by Elise Kova
“I can see you,” she whispered, her voice steady. “I can see you here… alone.”
“I was never truly alone.” His voice was low and warm on her skin. “I had you.”
Vi laughed bitterly. “My face was torture.”
“Until seeing you became my light.”
Her fingers curled tighter around his and Vi guided him toward her. Moments like this, moments of quiet, were so rare that they were more precious than any token or object she’d ever held.
She reached upward, fingertips smoothing along his jaw. Tilting her head, Vi guided his mouth to hers. Taavin’s eyes dipped closed slowly, as if he wanted to see her there until the last possible second.
A soft sigh escaped her at the blissful moment of warmth and rest. Their kisses had yet to solve anything for her, but they made the days so much easier to bear.
As gently and slowly as his lips had met hers, Taavin pulled away. Vi looked at him through heavy lids.
“Would you like me to heal these?” Taavin ran his fingertips over the bandages around her wrists.
“They’re fine,” Vi said, shaking her head. What she’d said to Sernia about the wounds still stood.
Taavin didn’t insist further. He must’ve seen the blood dripping from the shackles in Ulvarth’s throne room. So perhaps he had some idea of why she was allowing those marks to remain on her flesh.
“I want to show you something.” Keeping her hand in his, Taavin stepped away, guiding her toward the set of doors next to where Vi had entered from. He pulled them open to reveal a small, dark room.
There was nothing inside. No gilded statues. No signs or sigils.
On a single pedestal in the center of the room stood a plain marble candlestick holder with a flame flickering at the top. There was no wick for oil or candle wax. The flame burned impossibly, hovering just above the candlestick.
“This is it, isn’t it? The real flame.”
“Yes, this is the legendary Flame of Yargen,” Taavin affirmed. “Or what’s left of it.”
Vi took a step forward, her eyes never leaving the small flame or the dull ash collected around its base. “What about the brazier in the Archives?”
“The flame used to burn that brightly, barely controlled. Now, it’s nothing more than an illusion maintained by a few High Larks sworn to secrecy.”
That explained the lack of heat, and Ulvarth’s delight—she hadn’t immediately identified the false flame.
“Why has it dimmed?”
“I suspect because of the destruction of the other parts of Yargen’s power. The Crystal Caverns, the crystal weapons… they’re all connected.”
“We’re all connected.”
“What did you say?” Taavin took a small step forward into the room.
“We’re all connected.” She clutched her watch, thinking back to her father’s words. Members of the Solaris family had been wrapped up with the crystals for generations, likely going further back than she understood. “Fate is a road that is made, laid by the generations before us.”
“Vi—”
“And us,” she turned to face him, clutching her watch. It felt hot under her palm in a way not even burning through iron had felt. “We’re connected too, drawn together by her power. It lives in you, and in me, as it did in the crystal weapons and the caverns, and does still in the scythe.”
Vi’s hands went to the nape of her neck, slowly unfastening the watch. It was the first time it had left her neck in months, and she felt naked without it, bare before the Goddess. Taavin did nothing to stop her as Vi slowly turned toward the flame, compelled by an invisible force.
“I did what you asked. I’ve brought this to you.” Beseeching the Goddess had just as much chance of working as her trying uncose. But she hadn’t come all this way not to try. “Tell us, what do we do now?”
She slowly lifted the watch, and as soon as it drew level with the flame, the world was overcome with white.
Wind rushed around her, soundless. Even though it should whip her hair and tug at the robes she wore, Vi remained perfectly still. Untouched.
The world was completely dark, only the immediate radius visible to her. Underneath her feet was a barren landscape of pale gray ash, piled thick. Whatever fire had raged here had burned so hot that not even the stumps of trees or foundations of buildings had survived.
Cloying heat sank into her, trying to smother her, despite her detachment from the dead world before her.
She began to walk.
It was impossible to tell her direction, or what she was walking toward. But it was equally impossible for her to stomach the idea of standing still. If she stood still, it would get to her, something within Vi nagged. But she had no idea what it was.
Vi came to a stop.
A shard of obsidian jutted out from the ash—a dormant crystal. There was another not too far away, and another closer to the second. Vi followed the trail to a scattering of obsidian fragments. Her gaze landed on a hand, clutched around a large shard, even in death.
The woman was mostly covered by the thick ash, but one all-white eye still stared lifelessly at the world. Even with a sunken face, collapsed with rot, even mostly covered in ash, Vi recognized her own corpse.
Her pulse returned to her first as the vision faded. It beat like a war drum in her ears. No… it wasn’t. It was a word.
Thrumsana. Thrumsana. Thrumsana, the soft voice repeated. It was strong, yet pleading—whispering, yet loud.
When Vi opened her eyes once more to the real world, light surrounded her, like flames condensed into glyphs she couldn’t recognize. They spun against symbols wrought in a faint blue magic she recognized as Taavin’s.
“Taavin,” Vi groaned. The man lay across from her, his body twitching slightly. “Taavin.” Vi pushed herself up, the magic fading. “Taavin,” she shook him slowly. Her whole body felt leaden, her mind exhausted. Her magic spent. Yet she still found energy enough to worry over him. “Please, Taavin.”
