A King's Caution (The Eternal War Book 2)

by Brennan C. Adams

  Gingerly climbing to his feet, Raimie helped Ren stand. They silently strolled to the palace, arm in arm, with Thumb trailing them once they’d left the gardens behind. When they arrived to the room he’d claimed, Raimie firmly closed the door behind them, blocking the spy out.

  Ren critically inspected his accommodations, her nose wrinkling. He couldn’t blame her. His obsidian box with only a narrow bed to fill it wasn’t very impressive.

  “To which will you take her?” Nylion asked.

  You’ll see.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll acquire something more fitting soon enough,” he told her, igniting a gas lamp and stepping into the shadow it cast. “In the meantime, we’ve other options. Come here.”

  He beckoned her forward, but she only stared at him uncertainly.

  “Ren,” Raimie sighed, “don’t you trust me?”

  The challenge moved her forward. Tightly wrapping her in his arms, he let the shadows take them.

  The journey was much shorter this time. In the last month, he’d made it multiple times when Kheled was absent. Always when his friend wasn’t looking. When they stumbled from the shadows and a burning freeze greeted them, however, Raimie knew he’d misjudged. Desperately scanning their surroundings through a curtain of snow, he yelped with relief at the sight of a nearby mound.

  “Sorry, I overshot,” he yelled. “Follow me?”

  He offered his hand again, and she slowly unwound one arm from hugging warmth to her stomach. He was relieved to see her grinning despite chattering teeth. They raced across the frozen tundra, giggling like children at the icy kisses each flake left on their skin. Nylion followed, laughing with them as he tried to dodge the snow. They’d returned to their origins, the winter of their courting. The only missing element was their excursions’ furtiveness, and Raimie missed that not one bit.

  The mound loomed, and Raimie circled it until he found what he searched for. Clearing frost from the glass, he pressed his near frozen palm against it.

  And nothing happened. Oh, no, had he broken it last time? He’d been rough while searching the place, caution discarded in a desperate need to find warmth.

  The glass panel lit up, and lines of neon blue and purple raced from it to outline a rectangular shape hidden beneath the snow pile. The mound rumbled, and snow fell into the gaping mouth of a cave which materialized beneath it.

  Raimie led Ren inside. Once they’d crossed the threshold, the blizzard’s freezing cold instantly vanished to be replaced with a comfortable warmth. Thicker bands of purple and blue streaked at timed intervals down the smooth, black, square hallway which disappeared into the earth.

  “Raimie, how did we get here? You never answered after the investiture,” Ren whispered as she followed. “And where are we? What is this place?”

  “We’re in the north, past the Matvai homeland. I found this place during negotiations with them. The Matvai are a… ponderous people. Making decisions of any kind takes them ages, and so, I’d go exploring in my unexpected spare time,” Raimie answered. “As for how we got here, well, we shade melded.”

  “Shade melded?”

  “Primeancer skill. I’ll tell you all about it later,” Raimie promised. “In the meantime…”

  The hallway opened, and Ren stopped short. Raimie watched her, afraid she might collapse. He’d nearly done so himself when he’d first visited. This particular ruin contained mindboggling wonders, marvels which dried the mouth and weakened the knees. Lines of blue and purple streaked from the hallway over the cavernous room’s walls, but the fascinating display paled against the chamber’s ornaments.

  When he was sure she wouldn’t collapse, Raimie strolled to the fire which burned in the floor’s center, unbuckling his weapon’s belt to lean against a wall. Whenever he visited, he always found it easiest to first focus on the room’s least strange aspect, and that was the fire. Even if it never extinguished, even if it refused to burn his skin, it still produced heat, crackled, and flickered as a fire should. He draped his vest over the low to the ground railing which surrounded it. The clothing could dry while he waited for Ren to adjust.

  Next came the second least strange wonder. He sank onto the bed, pulling his boots from his feet, and its bouncy surface conformed to him, whisking away the damp which coated his trousers without prompting. When he rose to place his boots beside his vest, the bed returned to a flat platform with nary a wrinkle in the single blanket atop it.

