“The last bottle of wine,” said Eithan.
She scooted over and picked it up. “This will make us…”
“Sterile, yeah,” he said.
She looked up at him.
He reached for her.
Then, they were kissing.
* * *
They made love in the bath and then balanced on the lip of the bath, and then up against the wall, and then in the bed in the room—the sheets in the bed weren’t in bad shape.
He slid into her from behind and they rocked together, his fingers reaching around to stroke the center of her pleasure, and they gathered together like a gust of storm and exploded into a gushing torrent of fury, and it was bliss.
Eventually, they slept, exhausted.
When she woke, her head hurt from drinking too much wine.
She lay in the circle of Eithan’s arms and gazed at his face and he was too beautiful for words. Somehow, he had become even more beautiful than he had ever been to her. His features had become so dear and so beloved, and it ached when she stared at him.
He stirred and blinked at her, waking up, his lips curving into a smile because the first thing he saw upon waking was her.
“Do you still want to get married?” she said.
He laughed.
* * *
Eithan was dismantling one of the beds so that they would have torches. He had gone down to one of the torture rooms for an ax, which he’d found, and now he was using it to chop at the wood.
Nicce was hovering. She wanted to help, but he told her he had it under control. “I can swing an ax, you know.”
“There’s only one ax,” he said. “You want one, go down to the black room and find one.”
She sighed. “I don’t even know where that is.”
“Well, then just sit tight. I’m almost done.” His ax cut into the wood. “Where do you think we should look? I’m thinking up in the tower where Feteran was. That seems like a place she’d keep something like that. Maybe that was why she was talking to him about Oea anyway.”
“It wouldn’t mean that I wanted to get pregnant,” she said.
He missed the wood entirely, startled by this subject change. “What?”
“If we got married,” she said.
Oh. Right. She’d said that, and they hadn’t talked about it. She’d kissed him, and then she’d done things—distracting things—with her mouth, and now… He set down the ax. “You want to talk about that now?”
“You do want to marry me, right?”
“Yes.” He grinned at her.
“Well, so, you should ask me.”
He laughed.
“Or, I guess I could ask you,” she said, straightening. “Eithan Draig, will you marry me?”
He was still laughing.
“It’s not funny,” she said.
He forced himself to quiet, but he was still grinning. “I accept. Now, I have torches to make.” He turned back to the bed posts and brought down the ax.
“Would you be okay if… if we waited?”
“Nicce, this is something we should talk about when we’re not here.”
“Because you wouldn’t be okay waiting.”
“No, sure, fine.” The ax split the remaining wood in two. “I’m in no rush to put children in your belly. I promise.” He looked up at her. “I never was. I swear.”
She had twisted her hands together. “It’s not that I don’t ever want to do it, you know. I mean, I am worried that I’d be a terrible mother, but… I mean, if Xenia can do it, then surely anyone can.”
He laughed again. “Nicce, it’s okay, it really is. It wasn’t really about children, I don’t think.”
“Right.” She gazed at him. “So, everything’s okay for you now.”
“I never think about knocking you up. Really. I told you so many times that I wished I’d never said it.”
She bit down on her bottom lip. “You just felt… like you weren’t enough.”
He took a deep breath. “Let’s talk about it later.”
“But you know you are now. You proved yourself, and I showed you I wanted you, so now it’s all right.”
“Yes, it’s all right,” he said, and there was a question in his voice.
Her voice was soft. “In some ways, I feel like we’re closer than ever. I feel like you’re… I don’t know… this missing piece of myself, but in other ways—”
He dropped the ax and closed the distance between them and kissed her, cutting her off.
She melted against him.
When he pulled back, she was gazing at him with adoration in her eyes, and it made his heart hurt.
“Me too,” he whispered.
“You too, what?”
“Like we fit together,” he said. “Like… whatever you said.”
She brushed fingertips against his face. “But in other ways…”
He furrowed his brow. Ah, he had known this was coming.
“It’s like there is something wrong.”
“Not for me.” He shook his head.
She searched his eyes with her own. “It’s only that I have this… this feeling.”
He sighed. “Like the feeling you have that you’re destined for greatness? Like that feeling?”
Her face fell.
He let go of her.
She ran a hand through her hair.
He picked up the ax again. “Like I said, let’s talk about this later.”
And then it was quiet for a while, and there was no sound except the swing of his ax and the bite of the blade into the wood. When he was finished, he had eight torches, which should surely last them for a while. He tucked them into the pack he was wearing on his back and gave Nicce a questioning look.
It was questioning because he wanted to see if she was ready to start searching, but from her expression he could see that she was troubled, so he went to her and kissed her, smoothing his hand over her back, thinking about how warm and small and soft she was, about how much he loved her.
“Everything’s going to be all right,” he murmured into her temple.
She sighed. “Promise?”
“Promise,” he said.
