The hand brushed across his brow, then vanished. His eyes remained closed, but the light around him already felt different. A shadow slowly crept into what should have been pure sunlight. He understood now why Nylian was so insistent on this timing and about Maritan's conception. There was something different about binding with the light of a solar eclipse.
A needle pricked at Shan's right cheek. Oh? You're destroying my face now? He wanted to be angry about it, but there was no point. This had to happen. He had to be finished.
“You were identified as the Eclipse Spellkeeper by your grandmother, Ranalae Nightshadow, during the trial that scarred your face.” Nylian's quiet voice hovered above the mosaic labyrinth path. The garden was silent aside from the whimpering of a baby and the wind whipping at flags. “I thought that meant you were a creature of shadow, but I was wrong. You are the Eclipse, shadowed light. That is why your ascension is now, during a solar eclipse on your twentieth birthday. You were our goal all along, Shan. Generations of careful pairings led to you. I wish your initiation into yourself had been kind instead of the torture she inflicted upon you. Then you would have accepted this instead of spent these past few years fighting. I'm sorry I hurt you. I was as gentle as I could be while still completing the task, but I didn't anticipate how much the previous pain would continue to hurt you.”
The needle kept moving and the shadow swelled. Shan's hand slipped from his stomach to his side. Someone picked it up to lightly hold it and stroke his fingers.
Lyssandra's voice reached his ears. “He's doing well so far. Face is relaxed.”
“I may need you to brace his head if he falls asleep.”
The weight lifted from Shan's chest as a knee shifted against the side of his head. “I can sit like this as long as is needed.”
“Yes, that will do.”
The needle lifted, then moved to his left cheek. The movement was faster and lighter than Shan remembered any of his previous tattooing being. There was no pain now, only a static ripple.
And then he was somewhere else.
The air smelled of moss and detritus, the breeze carried a faint tinkle of wind chimes, and something furry scampered over his bare thigh. He flexed his fingers and pulled what felt like a tiny pine cone out off a soft patch of moss.
“You can open your eyes. You're not awake so you won't hurt yourself.”
“I know your voice,” Shan whispered.
He sat upright, then opened his eyes. Marita sat before him, dressed in the same practical riding gear she had worn the day they left North Juniper. Her auburn hair fell in loose waves down her back and a redwood sprig was tucked behind her right ear.
“You're not real,” Shan said, tears welling in his eyes.
She shrugged and gave him a half-smirk. “Your memories of me are. No, I'm not really here. You're really naked in front of a crowd, though.”
“You know I find clothing unnecessarily restrictive. Knew. You knew. You thought it was funny.”
“It was especially funny when Nylian showed up to find you dancing in front of the fireplace or lounging in the solarium covered by nothing but a book.”
He let his eyes settle on her as he took in the whole of the forest. This was one of the redwood forests near Jadeshire, one of his favorite landscapes. It had been hers, too. It was where she had escaped to after running away from her abusive family. “I wish all of this was real. This is somewhere I'd want to bring Maritan. I had to name him after you. Elven tradition, you know? Normally I would have scoffed at that, but after what happened I wanted him to have your name. He's such a sweet baby. Good sleeper, even better eater. Just wants to be held all the time, which I love because I never want to put him down. I'm trying to get past the constant thoughts of he should be in your arms. I mean, he should be, but sometimes all I can think about is how you should still be with us. I get irrationally angry when Jei or Linamae feed him and I have to go do something else until he's done. And I worry that having only me to parent him is going to turn his life into something ugly.”
“You are doing wonderfully with him,” Marita said. She crept forward to flutter a leaf across his face. “He's lucky to have you as his father.”
“We'll see about that.” Branches bowed in the light wind and somewhere nearby twigs snapped beneath animal feet, but he only wanted to look at her. “Sometimes my broken little brain tries to convince me that I've lost everything and everyone. Separated from my family, you and Lumin are dead, the only other person in Anthora who I liked . . . also dead. I still have me though, don't I? If I stop hating myself for a little while, maybe I can work with that. And I have Maritan, who patches up the gaps where my soul tries to leak out. Fake Marita, I don't know what's happening to me right now. I'm trying to just accept it because I'm too tired to fight anymore, but I'm scared. I don't know who I'll be when I wake from this beautiful dream.”
