Realm of Ruins

by Hannah West

  I loved him. I would do anything for him, defy his wishes, even nullify all he’d worked for, just to save him. But when I opened my mouth to comply with the Moth King’s demands, I couldn’t.

  Valmarys’s pale blue eyes fell into the shadow of his black brows. He knew my verdict.

  “Tilmorn,” he said. “Kill him. But make it last. Use your hands.”

  I lurched, but my will rammed against the barrier of the compulsion. “No!” I screamed, and Valmarys waved a hand to close my mouth again.

  Tilmorn, who stood with his hands behind his back and shoulders relaxed, strode forward, opened a glass panel, whipped away Mercer’s bonds, and hauled his younger brother out by the collar.

  Tilmorn threw Mercer back into the glass chamber, shattering it. Mercer slid across the floor, his head striking the table. Before he could stand, Tilmorn crushed Mercer’s wounded hand beneath his boot. Mercer cried out, the worst sound I’d ever heard. I wanted to save him, to heal him, to stroke his hair. The pent-up rage inside me was torment.

  Mercer managed to stand, draping his hurt hand at his side. He gritted his teeth. “Tilmorn,” he said, but before he could make his plea, Tilmorn smashed a ruthless fist into his face.

  Mercer spat blood and charged out of desperation, his boot soles crunching glass. He tackled Tilmorn with the brute strength of one good arm, slamming his brother to the ground, thrashing him. But Tilmorn used both legs to launch him away, crashing him against one of the other glass-fronted chambers that held the elicromancers.

  “Rethir!” Mercer cried, the word tearing out of his throat with such devastating sorrow that I knew it could only mean “brother.”

  The Moth King smiled a crooked smile. He was confident in Tilmorn’s loyalty—maybe too confident. A flicker of some sort of awareness crossed Tilmorn’s eyes, but the Moth King was watching me, relishing my incapacitation, punishing me for not taking the coward’s way out.

  My power began to work to break the compulsion. I’d tried to pick a lock in the palace with a hairpin once, and that was how this felt: finagling, a secret struggle in the dark. All it would take was the right pressure at the right point and the door would creak open. Tilmorn had left the Moth King with only one gift: the compulsion. If I could render it useless, this would all be over.

  While the fight raged around me and blood began to sprinkle the floor like warm raindrops—most of it Mercer’s—I yanked at the coils of power inside me. But they didn’t break me lose.

  I needed my power more than ever. I would have to disregard the compulsion, let the presence inside me speak for itself and act on its own whim. Perhaps if I concentrated hard enough, I could crack the Moth King’s bones one by one until imminent death blazed in his eyes.

  I summoned the Water’s mighty power so that my fingers and toes curled with it and my vision went black. But when I sought hold over Emlyn Valmarys, he was like a slippery, quivering thing that I couldn’t quite grip.

  Yet I felt pulses of other living things, orbs of bright elicrin magic throbbing in the dark, the warmth of gifts nesting in their stones. I could see each elicromancer, feel their essence. The Water had already chosen them, let them pass unharmed—so echoes of the same entity inside me could not destroy them. If I had taken my time with Prosper and the others in the dungeons, I might have been able to see that their elicrin power blocked them from me. The blights had still only been shells of elicromancers, and Jovie an elicromancer in pretense alone. That was why I’d managed to break her arm. Neswick had kept a safer distance, otherwise I might have injured him as well.

  But these elicromancers had already survived the Water, and therefore it could no longer destroy them.

  Destroy. Transform. Destroy. Transform.

  When I opened my eyes, the Moth King’s blue eyes were wide, aware, alarmed like a snake before a heel strike.

  Destroy. Transform. Destroy. Transform, and…

  The visceral coldness of that night at the Water with Ivria overcame me. I thought of the uncertainty of that moment, the way everything seemed to pause when Ivria’s toes skimmed the surface, as if the whole forest watched with bated breath.

  Destruction and transformation were only the results of the Water’s true power: its power of choice. The Water was sentient, decisive. It was the purveyor of every gift, and killer of those who dared approach it undeserving.

  The Water chose me to carry on its legacy, which meant it chose me to choose who was worthy. I had become the Water.

