Keepers of the Crown

by Lydia Redwine

  Joel lifted his head, a small, sad smile on his lips and glistening in his eyes. “I am very glad we met, Cam. Even if it meant your sister almost dying.” His following laugh was shaky but real. He raked a hand through his hair. “I am very glad to have met her and Caleb too.”

  Cam swallowed the aching lump in her throat and forced a smile to her lips. “I am very gladto have met you too, Joel. And I hope we will meet again.”

  “Hopefully somewhere where it’s daylight and you’re not scared out of your wits and hit me with rock again.”

  Cam shrugged. “My aim was good, you have to admit.”

  Joel laughed, the sound shuddering but full of joy.

  He took Cam’s hands in his own. “Farewell, friend, and stay faithful. You and I, we know more than we want to know about sacrifice. But the greatest sacrifice is yet to come. I want both of us to be prepared so that one day, we might see one another in Caelae.”

  “Farewell, faithful friend,” Cam said through her tears.

  She watched Joel turn and walk through the passage, his torch in hand. And as she watched him she knew that he had been her friend. Was still her friend.

  He had rid her of her enemy, of everything that haunted her. And sacrificed his own innocence to do it.

  “His name shall be called Immanuel.”

  -The Sixth Prophet

  Sixty

  Joel wasn’t the only one leaving.

  And Cam knew it. She could feel change shifting in the air. The time had come. “We have been joined by others who did not know it their goal to come to Nazeria. And like Joel, he will be moving on.” But Cam still had questions. So when she emerged into the dimly lit cavern far from where the Shadow Bearers dwelled, her eyes scanned the occupants in search of her.

  The number of people in this cavern was numerous. They liked to stay together, to be reminded of who they still had left. Cam felt the woman’s eyes on her. She didn’t need tolook for the Scarlet Spy, for the spy’s eyes found her soon enough. Ilea’s gaze drew Cam’s attention to her. Cam tilted her head towards the exit. Ilea nodded.

  When the darker woman stepped into the narrow passage Cam had chosen, the latter found that she was wearing clothing fit for traveling. A loose shirt of a dull tan color topped with a teal vest lined with golden threads. The pants were loose and flowing. The clothing would have been seen as coveted or costly if Cam didn't note the threadbareness, the worn spots which were abundant. Who knew how long Ilea had had this clothing.

  But it was loose and flowing and light. Nothing that she could survive in the northern lands this time of year. So she was going south. Back to the desert lands. “You’re leaving,” Cam said simply.

  Ilea nodded. “Elyon is calling me elsewhere.” A smile lit her eyes and spread her lips apart. “I haven't felt a calling this distinctly since...since well, I can’t remember. A long time.”

  Cam smiled too. “And that makes you happy?” Ilea shrugged. “It makes me feel as though I have a purpose. And for that I am thankful.” Ilea opened her arms, and Cam embraced her. She held the woman close, breathed in her soft scent.

  It felt strange, being so close to this woman. A woman she had gone through hell and back with this past year. But someone she could not say she really knew. There was a depth to Ilea that Cam did not think she could reach.

  “AndI am thankful for you, Camaria, andfor all youhave braved.” Ilea drew away. Her dark eyes were shining with tears and her smile was like a display of stars. Her dark skin was smooth and beautiful against the soft brush of her braided hair.

  Ordinary.

  “Just like me.”

  But chosen.

  “You chose Elyon,” Cam said.

  Ilea nodded. “As He chose me.”

  Cam smiled, her own tears pressing into her eyes. “I

  know. I can see it. You love Him more than I have ever seen anyone love anyone or anything else.” Ilea laughed, a choking sort of laugh. A tear trickled onto her cheek. “I do hope...that we will meet again one day, Camaria. Here, perhaps, but also...in Caelae. I would very much like to meet your sisters there too.”

  Cam reached for Ilea’s hands and squeezed them in her own. Her reply was a whisper, constrained by the ache in her throat, “Thank you.”