Marita's laugh was like a wind chime. “Come walk with me. Put some clothes on first. I'll make this a little more beautiful while you're doing that.”
Shan conjured a linen tunic and pulled it over his head, then decided it was long enough that pants weren't necessary. When he looked up again, Marita had Maritan in her arms. Paired tears fell on his collar as he said, “That's what I wish I could see.”
Marita smiled and bounced the baby on her hip. “He's heavy already. And it looks like he might end up with my eye color. Hard to tell at this age.”
Silently, they walked a short distance to the edge of the forest. An expanse of long grasses sat before them, and the ocean roared beyond a golden beach.
He held his hands to the sides and let the salted wind kiss his face. “I need to surrender to what I have instead of lament what I don't. I don't have this. I'll never have this. I can dream it, but I can't live within a dream. If I try to, I will spend the rest of my life in agony.”
Marita swayed with Maritan and smiled. The sunlight transformed the freckles on her olive skin into glittering sparkles. “Solace is found in acceptance. Accepting doesn't mean forgetting, just understanding that you can't remain in a past you can't change. Moving forward isn't forgetting, and it's not an insult to my memory when you find yourself in the rapture of a happy moment. You've felt a few already, tiny sparks when you're enthralled by our son. You deserve that happiness. You deserve to fall in love again when you're ready. Don't let your mind convince you otherwise.”
Shadows gathered in the forest behind them. Shan felt them first, then saw them undulating in his peripheral vision. The sun brightened, sending tendrils toward him like rapidly-growing vines. They were here for him, to claim him as their own.
He sighed and pulled Marita into a kiss. “I don't know what to do here. Do I embrace the shadows and accept my own darkness, or do I fight them away with every bit of strength I have left? And what of the light? Do I shield myself from it or stand in its full glory and burn to ashes? I think the eclipse is about to become total. That must mean I need to decide right now which one I am.”
The shadows drew closer, and so did the light. Reaching, spiraling, burning bright and cold from both sides.
“You dolt, do you really not understand this?” Marita asked with an abrupt laugh.
“I don't know which one to pick,” Shan whispered as the shadows and light both licked at his bare feet.
“You don't pick,” she said. Her smile was a sorrowful shade of kind as she lowered her chin to kiss Maritan.
“Do they pick for me? Do I just stand here and wait?”
“Idiot. You don't pick because it's not a competition. The light and shadow are coming to you because they are both you. You're the Eclipse Spellkeeper, Shan. You're both sunlight and shadow, sun and moon, lightbinder and warlock. Shadows can't exist without light. You can manipulate both, use the intensity of your light to create stronger shadows, and that is why your magic is so powerful.”
“If I accept them both will they tear me apart?” Shan asked. The tendrils tugged at his hands now, straightening clawed fingers and tick
ling palms.
Marita stepped forward and kissed his cheek. “No. They will make you whole. I love you, Shannon Daeriel Sylleth Goldtree. I need you to love yourself now, just a little bit. Just enough to let them in.”
“I don't know how,” Shan whimpered as the tendrils snaked up his arms.
“See yourself as I did—loving, caring, resilient, a fantastically creative lover, wonderfully inappropriate sense of humor. See yourself as Maritan does—warm, safe, responsive to his needs, a soothing voice, an absolute pillar of comfort. I don't think you understand how happy he is when you're holding him. He loves his wet nurses, but not like he loves you. You're his everything. You're already as much his light as he is yours.” She backed away from him and closed her teary eyes. “Forgive yourself. Trust yourself. Care for yourself. Love yourself. Choose yourself. You're worth that, Shan.”
“I don't want to be their weapon.” The light and shadows surrounded him now, embraced him like a pair of lovers. Only his head was still exposed.
