Dissever

by Ward, Tracey

  “We don’t worship them,” he said firmly, “not like you do. It’s dangerous. We have a relationship with the Earth elemental, though. We respect it, it respects us.”

  “And what do you call that type of elemental? Sparrows? Puppies? Wombats?”

  He rolled his eyes at me. “Are you having fun with this?”

  “I’m trying not to go insane.”

  “Some cultures refer to the Water as Undines. Does that make it easier for you?”

  “Yes, thank you. Now the Earth, what are they called?”

  “Ila.”

  “Good, alright,” I said, trying to remember all of this. I was learning a new religion, a new doctrine and not an ounce of it made sense to me yet. “So the Air elementals are Sylphs, the water are Undines and the Earth are Ilas?”

  “Ilai.”

  I glared at him. “What?”

  “The plural of Ila is…” He trailed off, seeing the look on face. My annoyance at having begun to grasp this madness and being corrected. “You know, it doesn’t matter. Forget it. Ilas, yes. That’s right.”

  “What about the Fire? What do I call him?”

  “You call him nothing, not here. There isn’t one.”

  I frowned. “Are there none anywhere in the world?”

  “They’re everywhere. Just not here on this island. That’s half the problem. It’s why this island is so imbalanced and strange. There’s only supposed to be one spirit for each element. They’re meant to keep one another in check. Fire balances Water, Air balances Earth. Everyone lives in harmony and the world turns as it should.”

  “But that doesn’t happen here.”

  Roarke laughs without mirth. “No, it does not. Without Fire, which we refer to as Idris, there’s a gaping hole here. The absence of Idris is most noticeable in the sea where the Undines live.”

  “The Shallows,” I say darkly, having no trouble solving that riddle.

  “Yes. There are literally thousands of them where there’s only supposed to be one. With Idris gone and the Sylph here as cunning as it is, it’s a playground for the Undines.”

  “What about Ila? Why doesn’t the Earth elemental do something about it?”

  “I don’t believe it can. It’s fiercely outnumbered and when we arrived the land here was nearly destroyed. Your people worship the Sylphs and Undines, a terrible choice by the way, and—“

  “Wait, why? Why is it a bad idea?”

  “They aren’t actually gods. They have powers to be sure, but they aren’t the omnipotent, benevolent beings your religion casts them as. They can be incredibly spiteful, selfish, uncaring and generally cruel. Worshipping them has given them strength over you. You’re people live under their thumb. That is terrifying to us.”

  “You’re people would never do that?”

  He shakes his head emphatically. “No. We have always been careful to maintain a relationship with Ila, but never a religion. When we arrived here we treated the land right, farmed it responsibly with the future well-being of the earth in mind. We brought it back to life. That hadn’t been done here in thousands of years so when we showed such care, your island’s Ila thanked us. It shelters us with the trees, feeds us with the crops.”

  “How do you know that’s what’s happening? How do you know you’re not just as imprisoned by it as we are? Do you talk to it?”

  He smirked at me. “Do you talk to your Saints?”

  “No, only the High Priest does that. They speak through him. Or so he says.”

  “I’ve never heard Ila speak, though some say they have, my mother being one of them. With her being clairvoyant, I’m inclined to believe her. But most of us can feel its presence, especially here in the village surrounded by the trees.” He glanced at me curiously. “Can you feel it?”

  I paused, paying attention to the world around me in a newly intense way.

  Eventually I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe. I’ve always felt different here simply because it’s so unlike the castle and The Court. I feel safer here, warmer. More at peace.” I smiled at him. “I thought it was because of you.”

  He smiled as well. “Maybe. But it sounds like you feel it, at least a little bit. And it’s aware of you, even if you aren’t aware of it.”

  I sighed, feeling tired. “I don’t think I like the sound of that. It seems I have enough attention as it is.”

  “It’s alright, Ila is not malevolent. Not like the Sylphs and Undines here.”

