by Alyssa Wees
If Varon weren’t holding me, my knees would give out. The skeletons, the thrones, the wounds where their hearts should be—oh, no, no, no, no.
With this wrench of revulsion comes an unbidden vision of the king’s rotted teeth slicing into my skin, into my heart, of him drinking and drinking until I am drained. A horrible waking nightmare, there and gone, and I promise myself from this moment on that I will not let him steal macula blood from me or anyone else. I will do whatever must be done to make sure of it.
The vision fades, and another one takes its place, not of the future this time but of the past. I remember my mother, how I found her in the temple, a gouge in her throat and her veins drained dry. I remember how I screamed, and how, in that moment, it felt like if I stopped screaming, my heart would stop beating. Like the scream was the only thing left alive inside me.
“Your mother was an accident,” says the king, as if he knows exactly what I’m thinking. “One of the Immacula I drank managed to regenerate enough magic to come back to life, and he descended upon the first macula he found, ravenous. It is a rare thing, but some maculae can detect the magic in others. It calls to them—they can feel it there, under the skin, through a simple touch. But perhaps you knew that already.”
I swallow, my throat aching. How could the king know that I can feel the magic in others? Even now I sense Varon’s, the shimmer and the strain of it: apples rotting on a golden branch, stars peeling like scabs from the sky. It’s like he’s fighting against something—but what?
The king continues. “Those without magic have always tried to steal from those who have it. A sip of blood for a mere minute of magic, before it fizzles and is gone.” A long sigh that seems to go on forever, until it doesn’t. “I knew it would not be enough. Not blood on its own. No—the source must be consumed. The heart within a heart.”
At this, my own heart stops. It stops, and for a second I’m not sure it will ever start again. But it does, it does, and the sound of it is louder than anything else, louder even than a promise breaking, than a secret snapping, than a storm skinning the sky of its colors. Not my heart, I vow. He will not have my heart.
Varon’s grip loosens a little bit more, and I shake my head, dizzied but determined not to let the king know it. “That would never work.”
“I disagree, my dear. A heart eaten every few years, taken from those who wouldn’t be missed. There are many ways for a macula to serve the crown, and sacrificing oneself is the highest of all honors.”
I look up, but I can no longer see the stars. The darkness billowing there obscures everything. “Such an act—it would tear you apart.”
“And what is it that you see there above you? My deeds, made manifest. Ever since the first bite passed my lips, I have been deteriorating, piece by piece.”
“But I saw you a month ago. Before I cast my spell. You were there. You were—”
“A proxy, glamoured in my image.”
A shudder passes through my entire body.
“Soon I’ll be nothing but darkness, a roiling mass of it. Glorious and unbounded. A kind of magic no one has ever before seen.”
“That’s never going to happen,” I hiss. “Any of it.”
“Oh, you’ll see, Rhea Ravenna.”
“Varon, let me go,” I plead. But his grip only tightens, even as his heart flinches an apology against my back. My hands are pinned to my sides, but I rotate my palms so that they are facing behind me. “Alenia mec liesana. Varon, please. Alenia mec!”
Nothing.
“You are so powerful,” Varon says quietly, “but you do not have that kind of magic. The kind that controls.”
The new Darkness, the king—he laughs. Humorless, colorless, dry.
“Necromancer,” he says. “Alenia sec liesana.”
Varon releases me.
And it is then that I truly comprehend the depth of this horror.
For years the king has had magic—sticky magic, stolen magic—and all the while, he’s been persecuting each macula for committing a far lesser crime than every one of his combined. The crime of merely being born with magic.
I know your secret, the pretend Rhea said, to lure the king into Graiae Forest. Your secret, your secret, your secret.
But for him, his journey into the forest was never about his macabre magic, even if the creatures had known about it. No, he went to them knowing what they had planned to do, striding through the trees with a plan of his own. The rallying woodland people didn’t expect anything, because they didn’t actually know the secret they claimed to hold, that the king was capable of such a thing. Of seizing a star, and letting them all burn.
And they still don’t know—but I do. I do, and there’s no going back now.
“What do you want with me?” I ask, holding my hands behind my back and letting a knot of hard white magic swell between my palms. “Why did you want me to see this place?”
“You are mine, Rhea, the true heir to my throne, even over your father, who does not know what it means to have magic. And despite all that has happened, you can still have the throne. The brands on your hands, the renouncement of your title—it was all for show. You would have known that if you had not run off. I was going to keep you hidden, keep you safe, until it was time for you to take my crown and rule as I have done.”
Terror sickles apart the chambers of my heart as I imagine being locked away for years and years, learning how to become him.
I pretend to consider his words for a second. Then I bring my hands out from behind my back, and throw my glass knot of magic toward him as hard and as fast as I can.
The king lifts his decrepit fingers and flicks my blast aside. It shoots off into the night and shatters in the wind, shards bursting in a flash of gold light. As it does, the darkness comes crashing back down around us, a billowing cloud, obscuring the king and the ruined bodies slumped in their thrones, negating any further attacks.
