“Listen to me well, now, Remnant. If you wish to survive, you will not plant any more seeds of discontent in Keallach’s mind. And if you won’t do it for your own survival, do it for those you love.”
I stilled, immediately thinking of Ronan. Had they … captured him? It wasn’t possible. He would’ve died fighting them.
But then my breath caught. He would’ve done anything to try and free me, if he’d seen me taken …
Sethos laughed under his breath. “Ahh, yes. I know the ways of your heart, Andriana. Your strengths as well as your weaknesses. And if you don’t think I’ll lean hard on those weaknesses, if necessary, then you know nothing. Act against me, and your loved ones shall suffer, and in turn, you shall know the most exquisite suffering of your life.”
Loved ones. Who else was he talking about, besides Ronan? Had they captured others?
“You lie,” I said desperately. “You hold no one that I love.”
“Are you certain?” he asked drily, lifting one brow. He grabbed hold of my arm again and dragged me up the stairs down the next hall to my room, opening the door with such force that it slammed against the wall. He tossed me inside and I went to my knees. I lifted my face, furious, longing to lash out at him again.
“Stay here, in your room,” he said, pointing at me and then around the room. “No matter what the emperor has told you, these walls are the full extent of your freedom in the palace. If I find you outside this room again, those you love will suffer the consequences.”
“You lie! I don’t believe you captured anyone but me.”
“Is that a risk you care to take?” he asked. “Cross me, and I’ll take out my wrath on those within the dungeon’s keep.”
I switched tactics. “Keallach will wonder what is wrong with me, if I stay here. And I’ll have to tell him you have limited my freedom.”
That seemed to make Sethos take pause.
“You like to read, yes?” He didn’t wait for my answer. “There is a vast library at the very start of the second floor, directly beside the staircase we just came up. You may spend your days there, reading novels or whatnot. Or here, in your room. Nowhere else unless you are in my company or the emperor’s.” His eyes narrowed. “Have I been clear?”
But he didn’t wait for a response. He took a deep breath, straightened his tunic, and then calmly walked to the door. He gave me a tiny smile, as if nothing had happened at all, and bowed his head slightly. “Good night, Andriana. Sleep well.”
With that, he left me to close the door. I waited until I could not hear his boots across the marble floors of the hallway, then I raced to the door, slammed it, and leaned my back against it, as if I could bodily keep him from ever entering again. Then I lifted my eyes to the high ceiling and muttered, “What now, Maker? What would you have me do?”
CHAPTER
22
ANDRIANA
I battled sleep for hours as I sat huddled on my bed, staring with burning eyes and heavy lids at the door, frightened that Sethos would return. Again and again I tried to sort out all I had heard that night, until in weary defeat, I slept.
I awakened with a start, my eyes on a fold of fabric inches from my face. I blinked slowly, then opened my eyes again. Remembering, as I stared at the elaborate stitches and ran my hand across the shiny, soft fabric that I was a prisoner in the palace of our enemy. I blinked slowly and rolled, looking up at the canopy above me, and rubbed my armband, like it was a talisman that might whisk me home, back to the Valley. Or to —
I frowned in confusion. My cuff was warm. Warm. My heart surged with hope. An Ailith. Ronan?
Sitting up quickly, my eyes darted to the far corners, deep in morning shadow, to the two chairs.
My heart pounded hard, stopped for a second, then pounded again.
“Oh, Keallach,” I said, pulling the blanket to me as if it were a shield. “What are you doing here?”
He had been rubbing his temple as if it ached. But when I sat up, he smiled. “Good morning,” he said softly, almost wistful. “Forgive me for intruding. I just … missed you. I didn’t like how we left things yesterday. That wasn’t how I want it to be between us.”
I stared at him, trying to sort out what was going on. He was feeling the Ailith pull for certain. “There is a lot between us, Keallach. Good and bad.”
“Yes. Right,” he said quickly, clearly not wanting to go into it again. “You didn’t undress last night for bed,” he said, rising and going to the wall to pull a long, fabric band that I had learned summoned a servant from somewhere below. “You’re still in your gown.”
I glanced downward, thinking the gown was hardly more than nightclothes, anyway. But I had more important matters to address before anyone else entered the room. “Listen, Keallach. I had an … encounter with Sethos last night. And with him having access to —”
“Sethos?” he frowned. “He was here? In your room?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head in anger. “I’m sorry. I thought I made it clear to him that he wasn’t to … cause you distress.”
“Thank you. But, Sethos said … He said that he holds people I love in his dungeons. Who was he talking about?”
“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. I searched him, but while he wore an honest expression, he was blocking me to some extent. All I could feel was anger. Toward Sethos still?
“Who is in your dungeon then?”
“No one but enemies or traitors to Pacifica,” he said, irritation now wafting off of him. “But this might surprise you, Andriana — I don’t walk the dungeon halls every day like some evil lord. I have plenty of important things, good things, to do in order to see to the affairs of my people. The business of the empire keeps me busy from morning until night.”
“So, you do not hold Ronan — or any of the Ailith — in your dungeon?”
“No! Search me! See if I lie!”
