Beyond the Black Door

by A. M. Strickland

  His voice, his face, was desperate. Pleading. “Wait, Kamai! It will be different without the Darkness. I’ll be different. I can already feel it leaving me. I’ll be better, I promise—”

  “You have to keep your old promises before I can trust you with more. Good-bye, Vehyn.”

  He let loose a wordless cry and lunged for me. I stepped back, through the final black door, the one that had haunted me from my birth. I closed it on him.

  The door shuddered. But it didn’t open. After all, I was the only one who could open it now.

  Eventually the pounding fell silent.

  * * *

  When I next opened my eyes, I was staring at a molded bronze ceiling. The light had returned to normal, bright and golden through the windowpanes. Razim was leaning over me, stroking my hair, my face. Tears were in his eyes.

  Only tears. No darkness. He was only Razim again, the young man. My fake ex-stepbrother.

  And soon he would be king. I turned my head to find the staring eyes, the unmoving, bloody chest of the king. He was dead. I had killed him. And in so doing, I’d kept Razim from killing him. Kept his soul from surrendering. Kept the king’s sacred bond with Ranta intact. Kept the world from falling to Darkness. Kept.

  Maybe I was a Keeper. The thought, for the moment, didn’t taste like victory, but like blood. Or maybe that was actually what was on my lips. I was covered in blood—the king’s. Razim had actually been wiping it off my mouth with his sleeve. Of course, it was poisoned. He hadn’t wanted me to swallow any of it.

  For the moment, I didn’t really care if I died.

  “Kamai,” Razim gasped, bending over me and touching his forehead to mine. “I felt it. What was entering me. What was going to happen to me. It’s gone. You stopped it. Oh, gods, it’s gone.” He was shaking, terrified. But he wasn’t so beside himself that he didn’t ask, “What do you need? Are you hurt? What can I get you?”

  I opened my mouth, my tongue dry. “Nikha. I want Nikha.” Soon after, I asked him to free Lenara and Zeniri from the royal dungeons, but right then, all I could think of was her.

  She found me in the king’s sitting room. Razim had moved me there, after guards and advisers began flooding the inner meeting room in an uproar. Razim was with them, answering what I imagined were tens of thousands of questions. I knew I would have to answer some soon myself. But at the moment, I was incapable.

  I was shivering badly, teeth chattering, despite the blanket Razim had wrapped around me, and I couldn’t stop crying. The king. He had been far from perfect and had even been involved with my mother’s death, but he hadn’t been an evil man. And now all I could see were his sweat-sheened, pale lips and staring eyes as I cut his throat. Feel the give of his flesh as I stabbed him in the chest. His hot blood on my hands.

  And Vehyn. Vehyn’s expression as I shut the door on him. Locked him away in my soul.

  I felt that too, like a wound. Vehyn was evil, but I loved him anyway.

  At least the tears, and the cloth Razim had given me, had cleaned most of the blood off my face by the time Nikha found me. She came limping through the doorway, a thick white bandage around her thigh, in her usual leather tunic and wrinkled undershirt, which no doubt needed washing, her hair mussed and spiky.

  She was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen. Like a prince come to rescue me—never mind that I had already rescued myself and a prince, no less. But I didn’t feel saved. I felt lost, and Nikha was finding me.

  I started sobbing uncontrollably at the sight of her. She rushed to the couch and threw herself down, her arms around me. She held me while I quaked and cried, rocking me back and forth against her chest.

  “Shh,” she said into my hair. “Shh, it’s going to be all right.”

  There was no way she could even know what had happened. But for some ridiculous reason, I believed her.

  33

  SOFT TRUTHS

  I was reading aloud to Nikha when a knock sent me sitting up in my chair.

  Nikha was sprawled across the foot of my bed, much in the careless way of a young man—legs spread wide, arms folded behind her head, staring at the ceiling, lost in the words. She’d tried to read to me at first, when I was either refusing to sleep or to get up, but she’d never learned to read very well, and I grew impatient and ended up taking the book from her. I supposed that might have been her intention. She rather enjoyed being read to.

