Fallen Warrior (Fallen Trilogy book 3)

by Williams, Tess

  "So the Black Tortoises," he said, "Have you thought about what they'll do. I mean, what use they'll be to the war?"

  "Well," I replied, tasting a bit of my creation only to wince. "So far, all of the Constellation Animals have been powerful. More powerful than the other granted animals, I think. The birds with their fire, and the tigers are so powerful, the dragons..." I lost my breath for just a moment, "They're strong of course. Like the two put together, only they don't have teleportation like the Vermillion Birds, and I suppose they don't like to fight so much as the White Tigers."

  "They could be large," Cole replied. "The tortoises. From the images, that's how it seems."

  "Yes," I agreed. "I thought that there might be a clue in their element as well. Since, well, with the Vermillion Birds it's obvious enough that fire pertains to them. And with metal, even though it's not actually a part of the White Tigers, it fits their character."

  "Like the pledges you received. So you think the Genbu might give water?"

  "Or ice."

  "And how would help that describe them?" He asked this, as if to himself. "I guess the fact that they're tortoises is derivative of water enough in itself..."

  I shrugged.

  "Maybe you'll get endless water or something. At least, then you'll never get thirsty."

  "That's brilliant, Cole. I'm sure that's it exactly." My tone was sarcastic.

  "Well, if you have better guesses... hey, where did you put that Echrian bottle? I want to check something."

  I realized only now, that he had moved to the other side of the room, off by my bed, where I usually kept it.

  "Why?" I asked.

  "I'll tell you once I've checked. It's usually sitting just here..."

  "You know the last time I let you hold it, Cole, it got a crack in the glass. I didn't say anything, only because the next moment you came back demanding to hear about the battle in Karatel, but I think you must not know your own strength."

  Cole scoffed a little. He was still shuffling through things over by my bed. But suddenly he stopped to stand tall and look my way. "What, so, did you hide it?"

  I looked up at him, my hand still on the spoon. "Of course not."

  He held his palm out, face up, and flicked his fingers for me to give it over.

  "I'm sorry, sir, it's much too valuable for that. You can play with my sword."

  "Play?" He put his hands on his hips and scoffed. "Aren't I the one always coming up with the best ideas?"

  "I don't remember that. But you do always seem to be the one breaking things."

  He scoffed again, and I smiled down, dipping my finger in a box of powder, and pulling it out to test the smell. I sniffed it, then wrinkled my nose. Minstrel certainly had gotten together a strange collection of spices for me.

  "Hey, what are you doing?" I demanded, jerking to a start, feeling Cole's hand at my belt, his body behind me.

  "As if I don't know where the princess would hide something from me," he countered.

  "Do you want it that badly?" I taunted.

  "I told you I had a good idea."

  I meant to come up with another remark, but Cole sent me laughing when he reached into one of my pockets. I nearly dropped the bag of spices I was holding into the stove, and had to jerk back to keep it from spilling in the food. "I don't have it, really I don't," I said honestly.

  "Oh, tall tale," he retorted, bracing me easily. "You're just afraid now that I'm close."

  "Afraid for my bottle," I replied, but that was all I could get out, and then he sent me into a fit of laughter. Reaching into one pocket then another of my pants, then feeling into the pockets of my tunic, over my ribs and back. His head was tucked over my shoulder, and I was pressed back against him. It became apparent before long that he was more concentrated on continuing to tickle me than searching for any bottle, but I was so disabled with laughter that I could hardly avoid it. "I don't have it. Stop it, stop it," I laughed. And it was just when the breath of his own laughter touched my neck, that the next words came out. "Stop it, Cyric."

  He was the one to freeze first. He stopped all that he was doing. His hands, then his body. I didn't realize, until my own laughter had died down and I could sense how still he'd gone, that anything had gone amiss. Then I heard my own words repeated.

  I was already out of breath from the laughing, but my body stilled just as well as his had; instantly. I felt something like a claw coming up from deep inside me, then tightening its grip around my heart and squeezing all the breath out of me, all the life, all of everything.

