in their hearts. That is the kind of cold Brega misses. It’s a chill that can freeze your ears off but still bring joy in the early morning of Lauralee. It was the frosted air she’d watch from the window as the snow fell, a cup of hot chocolate in hand, a blanket wrapped around her, and her mother sitting beside her, the stars a million, still visible through the light flurries. Brega loved that cold.

  But like her mother, it’s dead.

  Remembering a time when it wasn’t can be painful…but sometimes the pain is a comfort in these times.

  Music traveled through the city, the palace courtyard alive with lights, every single house and building in the city dazzled with a thousand lights. Doorways and window sills were adorned with colorful flames inside different shaped glass containers, some brighter than others, most vibrant. No snow fell, but above, the stars dazzled, the moon bright.

  Wind had brushed against Brega’s bare arms, her blue dress warm enough, the chocolate drink in her hand warmer. The first day of winter, the festival is never on the coldest night, but even at that temperature, Rohidians wouldn’t be fazed. She’d taken a sip of the rich drink as her friend Eda walked up to her, taking a seat on the picnic bench next to her. She was the daughter of her mother’s personal servant and best friend, and her daughter had become Brega’s friend too. The red-haired fifteen-year-old wasn’t a servant, though. She lived in the servants’ quarters with her mother and older sister, her father and older brother in the army.