My eyes travel down the path his mother took. “That’s horrible,” I say softly.
“It is. But there is nothing you can offer them but hope. It’s unlike other diseases in that those who come into close contact with it remain well. You can safely do as his mother asks.”
As if pretending to be this facsimile of a deity wasn’t quite bad enough.
“That feels like a lie.” I swallow. “I’m trying to do less of that these days.”
“Think of it as comfort,” she says. “And of course, I will have my personal healer do all that he can to make the boy comfortable.” She sees my hesitation and climbs the throne’s stairs, squatting beneath the sculpted barnacles when she reaches me, to put a hand on my arm and draw her face level with mine. “It is all that we can do for them.”
I search her eyes and see nothing but truth there. I cannot fight what people will believe of me—or against death itself. But I can choose kindness. It will have to be enough for me, in this case.
“Very well,” I say with a heavy sigh.
~
Days later, I manage to relax into my role occasionally. Every day, I ask Helen what news there is from the governors, and every day, she tells me that they are still deliberating.
I stretch in Kyrene’s throne. At last, the line has dwindled and I shift in my seat to look down at Aunt Helen, who stands, serene, beneath the giant chair’s arm. “May I get down now?”
Her mouth opens, but closes at the sound of footsteps. “I’d suggest that you first counsel the last citizens of the day.”
Just so long as they aren’t anything like Rastus and his mother, I think darkly.
The footsteps are unhurried. Hesitant, almost. As if they’re not certain they mean to be here. It would be lovely if they’d hurry their pace. I’m eager to get back.
Tonight, I have had enough of the separation from my friends, whether Helen mistrusts them or not. Tonight, after I leave here, I’m going to their houses.
But, suddenly, I see there is no need for that. I straighten as the light splits across the faces of Aleta and Caden.
“You—what are you doing here?” I ask.
Aleta stiffens. She’s taken the question wrong immediately. “I’m glad to see you,” I add hurriedly. “But I can’t imagine you’re here to—”
“Pray?” She lifts a brow. “No. If I’d realized where it was Caden was taking me… But I didn’t and so here we are.”
Caden meets my eyes and smiles warmly. I have to ignore the unexpected flip of my stomach upon seeing him. Quietly, he turns to Aleta, takes her elbow in hand, and says, “Enough of this. The two of you need to talk. We need to talk.”
Helen straightens below me. “And you thought our sacred temple was the most appropriate place to have this conversation?” she asks. I can practically hear her raised eyebrow.
“I…” Caden trails off. His brow furrows, and he looks somewhat surprised. “I didn’t quite realize where I was leading us. But that doesn’t change the fact that quite enough time has gone by now.”
He’s right. And sod sacred. I don’t want to dismantle the infrastructure of Nereidium by reassuming my identity too early, but the evening is upon us. Once the sun sets, the citizens of Nereidium respect the reign of the moon in the sky. No one else will come to have their disputes settled tonight.
I scramble down the ladder so that I’m level with the two of them. Caden’s smile shrinks to half its size as the silence between Aleta and me swells. She holds her tongue, staring me down.
Finally, I can take it no more. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” I say uncertainly, like I have stretched a toe onto a rotting bridge, testing its stability. “How are you doing?”
I’m not used to seeing her so undone. There’s what looks like flour in her hair and a smear of red on the back of her hand that for a moment I think is blood, but there’s no open wound for it to sprout from.
Her mouth opens. A breath trembles in the air before us.
And then she whirls, hands in fists at her sides as she marches out of the temple the way she entered it. “I cannot do this.”
“Aleta,” Caden says, exasperated. His eyes dart back to me, and his hand rakes through his hair before he sets off after Aleta. I’m hot on his heels.
“No, Caden,” she says. Her voice is strident enough that, even as she flees away from me, I can hear her clearly behind her curtain of black hair. “I thought that I could, but she’s looked me in the eye and lied to me for Makers only know how long. I’m not ready to forgive her.”
It hits me hard in the heart, hearing that.
