by Kova, Elise
“No, it was destroyed when I used it to kill a man. And with that act, I began the War of the Crystal Caverns.”
“You…” Vi placed a hand on the deck, leaning, trying to catch her father’s eyes. But he avoided her gaze at every turn. “Father, you—”
“It’s the truth, Vi,” he spoke firmly, leaving no room for doubt. “I was taken to the caverns. I was misled. But that is no excuse. It was my hand and my actions that led to the death and suffering of our people—that helped pave the way for your mother to be used as a tool and nearly die in search of that same power. Now you—” Aldrik reached upward, grabbing her shoulders, shaking her gently “—you wield one as well. And I will not see you suffer the same fate. These weapons attract lies as easily as foolish, power-hungry men.”
Tears shone in his haunted eyes. Vi’s lips parted, but no sound escaped. She was held in place by her father and by the weight of his truths.
“Father, this is different,” she finally insisted, her voice weaker than she would’ve liked.
“Is it? Or is this just another turn of a vortex that every Solaris will drown in?”
Vi didn’t have an answer. She wanted to. She desperately wanted to. But nothing came. And, as if sensing the crack in her determined exterior, her father continued.
“Leave this behind and come back to the Main Continent with me. Return to your family.”
“I…”
“Vi, please. I have longed for our family to be together as much as you have. Leave the world to the hands of fate.” Her father’s arms tightened around her, pulling her to him. “Leave it all behind, and come home with me.”
Vi closed her eyes, returning her father’s embrace. No matter how old she became, part of her would always be the girl soothed by her parents’ arms.
“Vi…”
She whispered, “I’ll talk to Taavin about starting a course for Norin.”
Her father tightened his grasp, holding her to the point of pain—though Vi couldn’t tell if the ache came from his hold, or from within.
* * *
She was behind the helm, adjusting course slightly. The wood was weathered and worn, ashen from the beating sun. Vi felt the same heat on her cheeks, deepening the natural tan of her skin.
On her left was Meru and the end of the world she was expected to meet. On her right, across the Shattered Isles, was the Dark Isle and her waiting family. At her feet was the scythe that was part of a far more bloody history than she fully understood.
And she was trapped between them all.
Movement below deck wrenched her back to reality from her tangle of thoughts. A familiar mess of dark hair emerged from the cabin, the late afternoon sun picking up purple notes as the sky turned to red. The days were undeniably shorter now. Vi would bet they only had six or seven hours of daylight now—a change too dramatic to have anything to do with the summer months stretching toward winter.
“My father?” she asked as Taavin approached.
“Asleep. It seems to be restful,” Taavin said softly.
“Arwin?” Vi had expected Taavin to emerge the moment Arwin entered the cabin after Vi had offered to take the second shift. But he hadn’t, and Vi had been too grateful for the silence to investigate.
“Asleep on the floor.” Vi gave him a look and Taavin let out a low chuckle. “I was just as shocked.”
“I expected her to kick you from your cot.”
“Me too.” Taavin looked out over the bow of the boat, where Vi’s eyes remained transfixed. “How long until Risen?”
“If we go straight there… perhaps two days?” Vi answered delicately.
“Why wouldn’t we go straight there?” Taavin shifted mostly in front of her, making it impossible for her to avoid his piercing stare.
“I was thinking of making a quick stop in Norin.”
“No.”
“It would only add two—three days.”
“Vi—”
“We can drop off my father.” She decided not to bring up the fact that her father had begged her not to go onward with her plans to seek out her destiny involving the scythe.
“We risk being caught.” Taavin frowned. “Moreover, what makes you think your father will let you go once he has you back on the Dark Isle?”
“I’m his daughter, not his prisoner.”
“You’re right, a prisoner would be better because he’d care much less about a prisoner.”
Vi rolled her eyes and looked away, doing anything to avoid his gaze. “I don’t want to bring him to Risen,” she finally whispered.
“Why?”
“Because it was someone in Risen who contacted him—claiming they had a cure for the White Death.” The surprise on Taavin’s face reassured her that he hadn’t known. It didn’t rule out Ulvarth; in fact, Vi’s bet would still be on the Lord of the Faithful. But she took solace in the knowledge that Taavin had no hand in this particular machination of Ulvarth’s. “Why do they want him?”
“I don’t know.” Taavin shook his head. “I had no idea he was summoned.”
“Then I’m inclined to believe it’s not a good reason.” Vi stressed. “I always told you that you’d have my undivided attention to figure out the watch—the scythe—as soon as my father is safe.”
“But your father will always be at risk.” Taavin grabbed the helm, standing right in front of her. “How long will you make the world wait in the name of your personal problems?”
“As long as it has to, because a world without my family is not a world I want to live in.”
“None of us may have a world if you keep dallying.”
“I am not dallying.” Vi glared up at him and fought to keep her voice hushed.
“Every delay brings us closer to the end. Raspian’s power is growing exponentially by the day. You’ve seen it. You must surely feel it, perhaps better than I. You can’t deny it. And yet you stall.”
They were in a deadlock, each holding a peg on the helm’s wheel. Vi gripped and released the wood several times. It felt as though they were now at the moment when he would turn the wheel west, and she would spin it east.