  “So all of these beings are everywhere in the world? Where your people are from, there were Ila, Sylph, Undine and…?”

  “Idris, Fire. Yes, they’re everywhere. The Ila here is different than the one my people knew before.”

  “Before you were forced to leave?”

  “Something like that,” he muttered.

  He took my hand, bringing it to his lap. He wrapped it firmly in both of his. He stared at our skin mingling there, mine alabaster white and his golden honey. We were so different, inside and out. But we belonged together. That much I knew for certain. And when he looked into my eyes, I could see he knew it too.

  “Don’t marry him, Anna.”

  I felt my throat clenching, but I swallowed hard. “I have to. They’re ancient, Ro. We angered them only a hundred years ago. That’s the blink of an eye to something eternal. With two betrayals so recent, I doubt they would be merciful.”

  “I can’t—“ He shook his head, looking away for a moment. Then his eyes were with me again, brimming with pain. “The idea of you married to him… And the Undines taking you. I can’t stand it.”

  “I know,” I said, my voice cracking. “But I—“

  “I’ve loved you my entire life. You and no one else. Marrying someone else, it doesn’t make sense.” He pressed his forehead against mine. I felt hot tears slip down my face as I closed my eyes, drinking in the smell of him. Soap, sap and sea salt. “I have been bound to you body and soul since the moment I met you. I have been ever faithful. Ever thine.”

  “I can’t let all of those people die,” I whispered brokenly.

  “And I can’t watch you wither away in that castle.” He swallowed hard. “Do you love me?”

  “You know I do.”

  “Do you want to marry me?”

  “You and no one else.”

  He sat back, looking down at me with determination burning in his eyes. “Then we’ll do it. We’ll marry in secret hidden in the earth, in the Cave of Ila. It’s the seat of its power here. The Sylph and Undines won’t be able to find us inside. They’ll never know.”

  “But what will it change?”

  “Everything. We’ll perform the old ceremony, the one my people haven’t used since we left our home. It’s a binding ritual that ties a person to the Ila. It shares your strengths, making you belong to each other. It’s something that was only ever done to royalty to solidify their connection to the island and give them strength, or what you call magic.”

  “You want to bind me to an elemental? I thought that’s what we were trying to avoid?”

  “And to me.”

  “What?”

  “I want to bind you to me and myself to you. The important thing is that it’s all reciprocal. I give to you, you give to me, the Ila gives to you, you give to the Ila. You won’t belong to the Ila, not the way the Undines and Sylph want you to belong to them. They don’t want to share their power with you, they only want to take from you. They want to use you up like a toy until you’re broken and they can get another.”

  “And the Ila will share its strength with me? It will keep me safe?”

  “All we can do is ask. Even if it refuses, you’ll still be bound to me. The Sylph and Undines, they can take you, but they’ll have to take me as well.”

  I pulled my hands away from him, horrified. “You’ll die with me? Roarke, no!”

  He looked at me with stark determination. No fear, no hesitation. Only promise.

  “It’s the only way I know to keep you from them.”

&
nbsp; “But eventually they’ll know. Or the Ila won’t accept me and you’ll be pulled down into hell with me.”

  I was surprised when he smirked at me. “Who’s to say you’ll take me with you? Maybe I’ll pull you up to heaven with me. Don’t be such a pessimist.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. It’s a little difficult to bright side this situation.”

  “Not really. I believe I just did it.”

  “It’s a gamble I won’t take. Not with you.”

  “I’m doing it.”

  I threw up my hands in frustration. “No one ever listens to me!”

  “I’ll make you a deal. After this, I promise I’ll listen to you. We’ll do things your way.”

  “Really?” I asked, eyeing him suspiciously. “If I agree to this ceremony, we’ll do things my way from here on out?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s an easy bargain for you to make when this decision, your decision, is most likely our last.”

  “We’re going to survive this, Anna.”

  “That is highly unlikely.”

