She rises, fluid and self-assured, and we stop walking. Instead of moving toward us, though, she turns to a large, paneled screen on her left. An itch starts beneath my skin. There’s no reason for that to be hiding part of the wall.
“I’ve been waiting.” The confidence in her voice makes my stomach cramp. She grabs the edge of the panel and pushes it over. “They’ve been waiting, too.”
I don’t even hear the crash of wood on stone. Blood roars in my ears when I see the three iron cages backed up against the wall.
Aetos and Desma sit huddled together in the first cage. She looks okay—too thin, though, making her pregnant belly stand out like a disproportionate lump. He’s a brutalized mess. Despite Aetos being covered in swirling blue tattoos, there’s no hiding the bruising, and I can barely breathe through the sight of his battered face. They look at me, hope and relief exploding into their eyes. I see in an instant that they forgive me for this situation I didn’t even know about, but I may never forgive myself.
I swallow hard.
In the next cage, Vasili holds his wife. One of Vasili’s eyes is caked with blood and swollen shut, leaving three eyes to focus on me with unconditional love and to break my heart. I’ve never seen Phaedra cry before, but her eyes glisten now. A tear tracks down one of her weathered cheeks, and I can almost feel the ghost of it on my own skin.
Vasili and Phaedra were the first people to show me kindness when I needed it the most. Without them, I don’t think my broken heart would have ever stood a chance.
Looking at them, rage starts to pierce a hole through my anguish. How did Selena—Persephone—let this happen? These are her people as much as mine.
I force my gaze to the third and final cage, the one closest to me. It holds two people I hardly know but recognize anyway. My youngest brothers, Laertes and Priam. I have no idea of their worth. They look at me with some curiosity—and no hope at all.
My nostrils flare on a tight breath, and the look I turn on Mother is one of pure, scorching wrath. Lightning boils inside me, and I clench my jaw so hard it hurts. How did I not know about this? How did no one know about this?
“Your choice, Talia,” Mother says. “You enter one cage, and the people in it go free.”
Anger pounds through me. I want to snap and snarl, like I’ve done all my life. Instead, with utter calm but raging with Elemental Magic and volcanic fury underneath, I say, “You don’t make the rules anymore.”
Ignoring that, she gestures toward the cages. “Save a pair of them, or save yourself.”
“Don’t do it, Cat!” Desma yells.
Four of the most precious people in the world to me start shouting all at once from too-small prisons stained with their own blood and filth. They want me to save myself. My heart burns in my chest.
Two people remain silent. My brothers. They’re not that much younger than I am. Their faces are blank, their shoulders curled in. They know there’s no hope of my choosing them. My affections are already divided between the other captives.
There’s ice in my words. A storm in my veins. “I will not enter a cage, and you will not harm them.”
“You don’t make demands,” Mother snaps.
“I do. You listen to me now.”
She chuckles, but her low laugh reveals a hint of frayed nerves underneath. Her eyes dart to Griffin and then back to me. “Who’s holding the leash now? You or your Sintan dog?”
Finally recognizing her acidic barb for what it really is—jealousy—I take Griffin’s hand in mine and then move closer to my friends, placing us in front of their cages. Mother doesn’t miss either movement, and I didn’t intend her to. I have what she doesn’t. What she’s always refused and pushed away.
“There is no leash,” I answer. “There’s a partnership. And trust.”
Something in Mother’s eyes seems to waver, although her expression remains hard. There are harsh lines around her mouth that I don’t remember from before, no doubt pinched into her face by years of unhappiness.
Some of my anger starts to fade, my emotions taking a different form. “I feel sorry for you. You rejected everything good in life until life rejected you.”
Mother goes so pale that I know my words struck hard and true.
“Where’s Father?” I ask. I don’t need a blade to drive a knife right into her. I see that now. And I need to pierce her hard shell deeper than ever before.
Her chin lifts. “Six weeks in his grave.”