  A consortium of boxy devices covered one of the room’s walls. Raimie had yet to gather the courage to decipher what they did. He did know, from the one night he’d slept here, that a smaller cube magically produced food in the morning and another, person-sized box spewed soapy water for a short period following the food’s appearance.

  Pure, white light illuminated every surface of the black-walled room, and Raimie accidentally caught a glimpse of its source while pulling his soaked undershirt over his head. The ceiling stretched far above, and in that open, black space, globes hung without support. They floated in place with no tangible buoy to stop them from plummeting to the floor, but this phenomenon wasn’t what unnerved Raimie.

  Each of those white globes was a hardened, crystallized Ele ball. Bright called them ‘purified samples of the whole’s life force’, the same essence which had been folded into Shadowsteal’s blade so it could destroy Daevetch splinters. Whatever the globes were, they made Raimie’s skin crawl, so he avoided looking up as much as possible.

  The strangest of the room’s oddities was left for last, the one Raimie had grown to love the most. When first entering the room, the image might be slightly disconcerting because, from the hall, the far wall appeared to have been obliterated by the void which had replaced it, an abyss replete with millions of brilliant stars and one, huge ball of orange fire.

  “It’s not real,” Raimie told Ren. “If you come closer, you'll find tiny distortions in the glass. It’s only a picture of something Dim tells me is called ‘space.'”

  Ren had become a petrified statue of shock, stuck in the threshold.

  “Not the reaction we wanted,” Nylion grumbled.

  Sighing, Raimie gently guided her inside. “I know it’s overwhelming,” he muttered as he added the undershirt to the steadily growing pile by the fire, “but I thought it would be better than my room, and I don’t know. I thought you might like it. You mentioned a desire to come north and explore the ruins a few years back, but you weren’t exactly sober at the time. Maybe I read too much into what you said?”

  “It’s perfect!” Ren answered.

  “Really?” Raimie asked, turning toward her. “Because this isn’t my only refuge.”

  His turn unexpectedly accelerated, and the bedside painfully bumped his leg. Losing his balance, he tumbled onto the mattress. Unnerving Ele globes glared at him, and weight settled on his hips, pinning his arms to his sides. Ren’s smaller hands grabbed his cheeks and lifted his head to meet her lips. Her hands moved to his bare chest, his head flopped against the sheet, and all the while, he tried to silence the voice in his head which shrieked, ‘this is wrong, this is wrong, THIS IS WRONG!’

  In her passion, Ren unintentionally raked a fingernail across his belly while working his trousers’ clasp. The minute ripple of pain was enough to send him tumbling into animalistic terror. It didn’t matter that she was Ren and he was safe. All he knew was DANGER, DANGER! He instinctively called for Daevetch, bucking her off him. Blindly crawling from the bed, he stumbled toward warmth and barely made it to the fire pit before the stew he’d eaten for dinner returned as mushy mash.

  When his stomach finished heaving, he curled, panting, into as small of a ball as he could manage. Nylion crouched across from him, and Raimie put a hand in his. Even knowing his other half wasn’t truly there, the gesture gave him a measure of comfort, enough to calm and analyze what had happened.

  Why had panic risen so quickly? He was accustomed to a certain degree of it whenever Ren touched him, but that had been unreasonable.
For gods’ sake, he’d imagined a scene exactly like that with relish when he’d considered what tonight would entail. What the hell was wrong with him?

  A water skin descended into his field of view, and Raimie sharply glanced at Ren. Good, she wasn’t hurt, but her face had closed.

  “I’m sorry,” he told her while gratefully accepting the skin.

  Water washed the taste of vomit from his mouth.

  “We need to talk about this,” Ren said as she gracefully folded beside him. “You’ve always cringed if I touch you when you’re not expecting it, but Raimie… Is it only me, or do you have this violent of a reaction to others as well?”

  Raimie buried his face into his knees. “It’s not solely you,” he told her, uncaring of how muffled his voice had become. “Every other woman who’s expressed interest… It usually ends like this.”

