Un cast a grim look upward. "Stop your theatrics," he snapped. "They won't prevent your energy from being consumed if it is deemed necessary to repay the debt."
The crowd broke out into a murmur, and a cold shudder of fear ran down my spine. Dying while not in battle wasn’t the death I imagined for myself at this age. I always pictured old age or a valiant last effort in a fight, but never like this.
"No!" Ruk shouted and stepped forward. I stared in disbelief as fury poured from him. His flat lavender eyes sparked with rebellion. The shout silenced every arbiter in the amphitheater.
"I won't allow them to be sacrificed to repay my debt," Ruk growled. His voice wavered with a thrum of fear and concern, his usual bitterness drained from him. "I'll remind you that you've told me, the vampire, and the human that there is all the time in the world to decide these matters. There is no reason to collect on the debt immediately. We deserve some time to prepare ourselves and provide a solution that does not require unraveling two sentient beings. Surely, your superior sensibilities can see the logic in that."
My throat tightened. He’s protecting us. Even if he did drag us into this, it was clear he didn’t want us taking any blame for his actions. This was still his redeeming quality, one that struck a chord with my own sense of justice for all. Ruk's gaze narrowed a fraction.
"You know that I don't have the power to transfer them back to the lower planes, so you’re not risking anything by letting them leave with me," Ruk continued, his tone growing more calculated by the moment. "Give me time to earn my own energy. I will start by dissolving my estate and applying its energy toward my debt. If time is truly of no importance to you, as you say, then you can wait a short while for the energy and sacrifice these creatures at a later time if the debt requires it."
Sacrifice us?! My eyes darted to him. This was obviously a deliberate strategy to trick the other arbiters, but it was still unnerving to hear him discuss the possibility so matter-of-factly. Our lives were hanging in the balance, and the only person with any chance of averting our fate was a being who had lied to us numerous times and had betrayed his own kind. It was an uncomfortable position to be in, but Dorian and I really couldn’t be picky about our allies right now.
Un and Xiu lapsed into silence, turning to one another with the tiniest movement. Xiu lightened and contracted, letting out a sound like a reflective hum.
"Your entire estate?" Un asked. His stretched smile was unsettling, but he was clearly interested.
"My entire estate." Ruk’s voice was flat, and he crossed his arms with their spindly fingers across his chest. I couldn’t tell if the idea of destroying something he had obviously once taken great pride in was painful for him or if he no longer cared for it. Maybe getting out of this plane and never coming back was his primary concern now.
Murmurs of delighted and interested agreement passed through the crowd. Un crossed his arms with a hint of an approving smile.
"It’s good to see that you’re finally taking your responsibility seriously,” Un said in such a self-satisfied tone that I wanted to punch him, especially given what I now knew about the Separation. “I give my approval and relinquish my request to unravel the lower beings for the purpose of energy consumption." He turned to Xiu for confirmation.
Xiu hovered in the air. "Yes, it's an acceptable first step toward repaying your debt." She floated back toward the crowd, and her voice grew louder. “We have concluded the sentencing. You may disperse."
Ruk had managed to save our lives for the moment, but I stood shell-shocked in the center of the black stage, trying to grasp what exactly had just happened. Had we really almost died on the word of some cosmic orbs? Dorian gave a mutter of disbelieving gibberish. My body shook from leftover adrenaline as the arbiters in humanoid bodies walked off into the mist. For them, this was finished. Their role was done. I hated them for it, but I also felt the weight of my limited comprehension. The higher beings tugged at the length of my understanding of the cosmos. You walk through life thinking you know how to live and defend yourself… Our position felt beyond fair. I couldn’t comprehend their logic or complex rules, so how could we hope to argue against them?
I felt tears threatening. How had it come to this?
Ruk turned to us. His rage had drained away, but his eyes were weary. "That went about as expected. You can't reason with them." The bitterness was back.
