While Darius and Thea have a rather awkward, but flattering, conversation, I scan the crowd again. People smile and dance, not a single one of them looking like they are going to make a move against the royals. When you can't find anything but know that something's coming, you find yourself looking twice at everyone. Lance managed to pull me aside before I went back to the tower to change, and he told me everything. About Eleanor and Charles's dreams and what their sleep talking may imply. I honestly wasn't surprised, I mean I was the one to say that they'd be aiming for some time during the festival.
Still, I don't like silence.
When our world goes quiet, it means a storm is brewing on the horizon.
My father's voice rings in my head, and I swear I can feel his hand on my shoulder telling me to look closer. To see with more than with my eyes. Listen in between the noise. Feel the shift in the universe. Smell through the lies of the deceiver. Taste the blood before it's spilled. If you can't trust your senses, then trust your instincts. But everything comes back the same with nothing to show for my tension but the fighting children beside me. I turn to accept Thea's proposal if only to see what Darius will do when the hairs on my arm stand up.
In seconds every nerve in my body starts firing signals. I hunt through every inch of the room, stopping when I look into the shadows of the ceiling. Above the balconies of the third floor, a golden lion's head is mounted on the wall, but it's not the detail of the carving that I'm interested in. It's the shadows that move behind it, followed by a brief flash of light before it stills.
By the Gods and their Saints, they're going to shoot from across the room. It's within easy hitting distance, but if that's Will in the shadows, then it's no ordinary arrow he has knocked on the bow. Terror strikes my heart with the image of my father's body impaled by a thick, large arrow trades to the image of Darius's body broken by another. Keeping my face carefully neutral, I frantically flash my fingers behind Darius's back in hopes that Lance will see it. We created our own codes with our hands and fingers when I was twelve, and we haven't told anyone about them. Not even my father.
They weren't supposed to be here for another hour.
I keep flashing my fingers as I turn my head slightly toward Garrison still standing guard on the first step of the dais, and whisper, "Mountain Mallow."
He doesn't acknowledge me at all as he counts to ninety before walking up beside Mal and repeating the words. In no alarming way, they all tighten their ranks and move so that with a quick whistle from me, they'll fall back into the arrowhead formation around Darius. Small movements toward a bigger goal. Slow movements that have me eyeing the shadows above, praying to every listening ear that their bowstring snaps and they'll have to mend it before firing.
"What?" Shit. I forgot Thea was still here.
"It blooms after a fire in the woods," I explain distantly, letting my eyes roam where they want to feign disinterest.
"O-Oh."
"She's family," Darius says tightly as he casually adjusts his own position and puts his arms around me. No more than the Prince enjoying his lover. I hold my breath as I take the risk of looking away from the lion's head and turning to him. Though our eyes meet I know his are focused on the Bhaltayr while mine focus on the Queen's throne, thankful to find it empty and Lance and Kat gone. All but two of the Queen's guards have gone with them, tricking the crowd to think that she'll only be gone for a few minutes. Nothing more than a woman still recovering from her labor. "Clare."
"Alright," I fold. I step closer to Thea and keep one eye on the lion's head as I speak. "I need you to do exactly what I say in the order I say it."
"What-"
"Trust her, Thea. Please," Darius begs her.
I don't wait for her to agree. A clock has started ticking in my mind, and it's getting louder. "You're going to walk back to Derek acting like nothing is wrong and you're perfectly happy. Give him a drink, kiss his neck, whisper sweet things in his ear – I don't care, just get him seduced and then take him to your normal chambers in Darius's tower. Make sure you two look like you're nothing but two people going off to find pleasure in your bed. If someone stops you, tell them your name and that Darius personally requested you enjoy yourself. When you get to the room, lock the doors and windows, close the curtains, don't light a single candle, and hide in the bedroom. I'll send someone to retrieve you. Don't scream if the bookcase opens, and if the person who walks through says salutem, then you're safe. If they don't, then you scream as loud as you can. There are eight guards in the hall that will hear you. Do you understand?"
"I..." She looks partly convinced that this is some sort of prank Darius is trying to pull on her.
I grasp her hand slowly, planting a sweet smile on my face to ease the nosey ladies in the corner. "Look, you can trust me. I swear on my parent's graves that this is no trick and you'll be perfectly safe so long as you do as I say, and go with a smile on your face and act like nothing is wrong."
"Please, Thea," Darius pleas again.