Huh. I feel nothing. “Did you send him there?”
Her features, cold and brittle for so long, abruptly shift into something that makes her look almost human for once. “No. The healer said he had a weak heart.”
“He had a weak everything, if you ask me.”
Her eyes narrow, almost as if she wants to defend him. She doesn’t.
“Are you lonely now?” As far as I know, when Mother wasn’t sleeping around, they didn’t sleep apart. It always seemed odd to me that she wouldn’t share anything with him, and yet she kept him close.
I’ve never known her to answer a question like that. I’m shocked when she does.
“There is a void now. It’s unexpected.”
“Unexpected because you didn’t love him, or unexpected because you didn’t even feel that void when you killed your own children?”
Her expression hardens once more. “I never killed my own children.”
While that’s technically the truth, I nearly choke on the absurdity of her claim. My anger flares again. “You certainly orchestrated their deaths, especially Eleni’s. And you tried hard enough with me, or are you forgetting about Frostfire and the pit?”
“Forget Frostfire.” She flings a hand through the air, as if to shove aside the whole horrific incident. “Apart from that, I’ve only ever tried to bring you back!”
There’s no lie in her words, and I know them to be the truth. But Frostfire isn’t so easily forgotten, and I know the real reason she always wanted me back.
My laugh is dark. “Only to ensure your own survival. You sold me to keep your kingdom. Was your deal with Galen Tarva worth it?” I ask.
She draws slightly back. “Yes. As it turns out, I’m the only one who benefited.”
Disgusted, I ask, “Do you have any idea how that monster treated Ianthe? What he did to her?”
Something flickers in Mother’s eyes again. It’s fleeting, but I saw it. Through selfish, unfeeling actions, she lost Ianthe, too, and she knows it.
Griffin squeezes my hand. “Make your offer, Cat. Finish this.”
I nod, but before I can move or say anything at all, Mother’s telekinetic magic rips me away from Griffin and slams me up against the nearest cage.
For a moment, my ears ring, and I can’t breathe. But I don’t need breath or hearing to lift both hands and let twin bolts roll off them. I aim for her feet, and she leaps back from the charred stone, the hem of her dress singed.
My friends and brothers gasp. They didn’t know I could do that.
Growling his fury, Griffin helps to steady me. He looks me over with concern, but I’m fine. It takes more than one hit to rattle me.
Straightening away from the bars, I tap into Little Bean’s zip and zing to make sure she wasn’t too jostled. Her magic answers me reassuringly.
My own magic ignites. Lightning coils down my arm and gathers in the palm of my hand. I cock my head. “No potion needed. Your reign of terror is over, Mother. You’ve done enough harm.”
Her eyes dart beyond us to my friends. Power gathers around her, and she lifts her hand with clear malicious intent.
I send a lightning bolt straight through her raised palm just as the cages begin to rattle and rise. My aim has always been impressive. Mother cries out in pain.
“Don’t even think about it,” I say. “Or you won’t survive this.”
Bre
athing hard, she cradles her smoking hand against her chest. She still manages a scathing look. “Survive this? You’re as stupid as ever if you think to let your enemies live.”
“It’s not stupidity, Mother. It’s compassion.”
Her face goes momentarily blank. “Compassion? Why waste any of that on me?”
I huff. I can’t help it. “Truthfully? The damage you’ve caused and the lives you’ve taken make it very hard to choose this path. But I don’t think you would even ask that question if you weren’t craving compassion from someone.”
I glance at Griffin, so strong and solid by my side, letting me handle Mother the way I’ve chosen to. When we first found each other, I was a mess, full of conflict and fear. His steadfastness and unwavering faith in me helped to save me from myself, and from what I could have become. Right now, he’d kill Mother for me. Or he’d watch me kill her myself. He also understands this choice and how it’s a part of me—if Mother lets us make it.
I level a steady look on her. “Compassion has no rules. And Elpis abandons no one.”
She stares at me. I don’t think she breathes. I see her swallow.
