The Last Goddess

by C.E. Stalbaum

  ***

   

  Selaste’s eyes shot open. The tide of memories flooded over her, and she found she couldn’t breathe. She gasped desperately, clawing for air…

  “Hey, easy, easy,” Rynne’s voice said from next to her, and a pair of arms wrapped around her shoulders. “Don’t struggle too much; it’s all right.”

  The air finally came, and Selaste forced herself to breathe normally. It was nighttime, and she was sitting in the middle of the Highland Forest with the others, but none of it seemed real. Even Rynne’s comforting touch felt hollow, more like an echo than the real thing.

  Because it wasn’t real. None of it was. She wasn’t really a long-forgotten Messiah, nor was she just an unwitting victim in an elaborate conspiracy. The people around her weren’t really her friends, and her name was not Selaste.

  She was Tryss Malivar, daughter of the Empress and heiress to the Darenthi throne. And she had brought all of this upon herself.

  “You said you remembered,” Van prompted.

  Tryss swallowed and closed her eyes. If only he could appreciate the full meaning of those words. Yes, Tryss remembered—and just as she had feared earlier, she suddenly wished she could forget.

  “I…” her voice died and she placed a hand over her eyes.

  Tiel placed a reassuring hand on her leg. “Are you in pain? You took a bump on the head, but it seemed like your wounds were all healing by themselves somehow.”

  She shook her head, and her thoughts turned to the man she had been desperately trying to protect. “Where’s Rook?”

  They all seemed to grimace at once. Rynne eventually patted her on the arm.

  “He didn’t make it out. He went back to turn himself in so they would stop coming after us.”

  Tryss pressed her eyes shut and fought back the wave of tears. So he had dragged her from the battle and then charged off to buy her time—time she most certainly didn’t deserve. Now he might have been dead, all to save the life of a woman he knew even less than he thought.

  “Yeah, it was dumb,” Van muttered, “but I think it worked. They let us go. We never would have made it this far otherwise.”

  “And now they have the power of the Kirshal at their fingertips,” Tiel said distantly.

  Rynne shook her head. “We don’t know that. And besides, there’s nothing we can do about it, anyway. We need to focus on getting out of here. Maybe we can still rescue him once they return to Haven, assuming that’s where they’re headed.”

  “It is,” Tryss whispered, propping herself up on an elbow. “Veltar will try to use him.”

  “Veltar?” Rynne asked with a frown. “Kord Veltar, the Darenthi Senator? What does he have to do with any of this?”

  “Everything,” Tryss said. “What’s the date?”

  The three others blinked in confusion. Tiel snapped out of it first.

  “The seventeenth of Volus,” he told her.

  “What year?”

  The monk licked at his lips. “1008, of course. Why?”

  One year. She had missed an entire year. Her elbow slipped and she fell back to the ground.

   “Careful,” Tiel warned, grabbing onto her just before she hit the ground. “Maybe you should just lie down.”

  Tryss did her best to stifle the tears. She had to tell them. She had to make them understand what was going on. But first, she needed to know…

  “You said the Empress had a Unity Day celebration planned soon.”

  Rynne nodded slowly. “Yes. She’s supposed to sign a peace treaty with the Ebarans.”

  “And it’s not the first time she’s tried?”

  The other woman glanced briefly to Van, then back to Tryss. “No. Last year she attempted the same thing, but it all blew up in her face.”

  “Do you know why?” Tryss asked. Her stomach sunk in preparation for the answer she knew was coming…

  “I’m not sure anyone knows for certain, but the official word was that the Ebaran president pulled out at the last second when an arranged marriage between his son and the Empress’s daughter fell through. They say Princess Tryss ran off and…”

  Rynne’s mouth fell open. The two men glanced at each other in confusion, but then they both gasped as understanding belatedly struck them.

  “You have to be screlling kidding me,” Van whispered.

  Rynne leaned back, her head shaking. “How…?”

  “Veltar,” Tryss hissed. “He set me up. He promised a way out of the marriage, he helped me…” She slammed her fist into the ground and pulled herself up. “He wanted to find the Kirshane, and he needed bait. He also had to get me out of the way so my brother would be next in line for the throne.”

  “And he knew the Kirshane would investigate any mention of the Kirshal,” Tiel reasoned. “He knew he could follow you right to them—to us.”

  “So your brother was in on this too?” Rynne asked incredulously.

  “No, and neither was General Bremen,” Tryss said. “They’ve been played too.”

  Van scowled. “Bremen…now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a while.”

  “He was probably leading the force that attacked the monastery. He’s been my brother’s personal advisor ever since he was removed from direct command after Turesk.”

  “Wait,” Rynne said, raising her hands in front of her. “Why would Veltar go to this much trouble and not even tell his allies what he was doing?”

  “Because he doesn’t care about them,” Tryss said flatly. “He also wanted to be certain the Kirshane fell for the ruse, and that meant the people chasing me needed to be authentic. He’s not a man who trusts others with important details, but he knew Kastrius would jump at the chance to find the real Kirshal. My brother has always been obsessed with Septurian relics; he’s been hiring teams to excavate ruin sites since he was a teenager.”

  Van frowned. “So Veltar planted you there knowing Kastrius would dig you up. But how did he know you’d end up with us?”

