by Kova, Elise
“I didn’t mean for…” What hadn’t she meant for? This to happen? Hadn’t she loathed him for betraying her not hours before?
Nothing between her heart and mind made sense right now.
“I said out!” Taavin roared, sitting at once. The irises of his eyes were a green so bright and pale, it nearly matched the whites surrounding them.
Vi bounced to her feet and ran.
* * *
She sat alone in the darkness on the edge of her bed, clutching herself.
What had happened? What was that?
Questions swirled through her mind. Answers eluded her. Even after using the word, its meaning was no clearer to her. It felt as though a part was somehow missing. Perhaps that was why it had gone so awry. Perhaps a meaning was hidden in those seemingly endless glyphs.
Vi rested her elbows on her knees and sank her face into her hands. The watch was gone. One more token of Yargen had been destroyed and Vi doubted the flame seeming dimmer after was only in her imagination.
Slowly, she turned, looking out the window at the dark city. Maybe this would be the day the sun stopped rising altogether. The end of the world seemed more inevitable by the hour.
The door opened suddenly and Vi’s eyes with it. She turned to face the man in the doorway slowly. Taavin stood, staring at her with a fire in his eyes she’d never seen before.
“We have to move,” he said. “Now.”
“Move? Where? Are you—”
“There’s no time.” Taavin’s expression darkened. “The trial ended and your father will be put to death tomorrow.”
It was her worst nightmare come to life. This was the reason she hadn’t wanted to come here.
“If we hadn’t—”
“Spare me.” Taavin glowered at her. After the events earlier, it now seemed the rift between them spread both ways. “It doesn’t matter I brought him here—none of this matters. I know now how to rekindle the flame and stand against Raspian.”
“What do we have to do?” Vi asked softly. No matter the tension between them, it seemed they could still work toward this singular, common good. Perhaps when the world was saved, they could solve the rest—if things didn’t become too broken between them along the way.
“Follow me.”
Vi did, into the hallway and up the spiral stair that led to the walkway to the archives. As they crossed, Vi could hear noise and commotion growing. They were making preparations to kill her father. Vi didn’t have to walk up to the railing and look down to confirm it. She felt the dark truth in the air itself.
“Through here.” Taavin pushed on the same trap door Vi had used. “The Swords are patrolling the Archives. They expect you to try to escape.”
Vi moved quickly and quietly, not arguing. She wriggled through the narrow tunnel and into the passage where she could stand. A small flame appeared over her shoulder, illuminating them both.
“What have you figured out?” Vi asked over her shoulder.
“I was right—the traveler was right. The watch was the key to everything.”
“But—”
“Quiet,” he interrupted with a whisper. “Don’t talk here, it’s not safe.” They continued walking upward in silence, Vi’s nerves setting her hands to quivering. The shakes only stopped when Taavin’s firm grasp wrapped around her closed fist. “Wait here. Let me go ahead and make sure Ulvarth hasn’t decided to pay me a visit.”
Vi pressed herself against the wall to let him pass. They were practically stepping on each other’s toes and his chest slid across hers. She wondered if his heart was beating just as hard as hers, or if she only imagined feeling it through the thin fabric of the Lark robes she wore.
He disappeared in the darkness and Vi remained leaning against the wall, rubbing the bridge of her nose. The one good thing about everything happening all at once was that she didn’t have time to think or worry about any one thing. She needed to save her father, save the world, rekindle the flame… all while continuing to navigate the strained relationship between her and Taavin. She was so focused on surviving that she didn’t have time to be afraid.
At least, until moments like this, when she was still and waiting.
Unfocusing her eyes, Vi looked to the flame dancing over her shoulder, the one that had been lighting her way. She scratched at her bandages; the wounds were constantly itchy now. Vi tried to keep her mind on the tangible so it didn’t get too worked up over the possible horrors emerging from the shadows around her.
But it was Taavin who appeared next. Not a Sword. Not Ulvarth himself.
“Well? How does it look?”
“Safe, for now. Let’s hurry.”
Taavin started off into the darkness once more and Vi followed behind him. She paused, turning slowly. Their interaction was seared into her memory.
She’d seen it before, Vi realized with a sense of growing dread. It wasn’t bright in her memory because it had just happened. It was seared in her memory because—
“Taavin!” she hissed, grabbing his arm. Her words burst forth as fast as her heartbeat. “I’ve seen this before. My first vision… Here…” Vi looked down at her clothes, the simple, drab robes—the cowl—the bandages over her wrists and hands. “We haven’t changed anything.” Her eyes darted back up to him.
