FROM THE BREAK OF DAWN until our legs couldn't hold us anymore, we'd been training. We'd spent every morning and every night of the week that had followed my visit to this place fighting with swords, knives and daggers, running around empty fields to build muscle and gain resilience, and learning how to control my magic. I'd been complaining about how exhausting everything was, and Denfer had been complaining about my complaints.
During all the hours we'd spent together, there had not been a time that we'd spoken about ghosts of the past or monsters of the future. I was grateful for that because I'd long lost faith in the concept of two broken people finding the light together. I couldn't and didn't want to be dealing with someone else's insecurities and doubts all the time, not when that kind of bond had been what had first connected me with Josh, what had made everything complicated later.
He'd told me about this place too; the Land of Greatness they called it, something that gave Denfer the perfect opportunity to say that it had been named after him. I'd replied that if I ever got the chance to get away from Hell, I would have a palace built for me, not just a tower, named the Palace of Perfection. And despite the sweat and the rain, the exhaustion and the soreness, the Land of Greatness was even more than great. It wasn't part of Denfer's kingdom and that was why he'd always enjoyed coming here—they didn't hate him; they didn't even care about him—and he loved that kind of loneliness once in a while.
The Land of Greatness was a place where the greatest magic-wielders of all time lived, away from everyone, away from the crowds and the people who constantly wanted to see a spectacle of their magic. Most of them were healers, fortune-tellers, shapeshifters, people gifted by death itself or by shadows and things that weren't mentioned in any of the books I'd read here. Some of them could even sneak in people's minds and make them believe scenarios that were false to be true.
The vast majority of the people here had lived during those dark ages of wars and bloodshed, of cruel kings and emperors who had used people with exceptional magical powers for their own wicked purposes. Because of that, now that they'd finally been set free, they didn't want to be under the control of any king. They all craved sunlight and cloudless nights under the stars, but they didn't hate Denfer for his decision to let me decide for myself. Maybe because they could understand what it meant to be a pawn in a game that had no rules.
My days here were calm, simple. We needed time alone as much as we needed time together. We didn't try to be together every moment of the day or find deep and interesting topics to discuss at midnight. It was comfortable. It was good. Denfer would ride his beloved white Nefern every afternoon and I would take a nap, read or talk to whoever was in the ballroom, the room I spent many hours of my day in. I'd even found Cloudien someday there, laughing with an old lady. He lived here, he'd told me.
Sometimes, when I went to the balcony to get some fresh air, I caught a glimpse of Denfer on his golden-winged Nefern, looking like a ray of sunshine had finally managed to outrun the rain. I almost liked those creatures, too. They were reserved and thoughtful, Denfer had told me the first morning of our training, and they didn't like being around many people. That was the reason they would always fly around here, why I'd never seen them in the capital.
"I'm bored," Cloudien whispered, when we stopped searching inside ancient books we'd found in the tower's library for some kind of information about Hell's Leader and what kind of prophecy that was.
Denfer had told me everything he knew about Hell. About the constraints they put on everyone's magic, the creatures I was about to meet there, the animosities, the misery. He'd seen all of that when he'd gone there to demand a better future for the Gap World. And they'd kept him there long enough to learn some of its secrets.
Tonight, there was an unbreakable silence in the biggest library I'd ever been; a silence filled with the secrets its books held in their dusty pages. There was no one here at that time, so late in the night, almost two hours past midnight. The clock that hung between a towering window and an also towering bookcase was the only sound daring to disrupt the silence. My voice soon accompanied it.
"Let's stop for today."
His dark blond hair looked like an oasis of pure gold in the candlelit room while his eyes held more brown than green that time of the night. I bet mine looked the same way. We hadn't found anything useful. All these hours that we'd been here, on the third floor of the tower, had been for nothing.
"Shall we go to sleep?" I asked, thinking about the fact that tomorrow I would have to wake up before dawn.