Dorian stepped away from me, squaring up to Ruk. "Like you're any better!" His anger boiled over. "You were just trying to save yourself, and now all three of us are stuck here. You must have known there was a risk we'd be trapped here if you took us with you. But you did it anyway, thinking we'd be forced to help you with your stupid projects, which you won't even tell us anything about. And now we’re responsible for helping pay off a debt—possibly with our actual souls—that you brought upon yourself. We’re stuck up here in this endless void of indifferent nothingness while our friends and family could be dying in the lower planes in a war that they think we abandoned them to fight without us. Does any of that sound fair to you?"
My heart rate sped up again as Ruk stalked closer, getting right up in Dorian's face.
"You ungrateful creature." His gaze was furious, almost paternal, with crushing disappointment. "Do you even realize that I just saved your lives? If I hadn't brought you here, if I hadn't agreed to fix your tear, you would've died anyway. I’ve sacrificed my estate for you. Even in its decay, it is a marvel. You have no idea how many of your short little lifetimes I spent on that place. In this world, that kind of sacrifice on your behalf would incur such a massive debt that you would be in my servitude for a hundred of your own natural lifespans. Fortunately for you, I'm less focused on a meaningless system than the rest of my kind.”
My mind churned violently from the strain of everything that had just happened, but something tugged at me. It was something Ruk had mentioned in the Restless Desert after our escape from the dreaded sanitarium.
He’d said that he owed me his freedom and that he was in my debt.
"You said that you owed me," I said, my voice quiet and steady, slicing through the raging argument. They both jerked their heads in my direction.
"What are you talking about?" Ruk asked, his brow furrowing.
"In the caves beneath the Restless Desert." I balled my hands into fists. "You may not necessarily value them, but debts are such a big deal here. Surely you shouldn't be asking for our help outside of the pact we already established, especially when you made that pact with us when you were already in our debt. A debt you have yet to repay to me." I glared at him.
Ruk rocked back an inch with surprise. "I'll admit that's true. You gave me my freedom, so I owe you something equally meaningful to repay the debt."
"Why not settle the debt by granting Dorian and me freedom from this plane?” I asked. “That’s an act of equal worth.”
He blinked, a small smile playing on his lips. "Well, I guess you're learning how to bargain properly. And I would if I could, I promise, but I cannot without energy. And energy is something you might be able to help me with. If you help me, it would add to the debt that I owe you. We're stuck here anyway, so why not help each other?"
I sighed. “Stacking debt is meaningless if you never intend to pay it. And you’ve made it very clear that you don’t intend to fulfill our pact until it suits you, so why would we trust your word at this point?”
Dorian snarled, his voice shaking with anger. "You like to think that you are different from these other beings, hidden away up here and disconnected from the world below, but despite everything you’ve experienced, you’re still like them. And now, because of your arrogance, we're stuck here, away from our friends and dire cause. Because of you." For a moment it seemed like he might say more, but then he just scoffed and began storming away, climbing up the white stone steps of the amphitheater.
I reached out a hand to stop him but realized he needed to let his anger out. I understood the feeling; our situation wa
s worse than it'd been before. We had confirmation that the arbiters wouldn't help us at all. We appeared to have no visible way forward. For a moment, I’d truly had hope that we might have a chance of convincing them. I clenched my eyes shut for a moment and let the anger pass through me, but not consume me.
Leaving Ruk behind, I followed Dorian. He was already at the top of the amphitheater. Jia trotted up behind me, but Ruk stayed on the stage.
"I'm your only chance," Ruk cried.
I gave him one last glance over my shoulder. His face, torn with frustration and despair, made me pause. I felt a small stab of sympathy. "We just need some time on our own,” I said. “You must understand that a lot of what we learned here today is… intense.”
Overhearing this, Dorian turned and glared down at the stage. "Did you know about the curse?" His voice rang out, strong and dark. "Did you know the arbiters shaped vampires to be this way?"