Something must've shown in his eyes because she slips a convincing smile on her face, and then turns and walks down the dais. Darius pulls back my hood just enough to start kissing my neck, but I know that the only reason why we haven't moved yet is to make sure that she gets to Derek. Eleanor doesn't look happy to see her and politely excuses herself. Taking the gold circle necklace in my hands, I reflect the light from the chandeliers off of it and right into Blight's face. She's been standing beside a few clueless servants and immediately heads over to the dais when the glare hits her face. I could send Julyan, but I need him to go with the King when he retreats and having a woman rather than a man go to get Thea and Derek won't frighten them as much.
"Thank you," Darius whispers on my neck. I look to Thea one more time, finding her tugging Derek toward the garden rather insistently. At least she's good at acting, otherwise, without the wide smile and flirtatious gaze through her lashes, she'd look rather panicked and crazy.
I pull Darius back to his throne, making sure to keep my body between his and the edge of an arrow. We stand beside it and Blaise is already pushed up against the back of the chair when we get there. "You blinded me, your loveliness?"
"Mountain Mallow."
"Shit."
"Change of plans. I need you to go to Darius's tower and take the secret door to my bedroom. There will be a woman and a man in pale green clothing waiting. Say salutem, and then take them to Layara."
"What about-"
"We'll be fine. Now go." She hesitates but I second later I hear the faintest scuff of her foot as slips back against the wall and into the servant's entrance in the corner of the room.
I go to call over Aillard when the hairs on my arms stand up again and instinct has me shoving Darius behind the throne. There's a flash in the corner of my eye and then the whoosh of the arrow as it flies past me. I turn, one of the long Ebony blades already in my hand, and whistle. The Bhaltayr easily back-peddle up the steps and into the formation. Another arrow flies as I take my place at the tip of the arrowhead, and with a flash of my blade, it ricochets helplessly to the ground.
No one saw the first arrow, but the second the Bhaltayr moved so did the King's guard, and that threw everyone into a quiet panic, but it wasn't because of the arrow now clattering on the marble floor. When someone shoots an arrow at the royals, people turn and bolt for the doors. When the arrow flew at me and Darius, the first thing they noticed was the all-black blade in my hand. If they hadn't believed it before, then they most definitely all just now pieced together who, exactly, the Prince has been involved with. Sadly, I don't have time to make a snarky comment.
I'm in the motion of taking a step toward the King when every torch, lantern, and flame goes out, casting the entirety of the room in darkness. I didn't feel a single breeze blow into the room, and based on the way that the thin white curtains hung beside the garden doors aren't moving at all, I'd say there was no wind at all.
I don't like this.
"What in ten hells is going on?" Ethan whispers somewhere over my right shoulder.
"If I knew, I'd-" There's a high-pitched scream, followed by a small chorus of others. Terrified screams. My hand tightens around my blade.
"He's here," Darius announces. The flames light again without warning. I blink quickly to get rid of the blurriness. Seven cloaked figures stand in the middle of the room, each with a woman held against their chests by two blades aimed to slit their throat and plunge into their hearts. I don't recognize any of them. Two dozen more cloaked figures stand behind them, another twelve on the second-floor balconies, ten above that.
Fewer than I expected.
The crowd quickly backs away from them and pushes against the walls. There's no mistaking the one closest to us as Xaxias. For one, his hood isn't pulled up, and he's got one of those faces that haunt your nightmares. Scars frame his face, his matted dark hair falls down to his eyes that are black around the bright red iris. He looks like a demon of Helias's making, and the sinister smile he gives as he scans the room has chills running down my arm. You don't need to have magic to sense the death and lethal quiet that seeps from him.
If it weren't for the yellow gown peeking out through the black cloak of the second, I wouldn't know that it was Eleanor with a girl my age beneath her blade. One look at Xaxias's other shoulder and I spot Charles's blue jacket. Little shits deserve the knife I'm going to put right between their eyes. I can't see who the others might be, but not knowing will make them easier to kill.
"King Neven," Xaxias calls loudly. Dear Gods his voice sounds like there are glass shards in his throat. "I regret to inform you that it's not your life we seek."
Neven steps forward, only going as far as Aillard stands a few feet away from the edge of the dais. "And what is it you seek?" he demands. He's all too calm about this right now, and it's enough to make me slide out my other Ebony.
"I seek my King and Queen."
"Are you not currently speaking to him?"
"Don't play coy with me," Xaxias slithers. Something in my veins thrums with a low warning as if telling me that his tone is a dangerous one in itself. He's angry, that much is true, but at the King's deflective response, his lip curled back and his brow lowered. He's quick to anger. "I know they're here."
"Every other ruler is in their own kingdom-"
"The elementals, you idiot! Where are they? Where are the heirs to the Spirits of the Living? Those prophesied to either kill us all or save your pathetic lives."
"Your judgment is foul. There are no elementals in my kingdom, and even if there were, I'm afraid you're outnumbered." Just as my father wrote out, a hundred guards walk through the grand archway and onto the balconies, all lining up between Xaxias and the people. A line being drawn.