“Then don't be. Let them be surprised when you wake up and you're not what they expected you to be.” Now little more than a blur of color beyond the shadowed light veil, Marita smiled through her tears and cuddled Maritan close. “I need to leave you now, sweet Shan. You'll find me again in another dream. Maybe a different version of fake me, but still I'll be there. I'll stay with you, Shan. I love you, and I never regretted a thing.”
Shadows embraced light and Shan found himself floating in a ring of amber fire. This was it, totality, a radiant corona punctuated by blackness. He sat within it and let its warmth and beauty run through his tired nerves. Sunbright and moondark, and he was both.
“I am all of this,” he whispered to the dark, to the licking flames. “This is what I am, and it's beautiful. It's not what I chose, or what I wanted, but it's what I am. All that pain, all that torture, and I'm still alive. I took lives, but I've also saved them, and now I've created one. And now I create myself. I mold myself into something I can love. I'm not a fulcrum or a scale desperately seeking balance. I'm a tapestry. I was always on the back side of it before, so all I saw was ugliness and disorder. Now I see the front and I like what I see. A father, a brother, a son . . . but I'm not just that. I'm more than my relationship to other people. I'm not broken. I'm just unfinished.”
The corona and darkness tickled his senses, leaving him giggling.
“All right. I'm not scared anymore. I'm just tired. Come to me, my shadows, my light. I embrace you both. I love you both. I am you both. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to have myself a little nap. These past few years have been exhausting.”
Shadows and light rolled over him in alternating waves, then draped over him like a winter quilt. His heart calmed and he contently drifted through the black.
SHAN OPENED HIS EYES to sunlight and chirping birds. Lyssandra's knee was still next to his head and Nylian packed his materials back into a hard-sided case.
“I know you'd rather I keep my mouth shut, but can I talk now?” Shan mumbled.
“You're finished. How do you feel?” Lyssandra asked. Since she was backlit by the sun, Shan couldn't tell if it was confusion or concern wrinkling her brow.
Shan pressed his palms into the stone and sat up. “Light. Not hollow, just light and rested. My face is a little sore, but that's the only pain. Am I still under Lyndarian's spell?”
“No,” Nylian replied. He set a gauzy blanket over Shan's shoulders, then passed him his clothes. “Everything you're feeling right now is you. The only active spells are the ones on your pendants and in your shackle.”
“Hmm. You can take that shackle off if you like. I'd rather not have someone else's magic on me.”
“I need to keep the shackle on you for now, Shannon.”
“Delirious fool. You're covered in the magic of others.” Lyssandra rose to a crouch and smirked.
Shan looked down at his bare skin. Every rune and pattern on his body shimmered violet and silver. The colors were subtle, much more subtle than the black ink the living light and shadow had replaced. “No, I got rid of those. I replaced the temporary ink with my own magic. See, watch.”
He held his hand over a line of runes on his forearm. He lifted the spell as an iridescent vapor, then tossed it into the sky. Day became a dome of night and twinkling stars danced like fireflies. He held it for several seconds, then pressed the spell back into his skin. “Pretty. I didn't know what that one did before. Many of the spells on me are rather malicious, but I know which ones to use and which to avoid. There are one thousand, three hundred, and forty-seven distinct spells on my body. Some are as simple as a word, others contain a world within a single symbol. You two have no idea the magnitude of power you've granted me, do you?”
“You feel no pain?” Nylian asked.
“Like I said, only some soreness where you marked my face. I can see what you did by the reflection in your eyes. You wrote lines of runes down my cheeks between the scars, a couple more at my temples that arc over my eyebrows.” Shan held up his arm to examine a simple golden tree on his left wrist. “This is new. No, no pain. No fear, either. I've never felt this calm.”
Lyssandra exhaled.
“Did you think I would wake up and try to kill you?” Shan asked. “No, I won't kill you. I've killed people before. I don't think I will again. I don't want to do anything else I regret. I know you expected me to become your weapon, but I'm not one. I choose not to be a weapon. I choose not to destroy in either your name or mine.”
Nylian's confusion broke into a grin and he laughed. Shan tilted his head, perplexed. He'd never seen Nylian smile like this before, let alone laugh.
