THIRTY-TWO
ZUHRA
I sat on a large boulder, one of many interspersed in the gardens east of the castle, letting the night-chill of the stone seep through the fabric of my clothes into my bones. The sun’s rays set the sky ablaze over the ragged peaks it had to crest before it broke free entirely to fill the sky with its light. I had only vague memories of how I’d even found this place or got on that rock to stare, dry-eyed and hard-souled, at the dawning of a new day—the first of my forced residence there.
It was a stunning sunrise, a tumble of clouds shot through with crimson and sienna, bright sunbeams piercing the sky in a dazzling show of sublime power. And I hated it. I hated every last beautiful view that surrounded me on all sides. I wanted to scream and kick and tear the sun from the sky and pour darkness over the castle behind me and curl into a ball and never emerge, and instead I sat and I stared and I imagined myself turning to stone, just like the one I sat on. Immovable, unfeeling, cold.
“Zuhra?”
A strange sort of vindictive pride beat in my chest when my father’s hesitant voice didn’t so much as make me flinch. I knew this wasn’t his fault, I knew he’d been fighting his own battle to return for fifteen years, but it didn’t matter. In that moment, for the first time, I hated him entirely on my own, free of my mother’s borrowed anger. I hated him for going to check on the gateway, for not staying by my mother’s side and letting whatever happened at Inara’s birth come, for being taken from us, for not being there to teach us, help us, help Inara—to keep her from opening that gateway unknowingly and ripping us apart.
I could see him in the periphery of my vision, a tall figure split into two halves—light brushed on the front and shadowed where the sun hadn’t risen high enough to reach yet—but I didn’t turn to him. I resolutely kept my eyes on that horizon and clamped my teeth together.
“I know how upset you are,” he continued, quiet and heavy. “I just wanted you to know we won’t give up. This time the majority of the council voted to open the gateway.”
That made me turn at last, lingering spots of sunrays partially blocking his face from my view. “What do you mean the majority voted to open it? Then why—”
“It has to be unanimous,” he supplied before I could even finish.
I exhaled and turned back to the horizon. Then it would never happen, I realized. Because Ederra would never agree to it.
“We aren’t giving up,” he repeated.
“They never agreed to let you go back; why would they do it for—” The words choked off by the rise of the emotion I’d been attempting to ignore from the moment he’d shaken his head and I’d turned and fled, somehow ending up here.
“I don’t know.” His honesty took me off guard. When I glanced at him, his arms were folded across his stomach, his gaze on the sunrise now too. “But I will never stop trying. I can’t. And I imagine you probably feel the same way.”
It took me a moment, but when I nodded, it was a hard jerk of my head. Of course I felt the same way; of course I couldn’t just turn myself cold and give up. That’s what I’d been contemplating, and my own weakness made me sick. But if my father had any inkling that I’d been ready to do just that, he didn’t give any indication of it as he gestured to another boulder a few feet from mine, separated by a sea of flowers as tall as my knees and such a dark purple they were almost blue. “Do you mind if I join you?”
There was only a beat of hesitation before I said, “All right.”
“I have to admit, I’ve never done this before,” he said as all six feet, three inches of him climbed up that boulder like a massively overgrown child and folded himself into what looked like a fairly awkward sitting position.
“Sat on a rock?”
“No, sat on one of these rocks.” He glanced at me, a wicked light gleaming in his burning eyes. “This is my mother’s special garden, with all of her favorite flowers, and no one is allowed to walk off the paths or pick them. But I must admit, I quite enjoy the thought of making her upset right now.”
An unexpected warble of laughter burbled up my throat; my father doing something to purposely annoy his mother—the most formidable person I’d ever met, and that was truly saying something—was too unexpectedly comical.
He smiled back, but it faded all too quickly. “I am sorry, Zuhra.”
My laughter died before it even fully formed, the darkness inside, which no amount of sunlight could force away, consuming it once more. “There’s a massive rakasa loose in Vamala. If Inara’s unchecked power isn’t enough to induce them to help, shouldn’t that be?”
My father sighed. “It should be. It almost was … but some are more stubborn than others.”
“Ederra,” I supplied and my father shot me a shrewd glance. “If she’s going to pretend I don’t exist, I can’t quite bring myself to call her ‘grandmother.’”
“She’s not pretending you don’t exist—she’s … complicated.”
“I’m not sure the reasons why she’s acting like this make it any easier for me to be fine with it.”
“You might be surprised.” He turned more fully toward me on the boulder, loosely circling his arms around his knees. “Did your mother ever mention my sister to you?”
“You have a sister?”
“Apparently not.” A shadow crossed his face. “And yes, I had a sister.”
It took less than a heartbeat for his meaning to sink in. “Oh.”
“I was a battalion leader, but she was older than me, and one of three head generals who oversaw the efforts to eradicate the rakasas in Vamala. We were assigned to different areas, so I rarely saw her.” Though his eyes were still on me, his gaze was somewhere else, somewhere far from this garden. “Anael was … she was like the sun—bright and shining and powerful. She brought that light with her wherever she went. She and my mother were very close, and letting both of us go through the gateway to fight the rakasa was very hard on her. But she was a council member even back then, and she believed just as much as anyone that it was our duty to right the wrongs committed by the Five Banished.”