Xaxias laughs, and you can see the shadows thicken at the daunting timber sound. "My dear King, I need no army to win." Before anyone can blink, Eleanor and Charles drive their blades into their victim's chest. People scream and cry out, banging on the glass pane doors or those leading further into the castle, but I can barely hear it over the ringing in my own ears as I watch the two women begin to choke on their own blood. Another second and then they slit their throats. They did it on purpose - the heart and then the throat. Final as a knife to the heart is, with the blade left within the muscle, the victim has minutes to live. Left in, you can keep the victim alive, and they're left to feel all of the pain until they die. A slit throat takes time too, but slit while the blade is pulled free from the heart and they only last seconds. They kept their blades in to ensure the last thing they felt was pain and fear. They did it to make sure that we knew the last thing they felt was pain and fear. And now they're dead, and they have four more victims.
Xaxias watches the panic with contentment. "Shall we try this again? Where. Are. The elementals."
"I...I told you-" Neven doesn't get to finish before Xaxias sends his own knife into the woman's heart at a deliberate angle. Rather than slit her throat, he just pulls out his blade and lets her fall to the ground. I count the seconds until her last breath falls.
Eleven.
Another woman cries out from the crowd, and the world falls from my hands.
This is madness. This is what I've been sworn to protect, and yet I see no way to do so. There's blood puddling at their feet – innocent blood. Pureblood that didn't deserve to run cold. Not like this. Xaxias was supposed to be our problem, not theirs. He was supposed to take us, not them. I was supposed to be the one with the knife in my heart, and now I have to live with that for the rest of my life.
As I watch the blood spread, I don't stop it when the killing calm rushes through me. It's cold and empty and the red of the blood spreads further to the edge of my vision. Locking my eyes onto the left side of his chest, I take in a single breath that feels so thin it barely fills my lungs. I used to hate feeling so much. I used to love the numbness that overwhelmed me and snuffed it all out like water to a flame. Things hurt, others felt too good to be true, and doubt was like a plague. The killing calm was a blessing, but as the days passed on here with Darius and his family and his confusing friends and their stupid jokes and grins and annoying determination that often came as stubbornness, I came to not want the killing calm so near. Now it's all I want if only because it's being fueled by a wave of anger I can't control - and I don't want to control it.
"Clarice-" I silence Garrison with a raise of my hand. He wants to leave and get Darius out - and he will, but I have the promise to uphold.
I leave the Bhaltayr to guard Darius and walk to the King. Reynald is likely already taking my place amongst them, Julyan still standing by the door behind the dais, waiting.
"I thought I told you to protect my family," Neven seethes as I reach his side. I can feel Xaxias's eyes locking in on me. He'll get his chance.
"And I shall do as I promised," I say with a voice I know to be full of that emptiness. A voice that's not my own, but that of the Ebony. "I shall protect you and your family. That was the promise I made a month ago." I don't wait for him to catch it and look to Aillard who already knows what's coming.
It wasn't hard to figure out that Aillard was Thralian. His facial features weren't of any known kingdoms and he's learned to speak Vandarian well enough, but his accent slips here and there. At first, I couldn't place it, but then Ella showed up and started talking, and I held onto the little fact just long enough until I could take advantage of it. Thralia may have been forgotten, but I loved the many mysteries of the world and luckily read up on it a few years back. One of the many bogus things that I thought was ridiculous, was that every Thralian citizen, whether living on the island or not, is to obey the orders of their rulers. If they ask you to bring them a pastry from whatever land you're currently venturing, then you have no choice but to obey them. It was laughable until now, but after talking to the Thralian in disguise, I found out that it is utter bullshit, but the concept of it isn't.
"Vos have vestri ordinis. Non deficient." You have your orders. Don't fail.
"Ut vis, mea Regina," he says with a bow.
Once I pieced his lineage together, I figured that Sibella knew. She has, after all, been ruling Thralia for the past few decades. So I thought that she might have been in contact with possible Thralians in the area. I sent a letter to Rykiel last cycle telling him to trail her and find out if she was. He wrote back a day later saying that she was in contact with someone in the castle. He didn't know who it was or what she wrote because it was all in a different language, but he did copy it. Lithian. It turns out that Lithian is actually Thralian. It was kind of ironic to know that I had learned the language of my mother's homeland without knowing it. I knew the topic would come in handy one day, I just didn't think it'd be used to rule a kingdom.
"What is this?" Neven demands, his face an off contortion of fury. I look to Julyan over the King's shoulder and wait until he nods before turning back to the Neven.