And they set off into the palace together with one of the lit torches. They started up the stairs to go all the way to the top of the tower and Nicce started to talk again, and it wasn’t about babies or feeling like something was wrong, so he was relieved.
“Do you remember what Sullo said about the water in the spigots?” she said. “That they were powered by pumps?”
“Sure,” said Eithan. “I guess I don’t know what he meant, though.”
“Well, I’ve never seen a pump that didn’t have someone, you know, pumping it,” said Nicce. “And there was no one here at the palace pumping water.”
“What are you saying?”
“Nothing, I guess,” she said. “Just that it’s weird.”
“What if the pump is powered by something else?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen a pump working by itself either. I don’t even know how you’d accomplish such a thing.”
“Maybe with crystals,” said Nicce.
He halted on the steps and turned to look at her. “Wait a moment. You don’t think…?”
It dawned on her too. “Well, I suppose it’s possible,” she said. “Should we look?”
“Where would this pump be, do you think?” he mused. “Near the water?”
“The water in the dungeon?”
“Well, there was that lake thing that we came out in,” he said. “Maybe it’s being diverted from there.”
They climbed back down the stairs, and they went through the corridors. They went back to the doorway to the palace and they walked through the gates. They walked around the palace.
A nightmare flung itself into their path, all claws and teeth.
Nicce drew her sword and slashed it in half.
They stepped over its body.
Soon enoug
h, they came to the lake. It seemed even bigger than it had when they’d climbed up out of the dungeon.
At first, they didn’t see anything that looked like a pump, but then Eithan noticed some pipes bolted to the side of the building. They followed them down into the lake, and then out the bank of it, where they found a stone box.
Together, they pushed the stone lid off, and there they were.
The crystals glowed yellow, but not the bright yellow of Sullo’s topaz. Instead, it was a more subtle yellow, and they were shot through with veins of blue and green. They were the size of grapefruits. Eithan had never seen anything like them. They were beautiful.
There weren’t very many of them compared to the whole room of crystals they’d found when they killed Ciaska, but Eithan supposed that they could be magnitudes of orders more powerful.
They gathered the crystals up.
When they did, the components inside the stone box stopped. Before, they’d been spinning and cranking and doing all manner of bewildering things.
When the last crystal was taken from the stone box, there was a noise like thunder, and suddenly, a crack opened up in the wall of the palace, going along the same line as the pipes.
The earth shook.
Eithan gathered up the last of the crystals and shoved them into his pack and then seized Nicce’s hand.
She was gaping up at the palace. The crack was going all the way up the side of the building.
The entire palace was shuddering.
“I think those crystals might have been the only thing keeping it standing,” said Eithan. “Come on.”
They ran, and not a moment too soon, because the palace rumbled and shook and started to fall.
By the time they had gotten back to the portal, there was nothing left but a jumbled pile of stones and rocks.
The Nightmare Court had collapsed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Nicce had a stray idea about simply trying to close the portal when they went through it, but she wasn’t sure what to do with the crystals, and she wasn’t sure if closing the portal might bring down the wrath of the gods on them. They weren’t prepared for that.
So, they left the portal as it was.
It wasn’t until later, when they’d met back up with Feteran, that she held a crystal in her hand and whispered a spell and felt its raw power course out into her. It climbed under her skin, fizzing and sparking. It burned.
She dropped the crystal, gasping.
She wasn’t sure how to use the crystal to close the portal either. Did she need a specific spell, or could she simply release the power within the crystal and aim it at the portal?
Feteran had a theory about that, though, and a specific spell he’d crafted that was based on an ancient prayer to Oea. Since most of the spells that Nicce had been taught by the Guild to use on the jewels had been based on prayers to Sullo, she thought it was a solid bet that it would work.
They decided to test it.
They went to the portal in the middle of the day, so as not to have to deal with too many of the nightmares, which tended to stay hidden in the daylight. The three of them stood there—Nicce, Feteran, and Eithan—and they stared into the portal, its purple light reflecting on their faces.
Nicce reached out her hand. “Give me the crystal.” Feteran had insisted on bringing the crystals in a bag he wore slung over his shoulder.
“I’m not giving it to you,” said Feteran. “I have to be able to do it. I have to make the grand gesture to make the people want me to be king, don’t I?”
“We’ll tell them you did,” said Nicce. “But I have to do it.”
“Why?” said Feteran.
Eithan turned to her, raising his eyebrows.
She sighed. “Fine. You do it, Feteran.”
Feteran reached into the bag and took the jewel out and held it aloft. He whispered the words of the spell in a soft, rumbling voice.
The edges of the portal undulated, and the fronds began to move, turning inward. They stretched out, reaching for the center of the circle, reaching for each other, and as they did, they tugged on the outside of the circle.
It grew smaller.
Feteran closed both hands around the crystal, extinguishing the light. “That’s enough. It works.”
They couldn’t close the portal now, not until they got all the nightmares back through it, not until they were prepared, until they’d planned everything out as best as they could.