  Cam’s eyes slipped shut against her own tears and remained shut as Ilea’s lips brushed her cheek in a brief kiss. “Remember, Camaria, that Caelae has been promised to you should you accept. And Elyon always keeps His promises. You are in the promised land now.”

  Cam opened her eyes, her brow furrowed. “Here?” There was only cold, hard stone here.

  Ilea nodded. “You will know...one day.”

  “Where will you go?” Cam asked.

  Ilea tilted her head and shrugged. “Wherever Elyon will lead me. To the south first. I miss the land where I can stand out at night and see every single star He has placed in the skies.”

  Cam nodded before reaching into her pocket to withdraw a thin piece of worn parchment. “You...should have this.” She handed it to Ilea even as the woman’s brows were drawn in puzzlement. She did not ask what it was. She simply unfolded it. “Peter would have wanted you to have it. No doubt he already has its contents memorized.”

  Cam watched Ilea’s eyes fill with tears as they scanned the page. The letter Daniel had written to Ilea. The one she had never received. Ilea’s eyes lifted to Cam’s once more.

  “Thank you,” she said in a choked whisper. “You only know fragments of my story. Both of which I have told you and what you have heard otherwise. Bits of dust scattered in my memory. But there is so much more. Much that dangerous people know even now. And I will say only this: There is something out there somewhere that holds the power to cure me of my curse.”

  She pulled back the edge of her cloak, revealing the mark on her neck. “But Elyon will have to guide me there in order for me to find it.”

  And then Ilea put on her scarlet cloak and was gone.

  The Scarlet Spy following the whisper of her Creator.

  The water was cool beneath her finger and between her toes.

  Cam smiled. There had been a little spring in Medulla that felt as cool as this. That was as quiet as this. She would go there alone or with her sisters.

  She was alo ne now. She didn’t bother to take off her clothes. She left her boots on the shore of the small pond and wadedin.“Castit alloff. Leave it behind.”Her father hadbrushed her shoulder once. Had whispered this once.

  She breathed the words again, allowed them to settle in her lungs, weigh down her heart. “Cast it all off. Leave it behind.” Cam clenched her fists in the water. The world around her was ashen gray and still. The trees of the valley rose in thin shapes of dark green. They were smudged against the mountains, closing her in. She hadn't seen the sun in...a long time.

  “Terra.” Steps forward. Cam did not count, but the water was to her waist now.

  “Grandfather.”

  More steps. Water to her breasts.

  She drew in a shuddering breath. “Mista.”

  Water to her shoulders.

  She clenched her eyes shut and remembered. Bite and sting. Blood and curdling cries.

  “Silva.”

  The water was to her chin. Kind blue eyes and lithe fingers. A tentative smile and black hair curling around his ears. The tears streamed over Cam’s cheeks.

  “Peter…”

  She went under.

  And the water did not sting her eyes. It did not burn her lungs. She could feel it gushing into her body, filling every part of her. She knew she should be flailing for the surface, for air.

  Her eyes slipped shut as she drifted down, down, down…

  “Camaria…”

  The voice was a whisper, but she heard it clearer than she had ever heard any voice before.

  “I love you.”

  “You love me?”

  “Go back. Live…”

  Warmth surged through her body.

  “I love you.”


  “You give and take away…” Cam heard herself say. In the water.

  “I love you.”

  “Elyon…”

  “You are forgiven. You are clean. Walk free. Leave your chains here.”

  The light was blinding.

  Sunlight. Air gushed into Cam’s lungs. She pulled in long, heaving breaths. Her eyes stung as she forced them open and the sunlight filled her vision. The light was dancing on the water, turning the blue to gold.

  “Cam.” The voice was soft. But not the whisper she had heard beneath the water. A voice she knew that she knew. She reached forward, her hands grappling for anything but water.

  Flesh. Another palm pressed against her own. And she was being pulled. Cam lifted her other arm to shield her eyes from the sun. Her body collided with something soft. Land. The shore. Her hand slipped from the person before her and she grasped the grass of the shore in both hands. Cam’s mind was disoriented, fragments of memory scattered in her brain. “I am not myself…”

  The light was blinding against her skin. She peered at her own hands and arms grabbing at the ground. And she was glowing. As if the light wasn’t just before her. The water wasn’t cold. No...it too was warm. She coughed. Water spurted from her lungs, and her throat burned.