"This is me keeping my promise. Go. Aillard will get you to safety, and Darius will be right behind you. Go." He opens his mouth to argue, but Aillard puts a stiff hand on his shoulder, and he closes it.
His eyes snap back to mine, and I know the second he sees what they hold. "He may come to forgive you, but he'll never forget it."
"I know. Now go."
He doesn't resist when Aillard pulls him toward the door. One nod from the Captain of the Guard and the King's guard fall in ranks. Around me. Xaxias knows very well that Darius and I are the elementals, hence why he's letting the King go. He just wanted to show the people of Vandaria that their King was willing to let his people be slaughtered to keep two people hidden. He wants them to turn on him, but little does he know that the people have long since lost faith in Neven. Now it's just a matter of giving the people someone else to look to.
Ignoring Darius's desperate whisper of my middle name, I turn around and face Xaxias. He chuckles deeply as I descend the steps of the dais, pulling my blades back out of their sheaths. "At last. Someone with some common sense. I do hope you'll be smarter with your words, my Queen." He spits the title like it's molded bread. I don't break his stare, not as I wave off the guard and leave them as another line of defense in front of Darius and the Bhaltayr. Nor as I stop at the bottom of the dais, and definitely not as one of his seven followers shoves his victim into Charles's chest, rushes to Xaxias's side, and pulls off his hood.
Of all people to be beneath the hoods, I'm not at all surprised to see Willdred Maron's face. I learned a while ago that Will would always betray me. Again. His betrayal doesn't hurt this time. I expected it. It's no coincidence that he resurfaced and brought about enough chaos to have my father meet the Queen. It's no coincidence that all those tiny pokes and prods led to me being in a shared space with the very person who had the twin to my mother's pendant. It wasn't fate, it was just carefully calculated moves leading up to this. To Xaxias eyeing me like rare gold. My steps don't falter, my breath doesn't catch, nor do my hands shake. Instead, the killing calm takes over everything. Revenge. Justice. They're all the same jumbled mess now.
"Clarice-" My eyes snap to Will and I know he sees the lethal storm raging because he goes to talk in that annoying ′let's be friends′ voice. "Put the blades away." I don't do it, and instead, slowly stalk toward him instead, target temporarily altered. Xaxias laughs. "Clarice. Please."
My eyes narrow. Please. Please. Did he stop when Rose said 'please?′ Did he put his blades down when she pleaded for her life? Did he bite down on that stupid rage of his when he entered that bakery?
Please.
He deserves to suffer. He deserves to be broken from the inside without knowing it. Cutting into him isn't enough for him – letting Lance make him beg isn't enough for him. He deserves to feel the heartbreak I felt, to feel every piece of him shatter – and he'll get that. He'll get that and more. That's a promise. He took a vow to protect the innocent, and here he is, standing in defiance of the own blood he spilled on that codex. It's about time someone reminded him of that. About time that I finish that scar over his eye.
"With this blade in my hand..." I croon, beginning the spoken vow that every Jade Assassin takes the day they've been allowed to join us.
"With the strength of my heart..." Rykiel continues as he walks from the crowd and past the lined-up guards.
"By my love of the innocent..." recite five more Jades, all cloaked and hooded and stepping forward from the shadows.
Ten more emerge. "And mastery of my training..."
"I will drop my blood," Twenty of us shout in unison.
"My flesh." Forty.
"My soul." Sixty.
"To defend those lay waste,"
"By the hands of the broken." A hundred.
"I take this vow and spill my blood on these words, sealing my promise." One-fifth of the force our father left me and Lance with now stands within the Fernweh ballroom. The rest are spread throughout the castle and its walls, another hundred guarding the House of Jade while the last hundred watch the full town. My brother sent orders this morning, but they had mine two days ago. Lance may be the Jade King and have their vows and loyalty, but it is for that reason - the reason I manipulated to overrun his orders - that they now follow the ones I gave them instead. They just lost one King, they'll do anything to keep the same fate from my brother, and so will I.
I stop a few feet from Will, looking him dead in the eye. The words hit home, they've done their job, but it's not enough. "The hands of the broken have laid waste." Will goes pale, scanning the faces of the gathered Jades now all staring right at him. They all know who he is and what he did. They all remember. "We are bound by blood to defend them and your blood will be taken for theirs."
"Dear child," Xaxias sings to try and get my attention, but I'm honed in on Will, and nothing will break it. "Have you not yet learned-" There are four loud thuds that cut him off, and I don't bother to look at his four followers that are now dead with arrows in their heads as I drag my blade across Will's ribs and thighs.
Chaos truly erupts this time.
I swipe my leg out at his, but he jumps, pulling out two of his own blades from his boots in mid-air. I don't wait for him to land before moving on the offensive. The sound of Jades fighting around me and the castle guards ushering everyone else out is a distant echo, driving me faster and harder.