Well, I’ll just have to get close enough to press my hands against his chest and whisper the words to stop his derelict heart. I know the spell, though I’ve never used it before. I never thought I’d have to, and to do so might cause my own darkness to fester. But I have to try.
I grasp Varon’s hand. Our fingers entwine and our pulses tick, side by side, and I’m not sure which is his and which is mine. I squeeze once, hoping he will understand without words what I mean to do. Then I let go, taking a deep breath and one step forward, followed by another and another. I reach for him, the king I cannot see, my arms stretched long in front of me. Varon follows, hovering close.
“Someday, Princess, I was going to tell you everything,” the king says, speaking steadily louder and faster. His voice seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. “I didn’t want it to happen like this. No one was supposed to know—not about me, and not about you. But you were careless; you were caught. And I had no choice but to treat you like the other maculae. If I did not, my people would no longer trust me.”
I keep stepping, keep reaching. I whisper a voice-throwing spell before speaking so that it sounds to him like I’m still standing in the center of the room. “The forest is burning because of you.”
“Tell me, what was I supposed to do? Let the creatures take my kingdom?”
I hear Shay’s voice in my head saying, Whatever it takes.
The creatures, the maculae, me, the king—maybe we are only trying to keep what is ours. What we believe is ours.
Who does the world truly belong to?
Not him.
“We just want to live freely,” I say, yelling over the slosh of the waves as Varon and I veer nearer and nearer to the ocean at the northern edge of the tower, skirting behind the thrones. “Not to be killed or enslaved!”
“This land used to be a wild place. No Immaculae, no heartless—just magic, unbridled and everywhere. Do you know how f
rightening a place like that can be to those who have no magic at all?”
“Magic isn’t dangerous, and neither are the maculae.”
“Some are, though, and that is the problem. It is that way with all people, with all creatures, magical or otherwise. Everyone is capable of the deepest violence and the highest kindness. Our natures are simply a constant battle between those extremes.”
Keep going, I think, forcing myself to concentrate. Keep reaching.
“Now that you know what I am, you will learn from me and share my crown,” the king says. “But if you will not, I will have your heart, Rhea Ravenna. Either way, we will rule together.”
Suddenly a hand flies out of the darkness and grasps my upper arm. The scream in my chest makes it as far as the roof of my mouth, clots against the inside of my cheeks, and leaks between the sieve of my teeth as a high, wispy screech.
“Shhh. It’s just me.” Varon’s fingers loosen. “Why did you return for me?”
We don’t have time for this. I start to shiver, and I can’t stop. “Come o-on. We—”
Varon holds on to me as if I am the only sure, solid thing left in existence. Ocean mist wafts up, and I can feel it around our ankles, and I realize just how close we are to the very edge, nothing but open air behind us. “Rhea, please. Why did you come for me?”
I force myself to stand still just a moment more in order to give this boy holding on to me an honest answer.
“Because my name is cradled in your bones. Because your heart sounds the same as mine. Because a sky is just unremarkable darkness without the stars. It’s empty.”
And for a too-short second, I feel his grin, feel the cut and color of it, the clarity: ravenous and red and all, all for me.
“You can have my heart,” Varon says, and I return his grin despite everything, despite where we are and the predicament we’re in. But then he adds, “Take mine instead.”
“Don’t—” I begin to protest, but Varon squeezes my hand as if to let me know it’s all right and he knows what he’s doing. I’m not so sure. “You can’t—”
“Swim to safety,” he says quickly, quietly. “Get away from here.”
He puts his hands on my shoulders and shoves.
“No!” I fall over the side of the tower, and for a second I’m suspended in midair, the startled sea cringing back in anticipation of the impact of my body. I wait to slam into the waves, my eyes shut, my lungs full of air, not sure when I’ll be able to catch my next breath.
But.
Before my toes touch the water, an invisible rope winds around my waist and I know it’s the king, jerking me back. I crash not into the sea as Varon intended but onto the floor. Hard. My spine flattens on the ground, my neck snaps back, and my head smashes against the tile.
Everything does not go black, because everything already is black.
No—it goes blank.
A minute passes, or maybe an hour or a lifetime. The next thing I know, I’m gasping awake. Varon peers down at me, inches away, with his hands on either side of my face, his palms almost unbearably hot as he revives me. A dull throbbing knocks at the back of my skull as he eases back on his heels.
“Rhea, are you all right? Can you hear me?”
I nod, sitting up slowly. My back is sore, and there’s an ache in my temples already fading, but otherwise I’m unhurt. Varon helps me to my feet, catching me as I wobble, as I nearly topple to the floor again. Through his touch I feel his magic, warm and flowing freely beneath his skin. The king must have removed Varon’s chains to allow him to revive me.
“You might be a bit blurry, but not for long.” His fingers brush the outside corner of my eyebrow. I think he meant to touch my cheek. “My sky, I tried to save you. I thought—”
At once the king speaks. “Boy, your chains—put them back on.”
“No!” I cry, stepping in front of Varon, as if I could shield him from something that is everywhere, all around us. “You will not use him anymore.”
“Would you like to put them on him, then?”