I froze. In all the chaos, that was one of the realizations I hadn’t had the chance to return to yet.
Ruk paused. As the silence fell, the feeling of betrayal inside me grew at a vicious rate.
"Yes. I tried to warn Lyra…"
"When?" I demanded.
"When I told you that the vampire blood wouldn't work," Ruk snapped back.
My body shook with frustration. Was he talking about that single vague, cryptic warning about the vampire blood? "You are a complete idiot," I griped. "That wasn't helpful at all! Why not just give me a clear explanation?"
Ruk seethed with irritation. "Because then I would have been breaking the Mandate of Secrecy. You see all these rules in this plane."
"You’d already shown how much you cared about the rules by being in the damn Immortal Plane in the first place!” I pointed out. “Why were you so concerned about them at that specific point, when clear, direct information would have helped me?"
Ruk's eyes tightened with pain, conflict passing over his face. My anger dampened slightly. He was hurting, but why couldn't he just explain why? I let out a long exhale.
"Do you think your own struggles are so precious and unique that we can’t understand them?" I asked, my voice wavering with a tinge of sadness. "All you've done is lie about the things that matter most to us, and it just made things more complicated for all of us. If you'd been open and honest, maybe it wouldn’t have turned out this way. The least you could do is apologize, something you have yet to do."
Ruk stared at me, his mouth agape. No words came out. He clamped his lips shut, wrinkling his face into a conflicted grimace. For a moment, I thought he might take a step forward to follow us… but he didn't. After a long pause, I turned and left with Dorian. Jia followed us quietly, but I thought his owlish eyes looked sad somehow. I'm projecting my feelings onto everything now…
Although I had grown to hate walking, I longed to get far, far away from that amphitheater—anywhere without prying eyes. Dorian waited for me a few steps outside the structure and extended his hand to me. I smiled weakly at the gesture, grabbing it. We’d started doing this a lot lately, but it was necessary to feel physical contact with one another when the Higher Plane offered us so little sensory feedback.
We moved rapidly away, hurrying back along the walkway lined with gargoyle lampposts. It seemed that the whole construct had not been conjured just for the trial, since it still existed even though Un was gone. Allowing our feelings to act as our intent to guide us, we arrived at the awful cliff, the farthest place we could go in this plane.
I gave a dark laugh as I stared down at the crackling, splintering void. It seemed brighter now, more real. Or was that merely because I'd forgotten how frightening it was in person? Dorian stood at the edge and glared down into the monstrous cosmic pit. His emotions churned around him. Blue, as deep as the ocean, swirled over him.
Without warning, he let out a primal howl that haunted me down to my bones. I took a step back, hugging myself, the pain of it sinking into me and sending tears welling up in my eyes. Monstrous winds whipped around me, throwing my hair into my face. Dorian continued howling, letting out all his fury and anger. Angry crimson lightning flashed above us.
The curse…
The arbiters had created the very thing that forced Dorian and me apart. All the pain we'd endured was by their hands. A tear slipped down my cheek, one I hadn't realized I'd been holding back. The red lightning met rumbling clouds of yellowish green. Tears continued to stream down my face.
"Why is this happening?" I whispered to myself, bitter and frustrated. "Why?" I wanted the universe to answer me. It could offer energy and phantoms of loved ones, yet all I wanted was for someone to finally give me an answer. I fell to my knees for a moment, just letting every ounce of emotional pain leak out of me, needing to lighten the burden. The sky and world around me gobbled it up greedily. Dorian and I both grieved, separately and yet together.
We poured out our emotions, but something in the wind shifted. I turned my head to see the weather being sucked into the tear and chuckled bitterly. Now the tear was taking our fury and grief? Could the tear feel it?
It was almost cathartic, though utterly eerie, like Dorian draining me of darkness. I leaned over the edge to watch the clouds get sucked down, entranced by the sight of it. Something tugged at my skin. It was a force unlike anything I'd felt since we entered the Higher Plane. My skin bloomed with livid, violent bruises. I sucked in a pained gasp and fell onto my hands and knees. My muscles spasmed.