"You slaughtered Rose," I scream as I slice into his wrist, catching his knife that he drops and sliding it into my boot as I duck under his swing. "You murdered my father." I kick him in the stomach and swing for his throat.
He catches my forearm and pulls me against his chest so that we're inches apart. "I love you, Clary."
"That's not my name, asshole." I shove him back, hitting his inner thigh before once again kicking his chest. I don't give him a second to recover and hook my foot around his ankle, sending him falling to the ground. My blades are angled at his throat and heart, ready to move. "You're a practiced liar who keeps stabbing me in the back. Did you really think I'd let the gesture go unpaid?" I flick my wrist to cut his throat, but just as we were taught, he gets his hand under the blade. He uses a move I should've seen coming, hitting me in the diaphragm hard enough to make my eyes water and breath hard to come by for a few seconds. It's enough of a delay for him to roll and pin my arms down beside my head.
"Do you remember that night?" he whispers in my ear. His knees slide down, making his hips fall between mine. The memories cloud my vision, and then I'm shoving them aside and turning my head so that our lips are a hair's length apart.
"Yes. Do you remember the day I first bested you?"
I bring my lips in a hard crash against his, keeping my lips tightly sealed shut. I feel the shift in him, and before he can remember exactly how I won that sparring match, I shove the blade that I flipped in my hand before he pinned me into his arm. His grip loosens, and I twist my wrist out of his grasp quickly enough to get the blade into the back of his shoulder. He lets out a cry, but I barely hear it. Using my strength, I roll him onto his back and take the arm of the shoulder I didn't stab, and put my body beneath it. I put one leg over his neck and the other over his chest, slowly push down on my upper back, and lift my hips until a satisfying pop sounds, telling me his arm is now dislocated.
He screams again, and I wish Lance was here to hear it.
Taking a moment to assess the rest of the fighting around us, I find too many black cloaks on the ground to know if they're Jades or followers. Saints guide them to the next life if they're Jades. If not...well they're already meeting the death god.
Will shifts beneath me and I dig my heel into the empty socket of his shoulder bone. He screams again, louder this time as he tries to bring up his legs. I make the mistake of using my own leg to knock down his, and he doesn't hesitate to grit his teeth and pull my heel from his shoulder. He moves to catch me off balance, somehow kicking me right in the boob.
Little bastard knows that hurts.
I get on my feet and hit him hard enough in the jaw to make my wrist bark in pain at the contact. "Clarice!" I whirl, ignoring the pain in my hand, and find the Bhaltayr all still standing but slowly crumbling with the force of the followers. "I'm going to regret this." I grab Will's blade from my boot and throw it into his thigh, another of mine flying into the opposite side of his abdomen. I'm already spinning by the time he cries out again, knowing that Lance will likely want to strangle me because I didn't finish the job when he hears about it, but he can't suffer if he's dead.
I ram myself into Winston's opponent, digging my blades deep into his lungs. Another blade leaves my hand the next second, straight for the follower about to hit Alex's weak spot. With another slice of a throat, I take my place at the tip of the arrowhead, letting Reynald drop back behind Garrison and at Darius's side. Amel and Benny take out two more, and when Vlad, Winston, and I go to raise our weapons for oncoming swings, they don't come. No one's coming toward us, and I'm about to run back down to finish off Will when a voice comes from the other side of the dais.
"There wasn't supposed to be so much spilled blood," Xaxias calls.
We all easily turn, adjusting the aim of our arrow. "And yet you didn't hesitate to be the one to start it," I retort.
"Dear child, you're the one who sent the King to safety while his son stays here. I know who you are – who you both are." His eyes drift to Darius, but only for a second. I want to tell myself that that's good, but it just makes what decision I've already made harder to carry out. "Did you think I'd leave here without you?"
The calm fractures. "No, I didn't."
His arms slacken at his sides, no weapons gripped in them. You don't necessarily need them when you were forged into one. He's waiting for me to attack, waiting for the Bhaltayr to follow. I want to take him on. I want to see his blood run for the blood that stains his hands, but he's right. He's not leaving here without me, but I need time. I pinch my lips and whistle the tune of a Blue Jay. Rykiel and five of our strongest Jades climb the steps and stand between us, those now unoccupied by the followers on the floor running up the steps alongside them. Rykiel looks over at me once, chin dipping. They're not meant to defeat Xaxias, and I'm not even sure they could, all they have to do is buy me time, and Xaxias seems cocky enough to let the ten men and women try. I don't even wait to see the fight start before whirling.
"Don't you dare," Gabe quickly says when I open my mouth. "Don't say it."
