Of Darkness and Crowns

by Trisha Wolfe

  The feel of Caben’s lips pressing to mine sweeps over my senses, and I hate that our last, shared kiss was one of lust, fueled by vengeance and fear. Unlike any other we’ve shared, it wasn’t reminiscent of trust, devotion, love. Everything we were and might have been.

  Caben.

  His time is up. I’ve done nothing to help. Haven’t kept my vow. I’ve already paced this cell until the muscles of my legs ache. Ripped at my tangled black hair until my fingers throb instead of my scalp.

  I have no answers.

  Pulling my knees to my chest, I press my back against the stone wall, sinking farther into the lumpy cot. Although I still have Caben’s ring linked around my neck, and I cling to it, seeking comfort, I’ve been relieved of my sword, transmitter, dagger, and my most important item—my dignity.

  My Nactue betrayed me. That wound digs in deep, past blood and bone and bonds. Regardless of understanding that they had no choice, it still stings. They weren’t just assigned members of a faction. We forged something much deeper and genuine in the bowels of the earth. We’ve shed blood together. We’re tied together. And, Lilly is my family.

  But, I’m not sure what I’d have done differently had I’d been the one given the command to arrest one of them. Lilly? No. I’ve already proven I’m a rebel; gone against orders in the past to return for those I care for. But Lena? Hell. I’m no saint.

  And I’m far from divine despite what my mother or the empress claim.

  Thoughts like these get me nowhere, though. I’ve already tried to bend the bars. Thinking, surely, my “gifted” strength would be enough. But evidently they planned ahead. Reinforced steel.

  I’ve thought about reasoning with the cams. Whoever is watching, listening, might have a weakness. The Perinyians regard women differently than Cavan. Maybe if I cry or act wounded someone will come check on me, and I can… What? Attack them?

  All right. It might be a worthwhile plan, but I’m not shrinking to their level. If not my dignity, I at least have my honor as a Nactue. As a woman.

  Tapping my back against the wall as I rock, I go over everything. Everything that I missed, because obviously, there is something I’ve neglected.

  “Can you hear them?”

  My head jerks up. Across the brightly lit, bleached-out holding room, I can make out a woman. Her long brown hair reaches toward her back as she leans against her cell bars. “Uh, no. And I didn’t hear you,” I say hesitantly. I didn’t see her, either. I haven’t spoken any of my thoughts aloud, luckily, but she’s been watching.

  A black-tinted glass wall holding a monitor stands between us. The monitor is off, but the large screen obscures my view of her cell. It’s unlike me not to take my surroundings into account. And this proves I’m becoming unhinged.

  Slowly wrapping her hair into a messy bun atop her head, she begins to stand. Then I see her wardrobe; neutral-colored robe, matching garments beneath. When she faces me fully, my mouth tightens into a hard line. Councilor Teagan.

  “I wasn’t trying to fool you,” she says, waving a hand around to indicate the holding room. “I just wanted to give you time.”

  “All right,” I say, standing to move closer to her. I grasp the bars. “You have my attention now.” I want so badly to demand answers from her. She’s been the catalyst from the beginning, the traitor. The reason, ultimately, why Caben is housing a mad goddess and I’m in this cell.

  Forget demanding answers—I want to ram my fist into her pious face.

  Her weak smile infuriates me further. “If you close your eyes and listen, listen hard, I’m sure you’ll hear them.”

  Apparently, I’ll get nowhere with this woman until I give her what she wants. I do so, squeezing my eyelids tightly, and listen. The loud thumping of my heart, my rising anger, booms in my ears.

  But slowly, as I calm my breathing, quiet the firing mercury, the sounds from outside the palace trickle into my ears. It’s the same ruckus I heard in Julian’s chambers. The gathering crowd. Frightened and fearful Perinyians chanting, asking for retribution.

  I open my eyes. “They’re just scared. The raid on the palace has upset everyone. The empre—” I bite my tongue. It’s habit, my faith in my empress. To claim that she’ll contain the fear and bring harmony. That she’ll work with the Perinyian Council to make sure the Otherworlders don’t breach the capital again. My own empress, who I dedicated my life to, ordered me here. I still can’t make sense of it. Other than she believes she’s doing her goddess’s will. “It will be dealt with.”

