Crown of Crimson

by Rose Reid

  This is not how the Queen of Crimson dies. I will not die doing a dirty deed for the king.

  I continue to try to fan the smoke up into the night, hoping Lyom or one of his men will see it. My vision is turning hazy, my mind growing foggy, and by the second I am losing muscle control. It feels like the ikketra darts all over again, but this is a slower, more agonizing way to lose control. Instead of instantly being paralyzed and dipping into unconsciousness, I am forced to stand around while my body loses all its functionality.

  I try to shout up, hoping one of Lyom’s men hears me, but when I open my mouth only a whisper comes out.

  Just a few more minutes. I tell myself over and over again in a desperate attempt to stay conscious. Just a few —

  “I’ve got them!”

  I hear the shout distantly, echoing down from the canyon’s ridge. I try to spin around but only end up stumbling and falling to my knees. The sound of rapidly approaching footsteps is the most comforting thing in the world. I slowly lay down on the ground, staring up at the night sky, the smoke billowing into the air. By the time the footsteps approach, I have lost most movement and consciousness is slipping away from me. I hear a shout, then see a familiar face over me. It isn’t but a second later before Lyom crouches down next to me, scooping me up in his arms, shouting orders to Carnahan. His face is bone white as he takes in my appearance.

  “Get the other one,” I hear Lyom say distantly. His potent blue eyes look down at me and I see something I’ve never seen on his face before — fear. Fear … for me? I suddenly feel worse than I had before he arrived. If the Blight of Evrallon sees my wound and looks at me with worry in his eyes then I should know it is bad.

  Dark spots begin to appear in the corners of my vision and I look up, seeing the stars swirling in the night sky. Then, there is a flicker and I see a canopy of trees above me, darkness all around. Then the illusion is gone and I only see Lyom.

  “Aerietta,” he breathes but it sounds more like a warning. “Stay with me.”

  Dominik, I open my mouth to say. Don’t kill him …

  I don’t know why I don’t want Lyom’s men to kill him. Because I feel some sort of sick, twisted loyalty towards him? Perhaps his antics have won out and he has gained my trust back. Or it could always be the wytrian poison going to my head. Either way, it is better that all that leaves my mouth is a silent whisper.

  I see a muscle twitch in Lyom’s jaw. “Carnahan!” he bellows, a hysterical note to his tone.

  My head feels heavy and my neck can no longer support the weight of it. I feel my face go slack and my head loll backwards. I am suddenly gathered up against Lyom’s chest but I feel no warmth from it.

  Lyom nestles his face into the crook of my neck. Goosebumps raise on my skin as I stare up blankly into the night sky, the paralysis completely taking over. Logically, I know that unconsciousness will wrap its grip around me soon and then not long after, death will find me barely clinging to life. I suppose it will be a long awaited death for most.

  “You stupid, stupid human …” Lyom whispers, and if I had any control over my muscles, I would have flinched. Stubble from days worth of not shaving scratches my neck and jaw but I don’t move — I can’t move. But it isn’t the strange softness to Lyom’s tone that startles me, or even the way he has his lips grazing my jaw, but rather it is the words he spoke.

  Human.

  “Swordmaster,” Jamas says, bending down beside us. “We must get her back to the inn. Carnahan can —”

  Lyom swoops me up off the ground and my head lolls into his chest, feet and arms dangling. I know we’re walking but all I can see is the night sky. Then Lyom is running and the world begins to spin into darkness.

  XVII

  “When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one’s self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.”

  — Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

  Death is a strange thing. I have always been told that death is bleakness, that everything is dark, and, if you have a pure soul, a bright light will welcome you into gates of pearl where the “True King” would welcome you home. But, if you were not good, you would begin to feel the clutches of eternal heat dragging you down into a pit of fire from which you will never escape.

  I see no light, and I feel no heat, but I know I am dead.