The minor convulsions stopped, and with them Vi’s panic abated, though it didn’t fully retreat until his eyes blinked open.
“Taavin, I think I… I…”
“I heard the Goddess,” they both said at once.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“You… you heard Yargen?” Taavin pushed himself up slowly. He seemed to be in as much pain as her.
“I think so. She said a word, one word, over and over, she said—”
He pressed a finger against her lips. “Don’t say it out loud… not until it sits in your mind and unravels. Think of her words like an egg: you must incubate it before it hatches understanding.”
“But—”
“What if it is a word to summon Raspian so that you may face him? Or level a city?”
Vi ran a hand through her hair, shaking her head. He was right, she didn’t know what it was for and until she did, caution was the best path forward. “I came to Risen for answers… but I only have more questions.”
“But we are getting answers.” Taavin leaned forward, bending his knees and locking them against the inside of his elbows. “There are layers and layers of magic here—magic the likes of which I’ve only ever seen in one place before.”
“Here?” Vi motioned around them.
“Here.” He reached out, tapping the watch that had fallen to the floor between them. “I was right to make sure we came back to Risen. We need the watch and that scythe to reignite the flame. It’s just as the traveler foretold.”
Vi ignored the mention of the infamous traveler. “You were right to make sure we came back to Risen,” she repeated. “Taavin… what did you do?”
He looked at her with those worried eyes. Vi slowly shook her head. She’d asked the question and now, suddenly, would do anything to not hear the answer.
He betrayed you, Arwin had said.
He betrayed you, and Vi hadn’t believed it.
“No,” she whispered. Vi placed a hand between them, leaning forward. “Taavin, what d
id you do?” He turned away. “Answer me,” she pleaded softly. “Taavin, please tell me I’m jumping to conclusions.”
Still, silence.
“Tell me you didn’t contact the Swords.” Adela had used communication tokens. Why wouldn’t the Swords, or Ulvarth himself? Why would she assume Taavin hadn’t been carrying one with him the whole time? Her eyes fell to his bare wrist; the bracelet she’d seen him wear through their whole journey was gone. “Tell me—”
“You wanted to go to Norin… and there was no time…” He had the decency to sound ashamed.
Vi pulled away. Her whole body had gone from acutely pained to completely numb. The word Yargen had told her vanished from her ears, replaced by ringing.
“You… You carried a token to contact Ulvarth on your wrist.” Taavin wouldn’t even look at her as she spoke. “Tell me, yes or no?”
He gave a small nod. Vi shifted onto her knees.
“You were contacting him the whole time, telling him where we were. You didn’t escape. He let you leave. He let you leave to get me. This was all one big game crafted by both of you.” Vi’s voice rose, cracking like her heart.
“No. I only contacted Ulvarth at the end. I tried not to the entire time—not even when I was near death in that cave. I only contacted him then because I knew he would be tracking us and there was no way we would make it to Norin. He’d stop us first. And this way I could try to salvage—” Taavin grabbed her hand.
“Don’t touch me,” she seethed. He slowly released his grasp. “Don’t you dare touch me.”
“Vi—”
She stared at him and slowly shook her head. It didn’t matter what he said or claimed. Whatever they were—whatever they’d shared—was breaking right before her eyes.
“Listen, please,” he pleaded. “The days are becoming shorter, the nights longer. Raspian’s power only grows. The end of the world is near and we are not ready. We couldn’t afford a delay—if we even made it to Norin.”
Vi stood, turning her back to him. Still he spoke. She heard his boots sliding against the wooden floor as he stood as well, relentless.
“I knew if we came back, we would figure out the way to end this—the way to save us all. Your father, your mother. Then you would be reunited with your family not in the final hours, but for a lifetime together.
“I wanted to give you everything you desired, but this was the only way.”
Vi stared out at his small room—the lonely chair, the window to the world. The pity she’d felt was crumbling. It started a landslide that slipped underneath the dark waves she’d carried since her time aboard the Stormfrost.
“You don’t know it was the only way.”
“I knew delays wouldn’t help.”
“You couldn’t know.” She slowly turned, lacing and unlacing her fingers to try to keep the spark from springing forth and burning him alive. “Because you do not see the future. That is my destiny.”
“And you have.” He stared, unflinching in the face of her seething rage. “You have seen the future and it is one of failure. We must remove ourselves from this line of fate that leads only to our end.”
“Well, you have brought me here.” Her voice was quiet and quivering as Vi fought the urge to shout. “And the world is still headed toward its end.”
“What?” he breathed.
“I saw it here, now. The scythe still breaks. I still die. Raspian still wins.”
Taavin stared at her, dumbstruck. Vi watched him crumble under her unrelenting gaze. She looked down on him like the traitor he was, and he couldn’t stand under the weight of her judgment. Vi took a small step forward and he stepped back so hastily that he gripped the wall to prevent himself from tripping over his own feet.
“The only thing you changed is that now I will have to watch my father die at Ulvarth’s hand before I die fighting Raspian.”
“We can still figure it out,” he said weakly, less confident than she’d ever heard him. “We can still—”
“We? That’s the other thing you changed, Taavin.” Her voice cracked. Damn it all. It cracked. “There is no ‘we,’ not anymore.”