  After a moment, Ren cleared her throat. “Have you considered you might be,” she took a deep breath, “of a different persuasion?”

  She’d said the last two words with such fear. What on earth did she mean?

  “She wants to know if you would rather sleep with a man than her,” Nylion answered.

  Raimie’s head shot up. “No! No, that’s not it!” he exclaimed. “I want you, only… I don’t know. When you get aggressive, something in me just… reacts. I don’t know why!”

  “That’s how I am, Raimie,” Ren said. “Impulsive. Aggressive at times. When we’re intimate, I can work with you, help you feel comfortable. I don’t mind, but I need to know why you react in such a violently rejecting manner at times.”

  Raimie curled even tighter than he’d thought he could. “I DON’T KNOW!” he screamed into the tiny pocket of air between his knees.

  “Would you like to?” Nylion asked.

  Slowly, Raimie raised his head until his eyes peered over his arms’ fold.

  “I can share if you are ready,” Nylion continued, indifferently staring at the picture of space to their side.

  “You know why?” Raimie whispered.

  Nylion nodded. “It was part of our agreement, remember? I shield you from damaging knowledge, and in return, you occasionally allow me control of our body. What you seek is the biggest of those secrets.”

  “If they’re so damaging, why would you offer to share one now?”

  “You have matured. You are prepared to accept our childhood’s reality.” Nylion shrugged.

  Should he seek answers for something his other half, his constant protector, considered dangerous? Maybe he should live with his peculiarity, learn to quell his panicked reactions as much as possible, but doing so would take years. Years in which Ren would wonder if her actions caused desire or fear. Could he inflict that on her simply for his peace of mind? Looking at her expectant face, he knew what his answer would be.

  “Tell me.”

  “You should let her hear it from my lips, heart of my heart,” Nylion murmured. “It would be more efficient in any case.”

  Raimie readily relinquished control, but this time, he didn’t retreat to their personal mind space when the world snapped.

  May I touch her? Nylion asked.

  “You are me, and I am you, Nyl. She’s your wife too.”

  Scooting closer to Ren, Nylion reached for her hands, pausing before taking them. “Just so we are clear, Nylion is in control now,” he said.

  “I know,” she replied with a smile, seizing their hands.

  Nylion relaxed, folding their legs cross-legged before him. “How do I begin?” he mused. “What would be the easiest way-?”

  Ren squeezed their hands. “Just tell him,” she said.

  Nylion took a deep breath. “Do you remember the bruises and bumps we hid under our clothes when we were children, Raimie?”

  “The ones we received during particularly bad training sessions, yes?” Raimie confirmed.

  Nylion shook his head, sighing lengthily and loudly. “They were not from weapons masters or tutors. They were mother’s gifts.”

  Inside their mind, Raimie nervously giggled. That wasn’t right. Mama told him stories at bedtime. Mama kissed his forehead before blowing out the candle. Mama called him her beautiful boy. She’d never laid a hand on him in anger.

  “No. Not you,” Nylion agreed. “Never you. Except for the accident when we first told her about us. Except for the incident when we were five. We had finished a history lesson and had not performed well because I distracted you. Mother unexpectedly appeared at lesson’s end, long enough to observe our behavior. After sending the tutor home, she proceeded to beat your knuckles and back bloody with his ruler. I suppose she’d finally had enough of NylRaimie.”

  “That’s not… how I remember it,” Raimie uncertainly protested.

  Uncertainly because what he’d said wasn’t necessarily true. He did remember the lesson and mama nursing him later, but the rest was a giant blank.

  “I took the memory,” Nylion admitted. “Doing so was part of the agreement we made that night. I told you I would take the brunt of mother’s fury from then on, and I would have been content keeping it solely at that. You are my dearest friend, Raimie. The heart of my shattered heart. I would do anything for you without expecting a reward, but you insisted on recompensing me. You promised me freedom and remarkably, found a way to give it. Because of you, I walk this world on our feet, and I make the decisions when it is my turn. Such small autonomy is more than I ever expected.”