  Teagan mimics my stance, planting her palms on the bars before her. “It’s more than fear mongering, young Nactue. The Perinyian people believe that Bale has imbued herself among them. Seeping past their weakened mentality…” She tilts her head. “That Bale has touched some, generating a widespread epidemic.”

  My grip on the bars tightens as my spine locks taut. “They’re afraid of the mentally unstable?”

  “Crazy people,” she corrects, remorseless. “Don’t soften it. They’re calling for a cleanse. Like in the old days. Mad women have obviously been touched by Bale, so we must eradicate them. Get rid of the evil. Before it spreads to the masses.”

  “People aren’t that ignorant,” I insist, even though I can imagine the fear, the powerlessness of so many during this war. People can be very ignorant when they feel threatened. “And I don’t trust anything you say, Councilor. You have your own agenda.”

  She nods slowly. “Bax understood what has to happen.”

  My insides flair at hearing my friend’s name leave her mouth. The charade is over; I go in for my answers. “Where did you take him? Is he alive?”

  “You do know why Bax wanted you to compete in the Reckoning. Why when, after he discovered what coursed through your blood, he didn’t hand you over or kill you himself.”

  She’s mad. She has to be—it’s the only logical explanation. How could the empress or any of the other councilors not see it? “Tell me that he’s alive, and I won’t end your life when I’m freed.”

  Her smile widens. “So violent.” Then with a forced nod, she says, “He lives, Kaliope. He’d have been of no use to me dead.”

  For now, that’s good enough. I’ll strangle Caben’s whereabouts out of her later. Violent or not. “I was kept alive because Bax needed an ally. Someone to help overthrow his father and shut down the Reckoning.” I consider for a moment, because as so much has happened over the past months, I never really allowed myself to think on it. “He wanted his family safe from Bale.”

  “But why not just free you and let you take on his father at any time?” she asks. “Why make you go along with the Cage fights?”

  My forehead furrows. “I don’t follow.”

  She sighs, as if my ignorance is tiring. At this point, it’s tiring to me, too. “Do you know anything about the Goddess Bale before she was banished? About her powers, her works, her miracles? Most believed she was the wisest, most devoted to our kind of her sisters. She balanced good and evil. Sanity as well as madness. Peace and chaos. She harbored all of humanity within herself. She was the most diverse of the deities, and she had the most responsibility. Balancing the scales of life can weigh on one—no pun intended—even a goddess.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “My point is, young Nactue, that it was because of her love for us that she separated from us.” Teagan’s penetrating gaze drills through me, unsettling. “She saw her sisters with powers of healing, love and compassion, wisdom, and even conflict, and knew we’d be cared for, nurtured.” She shrugs. “As much nurture as perfect beings are capable of, of course. But she could no longer balance good and evil for humanity. The strain of it began to wear on her, and she made a choice. One over the other.”

  I shake my head. “That feels like a copout.”

  From across the holding room, I see her eyebrows raise. “You’re saying that you haven’t struggled with this yourself? That you don’t understand the battle between your good and evil nature?�
�

  Backing away from the bars, I put even more distance between the councilor and me. I’ve never once spoken to her, yet she pretends to know me intimately. I’m sure the Council performed an intensive background check before I became a Nactue—that doesn’t mean Tegan knows me. But as I convince myself of this, images of the Cage—rage, hate, violence—surface. How I fought the darkness, the temptation to just let go, let it overtake me. It seemed so easy, just to give in.

  As if Teagan is watching my thoughts displayed in the open air, she smiles. “You don’t have to admit anything. Not to me. But think on anyone’s struggle and multiply it by”—she flutters her hand—“infinitude. I trust you can appreciate Bale’s confliction. As she stripped herself of her powers, separating one side of herself from the other, she caved to the wicked. Madness won, and she believed the balance would be better achieved if one goddess went completely dark.”

  Glancing at the floor, stone tiles scuffed with years of grime, I search myself for everything I’ve learned about Bale. Teagan’s words are contradicting. “Bale didn’t strip her own powers,” I say, looking up at her. “The goddesses did, but only after she went mad.”