  Whispers and shadows move around me in what seems like endless darkness. My whole body is alight with pain from something like fire, or electricity, but no heat is associated with it. The whisperers move close, their voices ebbing like waves in an inky ocean.

  “Listen … listen well.”

  I hear the voice echo over and over again, stuttering and stammering as a broken record would, or even a mechanical device that has been improperly adjusted.

  “The Girl of the Elements is here …” something close by whispers.

  They’re not talking to me — they’re talking about me. I want to turn around to see who it is but it doesn’t feel that I have a body … not really. I am just sentience.

  “She watches us … Shall we let her return to the living? Or do we escort her to the land of the dead?”

  “It is not our decision to make.”

  “We should make it anyway. He is not here.”

  “We will hear from Him.”

  I try to speak but nothing comes out. I am but a bystander listening to this conversation.

  “The darkness still seeks her.”

  “It always will.”

  “And the Riser? Does she know about him?”

  I recognize the term and am suddenly wary of these whisperers. I’ve heard them before in my dreams. I think they have always been there in the background of my thoughts, never making themselves known. Perhaps they are only my subconsciousness transitioning myself from life to death. It would explain why they mentioned the Riser.

  I think back to what I read in the book in the Keep. It is an Afterlighter, I know that much, but what sort of Afterlighter, I am unsure.

  “She is beginning to trust him.”

  “Yes.”

  “Has he not betrayed her enough already?”

  My thoughts do backflips, trying to keep up with their conversation. I know deep down that they can only be my own subliminal musings but they sound real enough to make me believe they are a threat to me.

  Then, the darkness begins to shift, writhing and changing, even as the whisperers speak on. I want to stay with them for some reason; I want to stay and hear what they have to say. They seem to know so much … Who has betrayed me enough already? Dominik? The thought of him being anything less than human is laughable.

  I trip.

  No, allow me to rephrase that.

  I trip. I have a body all of a sudden. I land in soft moss and sod, sticks poking up between my fingers and the same eerie glow of the Menca Denu rising up from the ground. Roots spread out from beneath my fingertips and a soft breeze blows over me, like someone breathing down my neck.

  Slowly, I begin to get to my feet. It does not take a genius to know exactly where I am.

  The Afterlight Forest is dark, grim-looking, and everything I imagined it would be. Trees seem to cave in towards me, their branches vying for my attention. Everything is deep greens, blues, browns, and blacks. There is no life to this world. Because the Afterlight Forest is not just another kingdom like Evrallon or Adaai … it is another realm.

  I hear footsteps dash through the trees around me and my muscles involuntarily brace for an oncoming attack but none comes. The trees are dense around me, cloaking whatever light might have fallen from the sky.

  This is the Forest. I think solemnly.

  Is this where the Children go when they die? If I stumbled around in here long enough — which I suppose I could — would I come across Meili? Amee? Other Boys and Girls of the Elements?

  Deep laughter rises from the trees around me, causing me to shudder. There is nowhere to run or hide in this place because ever
ything is foreign — filled with magic, something that I cannot control, no matter how hard I try to.

  “Aerietta,”

  The voice, the whisper, comes like the wind behind me, dark and unnerving. I jolt and spin, prepared to fight, but find only trees that seem to watch me with invisible eyes.

  The grass feels strange beneath my bare feet, softer than anything in Lydovier or Evrallon or any of our realm’s kingdoms. Everything here is strange and different and eerie. I remember Quay telling me that once the Afterlight Forest was just like Lydovier — full of laughter and joy and dancing — but then something happened and everything changed. It is why the Afterlighters began spending more and more time in the kingdoms, and why they were later banned from our world.

  No one knows why the Afterlighters left the Forest or what happened but it is becoming increasingly evident to me.

  “Aerietta.”

  I spin, hearing the sound of a man’s voice directly behind me, and when I do, I find myself in the hands of a man at least Dominik’s height, if not slightly taller. His fist is clenched around my throat and eyes of dark gray stare into my own.

