* * * *
In the hours that followed, the Empress kept her daughter so close that Rucha grew restless and angry. The small girl, so strong, faced her chair to the wall and kicked and kicked, making a horrible racket. Raeche laughed then asked her to kick harder and louder. She said she would sing a much-celebrated song based on the drum of her daughter’s feet. Rucha pinned her mother with her piercing blue eyes. Raeche delighted in the glower as well.
“You have a fine temper, daughter. Fine. It will–”
Taritana materialized in a blue-white mist before her, scooped up Rucha and disappeared. Raeche sighed. It seemed as though the occasion to find herself alone with her mother had come.
She had sensed Annikah’s arrival at the palace, for no Spirit slid like ice on her skin like her mother’s. When warmth returned she knew Annikah had left. Now she was cold once more. Her mother appeared before her, back from a long distance. Perhaps back in Spirit only. A welt of anger and distrust swelled in the air between them, though her mother appeared as young, darkly beautiful and insouciant as ever.
“Your husband asked after my vanity,” her mother said.
“Did he?”
Annikah raised an eyebrow that imparted her obstinate nature, her commitment to being uncooperative.
Raeche drew herself as tall as possible, with every intention to be the Empire, to tolerate her mother’s presence then dismiss it. For so long she had prayed coldness into her Spirit. She had worshipped non-reaction, just so in a moment like this her mother could not use her reaction to manipulate her. Then Raeche caught a glimpse of something at her mother’s throat. Something that glinted an eerie blue-white as it greeted her. It had wanted Raeche to see it, or perhaps it had wanted to see her. The Empress felt a quick desire to greet the object.
“What is it?” she demanded, gliding closer to Annikah.
Annikah danced back. “To what are you referring?”
“What do you wear there around your neck?”
“Oh, this?” She acted as if she would gesture to it. Instead, she laid her hand on top of it, preventing Raeche from even glimpsing the length of chain the thing was on.
“Yes, that.” Raeche moved closer still.
Annikah stepped further back, though she still had not quite solidified in her daughter’s presence. “What if I answer another question for you?”
“I have no questions for you, Mother. But I do want the necklace.”
“You have many necklaces, of that I am certain. Why would you want this one?” Her sly eyes cut to the side. A little smile turned her glossy lips.
Raeche did not have an answer.
“Perhaps I should ask why you want your husband.”
Raeche became the very Spirit of Perplexity–a dangerous Spirit.
“So fair and ferocious, your Lanus the Clear. So unlike you.”
Not sure what to say, Raeche advanced again on her mother.
Suddenly, Annikah rushed forward. She grabbed Raeche’s hand and placed her palm over the heat of the pendant at her throat. “Consider this shard, the sole piece of the vanity I allowed myself to keep, to act as wedding present,” Annikah whispered. She reached behind her neck unbuttoning the shining white bead from the flexible white loop that held it. She let the necklace sag into Raeche’s palm. “When it is time, give it to Lannel for me. She is the only one out of all of you fools deserving of this crown. Goodbye, daughter.”
The farewell sounded permanent. Raeche did not care as long as she held the necklace to her heart.
Chapter 15
On a cold, bleached-white day with a blustery wind wringing tears from the eyes of an audience come from the West, North and East, the Empire held hands as they mounted the Lovers’ Opalus. Raeche and Lanus were followed by Valor, Taritana, and the Innov.
At the top of the small mound, garbed in their ceremonial robes of red and white and the yellow metal drrofy, they faced each other.
“We beg you to reconsider,” the Personals said, discretely and in unison.
The Empire stared at them. Speculating.
The Personals, to their credit, did not turn to look at each other. Instead, they followed the tradition of the ritual. Taritana held a jeweled blade identical to that held by Valor. The opulence of the instruments was unimportant; that they could cut and that they were separate was tantamount. The Personals presented the blades then stepped aside. Valor lifted his niece into his arms.
Raeche sliced into the palm of her hand with her blade. She watched as the Emperor did the same. A collective rumble of worry rippled through the crowd. They watched in horrified awe while the Empire washed their blades in their own blood.
Raeche raised her arm. She pressed the tip of her blade to the spot above her husband’s heart, a spot that already bore a burn from where her new necklace had touched his flesh. Lanus pressed the tip of his to the corresponding spot on her breast. For a split second, Raeche shared a pang with Lanus. Rucha, being held by Valor and Taritana, looked more like she belonged to them than to her parents. In that second, Raeche wondered if she was looking at the Empire, the new Empire. She looked up at her husband. Eye to eye.
Raeche pushed. Lanus pushed. They were linked through Spirit and metal and blood, heart to heart. Neither of them cried out, though both were stabbed through the heart and their blood ran freely.
The blessing and curse was short, a handful of words said in unison. “If you I do not kiss, may I drown. If you I do not worship, may I bleed. If you I do not love, may I die.”
Lightning did not strike. The earth did not open up. Avla continued to fly high in the sky. The winds from the west still caressed their faces.
When Raeche and Lanus drew back their blades, their wounds closed over, completely healed. Their hands still joined, they faced the Empire.