  I closed my eyes again, tuning out Mercer’s screams. Acting out of anger and sadness was not the way to use this gift. Mercer had been right.

  The hot rage inside me turned cool and devious, icy waters lapping at a winter shore. I saw each elicrin power as a pulse of color: blood red, forest green, smoke gray, vibrant purple, incandescent yellow, blue-streaked orange, even a faint sparkling white that must have represented Jovie’s.

  But as the colors began to throb brighter in the dark, my feet strode forward, obedient to the Moth King’s whim. My eyes shot open and I watched as a glide of Tilmorn’s finger made the glass wall along the back of the tower slide away. My pace became a run, and my tired legs drove me toward death with treasonous enthusiasm. I heard my name break free from Mercer’s throat, the desperation, the passion, the beautiful fragility. Mountain cliffs waited for me below, jagged mandibles eager to snap my small body.

  I leapt over the edge, suspended in the clouds for just a beat before I careened from the heights.

  HE fall lasted as long as a blink. I didn’t feel pain, just the cold roughness of a surface beneath my splayed fingers and prostrate body. I was afraid to open my eyes, afraid to see my own corpse, broken and maimed beyond recognition.

  Something hard scraped against my sternum as I shifted, and sensations of icy moisture skimmed across my back. Softness tickled my ankles. My bones didn’t feel broken. My skin didn’t feel torn. Why is the land of light so cold?

  Perhaps I didn’t deserve to enter it.

  I dared open my eyes. Maybe this is Galgeth. The place of dark spirits. The underworld.

  But soft, white shadows surrounded me. I propped myself up, realizing that I wore a gown. I looked and saw the jeweled neckline of my birthday dress, the shining silver-and-cream skirts twisting around my legs.

  I glanced around, hoping to see Ivria, but found only the shadows of ghostly trees and heard only the whisper of falling snow. But the whisper took shape and formed words.

  It was a voice, neither male nor female. You were chosen before time.

  My breath was deafening in the hallowed quiet. “For what?”

  Humankind erected gates, enchantments, decrees. Our power has been depleted over the ages. We are weary of being used. You are the new vessel, more powerful than any elicromancer. You are the essence of elicrin power, its curator, its steward.

  “What are you? Are you a god?”

  The voice laughed gently, but no answer came.

  The silhouettes of trees fled like wisps of smokes. My dress ripped away in a violent wind, revealing my ragged clothes underneath. The ice, however, remained as a pedestal beneath my feet. Mountain crags rose up around me. I heard the echo of my booming voice and the silky laugh resonating over the sunlit cliffs and peaks.

  I whirled around. The Moth King’s tower loomed behind me, across an expanse of ice that pulsed with vivid colors. Fear-stricken faces stared at me from the topmost floor.

  I took a step in their direction and found my feet steady on the ice. I closed my eyes as I walked, seeing more in the darkness than I could in the light, elicrin powers blinking above pounding hearts. I felt myself nearing the edge of the ice and opened my eyes again to peer at the whirling depths below. But the ice spread to catch my step, and I looked up, feeling my face brighten with a gleeful smile.

  I closed the distance and took an easy leap back into the tower room.

  Valmarys backed up. “Tilmorn!” he called.

  But my soul reached out to Valm
arys’s elicrin power. It curled out of his stone as a tendril of fog, snaking into my mouth and nostrils like a breath as I strode toward him. One look at Mercer’s bloodied face and I felt no pity for the powerless man staggering away from me. I unsheathed my knife, seized him by the collar, and thrust the blade into his heart, happy to make Mercer’s lies become truth.

  For all the talk of Emlyn Valmarys’s greatness, his flesh tore as easily as anyone’s.

  Valmarys dropped to his knees, sputtering. I would have thought a clean stab through the heart would make death instantaneous, but Emlyn Valmarys suffered at my hand.

  Tilmorn cried out in sorrow. Every surface of glass in the room exploded, raining broken bits that sliced my skin. The sea maiden slipped out in a rush of salty water, a shimmering corpse on studs of broken glass.

  Tilmorn charged to catch the Moth King as he slumped over. Gurgling, twitching, Valmarys pointed to the corridor.

  “Jovie!” Tilmorn roared.

