Crown of Crowns

by Clara Loveman

  I was appalled. “And the host doesn’t know what’s going on, that they’re being used as a tool for evil?”

  “No,” Roki said. “And yes, it sickens me too. Yet this is the way of the universe. The host’s mind cannot know what’s going on. They have no idea they’re being controlled by a Min. The Min quashes fear, trepidation, anxiety. The Min makes them almost superhuman.”

  Then Roki chuckled. “But it’s not all bad. We also use humans for fun. For example, when I inhabit the body of a human, I can feel despair, joy, love, anger, euphoria, and physical pain. The human senses become heightened. Oh, and the human still lives inside their body. They just take a back seat, like a passenger in the back of their mind.” He saw my skeptical expression and assured me, “I never kill them. That would be cruel.”

  Then he went on, saying, “Sound, sight, hearing, smell.” He gave me a look. “Touch. These sensations all become enhanced. Colors are brighter. Smells are more pungent. I find myself pausing for five minutes every time I pass a bakery. But touch is the big one. I can feel the air like it’s water. I can feel the blood flowing underneath my human skin. And women … don’t get me started. When we hug, it’s like we’re—”

  “Stop,” I said. “I don’t want to hear about the women you’ve been … hugging over the past five hundred years.”

  “Sorry.” Roki shifted awkwardly. “In truth, that was just physical stuff. I prefer deeply emotional connections. And in terms of minds, I have never interacted with a mind like yours. Never. You don’t accept something without questioning it first, even if it sounds like the greatest opportunity in the world. You genuinely care about the consequences and everyone’s welfare. Those other women were just bodies. You are both.”

  “Oh,” I said, but stopped it there. I didn’t want to start flirting. Roki and I had only become friends again five minutes ago, and I already felt like I was betraying Zawne. I tried to change the subject. “How have you kept your body for so long? What’s the person on the inside doing? I know you said they don’t know they’ve been possessed, but what’s going on with them?”

  “Ah,” Roki said, nodding. “This is where things get complicated. See, a Min can possess a body either for a brief period or for the full course of the body’s life. It depends on the assignment. My supersecret mission means that I am in this body for the next eighty years at minimum. The man inside is kind of dormant, at rest.”

  “That’s like murder,” I said. “It’s like a mental murder.”

  “The man was dying when I possessed him,” Roki said. “He had been infected by a pathogen and would have been dead within the hour. If anything, I saved him.”

  “Oh.” Again Roki had twisted my judgment around and made me feel stupid. He hadn’t killed the man. He had saved him. The man was getting to live it up with a Min for eighty years. I was more concerned that someone had been about to die because of a pathogen. I’d thought we were beyond such casualties. If there was one good thing about our society, it was that our medicine was top of the line.

  “You’re not stupid,” Roki said. “And yes, I can read your thoughts. Sorry about that. I’ll try not to. But really, you’re not dumb. You’re worried and kindhearted. I can already see that your core values haven’t changed in three years. You’re the same girl I fell for. It’s no wonder the Crown of Crowns picked you over the other heirs. I’ve eavesdropped on their thoughts and can tell you this. Half of them are evil, a quarter are hubristic, and a quarter only want the throne because it’s expected of them. Ninety-nine percent are just bored and looking for something to do. They think ascending the throne will give their restless lives some entertainment. You know how they are. These people have so much wealth and influence that life is borderline meaningless. But you, Kaelyn, you are driven by love and social justice. You are more righteous than them all.”

  “Thanks,” I said. It was no use arguing anymore. I had heard this same thing from a dozen people in the last week. I was just going to shut up and start accepting that yes, perhaps I was fit to be queen.

  “Speaking of queens,” Roki said, “we’d better get you to sleep. You need to be well rested for tomorrow. You’ve got a busy day ahead of you, I’m sure.”

  “But I want to know more,” I cried. “I’m not ready to go! Tell me more, Roki. Please.”