  But at the sound of a fist on the door, she shot upright in an instant. A familiar surge of apprehension swept through me. The last few weeks had been reverberating with the sound of knocking.

  Although only on the door to Nikha’s and my suite. The other door, my black door, had been silent.

  It was only Zeniri, who slipped into the room without waiting for one of us to invite him in.

  “What’s wrong?” Nikha demanded. We weren’t under arrest, exactly, but if we didn’t wander about the palace much, everyone was more relaxed. Even I preferred it that way. I’d kept the curtains drawn in our usually too-bright suite. Nikha, for her part, had ended up actually dragging a cot into my room like she’d threatened, to the horror of the palace servants, so she could be right there when I woke up screaming at night. She even climbed in bed with me a few times, holding me until I fell asleep. Neither of us really wanted company in this state, but it was unavoidable.

  Zeniri, Lenara, and Razim were our most frequent visitors, but I’d also seen dozens of others with dozens upon dozens of questions, accusations, threats … Only reading aloud, playing Gods and Kings, and listening Razim’s music, which he occasionally played for me, had made it bearable.

  Not that Razim had an excess of spare time. In the few weeks that I hadn’t left my room, Razim had been busier than he’d ever been in his life. While I was remembering how to feel again, he was learning how to rule a kingdom.

  Not only that, he was actively dismantling the Twilight Guild with what knowledge he had of their members and their dealings. He couldn’t weed out all of it, and much of it likely went to ground, but he did what he could. These were the people who had once been his comrades, whom his adoptive father had once worked alongside, but now that Razim understood their true purpose, he punished them without mercy. He even sent Nyaren, his friend, to the dungeons.

  “What’s wrong?” Zeniri threw Nikha’s words back at her. “Look at her! Is she never going to wear something remotely presentable again?” He arched an eyebrow at Nikha. “Though I shouldn’t expect you to be much help. Good thing you both have me.”

  Rather, it was a good thing—probably—that I cared about his insults. Feeling anything at all felt nice, even if it was the sting of indignation.

  Zeniri noticed it in my expression. “Feeling less numb, are we? That’s not the only thing that’s receding. Your eyes look better, though they’re the only part of you that does.”

  Less shadowed, he meant. Indeed, the darkness under my eyes had faded, if not the shadow over my heart.

  “At least you can no longer cheat at Gods and Kings,” he said, changing the subject, no doubt sensing my clouding mood. Zeniri hadn’t been a good spy purely because he was a soulwalker—the man was as sharp as a honed dagger. I was glad he was on my side. Most of the time.

  “She doesn’t need to cheat to win,” Nikha muttered, flopping back down on the bed. “She destroyed me earlier. And yesterday, and the day before that.”

  “Another indication she’s feeling better.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “Better enough for what?”

  He grinned. “The ceremony, of course.”

  “What ceremony?”

  “Razim didn’t tell you?” His voice was all too innocent.

  “No, he didn’t,” I said, “and I’m not going anywhere.”

  “That’s probably why he didn’t tell you. And now with me here, you can’t run away.” He waved his arms at me. “Go, get out of those rags. The servants are already drawing a bath in the other room. In the meantime, I’ll pick out somethin
g properly humble and penitent.”

  Which meant he would pick something out that was precisely the opposite.

  “Zeniri, I’m a regicide. No one cares if I’m sorry. And no one wants me at any ceremony.”

  “Even if it’s your ceremony?”

  My mouth fell open. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Of course! Our lovely lad—excuse me, king—needs to put a less official but no less important stamp on your pardon with a celebration. It’s only fitting.”

  Razim had pardoned everyone who’d tried to thwart the Twilight Guild—including Lenara, Zeniri, Nikha, and me. Especially me. Several of his advisers called for my punishment, even execution, never mind what else I might have done. I had killed the king, just like Razim’s and my fated game of Gods and Kings had once foreshadowed. An unforgivable sin. And I had also meddled in souls.