* * * *
That Dark, as he watched the wife he loved more than the Empire sleep, Lanus wondered if she had ever known what she was. He knew now, because the Amu’Wey had made them two parts of the same whole. He knew now what he was by Spirit-marriage. He knew what his children would also be. The Emperor was felled by a sweep of dark emotion that combined the Spirits of Joy and Avarice and Finality.
Epilogue
On the eve of Rucha’s ninth birthday, her parents kissed her, told her they loved her and allowed her to sleep in their bed, where she did not stir.
On the day of Rucha’s ninth birthday, her little sister, Lannelorree, “Rich ore of Lanus”–the Empire’s Jewel with hair as black as an avla’s wing, skin like rich sap of a tree from the Forest of the East, and eyes also like her mother’s–became Rucha’s Personal.
When the Codices revealed to Lanus and Raeche their cryptic pages for the next thirty-six rings of the Empire, they decreed that Eynow’s Personal would be Prince Louhandro of Trrahpa, a small but wealthy parcel steeped in all that was savage for its nearness to the border to the South. Though the Empire knew next to nothing of Trrahpa or its heir, none considered disputing the word of either Codex, for their words were absolute. The Empire embraced the serious boy with the dark features of the East who, though only in his twelfth ring, already grew large and strong like the ancient invaders from the West. It was on this day that Handro first laid eyes on Rucha and took an oath to protect Eynow, to serve the Empire.
On the night of Rucha’s ninth birthday, her mother Raeche wallowed in melancholy in Lanus’s arms.
“Our beautiful girl is growing yet she has nothing from me. Even I have my terrible mother’s looks.”
“Lannelorree looks very much like you.”
Raeche cast him a brilliant, proud smile. “She is more beautiful than I am, calmer, so much smarter. I love her dearly, but today is Rucha’s day and I feel as though I have nothing to offer her.”
“Heart of mine, that is not true.” He kissed the top of her head then pushed back so he could cup her face in his hands. “You have given her love and the counsel only a mother can provide. You have given her passion.”
“Temper.”
“And will.”
“Temper,” Raeche insisted. “I do not bring you peace.”
He started to say something but could not seem to keep his lips from hers, his tongue from demanding she reciprocate both the love and heat he felt for her. “You bring me peace, heart of mine. You bring me fire. I want to burn from your kisses, even when you are angry at me.”
“I am never angry at you.”
“You are frequently angry at me. Disappointed in me. Convinced that our daughter is too young to hear tales of sex, violence and politics while I teach her to cheat larger foes. To throw dirt in their eyes, to pinch, to scratch at their nethers, to–”
“Must you be so bloodthirsty?” Raeche groaned.
“Indeed. For her. I have been in the library tower. The tower teaches each Emperor what the next will face. What could be. What faces our daughter requires her to cultivate the beast within her.”
Raeche’s lips trembled. She began the conversation neither of them had been brave enough to start before that day. “The Codex says she will wed a monster at the dawn of our deaths. But I know you would not allow such a thing, my love. Besides, she is already promised to Eynow, and his Spirit could not carry the weight of monstrosity. Some stones harden beneath the pressure of a mountain, others shatter beneath the weight of a seed. We know Eynow is of the latter ilk.”
Lanus measured his words. “When he refuses to wed her, our daughter will start a war. Then she will leave the throne. Lannelorree will be left to reign in her stead.”
“Our Lannel is the very Spirit of Quiet, Calm, Reason, Delicacy. She is too soft to be the Empire.”
“Yet that is what she will be. The Jewel and the Sweet will bring peace. She is even now twisting in her bed with worry over what she senses brewing in her sister.”
“The Spirit Timra coiled ready to bite, to infect Rucha with the Rage.”
Lanus nodded. “Pretty, dark and delicate like you, she will maintain this land until Rucha is free from the Rage and we are free to return.”
“From the dead?”
Lanus shrugged. “I cannot puzzle through the Codices.”
“Sometimes I believe they are written by–”
Lanus pressed a hand to her lips. “Do not say it. Our centuries-old Empire is not based on malevolent game-play from the South.”
“But a monster, Lanus? The Rage? What exactly will befall us that we are powerless to prevent this? No Emperor has experienced the Rage in a thousand rings. Why should she?”
“No Emperor had performed the Amu’Wey in a thousand rings, either.” He lowered his eyelashes and kissed her softly. One hand stroke the tender side of her breast.
“Do not distract me. Tell me what this means.”
Instead of answering, Lanus pulled her into a kiss filled more with desperation, love and a masterful, near-undetectable push of Spirit than with honesty–which was fine with her. For the moment.
Raeche would not receive an answer to her question for nine rings.
About Grayson Reyes-Cole
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Grayson is obsessed with language, love and the fantastic. She is intrigued by the complexity of relationships people build and what makes them work.
She considers herself a quintessential Southerner who loves to cook, paint, and travel. She speaks–brokenly for sure–a smattering of languages: a fair amount of French, a little Spanish, German, and Tagalog. It never takes much convincing to get her to share stories of her adventures across Europe, Asia, and Central America.
A lover of every type of fiction, Grayson floats between dark fiction and just plain old delicious romance in her writing. Explore her many sides on her site.
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Table of Contents
Cover Copy
Teaser
The Empire
Copyright
Dedication
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Epilogue
About Grayson Reyes-Cole
Want more?
The Empire (The Lover's Opalus) Page 10