  “Fine,” he conceded. “One more question. Then you need to get some rest.”

  I thought long and hard, mostly because I was distracted by Roki’s soft lips curled into a smile. Then it came to me.

  “Mama,” I said. “Please, Roki, tell me who poisoned Mama.”

  Roki’s face drained of color. He took one of my hands in his and said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know. Min don’t pay too much attention to murders in Geniverd. I asked around, but no one could tell me. And I was with you when it happened.”

  Now I was sad. I didn’t want to think about Mama’s suffering because of some rival leader’s wrath. It made me want to unleash a wrath of my own!

  “You’re tough in your thoughts,” Roki said, teasing me like old times. “Now get some sleep, Kaelyn. We will talk more later.”

  “When?”

  Roki flashed his perfectly white teeth. “When you wake up.” He waved his hand in front of me, hypnotizing me deep into a slumber.

  It felt like I had slept for a whole week. I dozed dreamlessly in a black nothing. When I finally awoke, it was to the sight of Roki’s bright eyes blinking at me.

  “Good afternoon,” he said softly.

  Roki was kneeling at my bedside. I groggily reached up and caressed his face.

  “Afternoon?” I immediately took my hand back. I was in the real world again. I couldn’t touch Roki without betraying Zawne. I had to keep this as a friendship, a very close friendship.

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s already noon. And don’t stress about it. We’ve done nothing inappropriate.”

  Before I could respond, Roki vanished into thin air. At the exact same moment, Zawne walked into my room.

  “Sorry to barge in like this,” he said, “but I’ve been calling you on your visin all morning. Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” I said, finding it hard to sit up straight. I was incredibly tired from my time in Shiol. “I must have slept in again. All the excitement has got me fatigued.”

  “That’s understandable,” he said. Zawne crossed my bedroom in four brisk steps, leaned over, and planted a kiss on my lips. He pulled back just enough to look in my eyes. “I’ve been missing that.”

  I needed more. The talk with Roki, the fact I was to be married—it had a fire burning inside me. “Again,” I said, then grasped the nape of Zawne’s neck and pulled him close. Our lips touched, then our warm tongues swished and pressed and tugged; I was lost in it. I knew then that Zawne and I could rule the world.

  “That was unexpected,” Zawne said as he sat on the edge of my bed, panting. “You’re fiery for such a sleepy woman.”

  “I guess I needed the affection,” I said, which was true.

  Zawne gave me a smile. “You’ll always have mine.”

  I wondered if that was true. Would we always be so close and loving? I felt ashamed all over again for allowing Roki back into my life.

  Zawne said, “I’m going to have a quick shower, my love,” and he went into the bathroom. The second he closed the door, Roki was right back at my bedside, and I was lost in his eyes and his wild hair, his cut jaw. I was pulled between two worlds!

  “How did you do that?” I asked, trying to keep my voice low.

  Roki grinned, devilish in the way he silently teased me. “Every Min has heightened senses and extrasensory powers. I can detect moods, changes in temperature, slight fluctuations in air molecules. It means I can sense when someone is coming. I can even sense what they are going to do. It’s how I knew Raad was about to barge into your room with bad news that day. It was why I left, to let you and your brother mourn together.”

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s amazing. It m
ust be so great to be a Min. No wonder Lordin gave up her human form.”

  “That’s not all,” Roki said. “We each have one special ability. It comes with the package when you’re transformed. Mine is that I can mask presences. For example, I could mask my presence, and you would forget I was here. I can mask smells, feelings, even entire ideas. It’s incredible.”

  I gawked at Roki. “All these you can do … and you choose to visit me.”

  “You’ve sold yourself short for too long,” Roki told me. “I’m happy to see you’re coming into your own. You’re turning into a splendid woman, Kaelyn. I’m eager to see what the next forty years of your rule have in store.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but the bathroom door was opening. Roki vanished and out came Zawne, naked but for the towel wrapped around his waist. He was wet, bearded, and delicious. I suddenly felt like a very bad person, like a little girl and not at all like a queen. I motioned to him. “Come here. Sit close to me.”