  “Cam,” thevoicecameagain.“You’reokay, you’reokay…” She lifted her gaze. Peter’s kind blue eyes stared back at her, his lips lifting in a tentative smile.

  An ache exploded in Cam’s chest, and her heart soared into her throat, leaving the words she would have spoken to be utter choking sounds. His hands were at the sides of her face and she was lifting her own.

  No...she didn’t believe it. But she could hear it. The singing. The water and the trees and the very air and the light. All of it was singing. It was filling her with every emotion. Long and gratitude and joy and all of it was...bursting.

  But all she could do was cry. Cry and laugh. She grasped Peter’s face in both of her own hands and traced the bruises marring his flesh. He was laden with filth.

  His lips parted. “Hello…” Her lips were pressed to his, and everything inside her lifted. It soared as his fingers tightened around her head and stilled when he kissed her back.

  She tasted salt, sweat, and even blood, but it was all Peter, and he had never tasted sweeter to her before. Cam told herself not to pull away, for this was all another dream, and this would end just as soon as it had begun. She would awake with her head buried into a pillow wet from tears. Even if this moment did not seem entirely real, her need for breath was. She wrenched her mouth away, leaving Peter’s hanging open.

  “Tell me you’re real,” she panted while her fingers trailed over his facial injuries. Tears dripped from his eyelashes onto his cheeks. “Tell me I’m not dreaming.” But she was laughing, her eyes sparkling.

  “Ia m real, Cam. This is real.” Peter skimmedhis lips over her neck. When his lips reached her jaw line, she moved so her mouth covered his once again. She kissed him with desperation, with a longing that had been built over the week she had thought him dead. She had lost what she had loved and found it again. Her heart hammered with disbelief. Her arms and legs trembled.

  “You smell horrid,” Cam said at last when she drew apart from him a few inches.

  Peter’s chuckle was shaky. “And you are...soaking wet. Decided to take a bath after the battle?”

  Cam reached for him. He was still bent over the side of the pond, his hands fastened around her arms as she was still kneeling in the shallow water. “What the hell happened to you?”

  Peter’s words were muffled as her lips brushed his own and then his jaw, cheeks, lashes, and brow. “If you’d just...let me...stop kiss...I’d...tell you…” He pushed Cam far enough from him that she could not trace her tongue along his lower lip as she had just done. “I need to tell you something, Cam.” His hands grippedher shoulders. “Iknoweverythingabout myfather now.”

  Cam’s eyes widened, and her mind was bombarded with questions. How? What had he learned? She nodded slowly as she gripped his wrist. But first, she tilted her head and gave him a suggestive smile. “Do you want a bath first.”

  His returning smile held as much light as the sun when he kissed her quickly with an enthusiastic, “Yes.” And then he was in the water too, still fully clothed, his mouth over Cam’s.

  And Cam knew that a hundred things had to be done. They had to get back and tell Saffira and Cole. She had to tell him what had happened to Amelia and how they had come here. She had to tell him that Joel and Ilea were gone and that they had gone to Terra’s grave and that the Lumenbirds were also gone. She had to know where he had been, what he had been doing, and how he had survived.

  But for now...the world was singing and glimmering with light. And she knew she would never feel this much joy in her life ever again.

  Over the next cluster of hours, Cam had tearfully watched as

  Saffira had staggered towards her brother and had melted into his embrace with sobs wracking her body. Cam had heard her father’s laughter fill the entire mountain as he suffocated Peter in one of his own tearful embraces. But now...she followed him, her hand in his.

  An animal skin hung over the doorway into the cavern to create some semblance of privacy. They pushed through to see the firelight from a pit in the center of the room glowing on each other’s nowclean skin. “It's just us,” shebreathedas shebrushed her lips against his cheek and neck.

