Heart on Fire (The Kingmaker Chronicles Book 3)

by Amanda Bouchet

  Well, that does put a dark spin on things. I ram my head forward and crack him in the nose.

  He tosses me over the cliff.

  It goes on and on like that. I eventually lose track of everything—mainly of myself. I have no idea how many times I go down, and my mind stops grasping the fact that I come back up. I stop fighting Perses. I don’t kick or claw. My existence turns into an endless, agonizing blur, with my only hope being to burrow as deeply as I can into that separate place inside of myself where I can hide. I’m only vaguely aware of anything else, like the hard and painful impact that marks the moment of my own repeated demolition, or Perses ranting and shouting and cursing me for a fool. The eagle comes and goes, its habitual shriek before it attacks a strange counterpoint to my new, internal silence. Every now and then, I hear Prometheus whisper to me to fly.

  Fly? I haven’t tried in what feels like years and a thousand deaths. If I even have wings anymore, they’re beyond my reach.

  “It’s not working!” Perses shoves me hard, but this time, he doesn’t push me over the edge. My wingless back bumps into the rock wall, and I slump against it, panting. I blink a few times, and some of the focus and feeling I’d forced aside return to me.

  “You ride from life to death and back again, and you don’t even care!”

  I laugh, nurturing the hysterical edge. I can tell it enrages him. Perses’s torture technique to try to get what he wants from me reminds me of Mother, and I wonder if I could be resisting him on purpose. Is defiance somehow ingrained in me? A previously learned behavioral pattern that I’ll never break?

  I cough up another laugh, just to see his face darken and twist. “Physical pain means nothing to me.”

  That’s not exactly true, but it’s close enough. There’s a point when choosing not to care and actually not caring start to converge. I mentally removed myself further from every fall until I was experiencing the plummet, the shattering, and the reconstruction from an outsider’s perspective. The Titan’s plan didn’t work. Finding my wings became entirely secondary to remaining an observer looking in on someone else’s horrific fate. And so each stomach-lurching drop got easier. I knew what to expect, knew the damage wasn’t permanent, knew Little Bean would be okay.

  My breath hitches. But by Gods, she’d better not be feeling any of this.

  That horrendous thought snaps me fully awake, popping the bubble I’d been protecting myself in. How dare the Gods do this to her? How did I ever once think they cared?

  Motherhood’s wrath fills me. It’s a powerful force. “You’re a pawn!” I yell out. “And you’ve chosen the method of a dupe. This will never work.”

  A chilling coldness replaces the fury on the Titan’s face. Perses closes in on me until the ancient power inhabiting him scorches my skin, and his breath heats one whole side of my head. Each puff of air against my temple feels like a volcanic eruption—volatile, explosive, ready to burn me alive.

  I shudder. His very approach spells agony on deep levels. There’s no part of me that doesn’t want to run.

  Perses dips his head, and his dark-as-night whisper makes a terrifying promise in my ear. “Then I guess you’ve turned down the easy way.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Fear detonates inside me. If that was the easy way, then what could be the hard?

  “Do you have any idea how much time you’ve wasted?” Perses asks.

  I shake my head, a quick, jerky movement made up of trauma and trembling nerves. I step back from him, gaining space to breathe without inhaling danger and anger and primordial magic with every lungful of air.

  Perses slides me a viperous side-eyed look. “I do.”

  Oh Gods. Time means nothing here, but in Thalyria…

  Anxiety hits me like a hammer, ratcheting up my pulse. “Why are you saying this?” My voice rasps from screaming. I sound like a badly butchered sheep that’s been left to bleat and bleat and bleat.

  “I’m saying this because after millennia of imprisonment, Zeus finally granted me a potential end to this mind-numbing forever. I could be fornicating. Eating my fill. I could be thumping goblets with great warriors in Elysium right now and watching the red wine slosh over my wrist like the blood of the enemies I’ve slain, but I’m not”—the Titan’s tirade builds in pressure with every word, his face turning a raging scarlet—“because you won’t find your backbone and fly out of here first!”

