Tobius let out a mocking laugh, looking to his royal advisors who sat there, stunned.
“I’m afraid it’s… not that simple, my king,” Oren Harrin said.
Emery continued. “If you let Ciana free, the restrictions on trade from your kingdom will be repealed, your son will be forgiven for having maimed my son, and our family will put all this trouble with your family behind us.”
Emery spoke sternly and without blinking to hammer the message in to their heads and judging by their open mouths he had truly made an impact.
Petir finally snapped, having sat silently squirming for minutes now. He lashed out from Emery’s side, slamming his fist on the table.
“Are you serious, father?”
Emery turned his head and spoke softly. “Petir, not now.”
“That little shit of a prince claims to have had his way with my wife! He crippled me, nearly killed me! And you want to forgive him for what he did?!”
“This is bigger than you or me, Petir.”
“Have you lost your mind?”
Emery’s voice boomed. “Your sister, your mother, and the peoples of our kingdoms need a resolution at once.”
Petir shook his head with a grimace. “You’re a coward.”
Several of the squires and Anai slaves gasped at hearing the words spoken aloud. The insult hit Emery hard, but he refused to let it show, instead staring off blankly until he could think of what to say.
“Boy…” Artima Lowe hinted, threateningly.
Tobius, Oren Harrin and Hart Moralis whispered to one-another as Emery closed his eyes solemnly.
Petir was undermining this whole thing. Emery needed his people to appear to the Seynards as a single, strong unit of men working together, but that had quickly become unravelled.
Emery said with almost a whimper, “to be a good king, son, means doing what is right for the greater good-”
“You… are… a… coward!” Petir shouted in his father’s face with tears in his eyes. He shot out of his seat, knocking the chair over and storming off from the meeting table.
Emery exhaled nervously, rubbing his eyebrow. “My son, he is… I apologise on his behalf.”
Bennet Decaster could not himself but smirk. “Seems your boy has a lot on his mind.”
“Yes, that tends to happen when you get your arm chopped off,” Artima Lowe barked.
Emery felt completely humiliated by Petir’s outburst. He had tried his best to steer the meeting towards a successful outcome for everyone, but he knew Petir was not going to be satisfied.
However, the worst thing about it was that Emery instantly began to question himself and the decisions he was making.
Was Petir right?
Am I a coward?
“I’m sorry, Emery… but we cannot accept your terms,” Tobius said.
“And why the hell not?” the Old Bear spat begrudgingly.
“It’s simple, really. Ciana will be staying in Andervale with her husband. Wesley and Ciana were united before the Moon Mother. The True Luminance spoke the sacred words and they were Bled.”
“So have the marriage annulled, and we can forget any of this ever happened,” Emery said, getting more and more frustrated.
“That is not possible, I’m afraid,” Oren Harrin sighed. His tone and accent were obviously aimed at soothing Emery, but it was having the opposite effect. “Annulments do not exist in Caldaea. Once a couple is united before the Moon Mother, their unification is for life and death. A couple cannot separate, or even remarry after a spouse’s death.”
It took all of Emery’s willpower not to grab the closest object and hurl it at the infuriating men before him. Bennet Decaster continued to smirk at the realisation that Emery was losing his temper.
“There must be something you can do,” Emery said. He knew they only wanted to keep Ciana for the political claims her blood and name provided. A Seynard had not married so prestigiously for generations.
Ciana was a priceless gift for the Seynards, and Emery, staring down Tobius like a predatory bird, could see their true intentions behind the façade of religious decrees they had established.
“Perhaps there is something else we can negotiate on?” Oren Harrin asked. His calm demeanour was waning on Emery’s patience.
Dark clouds were beginning to roll in, blocking out some of the sun and blue sky with a lifeless grey. Thunder continued to rumble in the distance, but something about it seemed a little off. The clouds had a strange shimmer to them.
Emery did not let up on his deep, determined stare. “We are not leaving here without confirmation that Ciana will be returned home.”
“That is not going to happen, Emery. I will not be giving my son’s wife away,” Tobius said.
“Need I remind you of the treachery your House has already committed upon my family?” Emery threatened. “The maiming of my son, the incident in Crown Bay, and of course, this whole narrative about your son with my son’s wife?”
“All of which paints your House out to be nothing but treasonous and deceitful,” Artima Lowe added.
“All kings are liars,” Tobius shrugged. “Let me give it to you clearly, Emery. Your daughter is an incredibly valuable asset to us. You knew that! That’s why you married her off to bring an end to the war you were losing! She is going nowhere. Maybe after she’s shot out a few sons for my boy, I will give you what’s left of her. Until then, Ciana is a Seynard.”
Decaster snickered, his ginger hair ruffling in the growing wind. The bastard was enjoying Emery’s suffering.
Emery was seething. “How dare you-”
“King Emery, please,” Oren Harrin said gracefully, attempting to quell his anger. “King Tobius is happy to hear you out on any other requests you may have in order to come to an agreement.”
The thunder was growing louder as the sky grew darker. The sun was swallowed by billowing clouds. Something about it did not strike Emery as natural, however. Yet he was far too angry to even comprehend it.
