Sacred Breath Series (Books 1-4)

by Nadia Scrieva

  The woman remained pokerfaced, but he could tell that his diction had struck a chord in her.

  “Yes, I said conquering. Yes, I realize that word makes you think of my grandfather. The Destroyer of Kingdoms—isn’t that interesting? You know what’s even more interesting, Elan? The number one emotion I feel towards that man is respect. It’s followed closely by distaste, and mountains of disgust, but everything is mostly overshadowed by respect. I see myself in him. He’s exactly the kind of man I could have turned out to be if I had let myself slip. If I had let myself slide endlessly downward in the most sickening downward spiral you could imagine… I might be worse than Vachlan.”

  Elandria did take a step back then, her cheeks flushing to indicate how upset she was. She seemed to want to turn and swim away as fast as she could. She seemed to want to run and hide farther and deeper than she had already been hiding.

  “Guess what, Elandria?” he asked, stepping forward in pursuit. “I am sliding. I am in that abysmal downward spiral right this very moment. And I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to see where this road goes, and what kind of monster it transforms me into. So I’m making a drastic change today. I’m not asking for your help anymore—I’m here to teach you a lesson, and force you to help me.”

  Elandria flinched, lowering her head so that her chin connected with her collarbones. She seemed to be curling up into a defensive position and bracing herself for Trevain to strike out at her in anger. She had never seen this side of him. She had heard stories about him losing his temper with Aazuria, but she had never believed…

  “I won’t let anything stand in my way. I won’t let you stand in my way. I only want two things. I want to find your sister, and I want to preserve Adlivun—but since you’re possibly the one person who could offer me the most assistance in achieving both of those things, yet you’re the only person stubbornly shutting herself up in a zoo with wild animals, you’re standing in my way.”

  This accusation seemed to anger her. She did not look as though she wished to move aside. She stared directly into his face, with a challenge written on hers. If she knew how to deal with anything, she knew how to tolerate abuse. She expected it from every man, eventually. Her father had prepared her for that. Her expression clearly said, “Do what you want. Hurt me, rape me, kill me. I don’t care. I am untouchable because this is just my body, and I am bigger than this. I am beyond this, and you cannot reach me.”

  But she did not say these words.

  Trevain withdrew his sword. The metallic sound of it leaving its sheath rang out, echoing in the prime acoustics of the little rock-enshrouded lagoon. She stood her ground, not allowing her petrified eyes to stray from his and look down at his weapon.

  “Are these creatures nobler than us, Elandria? Are these creatures kinder than us?”

  Her lips remained tightly shut. She swallowed the saliva that was gathering in her mouth. What was he going to do? What was he capable of doing? This was Trevain, and he certainly would not…

  “Fine. Don’t respond. The truth is I don’t give a flying fuck. The world outside of here considers this sea cow extinct, and you know what? It isn’t a great loss. Life continued on without them. Do you know why? Humans hunted them to extinction. And there were no humans who stood up to fight for them. So tell me now, Elandria. Are you going to fight for the life of your sea cows as hard as you fought for the life of your sister and your people? Are you going to scarcely lift a finger as I slaughter each and every one of them before your eyes? Are you going to keep completely quiet? Let’s see.”

  He extended his arm swiftly and steadily, gesturing with his weapon to the creature which swam near her legs. He smiled. It was the most sadistic expression that had ever graced his face.

  “Ask me to stop, Elandria.”

  She did not speak.

  “Tell me to stop, Elandria.”

  Her eyes, her face, and her body were seized with fear and inaction for what would surely be the last time in her life. Trevain lunged forward, and with a fearsome bellow, thrust his weapon forth, plunging it directly into the chest of the massive beast.

  “No!” Elandria screamed with all the power of her lungs. Her outcry was earsplitting. “No! Cassie!”