  I flinch away from his fury. For my sake, I wish I could give the son of a Cyclops what he wants.

  “The magic is gone! I’m telling you, it’s not there anymore.”

  “Not gone,” he snarls in contempt, “or we wouldn’t be here.”

  “Zeus took it from me. I found my spine in Sykouri. I had lightning. I had wings. I was ready to use them both—for whatever means.” I throw my hand out toward the gray landscape. Tremors rattle my fingers, and I snatch them into a fist. “Now I’m here—with neither.”

  The God’s mouth pinches hard. He looks at me with unimpressed eyes. “It’s all or nothing with you, isn’t it? There’s no moderation.”

  I snort. Moderation? This from the being that just rewrote my definition of torture by repeatedly killing my child and me? All my near-deaths? Well, they weren’t any fun, either, but this… This was life-and-death whiplash—and not just my own. Prolonged. Pitiless. Mind-breaking. Most of me wishes I was still on the outside looking in, because inside is just too wrecked to think.

  Perses studies me with a sour look. “Too much humanity. Then not enough.”

  My eyes narrow. Something in his words pecks at me like Prometheus’s eagle, a sharp jab straight to the gut. “Why do you say that? What do you mean?”

  “Your balance is off. From what I hear, it’s been off your entire short life. Repress. Explode. Repress. Explode. On endless repeat.”

  I inhale sharply. That sounds too right. I can’t help wondering… If I had better control over myself, could I have saved Kato?

  Pain and loss slice through my chest like a barbed saw. My heart clenches, and I throw up a wall in my mind to block out the sight of blue eyes without any light.

  I swallow. Maybe with greater control, I would have known better than to try at all.

  An awful smirk contorts Perses’s face. “You think that’s all you’ve lost?”

  I stop breathing. All of me stops. Oh Gods, Griffin.

  No. He was injured, but there’s no way those wounds would have gotten the better of him. There were healers.

  What in the Gods’ names is Perses talking about?

  My pulse starts to pound, panic hitting my veins like a shot of poison. He’s trying to scare me. And it’s working.

  There’s a hitch in my voice. “What do you mean?”

  “Zeus sent you here because you overstepped. You wielded the power you were given for something only the Gods should control, and you did it without a hint of restraint. For his favored one, he apparently considered a temporary stay in Tartarus to be punishment enough.” Perses spits out that revelation in a way that makes me feel like a spoiled child who should have gotten her backside paddled a thousand times over but never did. “But unlike everyone else in Tartarus, Zeus is giving you a second chance. Understand your magic. Finish what you started.”

  “Understand your magic?” I glare at him. “The magic I didn’t even know about for years? That I’ve never once made work like it should? That no one will tell me how to use!”

  Perses nods.

  “Let me make sure I understand this. We’re the only two in Tartarus who can get out of here, and I’m your second chance?” I laugh just like Mother would and revel in it for once. “That’s unfortunate for you.”

  Bronze eyes bore into mine, humorless, pitiless, flat as coins. “I’ve waited millennia for this. You will not take it from me. Now wake up, before it’s too late!”

  He reaches out, and
I dart to the side, expecting him to try to hurl me over the cliff again. He doesn’t. Instead, he draws a symbol against the cliff wall in front of me, repeating the same archaic swoops and lines in a big square pattern until the invisible traces of power meet again in the place where he started.

  I frown, watching him. I’m familiar with the magic. Thanos showed me those ancient figures when he tried to teach me some protective ward marks, but I never used open. I only ever tried lock, and since lock never worked like it should, the written counter-spell of open was moot.

  Perses drops his hand from the wall, and the rock shudders, ripples, and then stabilizes again with a new view seeming to come from the inside. There are depth and color and sound. Like a window opening to another world, the square in the rock reveals a scene I recognize. It’s the great room in Castle Tarva, the place where we gathered as a family—for what little time we spent there. But it’s different, cozier, and filled with a din that’s indistinct but that speaks of habitation, activity, and warmth.