Before I can respond, there comes a creak and a long, agonized moan followed by another moan and another. Bones cracking, tendons snapping, skin ripping. Beside me, Varon raises his hands as he lifts the bodies from their thrones, their stiff knees popping as, slowly, they stand.
Animated but not alive, no hearts to pump the blood through their desiccated veins. I press closer to Varon’s side, feeling the warm flare of his magic as the bodies shuffle forward, slowly at first, heels scraping as they drag against the stone, but then faster and faster, inexorably.
A distraction. I peel away from Varon and, tightening my queasy stomach, I push myself between the bodies, using them as a shield as they crowd closer and closer to the king. I’m not sure we’re even moving in the right direction, but it’s worth a try. I reach out blindly in front of me, ready with the curse for stopping hearts, on the tip of my tongue.
There’s a clap like thunder on a clear night, sudden and deafening and rattling my teeth. At once the bodies drop to the floor, pile at the king’s feet. Seizing my chance, I press forward, stumbling over limp limbs, my arms outstretched.
A powerful rush of wind knocks me backward, and I fall, land hard on my left shoulder, and slide along the floor for several feet before the wind suddenly ceases. I scramble to standing, rolling my shoulder, the sting refusing to fade.
“What do you want from me?” I cry. Varon comes up beside me and slides his hand into mine, and magic crackles between our palms. It hurts, just a little, but I don’t mind. “I refuse to take your crown, and I won’t let you have my heart. I won’t continue what you’ve started. Why do you think I cast the curse in the first place? To get away from this.”
“You will not take my crown, and you will not give your heart,” the king repeats slowly, and dread rises like a moon inside me, full and sickly bright. “The boy, though—he would give his heart in place of yours. But I do not want a heart with so much death in it. And so I do not care what happens now to the boy.” There is a terrible pause, and I wish I could shrink the darkness to the size of my thumbnail and swallow it like a pill, gone. “Do you?”
There is a sudden slopping sound, of waves being parted, water crashing into water, and then smooth, slinking footsteps, growing louder.
That’s not the sea, I realize. That’s not the sound of sloshing water—it’s singing. Someone in the darkness is singing, and they are coming closer.
“Varon, oh, Varon, where are you? Come here, my light, my love, and let me have a taste of you.”
“Renata?” I whisper, even though I know, I know it is not her.
Varon’s fingers untangle from mine as he pulls away from me, compelled to approach the nymph we cannot see.
“It’s not real. It’s just a trick!” I warn, fumbling blindly for Varon’s hand, his arm, his hair, any piece of him I can reach. “Varon, please—”
“That’s right, that’s right,” the nymph sings, beckoning him toward her. She may be nothing but a voice created by the king, but once he has Varon in the sea, surely his magic will hold Varon under until he can no longer breathe. “Step farther, step faster, into the open arms of the night.”
I can’t stop her from singing if she’s not even really there to stop. I’ll simply have to be louder, to drown her out before she drowns him.
I smile a little to myself, knowing exactly what to do. Easy, easy, easy. And I don’t even need magic to do it.
I open my mouth, and scream.
And scream.
And scream.
It feels so, so good. Like waking up from a poisonous dream, sweating and blank with terror and grasping for my own name, my identity forgotten, but awake all the same.
But for once this is no dream, and I do not wake up.
“Enough,” the king says finally, and I hear it
in my head instead of in my ears. At once I go silent, my voice severed. “I will have your cooperation, Princess, or I will have that boy dead. Now, how do you answer?”
“No and no and no again.”
The ground shakes violently, as if a giant has stamped his foot. I tumble forward, and Varon catches my wrist, righting me, and I’m relieved that he is still near, still alive.
But for how long?
The king roars, a trumpet screech blasting through the room, higher and hungrier than any human sound I have ever heard. I cover my ears with my hands, but it doesn’t help, the cry cleaving through my mind, a corroded echo trapped inside.
No, it’s not the king, I realize, recognizing the noise as it goes on and on—a sphinx. He has conjured a brass-throated beast. Manticores eat men, but sphinxes have no such preferences—they will eat anyone, boy or girl, young or old, human or macula. But only if you fail to correctly solve a puzzle.
Finally the roar fades, followed by a furious flap of wings. Varon grunts, his warmth leaves my side, and I picture him swept up and pinned beneath the creature’s forepaws, which keep him in place.
“Say you’ll do what I ask of you, Rhea, and the boy will walk free,” says the king. “Or else unravel the riddle to save his life.”
“The riddle,” I say at once. The king forgets that I am a beast of the forest too. How many riddles have I answered? Thousands and thousands. I’m standing here now, obviously uneaten, simply because I know how to think like a sphinx. In the forest you learn quickly how to survive, how to prevent being gobbled alive. I smile, waiting for the creature to speak.
“How is a girl like a sky?” it asks in a rusted rumble. I wait for it to go on, certain there must be more to the riddle, but the sphinx is silent, waiting.
And waiting.
Usually sphinxes’ riddles are logical, like What has a spine but no bones? and What walks on four legs at dawn, two legs at noon, and three legs at dusk?