  My eyes were wide. Cole still hadn't shifted. My chest began to rise up and down, low at first, and long and deep, but then faster, still deep, but much faster. Cole's hands moved off of me. He took a step back, scraping the floorboard. My mouth opened and closed with a thousand things to say. Apologies, explanations. My eyes were too wide to well with tears but I could feel them stinging; I turned on Cole.

  I tried to say something. I couldn't. His eyes were startled, and uncertain, maybe hurt, even though I didn't even know if he knew who Cyric was, not by name. But the worse thing was, the worst thing of all of it, was that looking at him, seeing what I did of his eyes, I really felt like I was looking right at Cyric. That was all I saw. I thought I'd been managing well, but I really had gone mad, hadn't I?

  How could I have done that? To Cole? To Cyric?

  "I—"

  I felt a tear hit my cheek. I gasped, wiping it away.

  "I'm so sorry, Cole," I said. "Please. Please forget that I. I didn't mean..."

  He was still just standing there, eyes wide. I took one last moment to stare at him. Just to see, as if my heart had been suffocating for it, this face that even pretended to be my Cyric.

  I called out another apology, then I pushed past him, my eyes clouded with tears, my hand over my mouth to cover sobs, breaking for the door.

  If he chased after me, I never did know it.

  CYRIC:

  Cyric. Hadn't I willed her to say this to me a hundred times over? I'd wanted her to say it when she told me of my fate. I'd waited for her to say it as we discussed Akadia, Lox, Shaundakul. Cyric that said she knew me, and loved me, and thought everything good of me. The sound I'd replayed in my head all those days of loneliness in Akadia. The sound I loved.

  It had sounded just like that.

  And then she'd called me by my second name.

  Cole. I'm so sorry, Cole. I'm so sorry, Cole. I'd repeated that in my head a hundred times now, just to prove to myself that she didn't know me. But what was it that I was doing to her if she'd called me by my name, without knowing she was right about it? I didn't understand. I didn't understand why she didn't know me. I didn't understand the pain on her face, and the tears. I knew it was my fault, but that was all. And that's why I'd left without following her.

  I'd gone back to my room to sleep, now it was just before dawn and I was outside the city.

  There was a river not far into the jungle, that many Yanartians used to bathe. I'd taken to using it just as well, but I always came early so that I'd be on my now. I was helped by the many Yanartian fires—though I usually brought a torch anyways. Today I hadn't. I hadn't come to bathe either. I'd only come to think and get away from the darkness. I'd spent the night trying to think, just to figure out what I should do. I couldn't stop my pacing for my thinking.

  Eventually it became clear that the jungle was the worst place to come to think. It was perfectly silent. On a morning like this, it was freezing, frosted in ice, forcing my limbs numb. I left the river having gleaned nothing; as I approached the city, I had my arms crossed tight and my head buried in my chest, with no idea where I was going next.

  That was when I heard a sound ahead. I didn't react at first. It was early but not so early that someone might not be coming out to swim. This wasn't the exit that led to the sea, or already it would have been crowded by fishermen. I just kept walking on. Only when I noticed the way the figure was moving, pausing, then glancin
g back behind them, then moving on; or that they were fully shrouded by a cloak and hood—then I paid attention to them. With a narrowed brow I watched them as they went towards the jungle; a her, obvious from the form, and I would have thought nothing more of it moments later, except that she turned and looked back once in the direction of the city.

  And I saw her crown.

  My small narrow turned deep. She didn't hesitate to keep moving on, not giving me more than a second to catch a glimpse of pale hair. For a moment, I wondered if I really hadn't gotten enough sleep; if I was seeing things, seeing what I wanted to.

  No! I didn't want to see Ellia going off alone in the jungle. Why would I dream that? Hadn't she said something to me herself about going there alone all the time? Well, I'd doubted it then, because I followed her so often, and never once saw it. Why would she go now, after...

  She'd almost disappeared down the path. I swallowed, uncertain of whether I should stay or follow. Sure, I could justify that it was dangerous, but the truth was, she probably had gone into the jungle a hundred times without me. What if she was leaving to get away from me?