  I gasp for breath, fighting to get away from him, but he is too strong. I know he looks familiar, that I should think he looks like someone I know, but all I can think about is trying to escape.

  Darkness surrounds the man, black, wispy fog surrounding him. His eyes glow sinisterly and his mouth is twitched up into an easy smile.

  “I see my Riser has taken good care of you … I should kill him for letting you slip through his fingers.”

  I desperately claw at the man’s hand, kicking my feet wildly as he lifts me off the ground. Panic, bold and bright, is like fire in my blood. My eyes are wide with fear and I think it is the first time in my life when I know my fate. If I were not already dead, I would think he was going to kill me. But no.

  You can’t kill something that is already dead.

  “He never should have left you in the first place.” the man seethes. “A time will come,” He whispers the words like a hiss in my hear, lips drawing nearer. “when you will have to choose which side you want to be on.” I hear his deep chuckle but am not paying attention; I am still fighting for breath as my lungs burn, screaming the need for oxygen.

  “You seem to like the winning team,” continues the dark man. “I’ll let you in on a secret … I always win …”

  Suddenly, there is a shooting pain in my chest. I gasp, feeling as though my sternum is cracking in half. How is it fair that death is painful? Have I not endured enough in life?

  I think that is when said life smacks me upside the head.

  My eyes fly open and bright light flares into my vision. I suck in a deep, pained breath and almost scream when the air rushes out from my lungs.

  There is a man in front of me, two hands planted firmly on my shoulders as he shoves me back down to the bed. I look up at him frantically, knowing I should recognize him, but only a name comes to mind: Lyom.

  A man I know is Carnahan leans over me, something large in his hand. I don’t realize what it is until he withdraws the needle from my chest, tossing it onto the nightstand beside him. I feel like I should be afraid of him for some reason but I’m still struggling to take in another breath and all I can worry about is my next lungful.

  “Aerietta, you need to calm down,” yet another should-be familiar man says at my left but I hardly hear him. I cannot see, cannot breathe, cannot hear much of anything, and all I feel is pain — pain everywhere. I stare up at the ceiling, trying to take in a deep breath and failing miserably.

  All I can think of is the man cloaked with darkness, eyes burning holes in my chest. I see him now, leaned over me, his hand clutched around my throat, trying to extract the air from my needy lungs.

  “Carnahan!” I hear the Lyom one bellow, a frantic tone in his voice. “Help her!”

  “Swordmaster, perhaps you should —”

  “Get your hands off me!” Lyom barks.

  The man in darkness leans down closer, that same smirk on his face. I see rigid bones laying beneath his pale, almost translucent skin. Then, right before my eyes, his skin begins to wither, almost falling off his body, eyes turning darker by the second.

  I know I’m screaming.

  I scream when he leans down over me, rancid breath surrounding me.

  “This is what it means to be a Riser …” he whispers. “Does it frighten you?”

  I try to look away, close my eyes, bury my face in Lyom’s chest as he leans forward, trying to figure out what is going on, but he cannot see the dark man that grabs me by the chin and turns me to face him, bony fingers digging into my skin.

  “When the time comes to choose,” he growls, deep and low from his chest. “I think you know the right choice to make.”

  Then he is gone in a wisp of black smoke.

  I’m still screaming. I cannot seem to stop. Never has something scared me so much, made me fear for my life so desperately. I cough, choking on sobs, as Lyom and the other man I recognize as Jamas reach forward, pinning me to the bed. I buck beneath them, trying to get out of their grasps, feeling the cold clutch of the dark man’s hands around my arms instead of theirs.

  “Carnahan, the sedative!” Lyom booms angrily. I think it is that which knocks me out of my trance and I force myself to calm down, stop screaming long enough to remember my situation, because something inside me shouts that they cannot sedate me.

  My Jezdah. They’ll see it. Lyom will see it. He’ll have me killed on the spot.