  The scene swoops in to focus on a man in a chair. The ledge seems to lurch beneath my feet, and my eyes fill with tears. Trembling, I step toward the rock wall, closer to the only man who’ll ever make my heart both beat and stall.

  “Do you have any idea how much time you’ve wasted?”

  Perses’s question comes back to haunt me. Nausea roils in my stomach.

  Gray shoots liberally through Griffin’s black hair, the silver threads more heavily concentrated at his temples. His face is thicker. Still handsome and strong, but lacking the sharp angles and hard planes of manhood’s prime and the trials of war. The familiar lines on his face are deeper, like they’ve been cut more permanently into his skin. He looks wiser. Settled. Concentrated on his task.

  “You think that’s all you’ve lost?”

  My heart drops straight through the gaping hole in my middle. I think I’ve lost a dozen years—or more.

  Griffin is seated next to a small but crackling fire. His long legs are stretched out before him and crossed at the ankles. His familiar gray eyes diligently scan the parchment in his hands. He squints a little while reading, which he never used to do. There are more scrolls at his feet, not scattered around like I would no doubt leave them, but stacked tidily next to his chair and placed well away from the fire. When he finishes reading, he neatly rolls up the parchment in his hands, binds it, and then sets it down with the others.

  He straightens and lifts his face. His expression lights up at once. He sees me!

  I reach for him, and my fingertips bump against hard, cool rock.

  “Griffin?” I whisper.

  He smiles, warm and welcoming, loving, and my heart expands ten sizes in my chest. But then his eyes shift to follow a dark-haired boy who suddenly comes into view. He prances in front of Griffin, a hobbyhorse between his gangly legs and a wooden sword in his small hand.

  The lump of emotion clogging my throat turns into something that starts to strangle me. That child is Griffin’s. There’s no way that he’s not.

  The hobbyhorse’s head is made entirely of deftly woven hellipses grass. The long mane bounces and rustles as the boy makes battle sounds, waving his toy sword and preparing to charge.

  A young girl springs into the scene from the side and jumps in front of Griffin, as if to protect him from an enemy. Griffin chuckles and encourages her as she deflects the boy’s first blow with her own small sword.

  In shock, I stumble back from the vision. The boy looks to be about seven years old and the girl a little younger than that. Her wild, wavy locks are a striking red.

  I can’t breathe. And I can’t look away, even though my breaking heart is screaming at me to run from this.

  She’s a fierce little thing, and her second thrust with her wooden sword is a ferocious enough jab to put the boy on his guard in earnest. He jumps off the pretend horse, flings the toy aside, and then they both switch to more balanced stances. Laughing and goading each other under Griffin’s watchful gaze, the children bang out a mock battle with fluid moves and actual skill. It’s a fighting dance of play and trust.

  I slam my eyes shut. When I open them again, the scene is still there. Utterly crushing. Entirely real.

  Footsteps. A woman’s lilting laugh. Sickness heaves through me, shooting acid up my throat. I know what I’ll see next.

  Knowing still doesn’t prepare me for the swift and brutal kick in the gut when Bellanca strides into view, and Griffin’s eyes light on her with all the passion, possession, and protection I only ever thought he’d bestow on me. Smiling, she drops into Griffin’s lap like she has every right to be there, and his arms come around her waist like it’s the most natural thing he could do.

  My mouth goes as dry as salt. This can’t be happening.

  Except it already has. If the boy with the carefully handmade hobbyhorse is anything to judge by, it happened about eight years ago.

  My vision wavers, darkening. There’s no air, only a grinding weight on my chest. It presses down, crumbling my heart into dust.

  Bellanca leans into Griffin, and he nuzzles her fiery curls. The same satisfied, warmth-filled smile plays around both of their mouths as they watch the children play. Their children.

  I try to swallow, but there’s nothing to wash down my grief. There’s not even a scream to drive it out, although I feel it building, silently flaying the inside of my throat.

  I didn’t come back. I hid from pain and stopped searching for my magic, and while Perses kept throwing me over the cliff and I found nothing to stop him, Griffin and Bellanca found each other. Found love. Griffin would have given me time, waited for me, searched for me. I know that. But then… There’s always a point when people move on.