  The creature convulsed, and Trevain had to leap back, using all of his strength to pry the blade from the behemoth’s breast. It was somehow harder to remove it than it was to hammer it in. Cassandra’s convulsions lasted a few more seconds, and her violent thrashing in the shallow water showered both Trevain and Elandria liberally until they were both soaked. Elandria was alternating between sobbing and screaming as she held her arms out towards her dying friend.

  Trevain had put an arm around her waist to restrain her from going to the creature, mainly because the sea cow was so gargantuan that he feared its seizures would injure Elandria. If she was hit by one of the spasms, it would surely kill her as well. Trevain felt dazed with horror and remorse at his own actions, but he mostly felt numb. He felt a bit skeptical about whether this was reality; there was a dreamlike tinge to his vision. He hoped that he would wake up, but it was unlikely. He did not know what kind of a line he had crossed and how it would change him. He had slain an innocent. He had slain the embodiment of all innocence.

  Elandria was screaming bloody murder. Her voice was ringing in his brain so loudly that he was positive he would be permanently deafened. As a professional singer, her lungs and vocal chords were trained for power on a daily basis, and now he was discovering the maximum threshold of volume she could actually achieve. He felt like his eardrums were bleeding.

  The creature finally stopped thrashing and lay peaceably dead. Trevain released the small girl, and she threw herself upon her murdered friend, weeping.

  “Cassie, oh Cassie,” she moaned, putting her arms around the neck of the creature and crying into its leathery skin. Her arms did not even go fully around the beast’s neck.

  Trevain stood there, watching as Elandria’s small body shook with sobs, and feeling a strange mélange of guilt and satisfaction. She was speaking, after all. He had coaxed her voice out of her, after all. He did not know for how many minutes he stood like that, staring at the scene with a sick kind of pleasure. Something had changed. Something had been accomplished. Whether positive or negative, it was yet to be seen. He would accept the consequences regardless of their orientation, for he felt that it was progress, period, which he had been seeking; not progress of a particular kind.

  Elandria wept and clung to Cassandra until her indignation overcame her sadness. At that moment when the scales finally tipped, she began gathering her composure. She slowly rose to her feet, and turned to face her brother-in-law. Her white dress was dripping wet and soaked with crimson splotches of the creature’s blood. The water around her knees was blackened to the point of being completely opaque. Reddened droplets coursed down the sides of her face, congregating at her chin before plummeting from her skin.

  “How could you?” she asked him in a hiss.

  How could he, indeed? He had bathed her in blood. He had destroyed something that she loved, and bathed her in its blood. Here was this woman he respected more than anyone for her hushed fortitude, and he had damaged her thus. No one could be more confused about his actions than he was.

  Elandria let out the wail of a banshee as she hurled herself at Trevain. She balled her hands up into tiny fists, and began hammering at his chest with all of her might. He stood statue-still, frowning down at her with surprise. Her blows were weak and unimpressive. Aazuria had been able to floor him with one punch, and his grandmother could do more with her fingertips. Elandria was throwing her whole body at him in a vicious desperation, and nothing was being accomplished. She was utterly powerless—at least in this way. It made the situation so much more pathetic.

  He stared down at her with revulsion. “So you can spend your precious energy avenging the death of an animal, but you can’t spend the same amount of energy on saving the life of your sis
ter?”

  “She is gone,” Elandria sobbed, falling to her knees in the shallow water. She stared around her at the cloudy swirls of blackness which her movement had disturbed. She placed her hands together to cup the water in her palms, and she stared down at the scarlet liquid blankly. Red rivulets trickled over her forearms in erratic patterns. “Please,” she whispered, transfixed by the unreal sight of all the blood. “I am not strong like you. I cannot go on.”

  Trevain used his sword to point at the water. “Do you see this? As I understand, that’s what it looks like in Japan right now. Shiretoko has been ravaged. The blood flowing in their rivers is the blood of their people. And it’s going to happen right here, to everyone you know and their families. Unless you take a stand.”

  “I cannot,” she said weakly.