  Soft footsteps crossed broken glass. Jovie looked around the corner, emitted a sob, and rushed to the Moth King’s side. She took his hand to heal him, whispering, “Master.” But I closed my eyes, locating the pulse of light in her chest, and yanked.

  Jovie gave a strangled noise as I ripped out her stolen gift. She swayed on her knees for a moment, her eyes blank, her chest an open cavity as though I had ripped out her heart. Her mortal body was not strong enough to withstand the rescission of power.

  I felt an odd sorrow as her lifeless form collapsed inelegantly over the corpse of her dead master. Like me, Jovie had dreamed of being an elicromancer, of being accepted rather than mocked. Like me, she had longed to put her doubters in their place. If I had been raised to believe in someone who could give me whatever elicrin gift I desired, would I have raised him from the grave, no matter the cost?

  In death, she looked like a stunned child, but I remembered how she had plagued me with taunts of Mercer’s torture. No one would ever hurt him again.

  My gaze skimmed across the broken glass, the bodies that had fallen limp when Tilmorn exploded the chambers with his temper.

  “Grandmum.”

  I darted to the farthest cage. Her hair fanned around her. Her lips were parted, already emptied of their last breath. An old woman, no matter how tough, no matter how strong, should never leave this world in bloodshed. She should have died in a warm bed, with her loved ones around her and peace in her heart. But she was gone. Tilmorn’s rage had killed her.

  Grandmum. She was warmth, wisdom, honor, the gentle laughter of a warm fire, the scent of briarberry tea, and pages of ancient books telling heroic stories.

  I sank to the floor, a violent sob building inside me. Even in victory, something Grandmum would have been proud of, I felt a stain spreading on my soul, one that would last forever.

  I blinked back at Tilmorn, who looked around as if seeing for the first time. Horror eased into his expression and he looked at his bloody hands as though they belonged to a stranger. I bared my teeth and prepared to strike, instinct taking over.

  “Valory, no!” Mercer called, the plea muffled by swollen lips and blood pooling in his mouth.

  A dozen emotions crossed Tilmorn’s face at hearing his brother beg for mercy on his behalf. His ire faded to confusion and then to a grief beyond words. He yanked off his elicrin medallion and slid it through the broken glass. It stopped just a hair from my fingers splayed on the floor.

  Mercer shoved himself off the ground and staggered toward me. Hot tears filled the cuts streaking my cheeks. He fell to his knees and gripped my shoulders. “Valory,” he said, tipping my chin with his good hand. “You have every reason to kill Tilmorn, but if you love me, as I love you, you won’t. He did not choose this. He chose Lundy and me, but that choice was torn away, just as Ivria, your father, your grandmum were torn from you. Take out your wrath on those who choose corruption. Give Tilmorn a chance to redeem himself.”

  “I don’t want it,” Tilmorn rasped. “I don’t deserve it. I only ask that you kill me quickly.”

  I swallowed hard, bent to brush a featherlight kiss on Grandmum’s forehead, and planted my hands on the floor. When I rose, glass shards from the broken cases trickled like raindrops.

  I scooped up the chain of Tilmorn’s elicrin stone and crossed the banquet room toward him.

  He kept his head bowed as I stood over him, but I waited for him to find the courage to look up at me. I took in a deep breath, extracting the gifts nestled in the gray facets of the stone. I exhaled Melkior’s healing gift, which Jovie had taken, and slid the chain back around his neck.

  “You have work to do, Tilmorn Fye.”

  MID the aftermath of the battle, helpers emerged. The great hall became a refuge for the wounded. By nightfall, the survivors had located their loved ones, alive or dead. White paint was scrubbed from faces. Across the bridge, funeral pyres blazed against the onset of night. I said my farewells to Grandmum and welcomed the darkness, knowing that the shadow of that horrible tower would not loom so fiercely when it came.

  Tilmorn had donned a hood and healed everyone who could still be saved, but some died awaiting his touch. Glisette was nearly one of them. She had been skewered by arrows and lay writhing on a blanket. Rayed and Kadri hunched at her side as she whimpered and groaned, her wheat-gold hair streaked with blood and damp with sweat.