  Zawne smirked. “I thought you might say that.”

  As he sauntered over to me, I remembered there was something important to tell him. My strange new obsession with his body would have to wait.

  He sat on the bed, stretched one arm over me, and said, “So, now what?”

  “Now we have to talk.” It made me feel bad that his expression went slack. Zawne had had something else on his mind. The silly man would have to wait.

  He sat up straight, suddenly a bit edgy. “Talk about what?”

  I remembered what the Crown of Crowns had said about Zawne being a simpler person than me. There was no way he would deny the offer to be king. So I spat it out.

  “Zawne, you and I are the chosen ones. We’re going to be king and queen.”

  His expression remained unchanged. His eyes were locked on mine, but there was no emotion. Was this part of his Aska training, to be as cold as ice when he needed to be?

  “Could you repeat that?”

  “We’re chosen,” I said. “We are the chosen. The Crown of Crowns came to me—well, sucked me into their dimension. I know the Crown of Crowns is a bird, and they are a bird—well, they take turns. Anyway, they told me we would be selected as the next king and queen.”

  I told him everything from beginning to end, every rule and every crazy new universal truth I had learned over the past forty-eight hours. I even snuck in some of the stuff Roki had told me. When all was said and done, I sat panting on the bed, and Zawne stood by the window, the afternoon light slashing across his rock-hard abs.

  “I always had a feeling,” he said distantly, as if talking to himself. “I always knew there was something strange about my parents. They slept so often, and always like they were dead or in comas. They even had rules about not being disturbed. Whenever I woke with a nightmare, I just crawled into bed with my brother.”

  “So …” I gulped. This was the moment of truth. “So, do you agree to rule Geniverd with me?”

  Zawne stared seriously out the window. It was one of the things that was totally in contrast to Roki. Where Roki was a charismatic jokester, Zawne could be stiff and severe. Yet it was one of the reasons I was so attracted to him.

  “I agree,” he said. “I agree in the name of Shondur and in the name of Geniverd, for my parents and for the people.” Zawne turned to me, a smile finally breaking through. “If I had said no, would you have been killed?”

  “Yes. I was quite nervous. We both would have been killed.”

  “Not to worry,” Zawne said, swooping across the room to sit with me on the bed. “We will survive, prosper, and rule with compassion and courage. We will face this trial together as man and wife. When do we go to Shiol?”

  In that moment, I was proud to be Zawne’s fiancée. I wondered if Roki was watching me. I wondered if he was there in the room, listening to my thoughts. Was Roki jealous?

  The following evening, as Zawne and I lay down to sleep after a busy day of wedding planning—our wedding was to be held the day before the coronation—we both spelled Shiol over our hearts. Seconds later we were being zipped through the eternal cosmos.

  “What a ride!” Zawne said as we materialized into the Crown of Crowns’ bubble. “The gaseous bursts of space, the huge planets, the interdimensional tear into a pocket of the universe. I could get used to that!”

  “I already am,” I said, laughing. “It’s amazing how fast the human brain adjusts to a new experience. This was my third time, and it didn’t even faze me.”

  “And it never will again,” came Riedel’s voice. I had to concentrate and reach out with my senses to see his twinkling form standing beside Hanchell.

  “I can’t believe it,” Zawne said. “You are built of light. This is amazing.”

  I supposed Zawne didn’t need to focus to see Riedel and Hanchell. He was an Aska. His training would never leave him. Still, it made me feel inferior. Zawne was already better at this than I was.

  “I see you’ve made your decision together,” Hanchell said. She sounded pleased.

  “Yes.” Zawne took a bold step forward. “I agree to your proposal, Crown of Crowns. I agree to become king of Geniverd.”