For someone who was about to go to Hell, I certainly wasn't resting, relaxing and mentally preparing enough for what was about to come. But I couldn't sleep, not when everything and everyone now depended on me; when not only did I have to think about Hell, but my return to Lantra as well. Every night I counted the days until I found that thing in Hell that only I could see, and everything was over. Yet, I also wished for time to somehow freeze here, in this blissful state of calmness and anonymity, here where we were no one and no one spent their hours talking about the king and Hell's Leader.
Closing the paperback book with what looked like irritation, Cloudien placed his hands on the wooden desk and looked straight at me. "You seem like one of us now. With all those fine, sparkling jewelry. And the clothes."
So no sleep yet.
We'd been here for so long that I'd almost stopped caring about all the golden rings that were on my fingers and the necklaces that decorated the skin my dress left bare. When I'd first found out that a chamber on the first floor was actually a jewelry shop, I couldn't help but buy some of these with the silver coins Jersen had given me and everyone else who had worked after the blast to rebuild the mess. At first, I hadn't accepted them. I'd only helped Amanda decide who should do what and how much gold we should give to the families that had been left broken without having our kingdom been left in poverty. But Jersen had insisted on me taking them, telling me over and over again that it'd been the king's order.
I'd taken the coins, and then I'd taken the jewelry.
"You can thank Amanda for the clothes, and Jersen for bringing them here," I replied, putting aside all the books that still littered the desk.
His laugh echoed through the quiet of the room and I knew that if someone else was here reading, they would tell us to stop talking or go away.
"Never thank Amanda for anything," he said, after his dark chuckle had faded away.
Maybe it was too late in the night for research but not so late that I couldn't demand answers, I figured, and smiled thinly. "Do you know something I should know?" I asked.
He nodded. "I do."
"Would you like to enlighten me, please?"
He considered, as if he wanted to tell me everything, but at the same time he didn't. And I stood in silence, hoping that even though we only knew each other for a few days, even though he didn't trust me, he had felt it too. In his magic and in his heart as well, that primal connection, that tingle of warmth that surged in my body every time we met in a crowded hall.
"I'd been in Jersen's healing room for about two days until I was finally better," he started. "The last day, Denfer came in to say his farewell to Jersen, and commanded Amanda to not let anyone come to see him here except you."
"She told me she didn't know where he was," I only said and leaned back, thinking through what he'd just said.
His eyes looked cunning; his grin wicked. "Exactly."
"And why would she do that?"
His smile grew. "I think that she wants you to finally go to Hell for her to finally get her new kingdom. If you came here and you spent more time with Denfer, he wouldn't want you to go there, maybe he wouldn't let you go to Hell at all. And she didn't want that."
My voice was deadly soft as I asked, "Does Denfer know that?"
"I think he does."
And maybe that was the reason why he'd commanded Amanda to not let anyone visit him except me. For him to test her trust and loyalty. And I was sure that there were so many more secrets Amanda held, so many things she'd done that I knew nothing about. It didn't surprise me. I never liked her anyway. So self-absorbed, always caught up in her appearance and the way she looked, always fishing for compliments.
"Is he okay?" Cloudien's question was laced with worry, the latter was also mirrored in his eyes.
Standing up from the chair, I took all the books in my hands and started putting them on the shelves again.
"He's doing his best," I replied, mindlessly scouting the rainy sky for any sight of Denfer. Nothing.
Easy steps sounded on the floor, and in a few moments, Cloudien was next to me, taking some of the books off my hands. "I mean, does he sleep? Is he sad? Or does he hide it well?"
Heat flared through my body at the concern.
"He's a little stressed out, but nothing else. He just doesn't talk very much."
He nodded, and then we continued placing the remaining books in the bookcase in silence.
Something was off, something was wrong, and I didn't know what. Almost three weeks had passed since the explosion and we hadn't dared touch that matter with Denfer; we'd almost on purpose avoided starting that conversation. With what was waiting for us—for me—in the near future, we couldn't hold on to the past.
"I have a question," I breathed.