The calm fractures more but I hold it together. "Gabe-"
"No! You are not going to say those words because if you do, I'll torture you myself." It hits me like a blow to my chest, and just like that, the killing calm falls and I burst into tears. "You are not doing this to us – to him."
"Gabe," I beg, choking on his name.
"No." I look at Alex and find the same defiant look on his face. "We stand together."
"What in ten hell are you all talking about?" Darius asks, trying to push past Garrison. We all ignore him.
"Don't say it, Clare," Al pleas with glossy eyes of his own.
I look to every single one of them, skipping over Darius who keeps demanding that someone tells him what's going on. They all agree - even Garrison who has done nothing but hate me for the past two months. We stand together, not alone. I want to...but...Family comes first. That's what my father taught me. Family comes first and it's never just the people you share blood with - that's not what family means. Family is those who your heart chooses even when they hurt you. It's who you'll never be able to not choose if a choice was forced upon you, and it's who you choose to fight for even when they don't deserve it. That's what love does to you. It makes the decision for you, even when it's one that's so hard you try to convince yourself that there is a contender for it, but there's not. Family will always be the winning choice, and that's why it's dangerous. Because you'll choose it every time. Even over yourself.
That's why caring brings chaos. That's why I've guarded my heart for so long because I didn't want to ever have to make the choice and have it already made for me. I knew what my decision would be years ago and I feared it then, and I fear it now. Not the part where I have to make it and set it into action, I fear where I may end up because of it. I've been trained to endure a lot, and despite all the preparation and the long nights in a dark room with nothing but my thoughts, the one thing you can never out-train is uncertainty. No matter how much you plan or how many times you practice one thing over and over, there will always be an uncertainty you cannot prepare for or predict. You can't be certain that someone won't move at the last second, plunging your blade into another's flesh rather than the aimed target's. You can't predict what tomorrow will hold with complete and utter certainty. You can't predict your death.
Somewhere behind me a body falls. I dig my nails into my palm. "Saorsa." It comes out as nothing but a strangled sob and whines, so I close my eyes, not being able to look at them as I say it louder. "Saorsa."
When I open my eyes, I find everyone but Darius shaking their heads. I hate this. I hated it two days ago when I made them promise that if I said the word, they'd take Darius and leave. Leave me to buy them time. I said that I'd meet them in Layara, but we all knew the likelihood of me getting out if Xaxias was involved. They yelled and screamed and raged within the walls of Darius's sitting room that I had lined in a thick layer of water to mute our voices, but I made them do it. I pulled the Queen card, and when they tried saying that I wasn't their Queen, I just watched as they broke down, finding it a lie they hadn't realized they'd accepted. I hadn't realized it either, and I wish it was a lie. I wish they still hated me as they did the first day I walked into the castle. I wish they kept me away from Darius, guarding both him and his heart from me and mine from his. I should've let them. I should've upheld the mask of the Ebony Nightingale and let them think their worst and keep me to the title of his personal guard rather than slip into the alias of his fake lover. I wish it were fake. I wish...Gods I wish it had all gone wrong than wonderfully, perfectly right.
From the moment we all found out that Darius and I have been practically crowned King and Queen, you could just see it in their eyes that they'd be there to protect us. They'd be there to smile when we were coronated and every day we put those silly crowns on our heads. They'd fight and bleed for us, and they'd do anything if we asked. I had shut that memory out of my mind because I didn't want it to be true. I didn't want to care, and it hurt so much to see them all numbly nod and murmur the words, "we promise." It hurt to the point that I cried myself to sleep after making Melody and a few others make the same promise. It hurt then, and it's killing me now, twisting the knife still lodged in my chest.
"I don't give a shit what we said," Henry persists. "We're not going-"
"You can't make us," Benny states over his friend.
"What the fuck is Saorsa?"
"We stand until we fall, Clarice." I force myself to look at Garrison, to remember all the things he's said and done since I've infiltrated his life because it's easier than remembering everything else. I look at the rest of them, committing them all to memory, memorizing the sound of their voices and smiles that drew the darkness within me further back without any of us knowing it. I feel the pain, feel it thrashing as the sound of another body falling echoes behind us. Rykiel can only hold on for so long.
"No," I whisper. Voices no one else can hear sing in my ears, and as they each rise at my attention, so does the thrumming in my veins and the pain in my wrists. "You swim..." I choke on my sobs, avoiding their eyes as I make direct eye contact with Reynald still at Darius's side. "Or you drown."
