Beyond the Black Door

by A. M. Strickland

  I had no idea if Zeniri’s suite would be guarded. But since he was imprisoned and no one knew about the passageway, I hazarded a guess it would be abandoned. I still eased open the closet door cautiously.

  His rooms were a wreck. The orange and purple chair cushions had been slashed, the coffee table upturned, curtains thrown to the floor. Stuffing and papers littered every surface. They’d obviously been searching for what Zeniri’s soul hadn’t revealed. He might not have done whatever they’d accused him of, but they knew he was hiding something.

  Zeniri, I thought with a pang. But, just like Nikha, I could only help him or Lenara by carrying on.

  Go, Kamai.

  I left the closet, making sure the panel to the passageway was closed behind me. Before I moved for the door, I exchanged Lenara’s gray cloak for a deep blue velvet one of Zeniri’s. It was a touch gaudy and too long, but it would be less noticeable than plain priestess’s garb in this part of the palace. I wouldn’t have far to go, because the wing reserved for courtiers and courtesans was near the king’s quarters. And hopefully no one would be looking for me, besides. Because of my shortcut, I could safely assume I had outpaced news of my escape. But it probably wouldn’t be far behind me, and delivered to very specific ears.

  There hadn’t been the slightest hint of Vehyn’s presence. Not a whisper of his voice in my head or a flicker of his power in my flesh. I hoped he wasn’t waiting, saving his strength. All I could do was keep moving.

  I cracked the door. No one was in the hall outside. I slipped out, keeping my cloak held tight. The gold and red of the palace blurred by me, my feet carrying me like a shadow. I soon passed others—courtiers, nobles—but no one paid me any mind. With my hood up, I was just another person returning from a discreet visit to someone’s private quarters.

  I made it all the way to the gilded double doors to the king’s apartments. But there was no avoiding the pair of guards in equally gilded armor standing on either side.

  Not knowing what else to do, I walked right up to them. “I need to see the king. It’s an emergency.”

  One of them scoffed at me, but the other said more seriously, “The king left orders that he is not to be disturbed at any cost. He has sensitive business he is attending to. Whatever yours is, you’ll have to wait, make a formal petition for an audience—”

  My breath hitched. “Is his business with Ramir Zareen?”

  The man, caught off guard, nodded. “It is, but that isn’t your concern.”

  It was already starting. I had to get inside, now.

  I exhaled what I hoped was the right amount of fogging darkness. Their eyes clouded. The one closest teetered slightly but didn’t fall. I peered through the window into their souls and pushed my own thoughts inside.

  There’s no one here. No one at this door. No one entering.

  I had no idea if it would work. They both merely blinked, staring down the hall, past me. I slipped between them and put my hand on the golden doorknob, expecting at any moment for one of them to shout, or grab me. But they didn’t. It was as if I wasn’t there. Part of me hoped I hadn’t permanently fixed such a notion in their subconscious minds, or they could never be guards again. But even so, it would be a necessary sacrifice.

  I opened the door … and walked right in on Agrir and Nyaren in an ornately gilded sitting room. They stood, their stances tense, before another pair of doors that undoubtedly led to an inner, more private meeting chamber. Razim and the king were nowhere to be seen, which meant they were likely alone inside, together.

  The noise of my entrance caused Agrir and Nyaren to spin around. I shut the door quickly, before the guards could come to their senses and follow me inside.

  “What? How—?” Agrir sputtered. “Did he permit you to be here? Razim has just gone in, you can’t—”

  I had no idea how they had managed to arrange a private audience between Razim and the king, but there was no more time for questions.

  I wished desperately that Nikha were with me, but I only had myself. One breath took out Nyaren, dropping him like a bag of stones, but Vehyn’s gift … it was weakening. Either I was exhausting the power I had, or Vehyn was choking it, or Agrir had some sort of resistance to it, because his eyes only half closed before he shook off the effect. He dove for the doors to the hall to alert the guards, moving faster than I thought a man of his age could. He didn’t shout, at least, probably because he didn’t want the king to think something was amiss and interrupt whatever was happening between him and Razim.

