by Ben Wolf
The alternative, however, was either staying in her room for the duration of the evening or venturing out on her own to explore Valkendell. Given those choices, she decided spending time with Calum was the best of the options.
For the first several minutes, she guided the conversation and kept it focused on their talks with the King. Calum engaged her consistently, but they soon ran out of King- and war-related topics to discuss, in part because they’d both grown weary from going over the same points of interest as they had already done that entire day.
Lilly shifted the focus to their surroundings, and they remarked on everything they observed. That led to occasional exchanges of stories from their childhoods, with Lilly comparing the layout and décor of Valkendell to her home in the Sky Fortress and Calum wondering aloud if any of the stones that formed the walls of the castle had been excavated from the quarry where he used to work.
They shared a few laughs along the way, and Lilly had to admit she was truly enjoying herself. Despite their situation as pseudo-captives of the King, inside his palace, it was nice to not have to worry about being in charge, or leading her people, or discussing battle strategies with General Balena and General Tolomus and…
Condor.
He came to mind as Lilly stood next to Calum on a balcony overlooking the city of Solace. She hadn’t invited him into her mind, but he’d shown up there nonetheless.
By extension, she thought of Falcroné, too. She remembered his sacrifice to save her. Their betrothal, their separation, the constant tension between them…
Ugh. Why does this have to be so difficult?
“You alright?” Calum asked.
His voice snapped her out of her thoughts and memories, and she turned toward him.
“Yes,” she replied, trying to conceal the exasperation in her voice. “I’m fine.”
To his credit, Calum didn’t press the issue. He kept leaning on the polished wooden railing, staring out over the city. Far below them, the windows of white-and-gray buildings glowed with gentle light from within, creating a golden version of the stars in the night sky above.
With the King’s decision to absolve her of all wrongdoing, she could’ve simply leaped from the balcony, taken flight, and flown southwest until she found Lumen’s army yet again. After all, they were alone here. No one was guarding them. They had roamed Valkendell freely, unescorted, as if they truly were guests.
But to flee now meant abandoning not only their efforts to come to some sort of resolution with the King but also Axel and Calum themselves. Perhaps she could’ve left Axel behind, but the thought of leaving Calum to whatever fate would befall him at the end of the three days of negotiations left a sour sensation in her stomach.
As it was, they were all lucky to even be alive. Matthios or Gavridel, the gemstone warrior whom Calum and Axel had both faced, could’ve easily killed them in the battle at Lumen’s encampment, but they hadn’t.
“After this is all over,” Calum said, “I don’t think I’ll ever see you again.”
His words shocked Lilly, and she turned toward him, her heart pounding. “Why would you say such a thing? Of course you’ll see me again.”
Calum shook his head, still staring out across the city. “No. I won’t.”
Lilly stared at him, searching his face because he refused to meet her eyes. “Calum, why would you say such a thing?”
Finally, he turned to look at her. “If we survive this, both of us… I won’t see you again. I’ll stay here on the eastern side of Kanarah and help rebuild and change things. I’ll make things right for those who can’t do it themselves. And you’ll be in Western Kanarah, running your own kingdom, trying to do the exact same thing for your people.”
“Surely there will be some crossover.” Lilly offered the only scrap of hope she could rustle from within. “Your people need help from mine, and my people need help from yours. We’ll have the chance to meet again. Assuming you’ll be one of Lumen’s generals, you’ll have a lot of responsibility. Perhaps he’d even assign you to be an envoy to Western Kanarah.”
“Why would he do that?” Calum asked. The question was genuine but also laden with skepticism.
“You are responsible for uniting the East and the West,” Lilly explained. “You brought my people, the Wolves, and the Saurians together under one banner, to fight for freedom from the King. And even if we all find some sort of resolution by working with the King, you’re an invaluable voice in maintaining that unity. You are the Unifier of Kanarah.”
Calum shook his head and scanned the city again. “I’m nobody. I had a dream, and I followed it, and now I’m here.”
Lilly took hold of his hand. “I don’t know if you’re just being hard on yourself or if you mean what you’re saying, but I wish you’d stop talking like that. And I know we’ll see each other again, Calum, however this all ends. I know it.”
Calum looked down at her hand, and then he met her eyes once again.
Lilly immediately recognized that look: profound sadness, emptiness, loneliness. She’d endured all those emotions before she’d abandoned her home and her parents after they’d betrothed her to Falcroné. She’d felt as though no one would listen to her, and no one would understand her.
She understood Calum’s feelings more than he knew, and they both understood why he felt the way he did.
“Lilly, I—”
“Calum,” she interrupted. She hated that she had to be firm with him, but it was for the good of her people that she did so. She let go of his hand. “I know. And I’m sorry, but I can’t do this.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to say,” he said.
Lilly bit her tongue. “I think we both have a pretty good idea.”
“I know how you feel,” Calum said. “I’m sorry you feel this way. I’m sorry I feel it, too.”
“You don’t have to be sorry for how you feel,” she said.
“I do if it means coming between you and your people,” Calum said. “So, yeah, I’m sorry. If I could change this, I would.”