There was a weighted, heavy sensation. Every nerve-ending firing. The spark was alive under her skin, flushing, radiating heat.
This moment had weight to it.
It was the same sensation she felt before they had entered the Isle of Frost. Perhaps their every decision now carried so much weight that nearly each choice affected the outcome of the world. Maybe this was how an Apex of Fate was formed.
The thought sparked an idea.
“Let’s let the future decide.” Vi was acting on a hunch.
“What?”
“I’ll look into the future. I have the scythe. The watch has been broken, some of Yargen’s power unleashed. Perhaps I will see a vision; perhaps I can command them now.” Vi released the wheel, giving it to him. Taavin regarded her warily.
“And if you don’t?”
“Then we’ll keep arguing after.” Vi sat, holding the scythe in one hand. “It can’t hurt to try.”
Before Taavin could say anything else, she summoned a flame in the palm of her other hand. The bright, yellow fire burned on and around her palm, snaking through her fingers. She held it at eye level, staring, waiting expectantly.
“Vi, I don’t think…”
“It will work,” she insisted. “I will make it work.” Her grip on the scythe tightened. A shot of energy went straight through her—from the hand holding the scythe to the hand holding the flame. It tinged the flame with blue, barely visible at the edges.
“What the—” Taavin’s voice was lost as Vi was pulled into a vision.
The world blurred and overexposed before slowly fading back into place. Things were hazier than normal. Nothing seemed sharp. Vi squinted, trying to make out the shapes being painted into a dark reality.
There was an arc of blue in the darkness, and a flash of red. The blade of the scythe came into focus first, floating mid-air, quivering w
ith her strain as she tried to push it through a tangle of red lightning.
The blue-green magic that swirled within the blade illuminated her bruised and bloodied face. She had a split lip and swollen eye, and blood streamed down her temple to her cheek from trauma hidden by her matted hair.
Out of the darkness, a figure emerged opposite her future self. The lightning was his forearm, his face the haunted, skeletal visage of death itself. His hair writhed like snakes, silvery like moonlight. His mouth was a perpetually open maw of razor-sharp teeth.
The man’s gaze shifted away from Vi’s future self and toward her—as though he could look straight at her.
Raspian saw her.
Vi took an involuntary step back, though she didn’t know how she would escape even if she wanted to.
In the vision, lightning cracked through the scythe. It shattered into a thousand pieces, magic propelling outward in a shock wave. Raspian grabbed for the throat of her future self and his nightmarish mouth ripped soft flesh from bone.
The Vi facing off against the dark god collapsed, grabbing her throat and gasping. She gasped as well, her consciousness blurring between reality and the Vi she witnessed die. Then, the air that filled her lungs was salty. Her throat was in one piece. And Taavin’s face appeared over her.
“What did you see?” he asked solemnly, kneeling down by her, ignoring the helm.
“I… I don’t know.” Vi rolled onto her elbow, just in case she was going to be sick.
“Vi—”
“I don’t know. I think it didn’t work right because I forced it. Or because I let Raspian’s power in me. Or because—”
“What did you see?” he demanded harshly, both his hands closing around her cheeks and jerking her face toward his. They were inches apart, his green-eyed gaze devouring her soul far more effectively than Raspian ever could.
“The scythe won’t work,” Vi whispers. “In the end… he wins.”
Taavin’s grip on her face relaxed. His eyes slowly widened as all tension left his face, his lips parting. He sat back heavily and breathed a soft, “No.”
“I fight him, and he wins.”
“No.”
“I saw it.”
“You saw wrong,” Taavin snapped.
“And if I didn’t?”
“Then we are headed to Risen, and we will find the information we need there to change this future. There’s still time, there has to be time…”
Taavin stood, grabbed the helm and turned east, but set his gaze westward toward the fading sun. That was the problem with her vision: she didn’t know what choice led to the outcome she saw. Was the scene she just witnessed the result if they chose to go to Risen, as Taavin wanted? Or if they headed to Norin, as she intended?
She rubbed her throat thoughtfully.
“For now, we stay on course. We’ll decide if we are off to Risen or Norin later. I’ll speak with my Father—” though Vi doubted she’d ever find the right words to explain that “—and make the best choice for us all.”
* * *
Vi eventually relented to the need for sleep, leaving Taavin at the helm. He hadn’t argued with her for hours, so she decided their plan was settled. Arwin was just stirring as Vi entered the cabin, but her father slept on.
As soon as she was horizontal, a deep and thankfully dreamless sleep overtook her as well.
When she woke, it was still dark.
Moonlight winked through the cracks in the curtain that closed off the cabin from the main deck. She blinked away the sleep from her eyes. Her head felt heavy and aching, but it was nothing compared to her body.
It felt as though a noru sat on her chest.
There was creaking and the sound of ropes straining… and voices. Her eyes widened and Vi shot upright, heart racing. More hushed voices than Vi could count lingered on her ears. She pushed off from the cot slowly, reaching over to her father. He was rousing as well with a soft groan.
“Father,” she whispered. “Father, do you hear—”
Vi never finished her thought.