I did again, then. I thought he was telling me the truth. Sethos must have just been lying to me, trying to get under my skin. I summoned my courage, threw aside the covers, and strode over to the dressing table as if it was completely normal to have him in my room. He turned toward the window, as if giving me privacy, even though I was fully clothed.
“I’d like my clothes back,” I said, rubbing my arms against the morning chill. “My Aravander tunic? A long-sleeved shirt?”
He went over to a trunk and opened it, peered inward and then reached for a soft, silky cape. He shook it out and brought it over to me, silently waiting for me to stand, then gently wrapped it around my shoulders, tying it at my throat. I stilled, allowing this intimacy, trying to reach out to him. Today was a new day. Perhaps this was the day I’d really reach him. But he turned back to the window, as if sensing my pull.
I sat back down, picked up a brush and yanked it through my hair with rough strokes. “You dress your women as if they were dolls. As if they had nothing to do but lounge about, eating and drinking and gossiping the day away.”
When he said nothing, I dared to catch his reflection in my side mirror. He was edging the curtain aside, looking out. “It’s a sign of stature, to have one’s wife look as if she has no further demands on her life.”
“How utterly depressing is that? No wonder they all look half dead.”
He turned toward me, and I felt his agitation.
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly, forcing myself to swivel on the chair and face him. “That was unkind.”
But his face softened. “No,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “You are right. Here we are, the wealthiest and strongest in the land, and yet we are somehow dying.” His voice faded and he turned back to the window. “That is why I need you, Andriana. We need you.” His keen eyes returned to meet mine and he took a few steps toward me. “You are like life itself to me. I can’t sleep. Every time I close my eyes, all I see is you. This pull …” His hand went to his chest and he rubbed it, as if feeling pain there.
He was open to me a
gain, any trace of anger from last night gone. Full of such need and hope. And … love?
I tried to gather enough saliva to swallow and failed. Surely I was misreading him. “You … Keallach, you are sensing the Ailith pull between us and mistaking it for something more. You feel it as life because you have been separate from the body you were meant to be a part of for so long. It’s like you were a severed, dead limb and now you’ve been reattached, in a way. At least to me. Allowing blood to flow.”
“Yes,” he said, nodding, and crossed the distance between us.
I froze. His words from the night before hadn’t been forgotten. His plan to join the Remnants, possibly use us, for the empire’s gain. And yet he was my brother too. I found it as impossible to resist our connection as I would Vidar or Tressa or Chaza’el or …
He knelt in front of my knees and then slowly, almost reverently, laid his head atop them, not touching me anywhere else. We were silent and still together for a long moment. Then he said, “I know you wish to leave here. But I beg you not to separate me from this flow of life, Andriana. I couldn’t stand it. Not again.”
Now my mouth was truly dry. My heart raced. Was this an opportunity or a trap? I felt the ache within him — the loneliness, the pain, the regret — and I longed to assuage it. He was so humble, in this moment. So full of need. Tentatively, I sighed and reached out and laid a hand on his head, watching the morning light dance on the dark, clean strands. “There is much for us to sort out,” I began. “If we are truly to be friends.”
Hope sparked within him, and he lifted his head, gently grabbing hold of my hand in both of his. “Might we?” he asked softly. “Be friends? Or even more?” He lifted my wrist to his mouth, and eyes never leaving mine, gently kissed the inside of it.
I seemed to feel the power of his lips on that bit of skin all the way to the ends of my hair. Dismayed, I pulled my hand from his and cradled it to my chest as if he had hurt me.
He smiled softly as if he understood, and that angered me, confused me. Alarmed me. He rose and moved to the table.
I turned to watch the footman who’d silently arrived, setting down a tray, moving about my room, making the bed, removing a goblet from the side table. He acted as if it was nothing to find his emperor in my private quarters, and I wondered how many times he’d found him with a woman.
I shook my head, willing myself to concentrate. What did it matter to me how many women Keallach had bedded? I was losing my focus, losing sight of my mission. Maker …
Keallach paused in his pouring from the silver pot and studied me. It was as if he had heard my silent prayer. His jaw clenched. But then he turned back to his task and lifted a cup to me. “Come.”
Reluctantly, I sat next to him in the second chair. He was close enough to reach out and touch me again, but didn’t.
“Why am I here, Keallach?” I asked, accepting the delicate cup and saucer. “Really?”
“I’ve told you. I wanted you to myself for a bit,” he said, leaning back in his chair and sipping from it.
“And when I wish to leave?”
“Let’s address that when the moment comes, shall we?” he said easily, as if he meant it. But I felt a flash of frustration in him. “Surely you realize what a gift this is to me. To have you here. In the midst of this crazy battle that is simmering between our people. Don’t you see? We — the two of us — form the bridge.” He set his cup and saucer on the narrow table between us. “Andriana, can you not help me? Together, can we not find a way to work together to broker peace?”
I took a sip, considering him. “I was born to save our people, just as you were. But Keallach, saving them cannot be done through enslaving them.”
He frowned. “Are we back to this?” he asked, agitated. “I wish for no such thing.”