Not giving them a chance to take in my words, I lift my hands in front of my chest, hands forming a cylinder, and bite back my wince as the water element bursts open into a choir of hailing storms. Pools from the fifty purposefully placed buckets behind the dais in the shadows spring out of them and encase the men before me in a sphere of water. Waves rush by my face, blurring the faces of The Bhaltayr. I ignore their screams and pounding fists as I watch Reynald pull the white cloth from his pocket and place it over Darius's nose and mouth. Darius struggles, clawing at Reynald's arms like a scared child. The Bhaltayr take notice, all moving to help Darius. A flip of my hands and the water shifts, causing them all to fall. Darius goes limp, the sleeping elixir that was poured onto the cloth doing its job. I made Reynald, Blaise, and Julyan swear to carry the cloths dipped in a powerful, but harmless, sleeping elixir on them tonight. I told them why and they swore their secrecy, even from Lance. Gods know that if he found out he'd put one of the cloths over my mouth and drag me out. I couldn't have that. I can live with them ignoring me and being mad at me for the rest of my life, but I couldn't live with myself if they died.
Caring brings chaos.
Reynald finds my eyes, still standing, and with a nod of understanding, he bows at the waist, his fist going over his heart.
Ethan's face appears before my own, the image shifting as the water keeps circling them.
Please, he mouths. Please.
Before I can change my mind, I pull my hands further apart, the water rising to hover over the ground. Another movement of my arms and the water churns further, moving them toward the rammed through doors leading to the garden. I follow them out, Jades clearing a path, and I try to keep my shaking knees from giving out. Whenever Darius's power surged to bring up a wall of flames, or feel when his father came into the castle, he did so unknowingly but with an amount of control that we have yet come nowhere near to mastering. I didn't want to ask Ella about it as I still don't trust her, so I did my own digging. Every time he used his power in those controlled times, he did so with one thought on his mind. The elements thought he was in danger, so they quickly rose to protect him and obey his order on how to do so, as they couldn't very well see what the danger was. The power yielded to him, and so he could sustain it.
For the entirety of last night as I lay with Darius, I quietly practiced doing the same. No one noticed the buckets of water I slid beneath the bed, and no one heard when I brought a wall of water around the room. I did it until I was sure I had it down, and then I fell asleep. All it took was tricking the power into thinking I was in danger by asking it for protection, but little did it know it was not for my protection, but theirs. They can hate me later. They can curse my name and forget me for the rest of their lives so long as they get a life to live.
"Clarice! Clarice!" Their voices start bleeding through the water's walls as they begin to thin.
"Don't do this!"
"Wait!"
"Amo te." I call up the entire force of both elements. The grass starts to grow, each blade weaving in and out around the layers of water. Tree roots sprout upward, encasing them in a shell that will hold them. One after the other I add onto it, keeping only a sliver open right in front of me. Everyone else is still begging, but Reynald moves, laying down and pulling Darius on top of him, covering them both in his coat. I wait for his nod. Sealing them inside entirely, I scream against the pain and command the elements to do one thing.
Save them.
*****
I'm on the ground, sobbing and shaking at the pain that's everywhere. I should stand and fight Xaxias or finish Will - my legs won't move. My head screams its rising fatigue from using too much of my power, my throat is closing and wheezing with sobs, and my stomach is trying not to hurl up whatever's left in it. It all hurts and aches and-and-and I don't what to do. I feel like I just lost. Like everything I just did won't mean anything - or change the fact that I'd lose all of them anyways. Why do feel like I am still lost?
A breeze makes the tears falling down my cheeks feel like ice. It comes from the west, carrying the screams of the fleeing crowd within it. I fist the dirt beneath my hands, pulling on my power - either of them - begging to feel something. To feel that release - that deep breath that felt like living - that felt ten times easier than it does right now. I wait for the pain - welcome it even, but it doesn't come. Nothing but a ghost of what it was answered. I throw the fist of dirt and scream. I scream at the world, at the Gods, at my mother for leaving me so young, and my father for leaving when we'd need him the most. I scream at the people who forced me into this situation. To Will and my so-called aunt and Xaxias and - and just everyone. I scream until my lungs give out and my voice is near gone.
Another breeze rushes past as if sensing I need the air. I take large gulps of it, trying to calm myself. It does little until I hear it. A whisper in the center of the screams. But that's impossible. Only Darius can hear the whispers in the wind.
Darius...oh Gods why did I do it? He'll hate me forever - that's okay, that's okay. He can hate me so long as he's alive...he has to be alive.
The whisper gets louder until I can hear what it says. You haven't lost anything, little flower. That's...my mother used to call me that. Her little flower. She'd put a little flower from the garden at the House of Jade in my hair every morning at breakfast, and I'd keep it there all day or cry if I lost it while we were playing. The Garden was small, nothing more than a few crates full of dirt and blossoming petals on the roof. After her death, all the Jades took it upon themselves to keep her Garden growing. Eventually, the whole house was decorated in them. On the windowsills, along the perimeter of the gates and the laws, inside in vases in varying sizes, and on the roof where those three crates still sit, only now they're accompanied by two dozen more.