  Which gave me time to swipe a golden candlestick off an end table. It was the first thing I could reach. I threw myself at Agrir, hammering him savagely over the head. He joined Nyaren on the floor, groaning.

  Nikha’s strength, and her training, had been behind the blow. She was here with me in spirit. I dropped the candlestick and tore open the doors to the inner room to see Razim, with a long, wicked knife unsheathed and held ready behind his back; the king, sitting in a plush chair behind a wide desk; and the walls, splattered with as much golden opulence as one would expect a king’s office to have. It looked like they had only finished introductions, Razim straightening as if from a bow, and yet he was already prepared for a killing blow. So much for pleasantries. I should have kept the candlestick to bash Razim upside the head.

  Razim didn’t even turn to see who was at the doors, though the king’s gaze jerked to me in surprise. Maybe Razim had been waiting for an intrusion, a distraction, which one of the others was supposed to have caused.

  I stepped into the room just in time for him to lunge at the king, dagger outstretched.

  32

  BIRTHDAY PRESENTS

  “No!” I screamed, lunging for Razim just as he had for the king. By the time I caught him, Razim was already halfway across the king’s massive wooden desk, scattering papers. I seized hold of his jacket, yanking, trying to hold him back.

  Razim’s arm swept out. The dagger slashed the air. The king gasped.

  I hauled on Razim hard enough that we both tumbled back, careening off a high-backed leather chair and landing in a heap on the plush carpet. I cried out, shoving him off me with one hand and pinning him down with the other. He didn’t resist, oddly. We both looked to the king.

  The king’s eyes were wide. They were Razim’s eyes, I now realized. The king’s hand was at his throat.

  “No,” I whispered.

  But then he pulled his fingers away, revealing only a small gash in his neck and a trickle of blood, not the cascade of red that I’d feared. I fell back with a sigh of relief, still holding Razim down with a hand on his chest.

  “What is the meaning of this, Razim?” the king asked, his voice shocked.

  For a second, I was surprised he wasn’t shouting for the guards, but then what he’d said dawned on me, surprising me even more. Both Razim and I blinked from the floor. “Razim?” I said. “You know his true name?”

  “Of course I do,” the king spat at me, anger coloring his voice now. “He’s my son.”

  My mouth fell open. “You know?”

  Razim gaped back and forth between the both of us, clearly with no idea of what was going on.

  “Of course I know!” the king snapped. “Why do you think I’ve invited him here, on his twentieth birthday? I’ve just signed the official decree declaring him the heir apparent.” He gestured at the scattered papers, half hanging off the desk, some on the floor. “What I don’t know is why you just tried to kill me, my son.”

  “I didn’t know,” Razim said, sounding dazed.

  “But—but,” I stammered at the king. “How did you know?”

  He blinked at me from behind his desk, as if surprised to find me still there, asking questions, never mind that I had just saved his life. “This is none of your concern. Why are you even—”

  “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Razim interrupted, in that same distant voice.

  Maybe it was because Razim asked, or because the king seemed a little dazed himse
lf, but he answered. “The truth about you was brought to my attention only recently. My holy adviser discovered the queen consort’s deceit. She had hidden you, our child, the kingdom’s heir, preventing me from fulfilling my sacred duty to pass on…” He blinked, shook his head, perhaps realizing he shouldn’t be talking about something as important as Ranta’s bond in front of me. “I had the criminals executed.”

  “Your wife, you mean,” I snarled, “and she was going to tell you the truth! You also killed Marin Nuala, my mother, but you probably don’t remember her. And Hallan Lizier—”

  “Hallan!” the king cried, his lips looking pale in his reddened face, his breath coming faster. “He was the greatest deceiver of all. We treated him like family, my wife and I, but…” He glanced to the side, unable to meet my eyes.

