“I will. I will also see if I can determine any weaknesses before you face him.”
“Please do.”
“You are mad at me as well now.”
“Yes.”
Serah closed her eyes. “It is to be expected. Even you have—”
“Do not turn this into an occasion for self-pity. It does not suit you. You have lived with being hated and loathed your entire life, but should have faith in those who love you. We will forgive you, but do not try to drive us away. We deserve better.”
Serah’s eyes flashed and she curled her mouth into a sneer. For a second I thought I would be subject to one of her epic tongue lashings but she, instead, turned around and walked away toward the ship’s cabins.
That could have gone better, the Trickster said.
“Shut up,” I muttered aloud.
I turned around and took a moment to look over the smuggler’s crew. They were a collection of humans, Fir Bolg, boggarts, and Bauchan. Shadowkind could find work in the Southern Kingdoms. Dirty, disgusting, or criminal work, but work nonetheless. None of them seemed to think the arrival of the King Below and a wizardess via magical rift was anything of importance, though, which said a great deal about how jaded Captain Vass’s crew was.
Taking deep breath to calm myself, I decided to go speak with Regina. A part of me wanted to go find a cabin myself to sleep in but there was never any real comfort in rest. As much as I could conjure the trappings of life, I was undead and always would be. Sleep was more drifting into old memories and the darkness of oblivion rather than anything resembling true rest. After my encounter with Ethinu trying to rip away my spirit, I was wide awake and wanted to just clear my head. There wasn’t much to do for that in the middle of the Devil’s Sea, though.
Walking over, I tried to shove away thoughts of immortal demigods and insane wizard nobles. Instead, I just focused on the beautiful white-haired woman who was leaning over the railing and looking out into the frigid waves beyond. She had changed out of her armor into a set of leathers and furs with a hooded cloak over her head. It was normal attire for a mercenary, not the kind you would find on a royal or a queen, but none of that would disguise that she was one of the most beautiful women in the world.
That’s merely love talking, the Trickster said. Above average, yes, but far too unfeminine.
Your definition of femininity is far different from mine.
Lowering the hood of my cloak, I put my arms on the railing and gazed out into the night. The waters were surprisingly peaceful, but there was a storm in the far distance. I couldn’t help but remember the time I’d first crossed the Devil’s Sea with my fellow Shadowguard, taking residence at one of the forts like Caer Callig in hopes of hunting Formor to win coup points. Now I was the Formor’s leader and killing Shadowguard.
Just being around Regina, though, made things better. She was a reminder to me that there were still good things left in this world to fight for. More than that, I loved how she could drink three men under the table, hated elvish music, and treated everything like a competition even when we were just talking about what to eat. Once I had only thought I’d known what love was with Jassamine.
Now I did.
“A bit for your thoughts?” Regina said, pulling out a copper coin and handing it over.
“You’ll get much more than a copper’s worth.” I took it and smiled before putting it away.
“G’head,” Regina said. “We all need to unleash every now and then.”
“Are you sure? It’s heady stuff.”
“I’m a big girl.”
“All right. If you were given a choice between your loved ones and the world, which would you choose?”
Regina snorted. “That’s a stupid question. My loved ones live on the world.”
“You know what I mean.”
Regina turned around and leaned against some netting. “Honestly? I don’t know. I know what I’d want you to choose, though.”
“Which is?”
“That you’d save the world. I don’t want to live with the death of others on my conscience because someone loved me more.”
I looked at her, uncertain how to respond.
“Hypocritical as that may be,” Regina said, sighing, “I struggle with the fact that this entire war we’re planning is in large part because of your love for me. Your desire to please me. What does the destruction of Whitehall and its people mean to you? Nothing. You walked with me in the ruins of it, looking at the horrors done there, but it is one land in a million to you.”
“It is your home.”
Regina started to say something, stopped, then looked to one side. “Yes, mine. I…don’t want to drown the world in blood because of my pain. I can’t overlook the horrors they’re committing, though. It’s… I don’t know what the right thing to do is.”
“Because of Ketra?”
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about her a lot. My cousin has changed a great deal over the past three years—not all for the better.”
I’d seen the fury and intensity in the young woman’s eyes. Ketra was beautiful, a reflection of Regina in many ways, but there was none of my wife’s restraint behind those windows to the soul. Ketra was eager to bring the horror of war down upon Winterholme, if only so she could do more damage to the empire.
“Where is she now?” I asked.
“Sleeping in the hold,” Regina said, gesturing with a slight tilt of her head. “She had a very busy day.”
“We all did.”
Regina looked up to the stars. “All this time I thought I was Whitehall’s sole survivor. I wanted to make the Usurpers pay for the death of my family. Yet, two of my family are still alive. I could have searched for them, found them, and been with them this entire time. Instead, I was playing lord marshal, trying to strike out in the same way they were.”
“Does it change how you feel?”
Regina looked down. “No. Not really. Because while Ketra and Gewain managed to get away, Rebecca did not. Nor Yanna the cook, Marci the chambermaid, the groom, Anders, or a hundred other names that conjure memories for me but would be just a list to you.”