  But I had done it in service of the land, and saved Razim’s life, his soul, and the realm while I was at it. So, since he was the new king, he had some say in the matter. He pardoned me without condition.

  Likewise, Zeniri could walk around the palace freely because “unauthorized” soulwalkers such as my mother and he had played a large part in helping me. Razim looked upon the old problem of their existence in a fresh light and established a new guild, monitored by the priests and priestesses of Heshara, for soulwalkers who didn’t wish to be trapped in a temple and robes. There was no longer only a choice between the clergy or imprisonment and death. Razim made Zeniri the head of it, since everyone agreed he couldn’t simply go back to the pleasure arts. I became the first signed member, after him, of the Soulwalkers Guild. It was also excellent recruiting grounds for the Keepers, though that fact was kept quiet, of course.

  Not that there weren’t still murmurs against me, the Soulwalkers Guild, and Razim himself.

  “Zeniri—” I said, already feeling tired and overwhelmed.

  “Ah!” He cut me off with a raised finger. “No arguments!”

  I let him hustle me into the bathroom, where the servants undertook the unpleasant task of scrubbing hair that hadn’t been washed in far too long. At least the steaming water felt nice. I sat there in silence, submerged up to my chin, contemplating how difficult an escape out the window would be.

  It was only when the hands in my hair stilled and the room fell silent that I looked up. Lenara stood next to the bathtub, and the servants were quietly letting themselves out.

  “Here to congratulate me on being a regicide, as well?” When she didn’t answer, I asked, “How do those new robes feel?”

  Shortly after Agrir’s death, Lenara had been named the new high priestess in his place, due partially to her role in exposing and defeating his plan, which had been the greatest of blasphemies, and partially to other loyalties of hers within the clergy. Razim had no part in this decision, which made her support of him all the more convincing.

  After her rise, both she and several other well-respected priests and priestesses of Heshara—members of the Keepers, she’d told me after—had sworn on their power that Razim hadn’t had any ill intent toward his father and had never himself been a member of the Twilight Guild, and that the murder plot had been entirely Agrir’s. It was a total fabrication, of course, but necessary, Lenara argued, for the stability of the kingdom. The new high priestess also supported the formation of the Soulwalkers Guild, and since she was the one ceding her own clergy’s absolute control over soulwalking, no one could argue.

  Lenara glanced down at her robes—those of a high priestess. “They don’t feel entirely settled yet,” she admitted grudgingly. “There are those among the king’s advisory council and the nobility who still question everything, but none dare openly defy both the new king and the high priestess. Sooner or later, Razim will have to deal with those dissenters and their plotting and backstabbing that will make his rule less than smooth. But for now, everyone will put on a smile, even if they don’t want to.”

  Even me.

  “So I have to go to a party?” I muttered into the suds.

  “Razim insists. As do I. People need to see your face—that it belongs to a young girl, not…”

  “A killer?” I finished for her.

  “I was going to say a traitor to the throne.”

  I winced.

  Her hand found my shoulder, and her voice was soft. “Kamai, I’m sorry. For everything. For doubting you, for what you had to do. You’re not a killer or a traitor. You’re one of the bravest people I know. Your mother would be so, so proud of you.”

  “I saw my mother,” I blurted. “Before I closed off the source of Darkness. She was there, her spirit, at least, held captive, but then I freed her. Before she left, she … she told me to tell you that she misses you.”

  Lenara’s fingers flexed on my shoulder. “Thank—” It took a moment before she could get her voice under control. “Thank you for telling me. It means more than I can say, even if I can barely fathom it. I would like to discuss this more with you later, but for now I won’t let you use it as an excuse to get out of the ceremony.” She paused. “I’m asking you to be brave once again and put on whatever horror of a dress Zeniri chooses for you.”

  If I agreed, my first official outing from my rooms—other than my discreet walks at night in the gardens with Nikha—would be to go into a ballroom where everyone’s eyes would be on me. Razim had insisted likely just to pry me out of my bed.

  I ducked my head under the bathwater, wishing I could hide, but when I resurfaced, Lenara was still there.