“Lyssandra, he's not your apex,” Nylian said, still laughing. “Or maybe he is, because he certainly is powerful, but he's not what you were expecting.”
“I wanted a lion and you gave me a fluffy yellow kitten,” Lyssandra said, shaking her head. “No matter. There are others, and the half-Fae was conditioned from birth for this. We'll consider this one to be practice. Not a failed first attempt because as you said, he is extraordinarily powerful. He's also now just as disconnected as you are. Impossibly calm, nearly unshakable. I made a weapon of you, Nylian, but you were more willing than he is. Maybe time will allow him to become more useful. In the meantime, just let him live as he wishes. Let him wander the city and see what he does. That might gives us a better idea of what went wrong with him and how to avoid that in the future completions.”
“Nothing is wrong with me,” Shan said as he slipped into his clothes. “Everything wrong has become right. There was always this war raging inside me, as brutal as the one you're committing against the Fae. My war has ended and now I'm at peace with myself. I didn't know I could feel like this. I won't thank you for it because you assgargling slugshits tortured me and hunted my family, but I do appreciate the outcome.” He inhaled deeply, then rose to survey the observers. They all appeared as confused and disappointed as Lyssandra. “Sorry. I won't be blowing up any shit for you today. I gave you some stars, that's it for the show. Go home and think about your excessively poor life choices.”
Elsin shouldered past Nyssandrian to transfer Maritan into Shan's arms. He winced and asked, “Are you all right? You're alive, but are you all right?”
Shan leaned toward him and whispered, “I'll never be all right, but don't let them know that. If they know, they'll go back to thinking they won. Keep my little secret, Uncle Elsin. I won't forgive you if you tattle on me.” He straightened his back and smiled at Maritan. “Hey, baby-baby. How about we get away from all of these voyeurs and see if Rayna's awake? It's such a nice day that we should all go sit on our own balcony and read a book or two.”
Maritan startled himself with a burp. His flailing left arm glittered gold. Shan caught it to see a golden tree identical to the one on his own wrist.
He returned to Lyssandra and Nylian and narrowed his eyes. “You tattooed my baby? What is wrong with you?”
Elsin approached as t
hey stared at Shan, befuddled. He pursed his lips and said, “He was with me or Jei the entire time. They were never anywhere near him.”
Nylian studied the markings on both Shan's and Maritan's wrists. “This isn't a tattoo and I did not put this on either of you. It is a solar brand, a specific type of lightbind that can only be created during eclipses, and only by an extremely powerful lightbinder. It's a mark of protection similar to the spell that keeps me safe within The Halls. You did this, Shannon, not me. The only things that can kill either of you now are age or a reaper.”
Shan rocked Maritan side-to-side. “Hear that, little guy? We broke nature. I don't remember doing that, but gods, I hope I don't regret it.”
He walked away from the disappointed crowd and returned to his suite.
THE AROMAS OF SPICES and autumn fruits, the colors of silks fluttering in the autumn breeze, the clinks of coins and murmured music of hundreds of shoppers, the crisp sweetness of an apple on his tongue—Shan sat on a bench and allowed the bustle of the Lower Anthora market to overwhelm him. He came here often enough now that the shopkeepers and regulars no longer feared his face. He never stayed long since he had to schedule travel time around Maritan's feedings, but he made sure to venture down the bridges and sloped streets to the riverside market at least twice a week.
There was nothing special about this particular market, as far as Anthoran markets went. There were others just like it, even on this particular river. The ones closer to The Halls had better quality wares and more talented musicians, but luxury didn't interest him. He chose this market strictly for its ambiance. The Halls were too quiet, too cold. Here he found a warm comfort, a blanket of social noise and sensation that temporarily lifted him from his loneliness.
“Good day, Spellkeeper. How's your little one today? Heard it might rain tonight. Down here, at least. Up where you are it'll probably snow.” A halfling flower vendor with a baby on her back paused her cart before his bench. A month ago, she had been afraid of him. Now she greeted him every time he made the trip.
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