  “Good for you,” Riedel said. His voice was an earthy boom, perhaps to try to put Zawne in his human place. “But there are things we must go over before we proceed. This will be our last meeting before the coronation, so you must understand all the rules before you leave here today.”

  “Got it.” Zawne folded his hands and stepped back. I touched his arm, trying to show some solidarity between us, but Zawne was at attention, as if he were listening to his squad leader.

  “The first rule is that you must come here to Shiol five nights a week,” Riedel said. “We suggest you take shifts, split up your time here. That way one of you is not constantly tired.”

  “When you come to Shiol,” Hanchell said, “you will be given our recommendations on how to adjudicate the following day’s council meetings. You will be ruling over disputes and issues between two or more clans. These are important, and we highly suggest that you adhere to our recommendations.”

  “But we don’t have to?” I asked.

  “No,” Hanchell said. “You don’t have to, but no one in hundreds of years has ever gone against us. We suggest that if you wish to make the business of governing four billion people on six continents easier, you listen to what we say.”

  I nodded, but Zawne wasn’t convinced. “Where do you get the information for your recommendations?” he asked. “How do you decide?”

  “Irrelevant,” Riedel boomed. His voice shook the void with authority. It left no room for debate.

  “And you cannot discuss our findings with anyone,” he continued. “Not with the ex-queen or ex-king. Not even with the dead! If you do, you and every person you’ve revealed any part of the Great Secret to will be killed brutally and painfully within the hour.”

  That was enough to shut Zawne up. He stood straight and didn’t say a word.

  “Should you need to speak with us urgently,” Hanchell said, “you may take a power nap. Drift quickly here, ask for what you need, then return to Geniverd. This will wear you out, so please don’t do it too often.”

  Good, I thought. If I get overwhelmed, I have a place to go. However, I could always ask Roki for his opinion. It was going to be nice having a Min at my disposal while I was queen.

  “Our recommendations will also come with physical evidence for your human eyes,” Riedel told us. “You may read through reports, flick through video, and listen to audio recordings here in Shiol. Then you must return to sleep and make your judgments the following day. This will be a stressful process. Ready yourselves over the coming weeks.”

  “One more thing,” Hanchell said. She was audibly giddy. “Whose head would you like me to land on at the coronation? I’m so excited!”

  Zawne and I exchanged a glance. “I’m okay with it being Zawne,” I said, smiling at him.

  For once in the meeting, he smiled back. “Thank you, my queen. I
appreciate it.”

  “It’s settled!” Hanchell said. Her blob of light was agitated, sparking with excitement. “I will land on Zawne’s head in two weeks’ time. Now go to sleep, humans. You have a wedding and a kingdom to plan. We will see you soon.”

  Hanchell and Riedel fizzled out, leaving Zawne and me alone in the endless vacuum of the bubble. I kept thinking of the marvelous city just beyond the illusion. I wondered if Roki could take me there one day.

  “Are you ready?” I asked Zawne.

  He nodded. “We can do this, Kaelyn. We can rule together with the help of these beings.”

  Then he took my hand and kissed it lightly. Zawne’s unexpected romantic side was always a treat, and it made me giggle. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  We closed our eyes and entered the blackness.

  Chapter 8

  It was two weeks of mayhem. Dress shopping with Tissa, planning the ceremony with Zawne and his royal parents, sorting out the Ava-Gaard guest list with Raad, and spending countless hours gossiping with Nnati. The toughest part was keeping my mouth shut about Shiol and the secret Min living among us. I wanted to tell someone so badly! This was where Roki came in handy; he was always around, leaving a trace of his scent like a signature to let me know he was watching. We’d talk sometimes in the space between meetings. He’d visit me on the rare days I went to the office. Roki even promised to be there at my wedding, masked somewhere at the front of the crowd. He was a good friend to me, and it sometimes hurt that he couldn’t be more.

  You’re getting married! I had to remind myself. You wouldn’t betray Zawne. You wouldn’t!