“Who are they?” I broke in. “I don’t know what that means.” With everything else that had happened, I’d forgotten about hearing that phrase when I’d first come through the gateway and my confusion about what it meant.
“They are the ones responsible for reopening the gateway. The Paladin are generally a very peaceful people, but inevitably there will always be some who want more power or control and are willing to do whatever it takes to seize it. The Five were some of the worst criminals of their time—all imprisoned for such vile acts that they were sentenced to death. Before the punishments could be enacted, however, they broke out of the prison—something that had never been done before—and went deep into the lands inhabited by the rakasa. There they found the gateway that had fallen into myth and disuse ages ago when the connection between our worlds was severed. Using their combined power, they reopened it. And in their rush to escape without being recaptured, they left it open.”
I stared at him, wide-eyed. “Oh,” I finally said, too overwhelmed to say much more.
“That is why, once the horrific breach was discovered, we sent our battalions and armies to not only hunt down and stop the rakasa flooding into your unsuspecting world, but to also track down the Five and stop them from hurting your people.
“My mother believed it was our duty to help Vamala as much as anyone. She sent her only two children there, but she stayed behind with the council to protect the gateway and fight off any more rakasa from going through it into your world. They rebuilt the citadel to house those who were traveling between Vamala and Visimperum, and they would open and close the gateway at specific times, so Paladin could travel through—to either return home or join the fight. But the constant use of so much power at the gateway drew hordes of rakasa to it, making it necessary to keep Paladin there to fight them back. My mother was one of the ones who stayed the entire time—wanting to be there whe
n her children returned. It took years to find all the rakasa in Vamala and to track down four of the Five. Despite our best efforts, one remained out of our grasp.
“The Five did terrible things in your world, things that built fear and animosity toward the Paladin in your people. As rumor of the heinous atrocities the Five enacted on the unsuspecting humans spread, where they had once looked to us as their salvation, they began to see us as their doom. By that time, Anael had become high general of all the armies, and she worked closely with King Velfron and his armies to try and finish what we’d come to do. His son, Varick, was acting as the king’s general for the human armies and he and Anael … they fell in love.” As his story turned back to his sister, his voice grew thick, as though his memories were closing in on him, clenching his throat too tight. Dread twisted my gut. “I met him, once, when I was able to go to the castle to report to Anael. She was so happy and he truly loved her, anyone could see it. But the king, unbeknownst to any of us, was keeping a secret.
“The last missing of the Five, Leander, had made his way to the castle and persuaded the king that the other Paladin had lied about why their armies were there. Leander convinced Velfron that we were intent on stealing his throne and making ourselves rulers over his powerless people—and he saw Anael’s involvement with his son as proof. First, the king passed laws organizing whole garrisons whose entire purpose was to track down ‘rogue’ Paladin and put them to death.”
“What would constitute a ‘rogue’ Paladin?” I wondered if I looked as dismayed as I felt.
“That was the question—and far too many Paladin couldn’t quite figure it out until it was too late. The garrisons used almost any possible justification to arrest us. At first, we submitted to it peacefully, thinking it was a mistake. But when the first group was taken to the courtyard before the king, rather than pardoning them as they had expected, he had them executed. After that he didn’t even try to hide his intentions—he published the Treason and Death Decree, and ordered any Paladin left in Vamala to be executed. The remaining Paladin fled for their lives and spread the word to others still in Vamala—get back to the gateway, get home, before the garrisons found and killed them all.
“Then Velfron and Leander snuck into Anael’s quarters one night, and under Leander’s abominable instruction, Velfron attacked her, performing a ritual that … that would have enabled him to steal her power … and…” He broke off, his voice choked. “Varick came in the room to find his father drinking Anael’s blood and he attacked—he slayed his own father, but it was too late. Anael … was dead.”
I stared, struck into horrified silence.
“Leander attempted to kill Varick, but Anael had taught Varick a few tricks to defend himself from a Paladin, and somehow through sheer adrenaline and grief, Varick fended off and slew Leander.”
“Varick was always an ally to the Paladin, but when it was discovered he’d killed his father, the high judges took the opportunity to seize his power, and had Varick put on trial for the murder of the king. Lost in his grief, he did little to defend himself, and the judges had an easy time taking his throne from him. To have him put to death, the judgment had to be unanimous, and two of the eight judges found him not guilty—justifying his act as self-defense. Instead, Varick was imprisoned in his own castle, king only in name, as the judges took over ruling Vamala. They increased the attacks on the remaining Paladin, heedless of the fact that there were still rakasa we were trying to hunt down and protect the humans from.”
“But … but they had so much power,” I broke in, dazed at how much I’d truly been ignorant about. “How could the humans have hurt them—killed them?”
“One on one, a Paladin would almost always win. Against five, most likely. Maybe even ten. But a hundred? Two hundred? All intent on killing you? The humans beat us through sheer numbers and brute force. Oh, many Paladin were still able to escape, to hide, and try to make their way back to the citadel that had served as our home while we fought to protect Vamala. But the judges knew the citadel was our way of escape—that the gateway there would enable us to flee their ‘justice’ for our ‘crimes.’”