  Scalding tears track down my cheeks. This is my fault.

  A new nightmare crops up in the form of a third child who wanders into view. Another girl. She nestles into her mother’s skirts, and Bellanca settles her hand on the girl’s small head. Bellanca’s free fingers start drawing affectionate, lazy strokes on the back of Griffin’s neck, and my heart lurches in protest.

  Bellanca is older as well, and no longer the sharp-edged, tight-strung, wild-looking woman I knew. Maturity and maternity have softened her, and her rounded hip is the perfect fit for Griffin’s large palm. Her low-cut gown and full breasts draw his attention, and the barely banked heat I recognize in his roving gaze hollows me out inside.

  They both look up, distracted at the same time by something new. Bellanca frees her hands only to have them filled back up again with the warm, wiggling weight of a baby.

  The part of me that was still trying to somehow deal with this shuts down completely. The nurse backs away, leaving the small bundle in Bellanca’s arms. The newcomer is delicate-boned, dark-haired, and clearly another girl, bearing a striking resemblance to what Kaia must have looked like at four or five months old. Bright-blue eyes lock onto her father’s face, and the baby girl looks at Griffin like he’s the center of her whole world.

  Griffin’s mouth splits into a wide grin, and he tickles her tummy, making the infant giggle. Then he lifts the little girl still standing by the chair onto the knee Bellanca and the baby aren’t occupying and adjusts his embrace to cradle them all.

  The already gray world around me darkens to near-black. A sob rips the air from my lungs, and I turn away, choking and trying not to lose my mind as my entire future shatters before me. I fall to my knees and then pitch forward onto all fours, my violent sobs turning into retching. Nothing comes out of me. And why would it? There are years of emptiness in my stomach. Hunger I didn’t feel. Days I never spent.

  I heave. I heave, and I can’t breathe.

  “You know what to do.” Perses cuts through my heartsickness with flat detachment. “Crack the sky with lightning. Fly through the fracture. Take him back.”

  Light-headed, I shake all over. “They’re a family.�
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  “You were a family.”

  “Were!” I hurl the word at him, my stomach still trying to turn itself inside out.

  “Do you give up so easily? That’s not what I heard. But then, you’ve disappointed me completely so far.”

  I force myself to breathe more evenly. To swallow. My throat slowly opens back up, and I look at the Titan towering above me, seeing him through a haze of pain and hate. I’ll kill, I’ll maim, I’ll torture, and sometimes, I might not even care. But some things are sacred to me, whether I have them or not.

  “Annihilating a family isn’t a game to me.” And family means everything to Griffin.

  “You think he wouldn’t choose you.” A sly look goes hand in hand with the ancient God’s wilting jab.

  Sitting back on my heels, I wipe a shaking hand across my mouth. I can’t stop my eyes from jumping back to the magic window. I don’t want to watch Griffin being happy with someone else, but I also can’t look away. My heart hurts with a fierceness I can hardly bear, but I also know deep down that there are worse things than this. Griffin could be dead. He could never have known fatherhood, or his children’s love.

  “No,” I answer dully. “I think he would.” But Griffin would never let his children go. They’d always be there, and so would Bellanca. Reminders. Competition. Not mine. Not ours. No one would ever be truly happy again.

  Resignation settles over me, heavy and dark. Without me there to muddy the waters and force Griffin to tear himself in half, they can be a family forever—in this life, and in the next.

  I look at the scene. I hate it, and my heart weeps for what should have been mine. I want Griffin for myself. I want him desperately, but I want him to be happy more.

  Perses must read my thoughts, or simply my posture, because his power-deep eyes flare with sudden panic.

  I lock my tear-sore gaze with that of the Titan God and chuckle. The sound is so black it’s like midnight has invaded my soul. “I guess the hard way didn’t work, either.”

  My physical pain didn’t get him out of Tartarus. My emotional destruction didn’t even get us off this cliff.