The problem is…it’s fair. It hurts, but I can’t fault her for it.
“What if I’m sorry?” I ask quietly.
Her feet falter. Her head jerks and she almost turns around. I stand at her back, respecting the distance between us. The distance I put there. I haven’t been granted permission to come any closer. Not yet.
“Please don’t misunderstand,” she says. Her hands seem to tighten at her sides. “It isn’t that I don’t miss you, Breena. It isn’t that I am holding onto my anger with intention. But it is a flare. One that has yet to fade. I’m simply not ready.”
I shouldn’t push. And yet… “When will you be?”
She spares me a single glance, and for a moment her facade of cold fury breaks. In her eyes, I see the depth of betrayal and loss that she feels. “I’m not certain.”
She walks away as I stand beside Caden, staring helplessly after her.
What can I do? She needs time. I can’t do battle with the force of her anger. I have no choice but to wait.
It seems waiting is all I do these days.
The ground vibrates emphatically beneath my feet and I feel the blood drain from my body. “Please tell me I imagined that,” I say quietly to Caden. I widen my stance to steady myself as the earth becomes a turbulent ocean, thrashing like waves.
He shakes his head, eyes wide, as the earth’s warning growl grows to a snarl. “We must get out of here,” he says, extending a hand. He casts a fearful look up at the white stone that shelters us, and I see immediately what he fears. If the earth shakes enough—if it brings the temple down with us inside—we’ll be crushed.
This quake is different from the others. They’d been no more than flashes. Glimpses. They’d left no more than a few upturned pebbles, a broken vase.
Now, I see that they were the heralds, announcing the arrival of the earth’s sheer might.
Helen rushes toward me and the tremors increase. Pieces fly off of Kyrene’s throne, the shockwaves rippling through it, and leaving cracks in its seat.
“Damn,” I swear, hurriedly accepting Caden’s hand and fisting my skirt in the other. Aunt Helen ushers us forward, toward the exit as Wielders spill from the antechambers and for the relative safety of the streets.
We sprint for the welcoming room, feet perfectly in sync. In any other moment, I’d have time to stop and make a joke about how we might well consider joining festival days for three-legged races when all of this is over. My stomach drops when we are greeted by a pale-faced and panting Aleta, rushing back inside.
“What in the Makers’ names are you doing?” I screech as Caden bodily shoves Aleta toward the exit. She complies more than willingly.
“You shouldn’t have come back inside,” Caden says. He seizes her arm with his free hand and does his level best to drag us toward the exit. Aunt Helen pulls ahead on my other side and takes my arm in hers, determined to get both of us out.
“I wasn’t very well going to leave you to die in here, you half-wits,” Aleta says. She winces as the building makes an ominous rumbling sound.
“Brilliant,” I say. “That was just a swimming plan, Aleta. Now, you’ll just die with us.”
“No one is dying,” Caden says. Sweat streaks down the sides of his face. The floor cracks, fracturing beneath our feet, and he shifts his stance as he runs, trying not to let it spill him—spill all of us—onto the ground.
I doubt very much we’d rise again.
“You aren’t able to simply say thank you, are you, Breena?”
“This is not the time, Aleta,” Caden grits out.
She lets out a breathless little laugh, freeing her arms to pump at her sides as she runs. “No? When wi—”
The ceiling interrupts her by opening above us. Stone crashes around us as if released from a deadly catapult. I yank my arms free to shelter my eyes from falling debris, feet moving all the while toward the exit.
My heart leaps with relief into my throat when I see the red tinge of the sunset in the sky through the open doorway. We’re almost there. Almost clear from the danger.
I burst out into the empty air as the earth continues to wail its fury. My chest heaves for air, heart leaping for joy each time someone else makes it out into the relative safety of the street, where ceilings aren’t waiting to attack. There’s Aunt Helen and Caden, eyes frantic as they sweep the street for me, both of them relaxing only when they reach my side.
The earth roars.