  The above lights buzz, echoing a low, constant hum in the room. And I realize, for the first time, that Teagan and I are alone. Surely there’re more prisoners to house here…yet none share the holding room with us. This has been done on purpose.

  Councilor Teagan adjusts her robe, tugging at the sleeves. Like she’s getting ready for a meeting, not locked in a cell. “Did they? Or were they the ones to select a holding room, only much different than the one we’re in now, to store her powers?” She flicks her fingers, as if tossing her words aside. Unimportant. “But you don’t trust me. Why would I tell you any of this?”

  Indeed. “Why are you telling me this? What does this have to with anything at all, Teagan?”

  She tenses at my informal use of her name. “Only energy can house energy. You don’t need me to convince you of that. It’s a fact of physics. Think, young Nactue. Why are you here? Why did Bax allow you to continue in the Cage fights? Why did your father, despite being the chauvinistic male that he is, pump you full of a mineral he wouldn’t have otherwise stolen?”

  Fury grips my throat, thickness lodging at the base. Words fail to leave my mouth.

  Teagan nods, as if urging my thoughts along.

  I never considered my father’s actions further than him being an asshole. A woman hater. But a thief, up until that night, he was not. How strange the things we accept when forced. “He was given the mercury,” I whisper.

  “But was he told what to do with it?” she asks, then shrugs again. “We can never know how much of any situation is devised, pre-ordained. But one thing is clear: you are not the first to carry the divine blood inside you, Kaliope. You’re only the first to be called to use it.”

  I back up a step farther. My stomach twists at her revelation, but not wanting Teagan to witness my unease, I make myself say, “But the Goddess Alyah…” I shake my head. “She was the one. She saved me. Blessed the mercury, and made it so it wouldn’t kill me. It’s her powers that I house.” My brain is fracturing as I plead my case, as futile as it is.

  Lifting her hands toward the ceiling, Teagan says, “Yes, by Alyah herself, the goddess of healing, you were saved.” She dips her head, her hands still held high. She looks crazy. “But did Alyah ever once confirm that it was her power that thrums through you?” Her eyes lift to mine.

  I shake my head, over and over. Denial. “But I healed Bax’s father. And my father.” And I’ve since practiced on the sick in the palace ward. Never attempting again to reverse madness to sanity—it weakened me too much. Because I’ve needed all my strength during this war. To find and help Caben.

  But that’s not completely true.

  In the Otherworld, as Bale grew stronger the closer the eclipse became, I remember questioning my own sanity. Rationalizing that I was thinking her thoughts, not my own. Hearing her. Praying it to be true—

  And maybe it was.

  “You did heal them,” Teagan says, lowering her hands, her focus solely on me. “But wasn’t it so much easier to gift madness? To punish them rather than to save them?”

  “Go to hell.”

  She laughs. “Oh, my lovely girl, we’re almost there.”

  Then, to my utter confusion, she lowers herself to kneel on one knee. “I’ve served for a very long time, My Liege. Waiting for the day my goddess would be made whole again.” She bows her head. “As a true follower of Bale, it would be remiss of me to only serve one half of my goddess.”

  ♦ 17 ♦

  Caben

  AS THE MORNING LIGHT bleeds into the cracks of my eyes, I curse aloud, “Shit.”

  Despite my vicious hangover, and the pounding in my head—the goddess stomping her figurative foot on my cerebrum—another pain pulses sharp and hot. Wiping the crusty sleep from one eye, I spot the source.

  My palm is dotted and slashed with recent, angry damage. Cut into my skin is the design of wings encircling the goddess sun. The sight of it triggers a memory—one of talking to Bax last night—and I instantly shut it down. Instead, trying only to think of the moment when I scooped the emblem from the black earth of the Cage arena.

  Kal’s protector insignia.

  My token.

  Welcome back, Prince.

  Bale’s alluring voice sweeps through my mind with as little force as a hurricane.

  “Did you miss me, my dark mistress?” Blinking my eyes a few times, I clear my blurry vision. Then I set to work bathing the funk of alcohol saturated skin from my body.