  “We have to do this,” he pressed, ignoring my pessimism. “We’ve been kept apart long enough. Eternity is out of the question.”

  “It’s your soul, Ro,” I complained.

  “And it belongs with you. Stop seeing it so doom and gloom. Look at the possibilities. We could bind you to the Ila and you could gain some of its power. It could protect you from them. But if it can’t or it refuses us, then you’re still bound to me. As long as I’m alive,” he took my hand in his and pressed my palm flat against his chest, over his heart, “you’re bound to this place. They can’t take you. Not until I’m dead and gone, then I’m going with you. Wherever that may be.”

  I shook my head, tears stinging my eyes as temptation tugged at my heart. “It’s so dangerous.”

  “And it’s all we have. All other options have been stripped from us. This is our choice, our last choice. Do you want to just let them win? To take everything without asking? Do you want to always wonder? Or do you want to know? Know that you fought back, that you gave and took everything you could.”

  He was right. I’d never tell him, but Roarke was often right. This was my moment. My time to choose the path my life would take and, as I always knew it would, the path I wanted led to Ro.

  “Yes.”

  He blinked in surprise. “Yes to…”

  “Yes, I will fight. Yes, I will let you bind me to the Ila. Yes, I will be bound to you.” I smiled at him. “Yes, I will marry you.”

  He smiled as well, his eyes glowing darkly with the brilliance of it. He lied when he told me fire didn’t live here. I saw it then, burning bright and strong in his gaze, igniting a fire in me that no wind or water could ever touch. Could ever extinguish.

  His fingers brushed my cheek. I shivered. I would remember that touch forever after. Light and lingering. He had touched me a million times in the years we had known each other, but this, this was different. This was touch with intent.

  He kissed me.

  It was so different from the kiss he stole as a child, different from the kisses I’d allowed Frederick over the years. This was full and warm, firm and soft. It was a dialogue that explained so many things, the first thing I fully understood all evening. It was love. It was light. It was us.

  When his lips broke from mine, both of us breathing raggedly, tears on both of our faces, I refused to let him go. At some point my arms had gone around him, pulling him as close to my body as I could sitting there on top of the world with him. I felt his hands, large and hot, on my shoulder and on my back. I didn’t wanted them to leave. I was sure I’d fall apart into a million confused and angry pieces if he ever let me go.

  “You’re going to marry me?” he whispered raggedly. I nodded. “Say it again.”

  I laughed. “Yes, I’m going to marry you. You and only you.”

  He nuzzled his nose into my neck, inhaling deeply, breathing out hotly. Goosebumps broke out across my skin.

  “Say it again.”

  I placed his hand over my heart, knowing he could feel the erratic, excited beat of it through my dress.

  “Ever faithful. Ever thine,” I promised.

  Chapter Fifteen

  What we promised one another that night in the tree remained our secret. We didn’t tell his parents, we clearly didn’t tell mine and we vowed not to speak of it for fear of the elementals hearing us. Roarke explained to me the danger of speaking around fish or birds. The Sylph and Undines could exist inside them for a time. They could enter them on the wind or in the sea and stay inside for a short period. Like holding your breath underwater. The only place that was safe for us, he said, was deep in the forest where the Earth would shroud us, even from the birds.

  After I said goodbye to his parents, he walked me home in silence. He took me the long way. The un-enchanted way. Occasionally his fingers would brush against mine as our arms swung in rhythm, but that was all. Otherwise, we kept to ourselves. The world felt far more dubious, much more suspect now that I knew the things I had been told by the Tem Aedha. But it also made more sense. I’d always feared the Saints. Now I knew why.

  “Thank you for a lovely… illuminating evening, Ro,” I told him when we neared the gate and agreed to part. I was dying to say so much more, but I knew there were ears everywhere.

  “My pleasure, Anna.” He bowed slightly. “Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

  He waited there as I disappeared inside the castle gates. I could feel his eyes on me as I entered. I could feel the guard’s eyes as well.