“Ghosts would not prevent you from choosing a new life away from all this.” Now I was playing the same role Serah had before. Strange.
“I’m unsaddled and confused by your feelings on this. Do you support war or not?”
I put my arm over her shoulder and gave her a light hug. “Would it help if I said I have no idea?”
Regina buried her head into my side. “Quite the opposite. You’re supposed to give me an easy answer. That’s what gods do.”
“Then I will just repeat what Warmaster Kalian once told me: Our emotions are our guide because motivations do not exist in logic and numbers. We value a thing because we feel for it. We act on our desires, whether they’re the smart thing or not. In the end, just do what you feel is best and you’ll regret it later. But know that the greater loss would not to act at all.”
“Thank you, Jacob.” Regina pulled away. “That helps a little. Does it help you?”
“Not in the slightest.”
Regina snorted.
“You’re the reason I keep going, Regina. You and Serah, not any higher ideals. Just those I love. I suppose I feel a sense of duty and friendship to those who follow me but even that pales in comparison to the feelings I have for you.”
Regina gave me a kiss on the lips then pulled away. “What would you do if I died?”
“Avenge you.”
“And then?”
“Stop.” That was all that needed to be said.
“Even with Serah?”
“That is assuming she would continue, which is a big assumption…but yes. I could not go on without you.” I could survive Serah’s death, just as she could survive mine. Neither of us could live without Regina.
I hated that fact.
Regina smiled. “Let’s forget the rest of the world for a little while. Come to my cabin and we’ll just be husba
nd and wife for a time. Just the two of us.”
“All right.”
And for a time, our troubles vanished.
Chapter Fifteen
I could have stayed there in the captain’s bed, lying next to Regina, for the rest of eternity. She was an exuberant lover and insatiable, always driven to see if she could perhaps exhaust a man who was more spirit than flesh. Often, she succeeded. This time, though, I knew it was she who needed to be exhausted as our time together was a necessary escape for her. A chance to empty the cup she’d filled with pain, sorrow, and remorse.
In the end, she lied nuzzled up against me with her eyes closed and a smile upon her face. I wanted to stay up all night next to her and just look at the Lady of Starlight, my Unicorn Queen, but I wanted to escape too.
And I fell asleep beside her.
A terrible mistake.
Sleep held no joy for me.
Only memories.
In this case, I found myself wandering the Ashlands on the back of an old broken-down horse, still a young man in my early twenties. It was dusty-gray land of dead cracked earth and fossilized trees in every direction for miles. There were mountains in the distance covered in an eternal storm, shooting out lightning every few seconds. It was neither night nor day since it seemed the two states didn’t quite exist here. People called the northern continent a wasteland, but those who did so had never visited the Ashlands. They were a slice of hell in our world.
“What have I gotten myself into?” I said, shaking my head as I continued on the road to Twilight’s End.
“You’re going to become a Shadowguardsman,” my elvish companion said from behind me. “You should be honored.”
Mikael was a brown-skinned low sidhe with long blond hair tied in a ponytail, wearing a Gaelish tartan, and carrying a crossbow on his back. My banishment from the Grand Temple, voluntary or not, had been months ago and I’d welcomed any form of companionship on my long road to reaching this territory. Still, I couldn’t help but be annoyed by the man’s chipper attitude.
I hated elves.
“I am honored. It’s why I’m making this three-month journey,” I said, my throat dry. There was a strange bitterness to the air as if there was nothing in it but stale wind. It was said that not even microbes existed in the Ashland’s air. The leftover magical energy from the First Great Shadow War killed everything but those who were altered to resist it.
Like the Shadowguard.
“Are you sure you don’t have any Fir Bolg blood on you? After a month traveling with you, I’m sure you must. Only they can be so grim and sarcastic.”
In the Imperial capital city, such a claim was a deadly insult. The Fir Bolg race was considered vermin by most Imperials. I’d been born in the Riverfords, though, where my bloodline was considered almost as foul. Even so, my father would often speak of the Stagmen with gross distaste.
“I do not have any of that honorable people’s blood within me, no,” I said, remembering Warmaster Kalian’s words about them. They were a proud people with a glorious history. This was their world and only the Grand Temple and the empire’s greed had made humans and their race enemies.
“Hmmm,” Mikael huffed. “Do you know the history of this land?”
“Is this another elvish history lecture? Because I learned more than enough about it before ever meeting you. What I know if you’re a race that claims to be the best at everything while never being able to prove it—yet never quite learning the lesson to treat other races with respect.”
“A man who doesn’t hate the Fir Bolg for being Anessia-Killers or want to exterminate the Shadowkind but who hates elves,” Mikael said, shaking his head. “You are a very strange man.”
“Is it so strange?”