  “To do what exactly?” Peter said with a wry grin. “Talk.” she pushed his shoulder slightly so he would sit on the pile of skins that served as his bed. “And then-”

  “And then…” Peter interrupted. “Then I will kiss you slowly, tenderly. Like I have all the time in the world.” His eyes wavered as she lowered herself to lay beside him, curled into his side.

  “What happened to you?” Cam asked as she traced a finger over the scars that had formed over his ribs.

  “I followed them when they came into the castle,” Peter began. “All of them were...well, ‘angry’ isn’t the right word. Picture anger that makes you cold as stone.”

  A smirk lifted one side of Peter’s mouth. “They failed to find the Crown.”

  Cam lifted up an elbow. “You were still in the castle?” Peter’s hand brushed Cam’s shoulder as he brought an arm around her.

  “You would have killed me if you knew. But I had to stay…”

  Cam couldn’t say anything. Couldn’t think...

  “I hid in the castle and must have fallen asleep at some point because when I awoke…” he paused and stared at the ceilingabove them. “Iwas...sittingin apool...noa river...of blood which came from who knows where...” Cam continued to brush his ribs with a comforting hand.

  “My head was spinning, and I was certain I was running a fever so I tried to find someplace where I might find a remedy or water even. And then I heard him. A voice so cold…”

  Cam saw the goosebumps rising on Peter’s flesh at the mere thought.

  “My father was one of the marked, Cam.”

  Cam’s eyes widened and she rose hastily once again so she could better look at Peter.

  Peter’s gaze was calm, though.

  “Just like Ilea,” Cam said.

  “It makes sense now why my father knew so much about those in the Infernal Cities.”

  “Was he still marked when you were born?” Peter shook his head. Cam sat up, her brow creasing. “Then how did he become unmarked?”

  “That...is a long story and I only know it because Glista was telling Riah. But what she said seems to be mere speculation. Of course, this account originally came from Leviathan...not my father. Something about a Crown of Cures...and Silva too. Apparently, she and my father had been allies.”

  “Before she had him killed.”

  Peter was silent for a long moment. “Again, it's a long story.”

  Cam laid beside Peter again. “We have time.”

  “Actually,” Peter said, “We have time also to go back.”

  Cam
froze. Go back. “To…”

  Peter nodded. He sat up, brushing her fingers on her arm as he leaned to kiss her bare shoulder.

  “To Mingroth.”

  “There are things both of us will learn there. There is so much more to all of this than we realize.”

  “And you think the answers will lie…” Cam swallowed. She was feeling sick.

  But she turned as he was nodding and kissed him. He was here. That was all that mattered. And he knew something about his father. It had created peace in him. She could see it.

  She laid beside him again. “Do you think it would have mattered?”

  “What?” he asked softly.

  “If we had taken the Crown with us to Nazeria as they thought instead of leaving it in Medulla.”

  Peter shook his head. “It still brought destruction, no matter where it was. But...with the Crown staying in Medulla all this time means...means they didn’t find it.”

  “But we lied...to our own people.”

  Peter was silent. And they would continue lying. They would let the people of Nazeria and Mirabelle believe that they had the Crown in their possession while it still lay beneath the castlein Medulla. “I knowthat Hemust beokay, safeeven. Alive. But…” Cam began to murmur.

  Peter’s hand squeezed hers. “They won’t look for the Savior inCaranthia.” Peter shrugged. “I doubt they knowthat He has come here yet.”

  Cam’s mind reverted, a memory surfacing. Midst snow and stone they had stood, the Keepers of the Crown, deciding where Immanuel would go. To Caranthia, they had decided. It was the most secure nation on the continent. Cam had looked at the young boy and had felt her heart clench into something hard.

  “Why didn’t He do anything when we were in Mingroth? If He is from Elyon, why didn't He help?” she had asked her father.

  Cole had smiled and pulled him into his arms. “It is not yet His time. And, He is human just as much as He is of Elyon. Just because He has power, doesn’t mean He can always use it.”

  Cam drew back to the present. “Do you think Caranthia will be safe?”