“We haven’t changed anything, yet.” Taavin pulled his arm from her grasp and took a full step away, as if to see her clearly. His eyes burned brighter than the flame at Vi’s side. They were wide enough to swallow her whole—the wide eyes of a fear Vi didn’t know if she had the strength to acknowledge. “That’s what we’re going to do now, tonight… We’re going to change this world.”
Vi nodded her head like she understood and when he continued into the darkness, she followed. It was possible he was leading her to a trap, Vi realized. He could be setting her up for yet another betrayal.
She swallowed. She didn’t want to trust him again. But if she couldn’t trust him, she had to trust the fact that he had just as much of a reason to want to fix their future as she did. She had to trust in mutual goals, if not in the man himself.
Up the ladder, Vi found out how Taavin had escaped.
“You broke the door.” She stared at the scattered splinters and the annihilated lock. “But Ulvarth—”
“After we rekindle the flame, Ulvarth won’t matter.” Taavin started in. He went to the shelf on his wall, lifting something from his watchmaking supplies. “Here, I made a new watch, you’ll need to hold it.”
Vi held out both her hands to accept the small token. When Taavin’s fingers vanished, she stared at something nearly identical to the watch she’d carried across the world. The links were uncannily similar. The face was the same. The only difference was this one was shiny, new, so pristine that Vi could see her face reflected in it.
Whereas the one she’d been gifted, the one Vi had received from Fritz, showed its age in every scratch, dent, and smear of tarnish.
“What do we need to do?” Vi whispered. “Why do I need a new watch?”
Her mind was jumbled. She’d packed it so full of information and plans that it was now about to explode. This would be the final straw.
“Listen to me, there’s little time to explain now, but I will soon. After you are settled, summon me as you once did. I can explain it all then.”
“Tell me now?” she asked, wishing her voice was stronger.
Taavin lifted the watch from her numb fingers, fastening it around her neck as he spoke. “When the War of Light ended, Yargen fractured her power to keep Raspian at bay.”
“One third to the tomb, one third to her Champion in a spear, and one third here in Risen as a living flame,” Vi recited. “And we have a piece of that staff in the scythe.”
“But the scythe alone… it isn’t enough.” He stepped away, starting for the open doors. The flame cast him in silhouette. “The scythe with the power of the flame, your watch, my power—it’s not enough. We need all the crystal weapons to stand against him. We need the full p
ower of Yargen.”
“The full power of Yargen is gone,” Vi needlessly reminded him. “The caverns, destroyed. The other crystal weapons—”
“Destroyed,” he finished for her, glancing over his shoulder, the light of the flame illuminating his profile. “I know it all. Thanks to your word, I now know every step this world has taken for hundreds of years, time and again.”
“So then how do we rekindle the flame?” Vi asked, taking a small step toward him. “If that power is gone, if the crystal weapons were destroyed, along with the other third of Yargen’s power held in the Crystal Caverns… What do we do to reignite the crystals so we can bring her power back to the flame? What do we do to bring her power back so she can fight off Raspian?”
“It’s not a what, Vi. It’s a when.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
When.
When.
Her mind sputtered and came to a halt on the word. Vi stood, swaying slightly. There was magic in the world. Powers great and small. Powers to heal and destroy.
But there was no power that granted one the hold over time itself.
To have that… one would have to be a… a… a goddess.
“Vi.” Taavin summoned her from her haze. Vi looked up, startled. She hadn’t realized he’d crossed over to her. Now, he towered above her with every inch of his height. “You cannot lose yourself now. I need you here with me mentally. If we dally too long, we’re met with a great deal of hardship. Ulvarth comes and… Well, what happens then doesn’t matter because we’re not dallying.”
Taavin rounded behind her, pushing her to motion. He pushed her toward the flame and Vi’s body only obliged because it was that or collapse in place. Luckily, her physical form moved on instinct, even when her mind refused.
“I’m going to say some words,” Taavin was saying. Vi barely heard him.
None of this was real. None of this was happening. It couldn’t be. He was speaking insanity. And yet her other option if she didn’t go along with it was walking back down into a hornet’s nest of Ulvarth’s men who would execute her father by dawn—if dawn even came. If they hadn’t already executed him.