"Lyra." Dorian's voice was frantic with concern.
I groaned. Blackness seeped from my pores like thick tar. What’s happening to me? I gave a terrified gasp but doubled over with pain as a murky slime began to seep out of me like sweat. Tears streamed down my face; I spit a bitter wad of blackness onto the floor. My tears fell like onyx liquid drops on the reflective ground. My entire body was on fire.
And then, as quickly as it had come, the pain and heat passed. I gasped through my sobs. Suddenly, I was aware of hands on me. I looked up weakly to see Dorian staring at me in fear and confusion.
"It's gone," he whispered, astonished. I stared at him with bleary eyes. "Your darkness, Lyra. It's gone. I can’t feel it anywhere in you, and it’s like a thin black cloth lifted off your aura. I can see you clearly now." He drew me into his arms. I collapsed against him, weak and sobbing with relief.
"It's all gone?"
"Everything," he promised me and placed a loving hand on the back of my head. "I can see your soul again. It's beautiful, Lyra. If you saw it… if you saw the color of you, you would weep."
I laughed weakly and buried my head in his chest. "I feel cleansed. Purified."
We hugged one another tightly, neither of us letting up the pressure. I rested my head against his chest. My head felt clear for the first time in a long time.
The weather gradually calmed. I opened my eyes in the brighter light and stared up into Dorian's handsome face. He was more relaxed now, his eyes softening as he cupped my face. Much better. I soaked in the affection from his touch like it was sunshine.
We stared at the tear, which had greedily sucked up all our tumultuous weather creations. The tear represented all our worries and problems, and it seemed more unfixable now than ever.
I glanced over to see Jia watching us silently. The sight of him no longer surprised me. I briefly wondered if Ruk was still standing, sad and resigned, back at the amphitheater.
Dorian let out a weary sigh, letting himself tip back to lie on his back and rubbing his temples. I joined him.
I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, knowing it had to be a giant mess after all the wind. "It hurt to learn the truth. We always knew living with the curse would be difficult, but we might have to accept that our other problems are bigger right now.” Admitting it made me feel better.
Dorian nodded firmly, but a tinge of sadness tugged at his contemplative scowl. "More than anything, I wish we could talk to Laini and Bravi about everything. Any of our friends, really. We have no way of knowing how much tim
e has passed or how the battle ended. I hope the evacuation of all the Hive members and artifacts worked."
"Me too." I wanted nothing more than to see my brother's face or Roxy's feisty grin. "I hope the Bureau helped them. I wonder if most of them are in the VAMPS camp with Morag now."
Dorian's shoulders slumped. "I've never hated the fact that communication across planes is impossible because of the barrier more than I do at this moment."
I hummed in agreement; it was a sentiment I completely understood. The only thing I’d ever seen that managed to communicate in some way across the planes was the giant magic interface in the destroyed sanitarium, and that was all through the gems embedded in the brainwashed creatures’ heads, so not exactly ideal or ethical. I just wished we could see what was happening down below.
I let my focus drift to the tear again, but this time a different kind of glimmering light flashed in the maelstrom. I frowned, squinting to get a better look.
Something, a swirl of gray cloud, coalesced above the tear, resisting the pull of the vortex. It rolled over to us where we were still sprawled near the cliff’s edge. A scrap of the reflective floor was now floating slightly above us, rippling a little, like water. Scraps of images began to flash across its surface, which was impressive enough. What made my pulse stagger with excitement was the fact that the images flitting across the luminescent surface were of the lower planes.
Hope flooded me, and, hoping it was another hint or aid from the universe, I cleared my mind of all but one thought: Where were my friends right now?
If we have to be stuck here, I begged the universe, at least let us see what’s happening with our friends.
Darklight 6: Darkbirth Page 18