  But then... I thought of something that I'd thought on often before. The improbably of some of the things that had happened to us, between us. I could always still remember perfectly walking into my new room in Akadia, feeling my throat thicken to face some handmaiden given to me as a prize, thinking about how beautiful this one sitting there with the curling yellow hair was, when I hadn't even seen her face—and then it had turned out to be Ellia. Ellia? Out of the thousands of women in Akadia. What were the chances of that? Then the second time, when she'd been captured in Selket and Lox had given her to me. Maybe he'd had his reasons, but I still remembered the feeling. Hearing him, call my name, telling me that she was mine to keep. It was the same feeling I had now, that if I was lucky enough to have happened to come out here, and now to see her leaving, that it wasn't something I should take for granted.

  Without further pause, I stepped up to the path, then went after her.

  .

  It became apparent, before long, that wherever this was that Ellia was going, she'd gone there before, and she'd gone there often. She was not following the path; she'd cut off of that almost immediately, making it unreasonably difficult for me to follow without calling attention to myself.

  I hadn't planned, per say, to keep my presence a secret, but seeing how carefully she'd checked behind her when she'd left the path, her hands clutching her cloak, tight, I hadn't been able to help myself. Everything about her demeanor bespoke of that sneaky sort that said she was hiding something. Whatever she was doing, I highly doubted that she was supposed to be doing it, and that probably meant that it was dangerous... at best it meant something that would give me just one clue as to what she might be thinking.

  The forest was cold, and the ice and snow made my steps harder to conceal. I lost her a few times, just trying to stay far back enough, but luckily she'd thrown her hood off, her long hair was easy to follow, especially since, she'd left it down. I hadn't seen it down like that since... by the stars, not since Akadia. It hurt to look at her like that; she was so beautiful, but I forced myself to concentrate on my steps.

  By the time the sky was full bright above through the branches, I was warm despite the cold from mere exertion. She passed a frozen waterfall that was so exceptional in its appearance that I was sure then she'd been here, even in the winter, because she'd just walked by without a second glance. The waterfall fed down into a small pool, smooth as glass, and depthless black. Only the ice around the falls had frosted white; it was almost close enough to reach out and touch.

  I only spared one glance to take all of this in, but then when I looked back where Ellia had been, she was gone. I cursed myself, and stepped on much less carefully, only to, from here, find a well-worn path. I wasn't sure that she had taken it, but since I'd lost her, there wasn't much to risk trying it. The jungle had built up around rather like a monster, maybe how I imagined the ice mountains of Gorosh might be, with the trolls that Minstrel was always talking about. Rocks and trees all turned to frozen sculptures, and blackness beyond them.

  I started at the sound of a cracking branch and ducked behind a tree. From there I came around the other side of it... and breathed a sigh of relief as I saw her. She was standing near a tall stone wall. For a moment I was so distracted by the sight of her, stopping to undo her belt, her hair still falling all around her, that I didn't notice the wall held a cave. Once I'd noticed this; I noticed also, unless my eyes were playing tricks on me, that it was glowing silver, instead of dark and black.

  I narrowed, clamping down on my jaw, and only seconds away from making myself known. But then without pause, she laid her belt and weapons aside and moved into the cave, marching till I couldn't see her.

  I came out from the trees straightaway. I moved up to the cave. I bent down and touched one of her weapons, just to make sure I wasn't imagining all of this. When I cut my finger along its edge, I was convinced. I couldn't hear any sounds from the jungle as I glanced around, but there must have been some sort of underground river inside the cave because it was emitting a hiss. Its top edge was lined with icicles, dripping in turn and making the whole thing look like a mouth.

  I took a step in and felt a cold breeze rush from the inside. What sort of place was this to be on Yanartas? And why was she here? I hesitated with one hand testing the cold of the icicle above me; with a deep swallow, I moved inside.

  It wasn't like walking in the dark. It was like walking in nothing. As one used to not seeing, this was different. It was emptiness, but it wasn't black. I felt mist, clinging to my skin, crawling up further beneath my robes.