Emery stood up from his seat, leaning forward with his hands on the tabletop in a menacing gesture to try staring his rival down.
“If you mean for us to go to war again, Tobius… be a man about it. Say it to my face.”
Tobius began to squirm like a nervous child at the threat, offering nothing in return but a quivering lip. Emery was seeing right through his false façade.
The shadows of the rowhouses grew longer on the streets. The Citadel seemed to groan. The air fell still.
Oren Harrin laughed nervously. “Nobody said anything about a war, King Emery.”
“I came to this armistice of yours to make peace with your people, and you return the favour by insulting my son, threatening my daughter, and questioning my intelligence,” Emery hissed.
Tobius launched up from his own chair, matching Emery’s cold stare across the table. “I’d choose my next words very carefully, if I were you,” he warned.
“I’ve made my conditions clear. You will have peace when Ciana is returned to me,” Emery said.
“That is never going to happen.”
Emery could say nothing more. He glared at the king, holding a strong expression upon his own face. He was not going to give in.
A crack of thunder exploded from the sky above Tellersted, so loud that the goblets on the table vibrated. Flashes of red and orange blinked within the storm clouds.
It was so sudden that everything else went as silent as a graveyard. Those at the meeting peered up into the sky as an air of uncertainty spread amongst them.
“What was that?” Bennet Decaster said.
“Sudden thunderstorm, my lord?” one of his guards suggested. “Shall we move indoors?”
The flashes were unlike any lightning Emery had ever seen. The clouds were glowing, like a spectacular fire in the sky.
A deafening rumble came before another boom rocked through the city, far louder than the previous one. The entire earth appeared to shake with it.
Windows rattled befo
re shattering, sending millions of pieces of glass raining into the streets. Townspeople began to run and scream, fleeing for shelter as the strange thunder escalated in both volume and intensity.
Then came an enormous, ear-splitting crash.
A forceful wave of air smacked into Emery, sending him hurtling backwards into the table. Goblets, quills, and papers were flung off the table as those around Emery were blown off their feet and thrown to the ground.
The walls of the Citadel shook as Emery grabbed onto his chair for support, pulling himself up to his feet. His crown had been blown off his head and his ears were ringing as if a bell had been rung right next to him.
He looked to Artima Lowe with concern as everything around them was consumed by a dark red and orange glow from the clouds above.
“My king, I think we should leave at once,” Artima suggested frantically. “This isn’t right.”. He appeared just as nervous as Emery felt.
“What the fuck is going on? Man your stations!” Bennet Decaster shouted angrily, hurling orders to his guards to find out what was happening. He had blood dripping from his right ear.
From high in the sky came fiery embers, gracefully raining down with the wind. Hundreds of embers. Then thousands. As if the sky itself had caught alight.
The entire town was steadily drenched into darkness.
Emery heard distant screaming as the ground continued to rumble and shake. His guards ran over with weapons and shields drawn, forming a protective circle around he and Baron Artima.
Tobius was helped to his feet by his advisors who quickly began to flee towards the doors of the Citadel.
The giant soldier, Sen Dorval, remained at his station having drawn his war hammer and pointing it out in the direction of Emery as he guided his king to safety.
They think this is us.
His heart stopped. Emery had to find Petir and get back to Sirillia. Something was dreadfully wrong.
“Simen!” Emery shouted. “Find my son, now. We are leaving.”
“Yes, my king!” Simen Lowe said. His legs were wobbly as he ran to find Petir.
“Let’s get back to the camp and the queen, Artima. This instant.”
“Don’t have to tell me twice.”
As Emery was escorted back to Shadow, he looked up at the ensuing chaos raining down from the sky. Through the dark clouds and rainfall of embers came glowing balls of rock with long, streaking tails of fire. They roared across the sky faster than anything he’d ever seen, like falling stars.
Many were small and appeared to disappear a few seconds after erupting in flame. The larger ones, some as big as barrels and carts, crashed to the ground with explosive force, causing the ground to violently shake.
“Go, go, go!” Emery shouted as a cluster of flaming stars were headed straight for them with a monstrous, whistling howl.
Emery bounced up onto his saddle in one quick jump as the first rock smashed into a nearby rowhouse along the side of the courtyard. It penetrated straight through the roof and out the front façade, causing the entire thing to crumble in a blast of flame and debris.
The road next to the building rippled with the force of the impact, lifting and hurling the cobblestones from the ground.
A block of stone went careening through the air from a nearby building that exploded, smacking an unlucky Anai slave straight in the back, killing him instantly.
Emery turned his horse around as Artima and his guards mounted up and followed. His nostrils filled with the stench of ash and burning materials.
Another ball of flame screeched through the sky overhead, colliding into the Teller’s Square Moon Mother statue halfway up its height. The entire thing toppled over and crumbled into a shower of small stone pieces.
Townspeople came fleeing from a burning rowhouse, completely unrecognisable as their clothes went up in flames and their skin dripped from their bodies like melting wax.
Their screams. Emery had never heard anything so harrowing.