  “Of course not. Because it’s too much effort to open your mouth and tell me no. It’s too hard to tell me to stop. This is on you, Elandria. It’s all on you. You wouldn’t speak up to save your beloved cow, your beloved sister, or your beloved country. Everything that has happened, everything that is happening, and everything that will happen in the future is the result of your failure to act—or even speak!”

  “Please, Trevain,” she said, looking up at him through her blood-soaked lashes. Her voice shook with grief and the psychological effort it took to push past her reservations and speak. “I cannot think; I cannot live. Aazuria was… I just cannot go on functioning like a normal human being without her.”

  “You think I’m functioning?” he spat, sinking down to face her at eye-level. “Your sister was carrying my child, Elandria. She was my world too. My life was nothing before she came into it—now it’s nothing again. I have lost more than you will ever understand.”

  “So you have chosen to retaliate against all of creation by destroying nature’s harmless children? Does this soothe you, brother?” Elandria reached out and laid her dripping, bloody hand on his cheek. “Oh, Trevain. I thought so much more of you! It is in a time like this that our characters are tested.”

  “Yours is really shining, sister,” he retorted.

  “I have chosen to withdraw, and perhaps it is weak, but it is my right! This is my method of coping, and you could not just let me be…”

  “Your right?” he asked incredulously. “You are the royal princess of Adlivun, and it isn’t your right to take a vacation and abandon your country and people in the middle of a war. You have responsibilities, not rights.”

  “I have nothing,” Elandria said quietly. “They have been slaughtered. Corallyn, Aazuria, and now Cassandra. Now I am sitting in a pool of the blood of my only remaining friend. Perhaps you should have slain me instead.”

  “Elan…” he said, as his heart broke. He stared into her pale blue eyes, which were so much like his wife’s. There was a sinking feeling in his stomach. He knew he could never go back from this.

  “Thank Sedna that Aazuria will never see what you have become,” Elandria whispered. “She would be so dismayed.” Elandria rose to her feet once more, in a dress that had been dyed a much darker shade of red. She looked down at him with the superior judgmental gaze of a goddess of vengeance. “I am glad that my sister is dead.”

  “What?” Trevain asked in astonishment.

  “I would rather Aazuria be dead than unhappy because she was trapped in a loveless marriage to a monster like you!”

  Trevain was on his feet in an instant and he had firmly gripped Elandria’s shoulders. “Damn you! Say anything you want about me, but don’t you dare say that I didn’t love Zuri!” He realized that she was goading him into hurting her. She wanted to be hurt. He released her shoulders just as abruptly as he had grabbed them. “And if your sister could see what I’ve done, she would understand. Aazuria was not a saint—she was a practical woman who did what needed to be done.”

  “She would never do anything like this!” Elandria shouted.

  “Aazuria killed to protect you. You told me yourself, Elan. In my house, you emptied my liquor cabinet and told me everything. She loved you so much that she killed her own father for you! Why can’t you try to be strong for her?”

  “Because I am not a strong person. You can murder as much as you like; it will not suddenly transform me into a strong person.”

  “Where are you getting this bullshit? I hate that I hurt you like this, but someone needed to snap you out of this stupor. I’m not sorry, because Aazuria is not yet dead. But if we don’t keep looking for her, and if we don’t make sure she has a home waiting for her to come back to if she escapes her captors, then you know what? She will be dead. And it will be our fault. Yours and mine, because we were in charge and could have done what needed to be done. We had resources at our disposal, and instead of putting our minds together and organizing our affairs, we moped about like crybabies and let everything fall apart.”

  He glared at her. “Is that the legacy you want to leave behind? That you were the woman who destroyed Adlivun with her indolence?”

  “Get out,” she said, rising to her full height. The other sea cows were beginning to notice their fallen sister, and they were crooning mournfully. “I do not mean for you to leave the room, Trevain. I mean for you to leave Adlivun. You are an outsider here, and you have abused the welcome and power we have given you. So leave now. Leave and return to your Alaska, and forget all about us. This is my home, of which I am a princess, and I do possess the authority to order you into exile.”