But it was possible.
Nicce thought she should have felt a surge of satisfaction, but her thoughts only strayed to the future. If they closed this portal, then they needed to close the portal in Kemulia. They needed to be sure that Aitho couldn’t open another portal. They needed to figure out how to kill Aitho. And finally, she needed to find some way to cut short the lifespans of the immortals in the Four Kingdoms.
At night in bed, she and Eithan talked about eventualities.
She lay tucked against him. “Do you think the gods will feel the portal close somehow and come for us right away?”
He had his arm under her neck, and his fingers brushed thoughtful circles on her shoulder. “Could be. If so, we’d need to be at the other portal and close it right away.”
“Close it at the same time,” she said. “If they both went at once, then the gods wouldn’t have a chance to react.”
“Hmm,” he said. “Yeah, you’re right. That’s the way to do it. We could coordinate. Do it at dawn on a specific day. We could go to Kemulia and leave Feteran here. He wants an audience anyway.”
“How long will it take us to get to Kemulia?” she said.
“On horseback?” He considered. “Two days, maybe three.”
“But it might not work,” she said, snuggling into him. “Aitho might be able to open a portal, and he might come for us and kill us. We need to know how to kill him.”
“Yeah, that’s a problem,” said Eithan. “But Feteran says that Aitho is taking the power from the portals that are here, that he can’t do anything unless he has power to take.”
“Feteran might be wrong,” she said. “He was wrong about the crystal blades. They did nothing to Ciaska.”
“True,” said Eithan. “Well, if we’re going to die, I guess we should figure out what it is we might regret not doing and do it.”
She was quiet.
He squeezed her shoulder. “Hey, I didn’t mean having kids. There’s obviously not time for that.”
She looked up at him, her heart in her throat. “Is it now? Is now when we talk about the thing that’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said, his voice soothing.
“But…” She sighed. “So, you’re saying that if something’s wrong, it’s only wrong for me.” She pressed her forehead into his chest.
His hand was on her bare back, gliding up and down her spine. “Maybe it is true what I said before. Maybe I’m not enough for you.”
She lifted her head, and she was fierce. “You are. I couldn’t want more than you.”
“I think if you were thirsty, you could want the entire ocean,” he said. “What’s more, I think you might find some way to get it. I’ve never known someone as determined as you, Nicce. It’s part of why I love you so much.”
“You are everything I ever wanted,” she said, kissing his lips.
His fingers tangled into her hair and held her there, deepening the kiss.
It was like falling from the trees along with autumn leaves, beautiful and calm and good. She moaned against his mouth.
He finally pulled back. “But something’s still wrong,” he whispered.
“I don’t think it’s about us,” she said. “I think it’s just about the gods. That’s a huge thing I have to concentrate on, and until I get it finished, we can’t move forward with our relationship.”
“Why can’t we?”
“Because it takes up so much time, and because it’s all I think about—”
“We could take a day off to get ma
rried, though, right?”
A smile split her face. “That’s what we should do before we go to Kemulia. That’s what I would regret.”
He smiled back. “Me too.”
They were kissing again.
She pulled back again. “I’m going to need a dress.”
“You hate dresses.”
“Not… I mean, yes, but I want to look pretty,” she said. She reached up to touch her hair, making a rueful expression. “I wish I hadn’t cut my hair.”
“You always look pretty,” he said.
She flopped down on the bed next to him, lying on her back and staring at the ceiling. “You just don’t care about it. Men never care about those sorts of things.”
“I didn’t think you were the sort of woman who cared about them either.” He was teasing her.
“I want it all, Eithan. I’m thirsty, and I want the whole ocean. I’m having a wedding, and it better be sun-taken perfect.”
He laughed.
She did too.
* * *
The troupe of actors was moving through the Rabian villages, performing the play about Feteran, and it was working. The public opinion toward Feteran was changing.
They plotted out closing the portals, and they planned the wedding.
Nicce couldn’t help but feel as if the wedding was getting short shrift because of the fact they were occupied with other things, but she did manage to get a dress. It was blue, as was the custom for brides in Rabia, but not the midnight blue of the thing she’d worn the first night she’d met Eithan. This was a brighter blue, made of satin, with a long train and sleeves that belled out just like the skirt. It had pearls stitched into the bodice, and it was the prettiest dress that Nicce had ever worn.
She wished there was something she could do with her hair, but she settled for having it evened out and layered. Now, it curled at the edges, which she liked. The lack of weight on her hair must have produced the waves.
They set the day for the portal closing.
She and Eithan would get married, and they would have their wedding night. They would have one day to relax, and then the following day, they would set out for Kemulia along with their crystals.
The nightmares were being rounded up in the dark forest and forced back through the portal when they could be, killed when they couldn’t. Some of the nightmares were frustratingly difficult to kill, however, or they could have just gone about slaughtering the lot.
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