I haven't heard that name in...I haven't heard her voice since then either, and it sounds as clear as day. You haven't lost anything, but you might if you do not stand.
I look east to where her voice flows against the wind, but there's nothing there. Just the empty Queen's Garden and the torches still burning to keep it lit.
You were never born to be soft and quiet. You were born to make the world shudder beneath your feet.
Rising to my knees, I search the grass for them. "Dad?"
Stand, Fauna. I can't see them - either of them. It hurts more than it probably should. To hear them as if they're right beside me but not able to see them. Like a vivid memory or a dream that feels too real. I'm hallucinating, that's all. They're not really here.
Stand even when your legs give out and you feel like falling because this world is meant to break you, but you, my dear...you were never made for this world.
I scream again with everything I have left, but even with my voice reverberating in my head, I can still hear them.
Fight, little one. Fight.
Something in my chest snaps. An eye opens, and a river breaks free of a dam. My next breath stops short as iciness shoots out through my body. It should feel like I'm being chained down or can't move, but it feels light and filling. It...it feels like a predator breaking free of its cage.
Stand up.
Thunder cracks above me, rumbling through dark clouds that had gathered. I can feel their density, the heaviness of the rain that wants to fall. All I do is think about it and then suddenly it's pouring. Drops gather on my lashes but my vision remains clear.
Fauna!
When I look east again something does stand there, but it's not my mother or my father. Two golden eyes the size of curled fists stare down at me. I know these eyes. I saw them two nights ago when I...when I put my hand in the moat and made my promise. The eyes belong to a wolf, its whole body consisting of water that flows fast within itself and absorbs any rain that hits it. If I couldn't feel how real it is, I'd think I'd be going crazy. I must be though, because its chest starts to glow a bright blue in its center, and then it pulses three times.
Stand and fight!
Their voices echo in me, running along every fiber of my being. The pain of still trying to sustain an already failing power threatens to pull me down, but I put my feet beneath me. My whole body shakes, whether in fatigue or fear or just everything all around, but I hold the wolf's gaze, I grip the blades on my hips, and I stand. I feel like I'm going to fall back to the ground any second, but I didn't just...I didn't do what I did to give up now. The Jades aren't fighting against an unknown enemy just for me to surrender. My parents didn't die so I could fail now.
For once, it's hard to call up the Killing Calm. It takes a minute for the numbing to turn off the pain and the feeling of the rain on my skin and weighing down my hair. Another for my heart to slow to a steady beat and keep my breathing calm and even. My parent's voices no longer blow in the wind, nor do I feel them near, but there's a howl. A summoning that counters the thunder still rolling in the sky.
The wolf disperses into a puddle that pools at my feet and turns into a river that flows back toward the ballroom. I follow it, seeing blood cover the once spotless marble floor, along with bodies both cloaked and others dressed for the ball. Innocents. Fighting still ensues, steel clashing like symbols. The staircase is still being overrun by a panicking crowd that can't all fit through the smaller doors to the bridge and foyer beyond. People fall and die due to the stampede where others get picked off by Xaxias's men. It's a bloodbath, and no one's getting out in time. Not without help.
On the dais, Xaxias still faces off with Rykiel and the others. He deflects and dodges like a cloud of mist, but he never strikes back. Why would he when he'd get what he wanted anyway? I knew where I'd end up tonight when he showed up, but that doesn't mean I won't fight to make it otherwise. Gods know I'd much rather be somewhere else. I fight not for Darius or Lance, or Kat or the Bhaltayr, or anyone else. I don't fight for them, but for me. For the raging fire and the force of water pulsing through my fingertips.
The people still cowering along the walls or beneath the tables turn when I walk back in. Fear strikes their eyes when they see the Ebonies still clutched tightly in my fists, but then they look up and their eyes widen with surprise. I wear no hood or mask or my balaclava as I have for the past decade. Nothing hides who I am anymore. Those who say my name call me by an alias that I don't want to use anymore. My name is Fauna Clarice Rheasydia. I am the Queen of Thralia and the Ebony Nightingale, but above all, I am my mother's kindhearted little flower, my father's wicked little one, my brother's teeny monster, and my friend's greatest nuisance. I made a promise and I intend to keep it, no matter what the cost.
So I call Rykiel and the others off as I ascend the dais and meet the red blood eyes of the man who killed my mother. A while ago I made a choice. Tonight I carry it out.
To risk Fate, and damn Destiny.