But where’s…
Aleta. She stops, framed in the doorway. Caught by surprise in the wake of the earth’s mighty wail, she pauses, casting a glance up at the stone arch over her head.
And somehow, I know precisely what is about to happen. My feet take flight beneath me as I sprint toward her, dodging both Caden and Helen’s attempts to snatch at me, to grab me back and stop me.
“Run!” I scream. Am I talking to Aleta or myself? She’s halfway out the exit when the ground trembles and a ripple of fear goes through me. It’s echoed in Aleta’s eyes as the temple gives a final buck at the earth’s command and capitulates. It collapses behind her. There are screams in the streets, people who are at the whims of their shelters as the ground they stand upon turns against them.
The city is falling.
Aleta loses her footing, falling to the ground as rubble races through the sky toward her. Her eyes widen as she sees it coming, and she lifts her arms, a weak and ineffective shield from the weight of stone.
I reach her just in time, snatching hold of her arm and yanking her away, sending her rolling down the stairs to the street, unscathed but for the bumps and bruises she gains along the way.
But I?
The movement trips me up, the force with which I spin Aleta away putting me squarely in her place.
I have only time enough to mentally offer a prayer of gratitude for her safety before stone plummets down onto my skull.
And I know no more.
Eleven
Aleta
The earth settles as I stare at Breena’s unmoving body and shudder, horror stealing the breath from my lungs. Desperation claws its way through my chest, and I trip back up the pocked and pitted staircase to reach her side.
Her eyes are closed, lashes soft against her cheek. White stone rubble lays over her, a gash in the back of her head flowing freely. My fingers trip over each other as I rip fabric free from my skirts to staunch the flow of blood while Caden and Lady Helen bellow for help. Caden reaches us, and his muscles strain to lift the small boulders that cover her form, the Nereid Wielders leaping to his aid.
“I forgive you,” I whisper to her. My fingers tremble when they graze her limp palm. Makers, she’s so still. I swallow down the lump in my throat, too afraid to give a name to the emotion building there. “But if you die, I never will.”
Her eyes flicker open for an instant, revealing a slip of blue. I nearly go limp with relief as the wisp of a smile floats across her lips.
“No take-backs,” she whispers hoarsely. Caden stills in the midst of his actions, some of the tension in his shoulders receding as he sees her eyes open, her lips moving, and desperation curls back up in my chest, at rest for now.
And then she sleeps again.
~
Amidst all of the rubble and wreckage, we manage to clear the debris from Breena’s form with relative ease, the Wielders and Lady Helen using their precision Throwing capabilities to shatter the larger stones and free her. Caden gathers her injured body and clutches her close. Helen’s face is stark white as she directs her people to move a stretcher through the murmuring crowd before the collapsed temple to get Breena to a healer.
When we reach the healing structure—somehow miraculously intact, but for decorative objects broken and out of place—Lady Helen disappears behind a curtain with Breena. Caden sets to pacing around the halls, hand streaking through his hair, as I sit against the wall, back ramrod straight, fists curling around my knee in a vice grip.
Breena had come back for me. If it hadn’t been for her, I’d be the one needing a healer’s attentions. Or I may very well have been killed on the spot. But she’d come back for me, just as I had for her. Just as I had needlessly done. If I’d simply stayed out in the street, neither of us would have been injured.
My hand spasms on my lap.
Distantly, I hear Lady Helen’s voice—shrill as she delivers orders— and the demure, calming tones of the healer’s replies. Furiously, she whips the curtain to the room aside.
She must have news. I shoot to my feet to receive it. Caden stills.
She glares at nothing. “They had the nerve to ask me to leave,” she says stiffly.
Both Caden and I resume our previous positions.
As night descends further, the others trickle in, their searches for us in the wake of the quake leading them here. First, Elena and Lady Lilia arrive together. Lilia takes a single look at Caden before having a stern word with him, and he stops his pacing, looking a strange combination of disgruntled and sheepish. Sir Liam falls in beside them when he arrives, mimicking Caden’s pose as they lean against the wall together, arms crossed. Tregle comes in and settles beside me, gripping my hand hard. When Medalyn gets here, she slumps on my other side, her hand hovering hesitantly over mine for an instant before she lets it fall to her side.