“I wouldn’t want you to change it.” Lilly wished she could’ve taken back the words, but she couldn’t. She’d said them aloud, and now it was too late.
Calum proved gracious about it, though. All he said in reply was, “I know.”
They stood there in silence. Ever since their brief meeting in his chambers, Lilly had known Calum would try to talk to her about all of this again. And, truth be told, when she’d agreed to go walking with him, she’d known he would bring it up at some point while they had time to be alone.
He’d made it clear to her that he understood her decision and why she’d made it, but it seemed like he refused to accept it. Or perhaps he couldn’t accept it. He was incapable of accepting it.
“Calum,” Lilly finally said again, “I want you to know that I will always love you.”
Calum’s sad eyes looked up at her, flickering with hope.
“We will always be friends—dear friends, even…” She felt her own heart breaking even as she said the words. She gave a sorrowful sigh. “Calum, there are two versions of me. There is the Lilly that you love and who loves you in return, but there is also the Lilly who loves her people and would do anything—anything—to keep them safe.
“The Lilly who loves her people is the true version of me. She has responsibilities, obligations, and a commission to rule over the Sky Realm for the rest of her life,” Lilly continued. “She is the Lilly whose life I must live, whose path I must follow. The other Lilly… she will just have to go along with it.”
Calum shook his head. “There aren’t two Lillys. I see only one standing before me.”
Lilly sighed again. “Calum…”
“Please, let me say this,” he insisted, and Lilly held her tongue. She owed him that much, at least. “There is only one Lilly. Those obligations and those feelings all reside within her—within you. You are one in the same. There is no escaping that.
“Your commission an
d your heart don’t have to be at odds with each other,” Calum said. “They don’t. I know you think they do, but… Lilly, you’re the Premieress. You can do whatever you want to do. You get to make your own path, and you get to live your life how you want to live it. You’re one of the few people in Kanarah who can actually say that with any certainty.
“So if there’s something you want to do, do it. If there’s something you want to say, you can say it.” Calum gulped, and his next words came out shaky. “If there’s someone you want to love, you can love them, and no one—no one—can tell you otherwise.”
Lilly waited until she was sure he’d finished. His words gnawed at her, but so did nearly two decades of rules, responsibilities, obligations, and the training to fulfill each of them. Only she could rightly divide between the two of them.
“Calum,” she began, “I wish it were that simple, but it’s not.”
“It is, though,” Calum insisted. “All my life, I’ve only ever been told that I was meant to be a slave. I mean, Axel told me I should’ve aimed higher than being a foreman at the quarry, but he’s the only one who ever believed in me since my parents died.
“Then I began to dream of Lumen,” Calum continued. “Then I met Magnus, and I left that life behind. I stopped doubting, and I began to believe. I faced death a hundred times and walked away unscathed… or maybe with some cuts and bruises, but I’m still here.
“None of us are forced to walk any specific path in life. We always have a choice,” he continued. “I chose to pursue something greater, and along the way, I met you. And then I… I fell in love with you.” Calum paused and met Lilly’s eyes. “I don’t believe in fate—I can’t possibly after surviving everything I’ve survived, but that—you and I—it can’t only be a coincidence.”
The way Calum looked at Lilly and the words he spoke pierced her like an arrow. He loved her, and she loved him—there was no denying that.
And as for everything else… was he wrong? Or could she forge whatever path she wanted? Who would stop her from doing so?
If she wanted to love Calum, why shouldn’t she be able to?
“That’s why I can’t ever see you again,” Calum said, resigned. “Once all of this is over and done with, I’ll go my way and you can go y—”
Lilly grabbed Calum’s face and kissed him.
Chapter Thirty-Two
It just… happened.
Lilly hadn’t anticipated it.
The urge was there, and Calum’s words about never seeing him again were shredding her heart from the inside out, and…
It just happened.
But Lilly didn’t regret it. Not one bit.
That’s why she didn’t stop kissing him.
She flung her arms around him and pulled him close to her, drinking deeply of his love. It took Calum a few seconds to respond in kind, but when he did, he matched her passion. His strong arms enveloped her, and he pulled her even closer, kissing her in return.
They both needed this. They had for so long, yet so many things had gotten in the way. Axel, Falcroné, Condor… not to mention monstrous enemies and insurmountable odds and finding a way to free the General of Light from his thousand-year prison.
Calum had been right. Apart from all of those interruptions, those distractions, the truth could finally blossom. It could finally breathe.
Speaking of which, Lilly had to pull away to get a breath. She did, but then she went right back in for more, clutching even tighter at Calum’s back. She would never let him go. No matter what happened, Calum was hers now, and she was his.
They stood on that balcony for minutes, kissing and laughing and crying while the city of Solace twinkled far below and the stars danced overhead.
When they finally stopped, their eyes were red from crying, and their lips were pink from kissing. Lilly looked up at Calum and smiled the widest smile she’d ever smiled in her entire life, and fresh tears streamed down her cheeks.