As they began galloping back the way they had arrived, Emery turned to see dozens of flaming rocks striking the Citadel, though barely leaving a dent across its remarkably solid exterior. The rocks appeared to shatter into thousands of pieces and adorning its exterior with enormous blast marks.
The sky was alight with fiery rain. The glowing clouds were continuously blown open as the stars fell through them.
All around them, Tellersted was ablaze. Houses had their roofs and walls punched in by the falling rocks. Shops were burning, their awnings collapsing and the materials singed and smouldering.
People ran and screamed for cover, terrified for their lives as their world around them was engulfed in red-hot flame.
All along the streets, the dead burned and bled.
Enormous plumes of smoke and embers billowed into the sky, serving only to light up in a brilliant display of radiant colour with each new star falling.
All the while, despite his sense being assaulted with flashes of light, ear-splitting noises, and sickening smells, Emery could only focus on getting Sirillia and Petir out of there as fast as possible.
He could feel the blood in his body pumping through to his screaming muscles, preparing him for the fight ahead. His stomach grew tight and his mind hyper-focused.
His guards were screaming at his side as they sped through the streets, dodging collapsing buildings and leaping over piles of fiery rubble.
“What the fuck do we do?!”
“Are we attacking Tellersted? Is this us?!”
“It’s the end! This is the end of all things!”
“We need to help these people!”
Artima was trying to shout to Emery to organise their next move but was met with silence on the king’s part.
The threat to his life meant nothing.
Emery did not avert his gaze anywhere but to what was ahead of he and Shadow.
He needed to retreat to his army, find Petir and Sirillia, and get out.
Nothing else mattered in that moment.
Chapter 36 - From Darkness
Tomas sat on the damp stone floor with his arms shrugged over his knees and his head hanging low. He had tried to get some sleep, but it had not come to him.
The cell he was locked in with Lynn Jhono was shrouded in darkness. A small candle the captain had allowed them to take in was their only source of light. The air felt heavy inside, as if the door had not been opened in years. It made it difficult to breathe.
Water dripped from the ceiling and collected in puddles between the old grimy stones. The continuous, monotonous drip was making Tomas more and more uncomfortable as the hours wore by.
Lynn sat across from him and had remained silent since being thrown in. Deep in thought, it seemed.
No matter how much he forced the thoughts away, the images of Rilan’s death continued to flash through Tomas’s mind. He replayed every detail- the thick, pristine snow, the gargling sound of Rilan choking on his own blood, the stench of Ref’s odour as Tomas tackled and beat him half to death.
Rilan’s helmet.
Tomas gritted his teeth. Rilan’s helmet, which had once belonged to his father, had been knocked from his head and was laying in the snow beside him after he had fallen.
That helmet meant something to Rilan- an heirloom of his deceased father. It was special, not only to Rilan but to Tomas as well. He recalled the night Rilan had saved him from his father, the helmet atop his shadowy figure having convinced his father to let Tomas go lest there be consequences.
Tomas could not help but wonder where it was now.
Was it still in the snow, beside Rilan’s slowly-decaying corpse, just waiting for some lucky passer-by to pick it up? Had a band of looters come across the site and taken it for themselves?
It pained Tomas to think that he had let Rilan down so heavily.
I failed him. I could not save him in time. I couldn’t even remember to pick up and take with me the one thing he cared about.
Tomas peered up over hi
s knees, glaring at Lynn across the other side of the cell through the dim light.
All this, for her.
He could not hold back his emotions, sinking back into a pit of despair. He pulled at his hair. He clawed at himself, feeling his dirtied nails drag and burn across his skin, trying to do anything to make the pain go away.
All this, for her.
“Are… are you alright?” Lynn murmured from out of nowhere.
Tomas looked up at her again, tears rolling down his face. He had been whimpering. He did not know how to respond, instead choosing to wipe his face and close his eyes back up.
“For what it’s worth, I wanted to say that I’m sorry about your friend,” Lynn said. “The one you mentioned earlier, who died on your way here. I am truly sorry that others had to die to help me. I… I never wanted that.”
Tomas still did not reply. Even if he wanted to, what would he say?
“You and I are not so different, I believe. I’ve lost everyone I know because of this place,” Lynn admitted. “My family, my friends, my mentor, Magister Aymeir. He was like a father to me. The only person I could ever truly rely on after my parents gave me up. I have no one left but myself now.”
Tomas could recognise the pain in her voice, even as he fought to keep his sympathy at bay. He could not refuse, however, that it was as if she were speaking words that were continuously ringing in his own mind.
“You have to believe me when I say that I had no part in what was going on at the Repository or the thing that killed your friend. Those children, the Blight. I was trying to stop it.”
Lynn played with the vial of black liquid around her neck as she spoke, like a nervous habit. Tomas decided to address it, on top of wanting to put an end to the sympathetic strategy he thought the woman was playing.
“What is that stuff?” Tomas asked, finally breaking his silence. “I heard Magisters carry them around their necks.”
“And why would I tell you that?” Lynn clutched it tightly in the palm of her hand, clearly protective of it.
“We are probably going to die here anyway. And right now, I’m trying to come up with decisions not to off you myself.”
Starfall (The Fables of Chaos Book 1) Page 42