“I don’t hate you anymore, Mother. That feeling has passed. I know joy, and you don’t. I’m sad for you. I’ll help you if I can.”
Her mouth trembles ever so slightly, and then she clamps her lips tight.
Where Mother is concerned, part of me thinks my choices should be more black and white, but instead, I feel like I’m still in Tartarus and see only in shades of gray. Maybe that’s what forgiveness looks like, or at least acceptance. Maybe that’s why Griffin likes my two-toned wings. Maybe that’s why I like them as well.
“Swear a binding vow to do no more harm,” I offer, “and I can let you live.”
Slowly, she shakes her head. “I can’t live in a cage of my own making.”
“But don’t you see?” I let lightning grow and crackle from my head to my feet. Thunder rumbles around me. “That’s the only way to live.”
“I’m already a prisoner,” she murmurs, her voice not quite steady. Her eyes meet mine. “I don’t even remember a before.”
Her unexpected words, a confession of sorts, nearly rip me in half. They’re the encouragement I needed from her. And the closest to an apology she’s ever given.
“What happened to you?” I ask. “What made you like this?”
Her gaze jumps to the cages still holding my friends, to Griffin, and then back to me again. For the first time in my memory, her face twists and her stony mask really cracks. “I never had anyone. Nothing like this.” Her good hand flies toward us but without any harmful magic this time. “I saw only one path.”
I step toward her, and to my undying satisfaction—no matter my capacity for compassion—Mother takes a step back. “Then you were blind. I would have helped you. Eleni would have helped you.”
She sucks in a sharp breath. “You hated me. You both did.”
“You gave us every reason to despise you. And then you did everything you could to nurture our hate.”
Her eyes start to glisten. I didn’t think Mother could cry. I thought it was anatomically impossible.
She blinks all traces of wetness away, and her voice hardens again. “It’s too late.”
“It might be,” I agree. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t try.”
Her gaze darts over me, over the manifest power at my command. “Your magic is impressive.” There’s nothing grudging in her words, almost like she’s relieved to see me finally coming into my own.
I nod. “You can’t win. I know it. You know it. Give me your binding vow.”
All artifice seems to strip from her face. Her voice drops in pitch. “Who are you?”
With that question, she might actually be seeing me for the first time. But I think she already knows. She’s used my humanity against me so many times. Some think I have too little. Others think I have too much. No one can decide, least of all me, but it’s there, and it defines me. Mother couldn’t take it from me, or make me into a different person. Empathy is a part of me, even now, when the stakes are at their highest, and it’s an all-or-nothing game.
Something I said during the Agon Games comes back to me. It was true then, and it’s true now. “I am mercy, but I am also death.”
She must read everything she needs to on my face. I’ve never wanted to kill her. But I will, if it comes to that.
She takes a deep breath, almost a sigh. “I envy your choices. Now, when it’s too late, I wish I could have made them myself.” The habitual scorn is absent from her words, and a look comes over her face that I hardly recognize on her usually hard and unfeeling features. Something selfless. Something close to peace.
Emotion bands around my chest. “It’s not too late,” I whisper.
“I’ve taken from you. So much. I understand that now.” She backs up another step. “It’s over now, Talia, but I can still give you one thing.”
Years of suspicion rise up in me. I try to find the twist in her words.
She pulls a dagger from her belt. Does she think she can kill me with that? Kill any of us? I’ll char her to dust first.
Mother lifts the knife but then abruptly turns it and drives it toward her heart.
I gasp in shock. My lightning stops raging around me, and the cavernous room dims. Sudden silence descends after the startled noises from Griffin and my caged brothers and friends. Mother staggers and then falls. Her hand drops to the side, leaving the dagger in her chest.
I lunge forward, crouching next to her. “Mother?”
Turning her head toward me, she lifts her good hand—the one I didn’t send a lightning bolt through—and then brushes her fingertips against my cheek. It’s the only time she’s ever touched me with affection. The softness in her face is so different, so bright.