  “There, there, beauty,” Rynna said, rushing to tip a cup of nectar to Glisette’s lips. Glisette nearly choked on the viscous liquid, but she managed to swallow and collapsed back on the cot. “There isn’t enough to go around,” Rynna whispered. “Feign dying a little longer.”

  After he had done all he could to help, Tilmorn found his way back to us. I didn’t look at him as he sank down. He had healed Mercer and me on our journey down from the tower in the glass chamber, but Mercer’s damaged eye remained white as an eggshell.

  “They fear me,” Tilmorn whispered, sweeping his gaze over the Darmeskan victims.

  “They will see who you are without Valmarys,” Mercer said. “They know what it’s like to be trapped in the shadow of his cruelty.” The lump in his throat bobbed. “Tilmorn, what did he do to you when you left with his men so long ago? Do you even remember?”

  Tilmorn didn’t speak for some time. The soft fires burning in metal pits throughout the hall projected shadows on his comely face. “I’d nearly forgotten. But when he died, the worst of it came back to me. He brought me to his court and took my elicrin stone. He kept me in a dark cave, isolated from everyone and everything. Except, he had a Healer. He would…he would pry off my fingernails. He would bleed me out. One time he even sliced the beard off my face, and the flesh with it. And then he would heal me, and reassure me that he wouldn’t do it again.”

  I shuddered.

  “He told me that he would torture and kill you and Lundy if I ever tried to escape. But if I committed myself to his service, did everything he asked, he would keep you safe. Then…he started to tell me about how you had turned your back on me. How you both had forgotten me, that you barely waited a week before you made love to my wife and put a child in her. He insisted he was the only person I could trust.”

  Mercer hung his head, sobbing. I had already been rent into a thousand pieces, and now each one of them rent in half.

  “He stopped hurting me,” Tilmorn went on. “But he told me the story of what you had done, why you deserved to die, over and over. I did as he asked, always, at first because I wanted you and Lundy to live even though I hated you. And then he treated me so kindly, like a brother. He made me believe you had set out to destroy me and that he was my defender. When we awoke from the darkness in the mountain, he promised me the world. He said my family had died. He compelled me to forget you, and it wasn’t until Valory killed him that I could…see you for who you were.”

  “What was his elicrin gift?” I couldn’t help asking.

  “He could hide himself well.”

  “Like a Clandestine?”

  I heard a
wry, dark chuckle building in Tilmorn’s chest. “No. Nowhere near as interesting as that. He could integrate into his environment if he wanted—which he never wanted. It’s odd. I think the fairies and elicromancers, fearing he would grow to be too powerful, somehow molded his desires. When he finally killed his elicromancer guardians and escaped to the Water, he was expecting so much and received so little. After that, he had to prove them all right somehow, justify their fear and hate. Or all that torment would have been for nothing. He turned to torture and manipulation to feel powerful.”

  “He was just an Obscurer?” I demanded. Growing up, I had been taught that no elicromancer was “just” anything, that every one was useful in his or her own way. There was a time when I would have longed to show an affinity for obscuring, even if it wasn’t the kind of elicrin gift that birthed legends. But for a man who had ravaged a realm…it was an astonishingly plain one.

  “Tilmorn,” Mercer breathed, wiping a tear with his thumb. “You should know that Lundy was with child, but he wasn’t mine. He was yours. I loved them and cared for them, but I never touched her….” He lost his voice to unuttered sobs. It took a moment for him to recover it. “Valory tells me that Halmer grew to be a war hero.”

  Tilmorn didn’t look at his brother but stared at the fire instead as tears filled his eyes. He clapped a hand on Mercer’s shoulder before standing and wandering into the night.

  “I’m sorry I lied to you,” Mercer said, turning back to me.

  I managed to smile. “Maybe…maybe I killed the Moth King because you told me I could. Maybe you have an even greater gift than prophecy: you say it and so it shall be.”

  * * *

  I slept little through the night. In my dreams, King Tiernan shriveled into a lifeless corpse. My mother smiled, her lips held in place by a clothier’s pushpins. Prosper struck Mercer’s face over and over until his bruises became festering sores. Ander opened his arms to embrace me only to stab me in the gut, explaining it was for my own good. Ivria and Grandmum stroked my face and whispered in my ear, giving me violent ideas of how to take down the new order in Arna.