  “I know that you possess that authority, Elandria. You are the one who seems to have forgotten. I couldn’t bear to see you wasting away in a hidden lagoon with a bunch of friendly cows. Your country needs you, and I will gladly accept your sentence of exile if it means that you will take my place and lead Adlivun. I know that you will succeed where I have failed.”

  He felt the bittersweet rush of loss as he bowed deeply. He gave her the traditional salute across his chest as naturally as if he had been repeating the motion for his entire life. He turned and trudged out of the carnage he had caused in the lagoon, wiping his bloodied sword on his pants and slipping it back into its sheath. He continued walking away, and Elandria watched his retreating back. He had almost exited the cave when she picked up her dress and began moving after him.

  “Wait. Wait!” Elandria called out, tearfully. He turned around as she stepped out of the water in her scarlet gown. “Trevain. I wish to hate you with all that I am, but you are my brother. I understand the magnitude of what you have done for me. I understand that this must have hurt you deeply as well.”

  He studied her in confusion for a moment, before shaking his head. “You can’t forgive me for this. Don’t forgive me for this. You need to stay angry, you need to be pissed…”

  “I am angry. But I cannot bear to watch you go. You did this out of kindness for me, and out of love for my sister.” As she spoke, tears cascaded down her cheeks. She looked completely wretched in her gory gown. Her snowy-white hair hung limply in tendrils drenched with blood around her cheeks. “It’s hard for me to look past my emotions, but I can see the reason in your destruction. I can see that your ends justify your means.”

  Trevain stared at her, still shaking his head. His legs gave way under him, and he ended up sitting abruptly down on the ground. “I don’t know what I’m doing. If it makes any kind of sense to you, I’m amazed.”

  “You are wholly correct—everything you said.” Her voice was unsteady as she gathered the courage to admit her flaws. “I have not been contributing anything. And by doing nothing, I have been sabotaging us.”

  “I didn’t mean to say that,” he told her numbly. “I was ranting. I’m out of control, and you should have me executed.”

  “No. I was as good as dead for the past few weeks while you have been shouldering my burden. You have been pulling my weight. I have placed all of you in a precarious position. Visola and Vachlan must be cursing my name, and what Sionna and Alcyone must think! While I retreated for a relaxing holiday, you were all doubtlessly
doing everything you possibly could to…”

  “Elandria…”

  “No, listen to me. I am speaking. You wanted me to speak, and I’m speaking. In the presence of injustice, I will never be silent again. I will do anything to compensate for the time I have lost, and I will make this right. If I can, and if it is in my power, I will fix this,” she said with determination. “Trevain, you are right. I have been standing in your way. I promise that from now on I will only stand at your side, and I will stand taller than I have ever stood if it can help you. I promise…”

  “Elan,” Trevain said quietly, “my mom died today.”

  She stared at him for a moment, forgetting to breathe. Her eyes closed, as the comprehension dawned on her. “Oh, Sedna,” Elandria whispered. She was instantly crouching at Trevain’s side and slipping her arms around his neck to hold him. This was not the first time that she had been there for him when there was a tragedy in his family.

  “For real this time,” he told her, laughing a strange little hysterical laugh. The laugh quickly subsided into a sob, and then petered off into silence. He pressed his face into her soft shoulder, seeking comfort from the same woman he had just gone to great lengths to harm. He felt consumed by more self-loathing than he had ever felt. When he had believed that his brother was dead, Elandria had spent weeks taking care of him and nursing him out of his depression. He felt a sudden onslaught of guilt that he had not been doing the same for her. Regardless of how much she liked her solitude, he should not have left her alone. It should not have come to this.

  “If it is worth anything,” Elandria said softly as she held him, “I am beside you now, brother.”

  Chapter 9: Palace of Ice