“The bastard betrayed us!” Arwin’s scream cut through the night. “Vi—”
Vi bolted upright, grabbing for the scythe. But Arwin had been right—she couldn’t get it unwrapped fast enough. The curtain to the tiny cabin was pulled open with such aggression that it ripped clean off its pegs. Vi stared in confusion, her mind struggling to process the face that looked at her. He had a beak-like nose and short cropped back hair pulled tightly against his head.
He wore golden armor, embellished with mother of pearl, and a heavy sword strapped to his hip. The man’s bright blue eyes—almost steel-like in their iciness—peered down at her, shining in the moonlight. A terrible grin spread across his face.
“Aldrik Solaris, Emperor of the Solaris Empire,” he said to her father, and then turned to her. “Vi Solaris, Crown Princess of the Solaris Empire… I hereby place you under arrest by the order of her Holiness, the Goddess Yargen.”
It hit her all at once.
Vi was staring at the face of Ulvarth, Lord of the Swords of Light.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Vi knew what she saw. But it didn’t make any sense.
“You must be Lord Ulvarth,” she said, as if saying the words aloud could remedy the disconnect between the realms of what should be possible and impossible. How in the Mother’s name was Ulvarth staring her down?
“If you know who I am, this should go smoothly.” His voice was a light and airy tenor. The man was clearly so full of his own hot air that she was shocked he didn’t drift away. “I’m willing to grant you both the decency your stations deserve, assuming you grant me the decency of mine and do not resist capture.”
“If you know who we are, you should not be arresting us.” Her father tried to stand. But he was hunched in the small cabin. “Your queen sent for me. We are to discuss how the magicks of Meru could possibly be used to—”
“I was the one to send for you,” Ulvarth interrupted. Vi only wished she could be surprised. “And I answer to no queen. I answer to the Goddess.”
Vi balled her hands into fists. The scythe, still wrapped, was locked in her grip. If she swung it hard enough, she could cut straight through the cloth around it. But could a crystal blade cut through metal plate armor?
“What are our charges?” her father asked.
“You,” Ulvarth spoke directly to Aldrik, “are charged with destroying the Goddess’s confinement of Lord Raspian, and unleashing him—and the death and destruction he brings—back into the world.”
“Raspian doesn’t yet have a mortal form. He’s not truly returned,” Vi tried to counter. Even though she well knew that without a mortal form he’d still managed to kill countless people, thanks to the White Death.
Ulvarth turned to her and continued as though she’d said nothing. “And you are charged with kidnapping the Voice.”
“What?” Every word Taavin had ever said about Ulvarth and his wicked nature was turning out to be true—not that Vi had doubted him. “I did no such thing.”
“That will be for the High Counsel of Light to decide. Now, if you please.” He stepped aside with a swing of his arm, as though he was ushering them into a party and not onto the dark deck of a stolen pirate ship.
Vi shared a look with her father, but neither of them seemed to have any better ideas about what to do. So they both emerged from the cabin and onto the deck. Several other knights in heavy plate armor stood in a semi-circle. Vi fantasized briefly about pushing them each over the railing and watching them sink far below the waves, no matter how hard they struggled against the weight of their plate.
“Where’s Taavin?” Vi spun in place, looking Ulvarth in the eye. She was oddly satisfied by the fact that, even in his greaves, he was no taller than her.
With an emotionless expression and movement faster than she would expect of someone wearing such burdensome armor, Ulvarth slapped her across the face with the back of his hand. Vi was sent stumbling. She t
asted blood in her mouth and knew from the instant throbbing it would leave a colorful bruise.
“That is the Voice to you, Dark Isle dweller.”
“How dare you,” her father snarled, fire crackling up his arm.
“Father, don’t.” Vi clasped her hand over his, extinguishing the flames and straightening. A smirk spread on Ulvarth’s lips.
“Listen to the girl and keep your head about you… or we may just take it early.”
“Where is the Voice?” Vi demanded, drawing up to her full height once more. He could not beat her into silence.
“We’ve already taken him aboard Light’s Victory so you could not beguile him further.” Ulvarth pointed over her shoulder and Vi dared to turn.
Not far from their own vessel was a large ship. Vi could hear voices drifting over the water and the creaking of its hull against the waves. Those must have been the noises she’d heard when she’d woken.
The whole situation finally began to come into focus.
“How?” Vi whispered. Certainly, they had been consumed with Adela and rescuing her father.
Vi hadn’t so much as spared a thought for the fact that she wasn’t the only one being hunted. For every step of theirs, Ulvarth had taken one just behind, following their tracks. She could imagine him casing the towns around the Twilight Forest—setting checkpoints on the main road. She could see him getting word from Toris that the pirates had been made fools of by a girl with a strange accent, accompanied by a morphi and an unknown Lightspinner.
It wasn’t hard to piece together their intended route. Mother, the Swords of Light had likely known Adela had captured her father. He’d been coming to Meru under their order, after all. Adela may have even tried to sell him back to them.
Her hands clenched into fists at her side. She’d been so focused on herself and her own missions that she’d forgotten to account for the other pieces in play. And now everyone she loved was going to pay for it.