I reach out and take it. We don’t always get along, but our spirits are in complete agreement at the moment.
She gives my hand a squeeze and pointedly looks everywhere else—scowling in particular at Liam when he meets her gaze with a teasing eyebrow—but she stays.
After so long of being alone—of having only Caden that I could rely on—I am growing used to having people that I can call mine. To having them stay.
Breena had better be one of them. I will drag her back from the Great Beyond kicking and screaming if I have to.
Hours have passed by the time a healer emerges, wiping his hands onto a red-streaked cloth.
My stomach lurches. That’s blood. Breena’s blood.
He sighs, a tired but not sorrowful sound that I draw immediate comfort from. “No major damage to her bones, thankfully. Bruises only, there. It was the head wound that gave us the most trouble, but even that looked more frightening than it truly was. More to the point, she’s awake and should recover nicely.”
Liam’s face is white. “Can we see her?”
“The whole lot of you?” He shakes his head. “She’ll be weak for days yet. She’s still acting a bit oddly. Keeps saying her name.”
I sit up straighter as the realization hits.
They think her name is Aleta. She’s asking for me.
All heads turn my way as they realize this as well.
The healer holds up a stern finger, ignorant to the group’s epiphany. “One of you may come in. And then the queen must rest.”
I wilt. Doubtless, Lady Helen will wish to attend Breena herself. I resign myself to waiting.
But, much to my surprise, she turns to me, a certain amount of hesitancy in her bearing.
“Go,” she says.
I blink. “I’m sorry, Your Ladyship?”
“It’s Aleta, is it not?”
It was.
It is. I firm, deciding that I will be who I always have been.
“Yes.”
“Your friend is asking for you. Go.”
No further invitation is required. I break—
like a statue bursting free of its plaster and learning to walk—to follow the healer behind the curtain, where he leads the way to Breena’s bedside.
They’ve changed her clothing. I hadn’t thought of it before, but I have to appreciate that, being able to visit her without the chalk of rubble and smear of blood upon her garments. Instead, she wears a simple, but clean shroud. Her arm is in a sling and her leg splinted. They’ve bandaged the wound in her head, wrapping gauze tightly around her face so that her short curls barely peek out. Her head is angled toward the ceiling, chin tilted up and eyes closed.
Upon hearing our footsteps, they fly open. She turns her head, face wan, and finds me with anxious eyes. She delivers a tired smile. “Hi. Still standing by that forgiveness thing?”
The healer clears his throat and murmurs that he’ll allow us privacy, while a muscle works in my throat.
It takes a moment before I find myself able to respond. It’s strange. Only hours ago, I’d been uncertain when I’d be able to find forgiveness in my heart for Breena. But now, with circumstances as dire as they are, my grudge slips through my fingers as if trying to hold water.
I am horrified to feel tears prickling at my eyes when I dwell upon how very close I came to losing her.
When my voice emerges, it is tight. Hoarse. “I suppose the verbal contract binds me to it.”
She blinks and looks amazed, trying to sit up. “Did you just make a joke?”
“Lay down.” A gentle prod on her uninjured shoulder sends her back to a full supine position, and she glares at me, looking disgruntled. But the longer she lays there—the longer the silence stretches—the more anxiety builds in her eyes. The glare fades.
“I’m sorry,” she says again. She toys with the loose threads of the blanket they’ve left at her side. “I know it must be hard that I’m—that I’m the—”
Her mouth works. Makers, even now she struggles to name herself before me. I cross my arms, glaring at her and determined to make her see sense if I must verbally beat it into her. “Breena. I am upset that you are the queen of Nereidium, it’s true.” She winces, but I forge on. “But that is circumstance. It is my own struggle. It is not what I’m upset with you about.”
Fall of Thrones and Thorns Page 7