  I shake my head vehemently. “No,” I croak, trying to form the words, at least get them out of my mouth, but they seem lodged in my throat.

  When Carnahan moves towards me with the needle, I wave my hands violently, screaming, “No!”

  Jamas shoves me back down onto the bed but Lyom bats Carnahan’s hand away. “Leave us. I’ll handle her.”

  Jamas looks at his Swordmaster in concern but does not say anything. He and Carnahan leave the room, along with another man I recognize as one of the innkeepers, who looks just as horrified as his wife who waits at the door. I hear their murmurs as they leave the room, closing the hardwood door behind them.

  Lyom relaxes some and I see tension leaking from his muscles. My fight has died back and somehow I feel safer knowing that it will be the Swordmaster that watches over me. I know I should not feel comforted; I should be as afraid as I was when the dark man had his hands around my throat, when his skin seemed to melt off him like wax, but I cannot bring myself to think anything other than one word: Safe.

  The Swordmaster sinks into a chair beside the bed as my head lolls to the side. I watch him as he looks up at me, something other than hate and revulsion swirling in his eyes of cobalt. I must look insane to him, like a raving madwoman, but I do not care.

  My eyes slowly begin to close and Lyom continues to watch me carefully. I feel his presence even after I close my eyes and the darkness closes in around me. I feel his hand resting on the bed next to me and his breath stirring the air. This is what I fall asleep to.

  XVIII

  “What could have made her peaceful with a mind

  That nobleness made simple as a fire,

  With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind

  That is not natural in an age like this,

  Being high and solitary and most stern?

  Why, what could she have done, being what she is?

  Was there another Troy for her to burn?”

  — William Butler Yeats, No Second Troy

  I sleep until the dawn of the next rising sun. It isn’t until thirty minutes after the sun has peeked its light out from beneath the mountain range that I finally open my eyes, though. I suppose there is something about being dead and dragging a demon back from the depths of the Afterlight Forest that drains the energy out of a person

  Before I even sit up, I know he is still there, keeping watch over me while I sleep. I sit in bed, watching him. I can’t help myself. He seems peaceful,
soft and vulnerable lying there. He sits in a chair but is slumped over onto the side of my bed, his hair unruly and his look disheveled. The top button of his shirt has been undone and the whiteness of it is stained by blood and dirt.

  Watching Lyom makes me want to forget everything that happened last night. I want to forget that I felt like I’d died — perhaps I did die — and forget that I ever witnessed the chill of the Afterlight Forest. Was that a dream? That is all it could have been, and the clutches of the dark man a mad hallucination.

  I want to sit here and study him. He seemed so fearful for me last night, as if he actually cared about my wellbeing. I’d known I was wearing his hostile, emotionless outer layer down but I’d not realized how far I’d brought him. Looking at him now, he appears exhausted. Half of last night is a blur, and only splotches of color and images remain, but I remember him being frantic, not at all how the Swordmaster was ever described to me. I wonder what his king would say if he saw him now.

  It is thinking of the Cruel King and what he might do to Lyom as a punishment that makes me call his name, waking him up. He starts to consciousness, reaching for his sword in one fluid motion. I cannot help the weak smile that crosses my face.

  Lyom sits up straighter, watching me with cautious eyes. He does not move any closer to the bed and I get the feeling that whatever mad sense came over him last night, he is not going to fall prey to it today.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Alive.” The word is out before I can catch it. Was I dead? Did Carnahan bring me back to life? And more importantly, did I win out when he tried to sedate me, or did they prevail and find my incriminating Jezdah?

  As if reading my mind, Lyom says, “Do you remember anything about last night?”

  I shake my head, trying to put the pieces together. “Fragments,” I answer, the word catching in my throat when I remember who I was brought in with. “Dominik —”

  “— is still alive.” Lyom finishes, and I think I see a flicker of annoyance in his eyes. It would not surprise. “He is not mine to kill.”