  Once inside, I was fortunate enough to miss running into everyone else in the world. It was late. I imagined most were in bed, though probably not with who they should be. My theory was challenged when I rounded the corner and stared down the hall toward my bedroom. My father’s door was cracked, a dull yellow glow emitting weakly from around the edges. I crept silently toward it, intending to rush past unnoticed, until I heard voices. They were all male, low and murmuring.

  “You’ve put it off long enough. It’s time,” my father insisted.

  “You put it off as well. Don’t blame me for all of this,” Frederick argued, sounding bored.

  “You lost your face and her mother died! I couldn’t get her to leave her room for two days. I still can’t get her to stop wearing black.”

  “Then how do you propose to get her into a white wedding dress?”

  “She’ll wear it. Name the day and she’ll be ready.”

  “I won’t marry her.”

  “Frederick!” King Phillip shouted.

  “I won’t! She’ll only do it out of pity.”

  “And you should be grateful for it,” my father growled. I was shocked by the tone he was taking with the Prince. It was so unlike him. “Do you know how many men I could marry her to? She’s breathtaking.”

  “Then marry her to one of them. I’ll have nothing to do with it.”

  “Who are you going to marry then?” My father’s voice was growing desperate.

  “No one. Not ever.”

  “You know that’s not possible,” King Phillip said calmly, trying to reason with Frederick.

  “They did this to me!” Frederick shouted. I heard the sound of a chair or table topple to the floor. “What do I owe them? Nothing!”

  “We owe them everything. They keep us safe.”

  “Not all of us.”

  “Are you still alive?”

  “I wish I wasn’t.”

  “Oh, stop sulking and act like a man!” King Phillip roared, losing what small patience he had held. “You’re to be King of Kilmarnock and you’re betrothed to the most beautiful woman on the island. The fact that you look like a monster is inconsequential.”

  “As uplifting as that speech was, I still refuse to marry her. Let her marry who she chooses. I won’t tie her to me for the rest of her life and I won’t condemn her to a fate worse than death.”

  “We don’t know that it’s a bad thing,�
� my father argued, making my blood run cold.

  He does know, I thought.

  I don’t know why the realization depressed me like it did, but despite all that he and I had been through, all that he had put me through in my life, he was still my father. I had hoped on some level he meant it when he told me he’d never truly harm me. But this, selling my soul to vicious, angry gods in exchange for his own comfort, was more harm than I ever dreamed he could do.

  “Don’t,” Frederick told him severely. “Don’t try to sugar coat it. We all know it’s not cherubs and harps.”

  “We don’t know precisely what it is.”

  “Which means we don’t know how awful it really could be. How can we pretend to love these woman and cast them into the unknown this way? I won’t do it. Not to anyone, especially not to her.”

  “You’ll do it to someone,” King Phillip told him.

  “I’ll die first.”

  “We could all die if that’s what you choose. Is that what you want? It will be one hundred years ago all over again. The storm, the death.”

  “The outsiders.” My father spat the words out as though they were distasteful on his tongue.

  “Maybe you’ll get lucky and the storm will take them away this time,” Frederick told him sarcastically. “Problem solved.”

  “If you refuse to marry, we’ll most likely all be taken away,” King Phillip reminded him.

  “And you fear that? Being taken by them? Going the way of the Queens? Interesting. Hypocritical.”

  “Do not judge me. This is how things are, how they’ve always been.”

  “They will be this way no longer.”

  “You’re a foolhardy boy! A child. Where did I go wrong with you?”

  “You murdered my mother.”

  “Your mother did her duty to her land.” The raspy, quiet lilt of the High Priest’s voice wafted out into the hall, giving me chills. I was startled to know he was there in the room. “And she did it without complaint. How disappointed she would be to hear you protest as you are.”

  “Don’t talk to me about my own mother,” Frederick growled.

  “Frederick. Your tone,” King Phillip warned. He sounded nervous.

  “No, father, enough is enough. This is no holy man.”