  Raimie half listened, caught on the idea that the countless nights where he’d cried himself to sleep due to cracked ribs and welts were because of mama. How did that reconcile with what he knew of her?

  “If it helps, I do not believe she hated you,” Nylion said. “I think something was deeply wrong with her. She used to scream at me, blaming me for her inability to go home. I always found that baffling. Where is home if not with family?”

  But if mama had been abusive to them wouldn’t someone have caught her? Wouldn’t he have noticed?

  “Father was constantly away on Hand business, and when he was home mother behaved herself. His ignorance is understandable, if not forgivable. Eledis knew. He simply did not care. Whatever motivated us to better become his tools was acceptable in his book. As for you, Raimie, why do you think you picture me so battered and broken when we are in our head?”

  No. It wasn’t- No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no…

  “Help!” Nylion grunted, shoving a palm against their temple.

  The pressure on the other hand, the one Ren gripped, intensified. Addled, Raimie fought to focus on those loving, gray eyes.

  “Raimie,” Ren said, “it’s in the past. I’m so sorry, but the damage is already done. We know the problem. We can work together to heal this wound, and even if… even if we can’t, please understand, my love, I’m here for you, come what may.”

  She… was right. That mama had beaten them every day from the age of five to nine didn’t matter, not in the long run. He’d had Nylion to protect him, and–

  “Oh, my gods, Nyl!” Raimie whispered.

  His other half shrugged. I am your protector. I was doing my job, he told Raimie privately.

  “Thank you,” Raimie said, swelling with gratitude so intense those words couldn’t hope to convey it.

  Between us, there is never a need for thanks, heart of my heart. You would have done the same for me if our roles had been reversed.

  For an instant, they melded, savoring the union of two become one. For an instant, their bond was as strong as it had ever been.

  “That promise goes for you too, Nyl,” Ren added, unknowingly breaking their private communion. “Come what may, I'm here.”

  Their body stilled, not even blinking.

  “What?” Nylion asked.

  “You’re part of Raimie, and Raimie’s part of you, right?” she asked, echoing Raimie’s earlier assertion. “When I agreed to be your wife, I agreed to be your wife. I didn’t solely Join with Raimie. I Joined with you too, Nylion.

  “I sa
w everything. The days stuck behind his eyes. The time trapped in your mind after your mother gave him medicine. The years become eons spent in solitude, waiting for him to rescue you. I saw it all, although you managed to keep the worst from me. Just as you and Raimie have lived my life, I have lived yours, and… I love you both.”

  “Told you,” Raimie said.

  Tears spilled from their eyes, splashing unobstructed to the floor. “I- I do not know what to say,” Nylion whispered.

  “You don’t have to say anything,” Ren said as she stood, “but can you ask Raimie if he minds whether you go first?”

  What does she mean?

  Raimie cackled. Alouin, good gods above, but he loved this woman.

  “Tell her I said not at all.”

  “He says he does not mind,” Nylion repeated. “Why would he mind-?”

  He cut off as the gossamer outer layer of Ren’s dress puffed into smoke, leaving behind a long sheath of black. Together, they marveled while she wriggled from it. Fabric flowed to the floor, and she was all skin with a backdrop of space and sun to frame her.

  She drew Nylion toward the bed, every move slow and gentle so as not to startle him, and Raimie settled in to watch. As she kissed him. As she pulled clothes off him. As she showed him exactly what to do to make her back arch with pleasure.

  He didn’t mind waiting. His turn would come soon enough.

  Interlude III: Caution

  11th of Third, 3478

  Forget my doubts. Forget my bravado. The enemy is indeed a primeancer, and Auden is doomed.

  We joined him in combat on the Lyzencroft-Matvai border. I thought the battle would progress in a simple manner. The soldiers had their orders to behead the enemy, and we held the high ground. It should have been an easy victory.

  It was a slaughter. By themselves, Doldimar’s monstrous, deathless soldiers might have tipped the scales in the enemy’s favor, but with his primeancers, our defeat was inevitable.