  And then I understood. The king had never been in the dark about their affair. He had been a part of it. Hallan had played the role of what was sometimes referred to as a “marriage aid,” especially in arranged or royal marriages, wherein one of the partners wasn’t so … interested … in the other. Perhaps both the king and the queen consort had loved Hallan, for a time. Until they found out what he had been doing when he wasn’t in their bed.

  An affair seemed a harsh reason for an execution, which was why I’d thought it had been done in a fit of rage and then quietly buried. But that hadn’t made as much sense after I’d met the king and found him to be calm and stable, even while angry. Now I knew—it wasn’t the affair he had discovered, but Razim.

  “He stole my child from me,” the king continued, still breathing hard, even though his anger seemed to have cooled as he looked to Razim, “and kept you hidden for all these years.”

  Razim’s voice rose. “Mere days could have made a difference. I wouldn’t have done this, if only I had known!” He didn’t seem to care that he was nearly shouting at the king.

  Neither did the king, oddly. “I wasn’t sure how Hallan might have poisoned you against me, my son, so after his execution, I allowed you, with Agrir’s help, to come to court with a different name, so I could observe you.”

  That was why the king had been so curious as to Razim’s obsession with me, Jidras’s scandalous courtesan daughter. He was looking after his son—a fact that Agrir had taken care to hide in his soul.

  “But…,” Razim stammered. “But Agrir said…”

  The king scrubbed at his face. He was sweating. “You probably didn’t know I was the one behind your new title and lands to the north. Agrir provided you with some other excuse for your new fortune, did he not?”

  Agrir had tricked both of them, giving Razim an “excuse” the king would never have anticipated: that the Twilight Guild was helping him avenge his father.

  “I determined you were of sharp intellect and sound character, aside from your strange interest in her,” the king added, glancing at me. “But now…” He refocused on Razim, who stared back at him in growing horror. The king blinked, his eyes looking suddenly hazy.

  Alarm bells started ringing in my head. The king’s lips were too pale, his breathing too labored. The knife had merely nicked him, but …

  “Razim,” I cried, reaching for the dagger, “what was on that blade?”

  He yanked it out of my reach, looking at me with wide, wild eyes. “Poison,” he said. “A fatal amount.” That was why he hadn’t bothered striking again after he’d only barely touched the king. “I thought I was avenging my father. I didn’t think…”

  “That you would become king?” a voice said behind us. Razim and I both spun on our knees. The king only glanced to the entrance, his head wobbling unsteadily. Agrir stood in the doorway, holding a hand to his own head, which was covered with blood, thanks to me. His other hand held a knife. “Prepare yourself, Razim. It is your destiny.”

  “No,” Razim said, coming to his feet shakily. “I didn’t want this. I never would have done this if—”

  “You’d known?” Agrir finished, coming farther into the room. He took his hand from his bleeding scalp to pick up one of the sheets of paper, covered in flowing script, with a sweeping signature at the bottom, along with a red wax seal that looked like a splatter of blood from this vantage. It might as well have been the king’s blood. “That was why we didn’t tell you and fought hard to keep others from telling you. And now here you are.” He lifted the document. “It says right here, signed and sealed by the king, witnessed by the high priest—me, of course. You’re the heir apparent, to be crowned king at the time of your father’s death.” He glanced at the king. “Which might come sooner rather than later. How do you like your birthday present?”

  Razim was shaking his head, over and over again. The king wasn’t doing much of anything, only staring, but then he coughed, spasming, and spittle dripped from his lips. It was tinged red.

  “He did this, Razim,” I said, gasping in fear. “Agrir arranged everything. He convinced the king to kill Hallan, my mother, your mother, to keep the truth from you and to make you a pawn. The guild tricked you. He deceived you. Don’t be fooled by him any longer.”

  But maybe it didn’t matter anymore, I realized, as the king coughed violently. I could hear the truth. He was going to die by Razim’s hand, and the bond with Ranta would break. There was nothing I could do to stop it. And then Vehyn … I didn’t know if Vehyn was watching all this, waiting for Razim’s soul to tear, but I had a strong premonition that he was. Vehyn, Darkness, would rule the land wearing Razim’s body.