  “He didn’t. I’m not exactly sure what he intended, but he wouldn’t have wanted Kastrius to locate me, either. He needed the Kirshane to find out about it somehow. If you hadn’t bought me, he probably would have found another way.”

  “That seems like a huge risk,” Tiel commented. “How did he even know the Kirshane were in the city?”

  She locked eyes with him. “Because he was one of you. Those priests that Bale said left the order after the real Kirshal died? Veltar was one of them. Her death turned him into a Balorite overnight, and he became obsessed with revenge. He blamed Bale for wasting his life chasing a worthless Kirshal and then letting her leave and die. He also believed the Kirshane held something extremely important, some type of ancient Balorite spells that no doubt involve Defilement on a much larger scale.”

  “And now he has them,” Tiel breathed, “along with the soul of Edeh.”

  “He didn’t know anything about that. He thought the Kirshal was dead and that her power was gone—he told me so himself. Not all of this has gone according to his plan, but in the end he’s still getting what he wants.”

  Rynne’s brow furrowed as she leaned back against a nearby tree. “Why would he tell you these things?”

  “He told me everything,” she said, the memories flashing before her eyes. “I didn’t know who I was anymore. He took my memories, and then when I woke up, he fed me lie after lie. He told me I was a Balorite mage, and he spent months training me to fight and Defile, building on the techniques I had already learned before…” She bit her lip and shook her head. “It’s a long story, but I felt trapped by this arranged marriage. Veltar offered me a way out, and I took it. He taught me this…power.  He knew that once I learned it, he could wipe away my identity and make use of it however he wanted. Once I figured out what was going on I tried to stop him, but…”

  Tryss pressed her fists against her forehead and took a deep breath. She no longer wanted to cry—she wanted to scream. She wanted to stand in front of Veltar’
s pudgy little body and blast him to cinders. She wasn’t going to let him get away with this, and she wasn’t going to let anything happen to Rook, either. For that reason more than any other, she needed to pull herself together.

  “So he conditioned you to play this role,” Rynne said into the silence. “The tattoos, the strange magic, the physique…he did everything he could to mold you into the perfect vision of the Kirshal, and then he wiped your memories so you didn’t remember any of it.”

  Tiel ground his teeth together. “All for revenge.”

  Tryss nodded slowly. “He believed Bale betrayed the order when he let Lurien go. He said the Kirshane wasted an opportunity of a lifetime. If she couldn’t be controlled, then he wanted to take her power and use it. Many of the others agreed with him, and Bale exiled them for it.”

  “Unbelievable,” Rynne breathed. “It’s all just…”

  “Yeah,” Van murmured. “One thing I don’t get, though. You’d think Veltar would have made a better effort to have his people kill you back there in the monastery. I mean, isn’t he worried that you’ll tell everyone about his plans? If you show up back in Haven, that’s going to create an uproar. You could easily set the record straight and turn the people against him.”

  “I’m sure he didn’t want me to escape—or any of us, for that matter,” she said. “I don’t know what happened, but maybe he was just overconfident. He told me the memories would be gone and that no magic could bring them back.”

  “Bale said the same thing, and yet here we are.”

  “So how…” Rynne’s eyes widened. “You were with Rook, weren’t you? Before the attack?”

  Tryss nodded solemnly. She hadn’t realized what it all meant either, but now, sitting here talking about it, it all came together.

  “We were…he was touching me,” she stuttered. “I didn’t feel anything at the time, but…”

  “The power of the Kirshal,” Tiel whispered. “The power to heal any wound. The power to restore the dead from the Fane…”

  Van shook his head. “No, no way. Not Nate.”

  “You told me before that every time you woke up, Rook had been the one who touched you,” Rynne said. “Maybe Veltar didn’t expect you to wake up so early. Maybe it was Rook’s touch that broke the spell in the first place.”

  “I don’t know,” Tryss admitted, “but Bale was right. I don’t understand how, but Rook has her power inside him—and now the Balorites have him.”

  “Some ancient spells and the power of the gods,” Van said softly. “You know exactly what they’re going to do with that.”

   “Veltar will stop the treaty and take control of the Republic,” Tryss replied, “or he’ll watch it burn around him. Either way, he believes he can free his god from the Fane and usher in a new era across Esharia.”

  Tiel shook his head. “We can’t let that happen. We have to stop them somehow.”

  Tryss slowly brought herself to her feet. “So we go back to Haven and rescue Rook. Then we figure out a way to stop Veltar and my brother before they pull a coup.”

  “Oh, that’s all,” Van grumbled. “And here I thought we might do something crazy.”

  “Veltar thinks I’m harmless. He doesn’t realize that my memories are back. I know his people, and I know where he likes to hide.”

  Tiel nodded. “So then we go flush him out. We take the fight to him.”

  Tryss took in a deep breath. All the memories, all the pain, all the mistakes—none of it mattered right now. Rook had been right about one thing: the new memories she had made in the last week had changed her. For the first time in her life, she had found people to care about. They hadn’t even known who she was, and yet they were already the closest things she had to friends.

  And Rook…well, she wasn’t sure she had ever truly loved anyone before, and she wasn’t sure that she loved him right now, either. But more than anything else in the world, she wanted to find out—and if Veltar or any of his people hurt him, she would chase them all the way into the Void and back to make sure they paid for it.

  “He has a lot to answer for,” Rynne said gravely.

  “Yes,” Tryss whispered, a ball of flame forming in her hand. “Yes, he does.”