  “Fine,” I said. I would have to face all this sooner or later.

  She smiled at me, her expression radiant. But then it fell. “Before I go, I just want to check…”

  I knew what she was going to ask. “It’s closed, Lenara.”

  “You’re sure—?”

  “Yes, and I don’t want to talk about it again.”

  Lenara left me in peace after that.

  * * *

  In front of a large audience in one of the palace’s grand halls, Razim awarded me Ranta’s Heart, granted for an act of supreme service to the kingdom. The ceremony involved his glowing speech, my acceptance of a beautiful bronze pendant, cast in a heart shape—which only reminded me of the hearts I’d stabbed or broken, my own included—and an excess of applause that sounded too loud to be entirely genuine. I mostly tried to imagine I was elsewhere. My off-the-shoulder, wine-colored silk gown didn’t help—it was far too attention-grabbing, and I cursed Zeniri under my breath the whole time. So much for looking “penitent.”

  Jidras was in attendance. When he caught my eye, he gave me a tentative nod, which from him was like an embrace. Still, I knew it wasn’t for me. Since I had saved the realm, I was now a Person of Importance. Only now was I worth acknowledging.

  But if my mother could forgive him, so could I. I walked over to him afterward, his eyes widening at my approach. He probably hadn’t expected, nor wanted, me to find him.

  “I saw Mother,” I said. “Marin’s spirit, in the sleeping realm.” I didn’t elaborate how, but by now everyone knew I had at least worked some sort of strange magic there. His eyes shot even wider. “She couldn’t stay long before she … passed on … but she told me to tell you that she forgives you.”

  I gave him the same benediction as I had when I’d left his household, touching the crown of my head, the spot between my eyes, and my lips with three fingers. This time, I reached out and touched his lips.

  I walked away soon after that, but not before I saw Jidras’s face crumple.

  My steps took me out onto an adjoining mosaic-speckled gallery, to look for fresh air. There were too many bodies around. For once, however, Nikha was enjoying herself with other people, drinking rather a lot of punch and laughing with a group of palace guards. I didn’t want her to stop on my account, so I tried to escape her notice, sitting on a bench in a quiet corner.

  Eventually, Razim sat down next to me, surprising me. His deep green brocade jacket painted the perfect
picture with my wine-colored gown, and I wondered if it had been planned that way. He put his hand on mine before I could do more than shift on the bench, let alone say anything.

  “You know, you would do me a great honor by becoming my queen consort.” I looked at him in shock, and he grimaced. “No, that came out wrong. I would vastly prefer ruling this kingdom if I had you to help me do it.”

  I shook my head. “But … you don’t even feel that way about me anymore.”

  It was true. Ever since I’d severed the connection between our souls, the look in his eyes had been different. Softer, calmer. He still cared for me, but the possessive fire that had burned there was gone. I knew now it must have come from Vehyn’s influence over him.

  He sighed. “I know you better than anyone, and you know me better. You saved my life, despite…” Despite nearly killing him. “Despite everything. You saved my soul too, and my supposed kingdom … whereas I would have destroyed them both.”

  “Not you,” I said. “That wasn’t you. And the things you did by your own hand … Razim, you didn’t know. My mother told me to tell you too: this wasn’t your fault. Those were some of her last words, so listen to them.” He blinked at the news. “You were just trying to seek revenge, like I was. And hey,” I said, and laughed weakly, “you killed your father’s killer, like you wanted—Agrir.”

  “My father … Hallan wasn’t…” He choked slightly, cleared his throat.

  “Hallan was your father,” I said vehemently. “He loved you, so much that in the end he died for it. Just because the king was your blood, that doesn’t mean he was your father.”

  This I knew all too well.

  Razim sat quietly for a moment. “All of this aside, I can’t think of anyone else I would rather have rule with me.”

  “You’ll find someone.” I tucked his hair behind his ear, and he leaned into my hand. “In the meantime, you have Lenara to help you. And you’ll always have me as a friend. I’ll be here whenever you need me, I promise.”