I’d never heard my father’s voice so cold, and it sent a shiver raking down my spine.
“Three different garrisons were sent to Gateskeep. They were told to kill any Paladin attempting to reach the citadel. But they couldn’t stop the airborne battalions on their gryphons, so rather than just staying in the city, the garrison stormed the citadel and attempted to break through the gateway into Visimperum. My mother and the council were put in an impossible position and ultimately she made a choice to protect our people, rather than her own family. She’d already lost her daughter, and that had nearly destroyed her. But I was near Mercarum with my remaining battalion, too far away to warn: the council decided that in order to protect Visimperum they had to plant the custovitan hedge to shield the citadel from further intruders and then close the gateway, trapping all remaining Paladin and rakasa in Vamala … including me.”
His icy rage was gone, replaced by a quiet, softer grief, but somehow that tore through me more violently than his anger had.
“So perhaps, while it may not make a difference, maybe it will at least explain why she has refused to open the gateway again for any reason, even to let me go back to my family—or for you to get back to your sister. After thinking she’d lost us both to help a world that had turned on us, and then miraculously having me return … it nearly destroyed her. What remains is the hardheaded, stubborn woman you’ve met. But somewhere inside her, there is still the mother I once knew, the one who willingly sent her two children to defend those who couldn’t defend themselves. I can only hope to reach her again someday, to convince her that despite the terrible cost, it was worth it—and it still is.”
The sun had broken free of the horizon, its warmth spreading across the sky, distilling down upon us and chasing away the chill of night. I closed my eyes and turned my face toward it, letting its rays wash over me alongside the revelations about Ederra—about so many things that I’d been blissfully ignorant of, that Sami had kept from me. And Halvor; even he hadn’t revealed the whole truth to me, though he’d given me more than Sami. I had to inhale and exhale slowly twice before I could open my eyes without tears blurring them.
My father was looking down at the flowers, the ones he’d claimed to not mind trampling after the council’s decision, but now the look on his face was one of utter desolation and it tore me apart. I couldn’t imagine what he had been through—leaving his home to help the humans, only to have his sister murdered, his way back home shut to him, and then to eventually make it back to Visimperum and lose his wife and children in the process.
“How … how did you and Mother meet?”
He glanced up, his eyebrows lifting, taken off guard. “Hasn’t she told you?”
“Erm … not as much as I’d have liked,” I hedged, not wanting to add to his burdens by telling him just what his leaving had done to her … and us.
“Oh, well, it was actually shortly after the Treason and Death Decree. My battalion had been taken unawares, and only two of us escaped the ambush—”
“General, there you are!”
We both turned at the shout, to see a young boy running toward us on the gravel pathway, a note clutched in his fist.
“What is it?” My father jumped off the rock to his feet, deftly avoiding as many flowers as possible to reach the pathway once more, where the boy skidded to a halt, waving the note toward him.
“It’s General Sachiel. She sent a message to you and said it was urgent.”
My father took the note, his gaze sliding to me and then back down to the white, slightly crumpled vellum in his hand.
“It’s fine,” I said before he could try to offer an apology. I couldn’t expect him to spend the entire day with me, moping.
“Are you sure you’ll be all right here … by yourself?”
Though I had so many questions and wanted nothing
more than for him to stay, I swallowed all of them and only said, “Of course. I’ll find … something to do.”
Adelric’s eyes narrowed slightly; his mouthed twitched. “I’ll come back as soon as I can, I promise.”
I nodded, making a shooing motion with my hands. “I’m eighteen, and apparently I’m stuck here. I’ll figure something out. I’ll be fine,” I repeated, even if I wasn’t so sure I even believed it.
“General, it is urgent!” The boy shot me a glare then did a double take when his gaze met mine—most likely because of my plain old hazel eyes, which were anything but plain here, where everyone’s eyes glowed with Paladin power. I’d yet to see another human, and after what my father had told me, I doubted any lived here.
Besides me.
“All right, all right. I’ll see you soon,” he added in my direction before following the antsy child back the way they’d come, pulling the letter open and reading as he walked. I glimpsed one corner of his mouth turning down before he hurried beyond the castle wall and out of sight.
* * *
I stayed on my perch for a little while longer, absorbing what my father had told me, and despite myself, when I thought of Ederra, a pinch of pity had crept into my heart … maybe even sympathy. I couldn’t imagine having my daughter murdered and then almost immediately having to close off my son, leaving him in the same place with no hope of ever seeing him again. What kind of strength must she have summoned to endure such heartache? And then, to have him suddenly show up again, all those years later … Though I was still furious with her, a tiny part of me understood why she would be so against opening the gateway, even knowing that he’d left a wife and two children behind. Our people had taken both of her children from her, and many, many other friends and comrades.
I was wandering the halls of the castle, still too lost to locate the room they’d given me, which I was now resigned to having to use much more than I’d originally hoped, when a familiar voice called out to me, stopping me in my tracks.
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