  I opened my mouth to call her name. Then I heard shouting that stopped me. All at once things turned black, and we were in a cave, but somehow I could see it. Colors danced over the ceilings, though they didn't seem to hold any light. The brightest glow was golden, and it fell on Ellia where she stood out ahead of me. She wore the same cloak I'd seen her in, her hair exactly the same. She was pleading with someone, and it was only when I'd stepped forward that I saw who it was.

  It was me.

  Me, but not as Cole. Me as Akadian Lieutenant. Dark iron and golden armor. The sword Lox had given me. All of it.

  "I'm sorry, Cyric," she was saying. "I'm so sorry. Please don't be angry. I'm sorry."

  "Don't apologize to me, Ellia," he, I shouted back. "It was your fault. Why do you think I did all those things for. Then to have your dragon kill me. Did you mean for that to happen?"

  She shook her head, and replied that she hadn't. She was crying. The Cyric me ignored this, if he saw it, he didn't say. He moved up in her face and shouted at her, repeating that it was her fault he'd died. That she killed everyone.

  I felt rage build in my chest and jerked to a start. I didn't think I'd ever felt angrier. I might not understand what was happening, but there was no world in which this was right. Cyric me was about to get leveled.

  But then, just when I'd almost broke from the shadows, I saw Ellia reach her hand out to touch my shoulder, his shoulder. Her fingers were shaking, but the second she made contact, she went steady and tightened her hand around. Her face lit bright, the way I'd learned it did when she was happy. She touched my other arm; her face was still covered with tears, but she moved closer to me and spoke on. "I'm sorry, Cyric. Please don't be angry. I love you. Don't be angry. I'm sorry."

  He tried to pull away from her.

  She moved to kiss his neck.

  I, the real me narrowed. The way she was holding him, the way them both looked, though his expression was angry, and his body was limp, not holding her, they were still perfect. They looked perfect together. I looked perfect for her. He brought a hand up to her hair and pressed her close. I watched Ellia's head turn, and her eyes close, spilling tears, and her expression breaking with pain like she was sure the next part would be worse.

  "You left me, Ellia," he said. "I was all alone.
I wanted you. Why would you leave me?"

  "I'm sorry Cyric."

  His voice was desperate; he held her the same way. "I was so scared, didn't I tell you not to leave me?"

  "I'm so sorry, Cyric. I wish I'd never left you. I love you."

  "I'm all alone now. You don't care that I'm alone."

  "Don't say that, Cyric," she gasped. I watched her hands cling tighter, for the first time losing some of her calm tone. "I'll do better. I'll be with you."

  I felt my breath give out; at the same time, he threw her off of him. She steadied herself back upright, as if she'd almost expected it, gripping her jaw, turning her chin as he went on shouting again. This time he paced as he threatened. She didn't reply now. She only listened. And if he demanded, she apologized.

  I couldn't figure out what this was. I couldn't breathe, and even when I tried again to move, I couldn't. I didn't know if it was because of me or not. I only kept thinking over and over that Ellia had chosen to come here. And I did not understand why she would have come somewhere like this.

  I watched this go on, and it didn't seem like it would ever end. Then eventually, without much to it, his shouting died down. He moved off further and further. I saw the look in her eye when he left; she did not want it. But he'd shouted for so long at her, that she wasn't even standing upright. When he did disappear, she dropped down to a crouch, just for a second, then she straightened upright, wiping her tears away.

  The cave brightened out ahead of her. It was green, and sparkling white. She stepped out into it. I put everything I could into racing in the same direction. It felt like everything was always out ahead of me, like it wasn't mine to see. But I came out into a forest just as she did. The cave melted away, and a lake grew up ahead of us, starting like a sparkling ripple then shooting across until it was blue reflecting the sky above, and yellow from the sun. There were trees all around it, as wide as wagons, as tall as you could see up. They were rich pine, and forest green.

  I heard laughter like music, and saw a girl standing past where Ellia was, at the edge of the lake. She picked up a stone, and tossed it across the water, making only one successful skip.