  The hot water clears my head further, and Bale revels in claiming that space for herself once again.

  We must know her exact location…soon. If she’s allowed to breach our legion’s borders, no amount of punishment will be enough.

  “Yes, yes, Your Darkness.” Scrubbing my skin, I run the bar of soap over my forearm, down to my wrist. Then my hand. I massage the suds into the wound, enjoying the sting instead of wincing, as I hold on to the last of my will.

  I’ve pushed it and the remnants of last night’s events into a pocket of my mind—one where only touching the emblem has allowed me to reserve for myself. Where the dark goddess can probe, but not fully enter. It’s not much, but it’s mine.

  When I’m dressed in one of my black suits and cloak, striking and daring, bringing me back to my dashing self, I’m ready to take on the day. Into the fray, as my father would say. And down the loft ladder I go. Into the den. Ha. If only when I constructed my fortress, I’d had known how ironic that name would be.

  Into the lion’s den! I want to shout.

  A growl fills my head. You’re losing mental stability, Prince.

  I laugh. “What did you expect, My Queen? Isn’t insanity your specialty?”

  A sudden, fierce image of Kal flashes in my mind. Her long hair falling over her bare shoulders, surrounding me, tickling my face, as she moves above…

  I stop before reaching the common quarters of the treehouse, force my eyes closed. Palming my head, I say, “Those are not your thoughts, witch.”

  You need them. Let them feed you. You’re becoming too weak.

  I shake my head hard, then open my eyes and march toward the side office. Bypassing the Otherworlders mingling in the den.

  Pushing the door open, I immediately halt in the entrance. Bax is shackled, one cuffed forearm strewn across his eyes, asleep. A fleeting memory tries to surface, but I tamp it down. I’m becoming exhausted already. The fight is wearing me out, and I’ve only been awake a little over an hour.

  “This won’t do,” I mumble, making my way over to the cherry oak desk. To think, I never really cared for drinking before; didn’t like anything that dulled my senses. But now, I go for the bottle of liquor like I’ll spontaneously combust if I don’t get a taste soon.

  A splintering pain shoots through my skull, stopping me mid-reach.

  I loose a cry an
d grab my head. Through the slats of my eyes, I see Bax stir. Then he’s on his feet and his beady eyes are watching me intently. Conveying something he can’t say aloud. I shake off the pain and plop down on the couch, thoroughly vexed.

  You’ve had plenty, princeling. No more. It weakens you physically, and you’ll need your strength today.

  What I need is a gaping hole in my head.

  Wondering if blocking out the dark goddess is worth the pain, I glimpse the bottle on the desk. How humiliating. A grown man who can’t even drink himself into a stupor if he wishes.

  Shuffling sounds from outside the room. Bax backs against the wall. Then a loud rap has me on my feet and meeting Lake halfway.

  “My Liege,” he says, winded. “Turn on the monitor. A live transmission from the Perinyian Court is being broadcasted.”

  Through the haze of pain and annoyance, I can still appreciate Lake’s ability to speak like an educated human. Another reason why I tolerate him more than the others. Less stress to my depreciating “mental stability” when I don’t have to decode grunts.

  He doesn’t wait for me, though. Even as he’s speaking, going on about the transmission, he’s at the monitor and flipping it on. Truly, I should always have it on, in case anything of importance on the war or my country is being displayed. But the lambent light increases my headaches.

  Quiet your rambling thoughts, Prince. Pay attention.

  I can hear the aggravation in Bale’s usual sultry tone. And I don’t filter my own thoughts before thinking how I’m unlikely to last another two days.

  So, the mongrel has revealed much in my absence.

  I bite down on my lip, as if my mouth is the cursed offender. “I thought my knowing would please you, My Goddess. Surely now we can stop our useless pursuit for the relic and its risky circumstance?”

  She’s silent as I wait for my expected punishment. But soon I forget her altogether.

  On the screen, Empress Iana stands upon a dais. I know the one. It’s where my father always gave his speeches. I’m angered that she, a woman of Cavan, has the nerve to address my people—until her words begin to process in my throbbing brain.