“Regardless of what you wish, that is what is happening. Pacifica leaches off the Union’s resources, but what does she give back? You sit here behind your wall, enjoying riches far beyond anything we could’ve ever imagined, growing up.” I waved about the room and shook my head, then lifted my cup. “We sipped from earthenware. Pine needle tea. And you serve me what?”
He lifted one shoulder. “Tea from across the Great Sea.”
My mind went to the ships and busy port, my heart quickening. There it was again, a reference to other countries. “Have you been there? Across the Great Sea?”
“No, but my men have.” He reached forward for a biscuit and, with silver tongs, placed one on the edge of my saucer, then one on his own.
“Are there many survivors there?”
“About as many as here,” he said. He bit into his biscuit, chewed, then reached forward for a spoonful of an orange-colored jam. “It is part of what concerns us.”
“That there are survivors?”
“That there are potential enemies. We must bind our empire together so that we are a force that compels our neighbors across the sea to never consider trying invasion again. Trading is all well and good, but we should keep to our own lands as the Maker created us to do.”
I considered him. “But the Si — Sethos,” I said, narrowly avoiding the tension that came up when I mentioned the Six. “Will he not want more, if he was to see you establish your empire of peace? Would he not eventually look beyond our shores to others?”
Keallach’s brows knit in confusion. “No. Why would he do that?”
I thought of the combined need I’d discerned while first with the Six — no matter what they wanted me to believe of them now — of the insatiable lust the group had for everything in their path, whether people, pleasure, or possessions. But I chose to stick with Sethos, my declared enemy, to test Keallach’s thoughts. “Because Sethos is ruled by the dark one, Keallach. Because he has a hunger in his heart that will never leave him satisfied. All he’ll want is more. And the longer you remain in his company, the more you will be like him.”
His face became like stone, and he set down his cup and half-eaten biscuit with care that belied his tension. “I cannot allow you to continue to speak against him.”
“It is simply the truth.”
He didn’t blink. “I know Sethos has his faults, but you speak against my oldest, most faithful friend.”
“But you were knit together in your mother’s womb as my brother. An Ailith. Our kin, not his. Does that not make me an even deeper friend?”
We stared as each other in silence.
Then he smiled, as if cajoling me. “Can we all not be family, of a sort, once again? Is reconciliation not the Maker’s way?”
I felt the dissonance of his words deep in my heart, but struggled to find reason to argue. “The Maker does love reconciliation. It’s the reason why there is a way back for you, Keallach, no matter what you have done. But he also wants us to recognize it — own up to it — when we wander from the Way. And there is not an ounce of contrition within Sethos that this empath can discern. He endeavors to lead you far from the Maker.”
Keallach stood up quickly, his rage gathering. “I didn’t leave the Maker. He left me.” He leaned toward me as he said it, and I forced myself not to shrink from him.
“That is untrue. If we feel far from him, it is because we have not sought him out as we should.”
Keallach let out a scoffing sound and strode toward the window. After a long moment he said with a quaking voice, “I’ve gone as far as to build a palace in Wadi Qelt in order to seek him out.”
“And have you found him there?”
He paused a long moment. Then whispered no.
“It’s because you do so,” I said gently, “out of your own ambition. You seek him because you long for power, for dominion, rather than to bow to his own. You want to control the One who cannot ever be controlled.”
“That isn’t true,” he said, glancing at me over his shoulder.
“Isn’t it?”
He held my gaze for a long time, then slowly turned back toward the window. My trainer’s words ran through my
mind, reminding me of the truth I had to share with Keallach.
I rose and went to stand at the window beside him, daring to take his hand in my own. “When we rely on our own gifting, our own abilities, it diminishes the Maker’s power in our lives. We can only get so far. But if we truly bow down to him first, if we allow his power to flow through us, allow him to use us rather than the other way around … that is what we were born for. All of us, whether Ailith or not. That is why we were born, Keallach.” I turned slightly toward him. “Not to wield our gifting as gods. But to yield to the One who holds us all in the palm of his hand. To reorient this dark world on a dark path back toward —”
“Enough,” he said curtly, dropping my hand and lifting his to me in warning, but he wasn’t furious any longer, just confused. “No more.” He took a breath, then another. “For now. You’ve given me much to think about.”
We stood there together in silence for a long while. Then, “Andriana, will you tell me of the other Remnants and their gifting? Besides Kapriel.”
I paused. To speak of them felt vaguely dangerous, treasonous. And yet he had to be so curious about our brothers and sisters too. Conflicted, I remained silent.
He ran a hand down the windowsill and looked outward again. “We’ve heard stories … of a female healer. A brother who prophesies. They perform miracles, and then they move. Even now, their following grows out there in the Union.”
It was happening, just as the elders said. Finally, the Remnants weren’t on the run. They were claiming territory.
Keallach took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “In this, there are the seeds of anarchy. Total social unrest.”
“I don’t know if you’ve wandered farther than Castle Vega or Georgii Post, but out in the Desert, I can tell you, it’s anarchy anyway.”
“I want to bring the Drifters to account. I want to bring every town, every kingdom to account. I want to bring them together. But the Remnants … Well, if they continue on this path, they may just divide everyone further.”
Season of Fire Page 20