  Maybe I could stop that, at least. And maybe, somehow, the bond wouldn’t break if the heir died first. I glanced around wildly, seeking anything that I could use to help me. I looked up at Razim, and he down at me. As if reading my thoughts, he glanced at the poisoned dagger on the carpet.

  Both Agrir and I followed his gaze. I dove for the dagger first, snatching it up. But Agrir was already coming at me, his own knife raised.

  Razim stepped between us, planting a fist in the high priest’s stomach, doubling him over. He swept Agrir’s knife from his loosened grip and in the same fluid motion buried it in the high priest’s spine.

  Agrir collapsed on the ground, limp and staring. Razim didn’t turn, only stood, broad shoulders rising and falling, looking down at the body. His back was exposed. The poisoned dagger was in my hand. The king slumped onto his desk and began sliding, inexorably, toward the floor.

  It was now or never. I raised the dagger.

  Razim spun and his hand caught mine. Except—it wasn’t his hand. His fingers were whorled in black. With a cry, I looked at his face. His eyes too were dark as night.

  “Don’t, Kamai.” Razim’s voice grated. But it was with Vehyn’s inflection.

  Had he already moved into Razim’s soul? But that would mean the king … I glanced in his direction. He still had breath, but it was rasping, wet, in his chest.

  Razim winced, buckling as if in pain. “What’s happening?” he gasped—his own voice, this time.

  His soul hadn’t entirely surrendered yet. But as the king slowly died, it was beginning to do so.

  “Fight it, Razim!” I shouted, but then he twisted my hand until the knife dropped from my nerveless fingers.

  “He can’t fight me, Kamai,” Vehyn hissed through Razim’s lips. As he spoke, the room began to darken, and I realized it was the sunlight outside, through the windows of the study, beginning to dim. “And neither can you. You can’t win.”

  He shoved me away, probably in case he lost control of Razim’s body again and I tried to retrieve the knife. I hit the king’s desk hard, and both the dying man and I fell onto the carpet. His eyes were already open, unseeing. His breath was a whispered rattle. It was so pained, so horrible, I almost wished I could end it for him sooner.

  The realization hit me: I could end it sooner. My mother’s knife—I’d only lost it in the sleeping realm. Its manifestation might have faded with her spirit, but here it was still made of solid wood and metal, the same as when she’d gifted it to me for my tenth birthday, for m
y protection in the waking realm. I yanked it out of my bodice, springing the small blade free from its wooden handle.

  Vehyn suddenly realized what I was doing. “Wait, Kamai.”

  I didn’t. I slit the king’s throat and then stabbed him as many times as I could, in the chest, blood spattering me, before hands tore me away.

  “What are you doing?” Vehyn shouted. He ripped the red-stained knife from my grip and threw me aside, turning to the king. Perhaps he thought to make one last strike. The final death blow.

  “What I should have done a long time ago,” I said, and closed my eyes.

  I reopened them in my soul. My soul. My soul. It was dark, but it was mine. I knew it, and I loved it. I felt all the open doors to Razim’s nehym like drafts in a house, and I brought them together in a line before me, along one side of the great entry hall, summoning them as simply and quickly as a thought. Vehyn appeared in one of them. His eyes were wild. “Kamai!”

  He came charging toward me, into my beautiful, dark fortress. That was when I closed all the doors. Every single one. But I didn’t just close them; I made them vanish, until only smooth wall remained. There was one door left—the black door, the one that led out of my soul—but nothing led to Razim’s anymore. Vehyn was trapped in here, with me. I had broken the connection.

  Because I had the power. This place was mine. I had reclaimed it, as my mother had urged me to.

  “No!” Vehyn screamed.

  “I told you,” I said, my tone merciless, “and you made the promise yourself. You serve me. So guard my soul for me. You are bound to it. It is your duty. Your prison.”