My knees hit the floor, and I bend over her, my throat squeezing tight. Griffin kneels down next to me, his warm hand a comfort on my back. I thank the Gods he’s here. Without him, I might break.
My obligation was clear. Griffin knew it. I knew it. Mother knew it. Extract a binding promise from her to do no further harm, or strike her down. She refused the vow. Mother’s only gift to me besides life and my sisters was taking this terrible duty out of my hands.
With her last breath, she exhales words I never thought I’d hear. “I’ll tell Eleni I’m sorry.”
My vision blurs as her eyes dull into the sightless stare of death. All is quiet around me, and Griffin is a strong, silent, consoling presence by my side.
We won. Thalyria is ours. Only one life was lost today.
Love is weakness. It’s what Mother always said. It’s what’s true, in a way.
Merciless Cat. Griffin had it right, too.
Compassion and ruthlessness have always danced around each other inside me like wary partners, but I know the music they spin to, and I’d rather have a heart to break than no heart at all.
I’ll never believe that Mother chose this path today because she knew I could beat her and that her kingdom was lost. If she’d wanted to, she still would have fought to the bitter end, would have forced me to kill her. But in the face of my mercy, something inside her shifted. Elpis finally touched her heart.
My breath shuddering, I pat down Mother, looking for her obol. Finding it, I force the tremor from my hand and pull the coin from her pocket, gripping it hard.
Her life force has only just left Thalyria. She’s just now seeing the other side.
I stare at the coin. I could doom her to Asphodel. I could take her payment for passage across the Styx.
I rub the coin between my fingers. It’s not even gold. It’s nearly worthless on our plane of existence. But take it from her? Some days, I despised her enough to do it. I’ll always struggle with the darkness in me that sometimes sways the scales and will always fringe my wings and
shade my actions. But today, I have no desire for revenge, and the choice of where Mother goes next isn’t mine to make.
I tuck the coin into her still-pliant hand and then fold her closed fist across her chest. I judged her plenty in life. Charon and Hades can judge her in death.
And if she gets that far, Eleni can decide if she wants to forgive.
I sit back on my heels, taking a deep, steadying breath. Then, turning to Griffin, I gently kiss his lips. “I can’t believe it’s over.”
“It’s over,” he says, cupping my jaw. “And you were amazing and strong.”
I tilt my head, studying him. “You were awfully quiet through all that.”
A small smile lifts his mouth. “You did everything you needed to all by yourself.”
He’s right. Today I mostly needed him supporting my choices, watching my back, and showing Mother that together is so much better than alone.
Aetos clears his throat, and I pop up, turning to my friends.
“It’s time to get you out.” I only waited this long because I figured they were safer from Mother behind bars.
I go to Desma and Aetos first, grip two bars of their cage, and then let my hands heat with the extraordinary power of Zeus himself. The metal glows red-hot, but no part of my own magic ever burns me, and I pull outward, easily bending the iron. I yank extra hard, knowing that Aetos will need plenty of room to get his big body out.
Desma stumbles out of the cage first and straight into my waiting arms. The swell of her growing baby bumps lightly into mine. She hugs me hard, even though she must be bone-weary.
Drawing back, she looks at me, her eyes as damp as mine. “I understand why you lied to us now, Cat. All these years. I don’t blame you for wanting to protect us.”
Aetos shimmies through the bent bars after her, and Desma leans against him. Somehow, he hugs us both at once, and for a moment, I also lean into his familiar, tattooed frame. Then I step away and turn to the next cage.
Vasili and I look at each other, and my heart turns over achingly hard at the sight of his abused face. There’s dried blood in his mustache, making it lopsided and crisp. His eye is puffed out and tight, the skin around it a terrible color. He needs a healer as soon as possible, or his vision might suffer, and he may never throw a knife as accurately again.
Heart on Fire (The Kingmaker Chronicles Book 3) Page 34