“Vi…” His tone was pleading, begging. So much said in the single syllable. Yet her heart ignored it.
She was the fire of her forefathers. She was the bitter ice that had hardened her. She was the frozen flames of the Goddess herself embodied in crystal: hard, unmoving, unfeeling.
“Count your blessings,” Vi whispered. “The last time someone betrayed me and my family, I killed her. But I guess I really did love you, Taavin. Because here you stand, and here you’ll stay.”
Vi started for the door. He didn’t move to stop her. She briefly considered leaving the lock broken and letting Ulvarth’s wrath befall Taavin—but if she sought revenge, now or ever, it would be by her own hand. Just as it had been with Jayme. Just as Arwin had shown her with Fallor.
So Vi returned the lock, sealing Taavin away once more, and vanished into the darkness of the secret passages of the Archives. She walked down the way she’d came, heart thundering in her chest, eyes blurry with anger.
She made it all the way back to the secret entrance, crouching to crawl through the passage. But Vi couldn’t bring herself to move another step. She sat down heavily, leaning against the wall, knees at her chest in the narrow space.
In the darkness, the crown princess felt herself burning alive, from her heart outward. But she didn’t cry. She didn’t call for help.
She let the fires within burn.
Until there was nothing left but ash.
She was alone now.
Without Taavin, there was no one on Meru she could depend on beyond her father. But he was locked away somewhere Vi couldn’t find and likely couldn’t get to even if she could find it. So rather than wasting the effort, she focused on research. She focused on the one thing Taavin had been right about: the only path forward involved finding a way to prevent the world’s end. And sulking wouldn’t accomplish that.
Vi sat perched on a high rung of the Archives. From her vantage point, she observed the Larks coming and going. Much like their namesake, they flitted in and out, carefully selecting tomes to bring back into their chambers to study. She wondered how many recorded new histories, how many studied the old in order to provide counsel, and how many merely maintained the massive library.
After watching them for an hour, she stood and began nonchalantly following behind one man, then the next, lingering at the shelves long after they’d left. Vi watched as books were taken and returned. What had them so busy?
“The Kingdom of Solaris,” she murmured, reading the title of the most recently replaced book. Vi plucked it from the shelf and opened to the first page, where a large family tree spilled over onto the next four pages.
It was strange to see her father’s name there among the rest and, in a fresh ink, her own. The book was on the lineage of the Solaris kings, and later, its emperors. The conqueror who had brought the continent to heel was none other than her grandfather, Tiberus.
Vi replaced the book and moved on to the next.
The War of Light. Lord Noct had mentioned the last great war in relation to Yargen and the Dark Isle. Vi flipped to the first chapter, scanning the text:
In the fifteenth century following the end of the last Dark Era, Lord Raspian escaped his previous imprisonment in the heavenly body, the prison of night’s light.
The book was factual and dry, but the subject matter was so vibrant, so fantastical, that Vi read it more like a story book than a historical text.
A horn startled Vi from her reading. Her head jolted upward, looking on instinct to the open windows above the fake flame where the sound echoed from. It was a sweet melody that rang throughout Risen, bells accompanying the trill of the horns. She could’ve sworn she heard drums in the mix.
The sound drew nearer and Vi closed the book to listen. The music increased in fervor. It was bright and full of life—the sort of thing she’d associate with a celebr
ation of some kind. All at once, it stopped.
The large doors to the Archives opened with a mighty groan and Vi sprinted around to get a better look, dashing down a set of stairs. She positioned herself opposite the doors peering at the group waiting to enter.
A company of knights were revealed to be on the other side of the door. But these were not Ulvarth’s Swords of Light. They wore silver armor and had bright red plumage extending from their caps. Without any further invitation, they marched in slowly.
Behind the first line of knights was a row of men and women, dressed in heavy layers of embroidered finery. The only similarity among them were the silver pins they wore on their left breasts—each in a different shape. Behind this row of people came a single woman.
Vi couldn’t actually see her face. In fact, the woman wore so many layers of fabric that she couldn’t tell it was a woman at all from the shape of the body. But Vi knew it was a woman, because atop the long veil that covered her from head to toe was an ornate, silver crown.
Lumeria, the Queen of Meru, had come to the Archives.
She leaned over the railing slightly, watching as the queen passed underneath. They went through a door opposite the entry, toward one of the pointed buildings Vi had yet to explore. Two more groups of knights took up the final rows, and Vi waited until they’d passed under her to step back and sit against the bookshelves.
Ulvarth had said her father’s trial would begin at the queen’s convenience. If the queen was here, that meant his trial was beginning. Vi ran a hand through her hair; the sensation of it, free of braids, was odd, but she didn’t have the energy to coif it.
She should keep reading, keep searching for ways out of the mess they were all in.
But she couldn’t.
She was so lost in thought that she didn’t hear the footsteps of someone approaching. Two unfamiliar booted feet appeared next to her and Vi followed them up to a silver-armored woman. She had bright blue eyes, ringed in purple. Eyes that stared at her for so long, Vi began to feel uncomfortable.