"Tell me."
Night was always the best time for the secrets to stop being kept in muffled cries and fake smiles. Night was accompanied by an abnormal sense of vulnerability, and I could take advantage of that. "Why did you decide to get into that building? And why did you all decide to do it the day before the Darkest Day?"
From the very first day that I'd seen him here, from that night in Jersen's healing room, and especially from the moment I'd seen him almost dead in Denfer's arms, I wanted to know why he'd done it; why he'd been so desperate to end it all and go to Hell. I'd been in despair, too. But if they hadn't wanted to execute me in Lantra, I wouldn't have wanted to die, I wouldn't have tried it.
And having Cloudien next to me, fully healed and without a scar, it was good. It was a miracle to hear his breath when I'd seen him being kissed by death a few weeks ago.
I watched him moving to the window, his stare getting lost in the sky. His brows narrowed as he opened the window and the crisp air swirled around us. I took a step closer to him, ready to take my question back since he seemed hesitant and not in the mood to talk about it, but he said, "The Darkest Day is the day Denfer's twin brother committed suicide."
Silence.
I kept every expression off my face and every rush of shock, sadness and despair in my heart. Later. I would think of everything later.
Silence went on for long moments of agony and filled the gaps between Cloudien's unspoken words.
When he finally took his eyes off the sky and angled his head to the side, his jaw tightened, as if it were too difficult to find the right words.
Denfer had a twin brother. And he'd been the first to commit suicide here. There was even a whole day in memory of him. The crippling sensation of death and grief threatened to fill every part of me. I didn't let it reach me. Not now, not here, not yet.
Hurt flashed in his eyes, as Cloudien went on, "They had all decided to go inside that building a day before the Darkest Day as a punishment for Denfer's behavior toward you. They wanted to show him that there is a day darker than the Darkest Day and they also wanted to fool him for his sorrow to be greater. A mass suicide, his brother's death anniversary and the regrets of not being able to prevent the first. It's a lot, and they knew it. They wanted him to pay for what he did to them, for giving them false hope, and then letting them down."
They were insane.
"And you did not want those things?" I asked, the ice-kissed wind hitting me harder than the truths that were about to be revealed in a matter of seconds.
"No," he muttered. "I didn't want to die, and I think Denfer is the greatest king someone could have. I wanted to go to Hell for you to have someone when you arrived there."
Overwhelm, that tingling feeling in my magic it was utter overwhelm by all the sudden information, all the emotions that had been awakened.
Yet I controlled it. Every part of it. Easy, I whispered to my magic, and dared to take a deep breath as a reminder to the elements running in my veins that they had to stay contained.
"What?" I breathed.
"I'm a fortune-teller. I can see the future, your future, the future of those I care about, those who will change my life, and the world in general."
The cold was a secondary concern now compared to the startling words that had just escaped Cloudien's lips. Putting a hand on my forehead, I tried . . . I didn't know what I'd tried to do. I didn't know what I was supposed to do.
"What did I just learn?" That was all I managed to say, but it was enough to make Cloudien chuckle, the sound warm and cold at the same time; warm for the way he had a sense of humor, and cold for the way humor wasn't allowed in moments like these.
"I think we should go to sleep now," he said.
It was my turn to laugh. "Yeah. As if I'll manage to sleep after what I learned about Denfer's past."
His chin lifted slightly as he said, "I'm sorry for giving you all the gossip."
And that was that. I tried to laugh again, because if I didn't laugh, I would cry, and then I stormed out of the library, murmuring a quick goodnight and heading to Denfer's room.
Denfer, who had a brother. Denfer, who had lost his brother. I still couldn't believe it. And Cloudien, who could see the future, who knew that I would go to Hell and wanted to be there with me when that happened.
Maybe Cloudien was even more informative than books.
Nausea churned in my gut for everything I'd learned tonight, and I only hoped it was the truth. For more lies and deceit, I wasn't ready. Not now, not here, not yet.
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