Calum matched her exactly, both in glee and in tears. But then his smile shrank and his eyebrows scrunched down with worry, or skepticism, or confusion—Lilly didn’t know what the emotion was, but she refused to let it interfere with this moment.
She cupped Calum’s cheeks with her hands. “What’s wrong?”
“Is this…” Calum hesitated. “Is this real?”
The question skewered Lilly’s gut, but she understood where it was coming from. Her smile returned full force, and she nodded. “It’s real.”
Calum’s eyes lit up. Tentatively, he asked, “You’re mine?”
Lilly nodded again. “Yes.”
More of Calum’s joy returned. “Forever?”
Lilly bounced on her toes from her ecstasy. “Forever. There will never be another.”
Calum broke into tears again and embraced her. He squeezed her so hard that it almost hurt.
She hugged him back with every bit of desperation she’d endured since the day they’d met.
But now she had him. And she would never let him go.
It was really happening.
Calum couldn’t believe it.
He squeezed Lilly tight, and as he smelled her flowery perfume, he absently wondered if she’d put it on herself or if one of the King’s servants had done it for her.
It wasn’t important. Not nearly as important as the reality of that moment.
Lilly was finally his, and he was finally hers. Nothing could stand in their way anymore.
Well, except the most devastating war the land had ever known, perhaps. Or maybe the invulnerable King who held them as captive guests. Or maybe the ancient warrior bent on overthrowing said King.
But other than that, nothing else even stood a chance.
Condor.
The name filtered into Calum’s mind like a poison, and he released his grip on Lilly. He looked into her eyes again.
“Condor,” was all he could bring himself to say.
Lilly shook her head. “There was never anything there. Never anything real, anyway. Attraction, sure, but… it’s not like this. This is love.”
Calum’s smile returned. “It is.”
They embraced again, just holding each other under the stars, never closer to paradise than there in each other’s arms. Calum never wanted it to end.
After far too short of an eternity, Calum asked, “What do we do now?”
Far too early the next morning, Calum swung his feet out of the bed and sat up. Very late that night, he’d escorted Lilly back to her room from the balcony, and when he went back to his, he found he couldn’t sleep due to his excitement. Now he was up at some unholy hour, well before sunrise, unable to manage his swirling thoughts.
He’d tossed and turned all night, vacillating between mentally planning their future together, reliving their best and worst moments with each other, and trying to force it all from his mind so he could get some rest. Altogether, he figured he’d gotten maybe two hours of sleep.
It was all so fresh, so unbelievable, that Calum wondered if it would actually be the same the next morning. It had felt genuine last night on that balcony, but was that just the byproduct of wishful thinking on his and Lilly’s parts? Their young and frivolous belief that they could find a way to work everything out? That their love could overcome anything, just like in storybooks?
No, don’t go down that road, Calum warned himself.
It was real. It was genuine. It was true.
Even so, he wasn’t going to get any more sleep. He stood up, pulled on a shirt and trousers from the fully stocked wardrobe in the corner of the bedroom, slipped on his boots, and headed for the door to his guest chambers.
Out in the hallway, he considered knocking softly on Lilly’s door to see if she was awake, too. Perhaps they could go on another walk together, or pilfer some early breakfast from the sprawling kitchen they’d walked past last night.
In the end, he chose not to. At least one of them should get some decent rest before their next meeting with the King. Romance or otherwis
e, they still had work to do on behalf of Kanarah.
By reaching an agreement with the King, Calum hoped they could put a stop to the fighting for good. Then all of his imagined plans for his life with Lilly could truly come to fruition.
As he strolled through the empty hallways, Calum gave a contented sigh. He’d answered Lumen’s call. He’d walked Lumen’s path and set him free. He’d raised an army to save Kanarah.
None of it compared to finally winning Lilly’s heart.
All of his other dreams were coming true, but this was the most precious of them all.
Calum had grown more familiar with the layout of the halls inside Valkendell, but he still didn’t feel comfortable wandering around, especially so early in the morning. It might look suspicious, and he didn’t want to transgress against the King’s mercy and hospitality. Axel was doing enough of that for the both of them. Instead, he headed to the garden.
Through the protective dome covering the garden, the stars still twinkled above, but the first rays of morning sunlight now shone from the east, painting the heights of the cliff face along the back of the city with subtle pinks and golds.
The garden itself was dark. The torches no longer burned, and the only light of any substance came from the silvery glow of the moon. It was just enough for Calum to be able to see, just enough that he didn’t have to use Lumen’s light to get around.
As he walked into the garden, he retraced his steps from his first visit. Though he’d only been there a single day at this point, Calum noticed that the flowers he’d trampled on his way to try to assassinate the King had already been replaced. Ursula and her crew worked quickly.
When he found the place where the King had been standing, surveying his garden while Calum approached from behind, Calum stopped. He had to chuckle at himself and at his fruitless attempt to kill the King.
In hindsight, he should’ve known better. If he’d tried the same tactic with Lumen, what would’ve happened? Even if he’d managed to strike a blow, he doubted a simple pickax could’ve killed a being like Lumen. So why had he thought it would work on the King?