“There are places in the empire where rich merchants pay the lowest of our kind to impregnate their daughters in hopes of siring a bastard with elven features. Places where the Lawgiver is depicted always with pointed ears and angular faces, for we were his chosen first children and humans merely his second unworthy creations. Places—”
“I have seen hundreds of farmers driven off their land so elves could create estates for themselves of illusion and magicrafted animals. I have seen sidhe lords and ladies waste ten thousand silver coins commissioning great statues and portraits during famine. I had witnessed them ride on golden white horses, immune to disease and blessed with healing magics, walk past plague houses with their nose upturned. I once saw an elvish lord cut a human girl’s face up in a brothel after paying more than the building for the sheer pleasure of defacing a monkey-person. That is why I despise elves.”
I still regretted not killing that elf.
“Oh,” Mikael said. “Well, then, I suppose you have your reasons.”
“Do I still have to hear the lecture?”
“I’m afraid so,” Mikael said. “Last one, though, I promise.”
“We’re about five miles from Twilight’s End.”
“That would be why.”
I sighed. “Fine, go ahead. You haven’t been completely terrible company.”
“You have blessed me,” Mikael said, putting his hand over his heart. “More than you could ever know.”
“I’m going to start fantasizing about a good round-eared human woman soon. You better start before I block you out completely.”
“Just be certain that fantasizing is all you do. I know humans love playing with themselves almost as much as they love throwing their shit at each other.”
I chuckled and dreamed of Jassamine. Her beautiful twisted black hair, her lovely chocolate skin, and the feel of her touch against my body. It was possible I’d never see her again, but I trusted her vision enough that here was where I needed to be. So much so that I’d let her frame me for her rape and let myself be sentenced to service here.
No one in the Grand Temple had believed it but the offer of gold had been enough to persuade them otherwise. I was to live and die now in the service of the hardest warriors in the world so that I might honor a hunch of my truest love.
What had I gotten myself into?
“This was once the kingdom of Tiarnanon, the land of the elves, which split the continent with the Terralan Dominion before they were wiped out. There were over a hundred million elves from here to the Devil’s Sea, existing in a state of—”
“Paradise?”
“No one knows,” Mikael surprised me by saying. “Those few old enough to remember it do not speak of it. It is as if the trauma has scarred their minds they could not access thoughts of said era without breaking down into quivering balls, screaming for hours. Such is the legacy of the First Great Shadow War.”
“You have my attention.”
“When the King Below brought his army of demons, undead, Shadowkind, it was an army in the hundreds of millions. He did not come to destroy the sidhe but to use our moongates to launch a great war across the universe. To bring the retribution of fear, death, and hate to a million races we will never meet or hear of. The high lords knew they could not win without the Lawgiver’s help, but he turned his back on us.”
I made a sign with my fingers against his blasphemy but did not interrupt.
Mikael continued, staring out into the darkness. “My ancestors broke themselves for humanity and the other races of this world and others. Every man, woman, and some children did their part. Untold numbers clashed and died until the high lords used such weapons as to permanently scar their land so there was nothing left behind. Nothing but ghosts and death. This.” He gestured out to the darkness and despair surrounding us.
“I admire your ancestors’ sacrifice,” I said, surprising myself. “It was a worthy end. I apologize for my bias.”
“Don’t.”
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Few elves would do the same today. You ask why the sidhe treat your race like vermin, the way your kind treats the Fir Bolg, boggans, and dryads? It is because they think they wasted their lives protecting someone other than themsel
ves. The only survivors of our kind were those too young to fight or too old on the Blessed Isles. Those who cannot appreciate pride or sacrifice or honor. You hate the elves for what they have become…but I hate them more.”
We were silent until we started up to the trail to Twilight’s End. This was the one place in the Ashlands that seemed to have some sense of life. There was mutated, sickly looking wheat, a village built into the side of the mountain, and caravans of traders moving up the road to the hundreds of towers carved into the mountain.
Twilight’s End was the largest castle I’d ever seen, more city than fortress, constructed with magics that would not be re-discovered for centuries. Hundreds journeyed to join the Shadowguard every year, but only a few were accepted. Those who were sent, like me, as part of the penal recruits were either enslaved or used as cannon fodder in their never-ending war against the King Below. There were even rumors that the biomancers beneath vivisected and experimented on the worst of its prisoners so they might gain insights into medicine.
Jassamine had faith I would pass and ascend to the highest ranks.
I wasn’t so sure.
“Welcome to your new home,” Mikael said, chuckling. It was as if our last conversation hadn’t happened at all.
“It is a charming residence in a nightmarish fairytale story sort of way.”
“The King Below erected Twilight’s End when he destroyed the last city of this land. Those who took it back vowed to stay here and fight the hordes of ghosts, demons, and mutants he left behind. They eventually won.”
“We won’t have won until the King Below is dead.”
“You can’t kill a god.”
“Watch me try.” I would become the greatest Shadowguardsman who ever lived. Why? Because I was doing it for love.
Mikael paused. “Tell me, Jacob, did you do it?”
“Hmm?”
“Your crime.”
“You have been with me for months and never bothered to ask before.”
“I am now.”
I sighed. “Yes, I did it.”
Mikael stared at me. “Amazing. You are a terrible liar.”
I frowned. “Why would I lie about such a horrible crime?”
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