What if Taavin had been lying about that to get her to move? What if they’d killed him in that courtyard and Taavin knew if he told her she would be a grieving mess? Could she trust him to tell her the truth?
Right now, the answer was a resounding no, and Vi felt as though she would be sick.
Taavin stopped pushing her and rounded in front of her. His hand cupped her cheek, but Vi could barely feel it. The motion was too familiar, too caring, for the strange man in front of her now. Madman or traitor—she didn’t know who he was.
“This is the only way forward. This is the only way to save your family. Repeat what I say, Vi. And I will be there to guide you in the new world, I promise. This is my destiny as much as it is yours.” He turned, his back to her, and knelt.
Destiny. She hated the word.
Vi was living a nightmare that ended with the world’s destruction. For the third time in three short days, she was overcome by a sensation of déjà vu. She’d had a vision of this very moment and she knew where it led. She knew what was about to happen.
“N-no.” Shaking her head, Vi stumbled a few steps back. “No, Taavin, I—”
Taavin stood slowly, looking to her. He advanced and Vi took another wide step—too wide. She stumbled, falling, landing hard because she didn’t even bother to catch herself.
“No, not this… don’t make me do this.”
“Don’t you hate me now?” His face was shadowed by the flame behind him, his mess of hair falling into his shining eyes. “Aren’t I the one who betrayed you?”
“Taavin, if I do this, you will die.” The words were a whisper, little more than a breath. “I have seen this—I told you. I will not burn you alive.”
“It’s because of me your father will die. I betrayed you, Vi.”
“Stop,” she pleaded. He was speaking truth right to the darkest part of her—the part she so desperately wanted to ignore.
“You wanted to take him to Norin if he wished, and I stopped that from happening.”
“Taavin—”
“You must do this!” His expression was a cross between pained and impatient. “This is the only way. This is the only path forward.”
“I’m not a murderer!”
“Then hate me more for making you one.” Taavin knelt before her. Even as she shouted at him, his voice didn’t waver and his gaze was set. He really was going to let her kill him. “Hate me because I will never let myself love you again. Hate me because you truly are the cause of all my torment. You are my nightmares. It was always you.”
Hate me, because I now hate you, his eyes said. That same burning feeling she’d embraced the other night was sparking again within the charred husk of her ribs. She wanted to sob and let out all the tears it felt like she’d been holding in for a lifetime. But if they fell now, they would merely evaporate on her cheeks.
“You must do this,” he reiterated, his voice gone soft. Taavin reached for her arm, pulling her upright.
“What happens if it doesn’t work?” Vi croaked, standing on shaking knees. “What happens if you’re wrong and I just kill you?”
“Death comes for us all.” He echoed the same sentiment as the first time she’d told him he was going to die. He looked her right in the eyes, so close his features went blurry. Perhaps, somehow, if everything he was saying was true, some part of him had known even then. “And if I am wrong, death will come for me before you when Raspian walks this earth once more… and you will have the satisfaction of killing someone else who wronged you.”
“You’re not making any sense!” She wanted to slap him. “Do you hear yourself? This isn’t logical and this magic, it doesn’t exist, and—”
“The watch was power—my power mingled with Yargen’s, and yours,” he spoke over her hastily. His hands gripped her shoulders, hard. “Layers and layers of magic, Vi… countless times. Countless attempts to stop this failed future from coming to pass. You have to return the power that’s in me to her, along with you, along with the scythe. Only that will give her enough power to send you back.”
“You truly are mad.”
“And you truly are the worst thing to have ever happened to me,” he seethed, so close their noses almost touched. Part of her wanted to kiss him, kiss the pain away. The other part of her was more tempted by the minute to give in and kill him. He was begging for it, after all. “Now, help me do this.”
Why was the line between love and hate so confusingly thin? She stared at his back, at the scythe positioned on the pedestal before the flame.
She wondered if she was about to trade some part of her soul—and if so, for what. It didn’t feel like much of her soul was left. Whatever was still there after all she’d endured, she may as well give to the Goddess.
Taavin knelt and Vi hovered behind him, swaying unsteadily.
Without so much as looking back at her—without even reaffirming what it was they were about to do one final time—Taavin begin to chant.
The words blurred together into a litany that would be his dirge. She could stop this now. She could clamp her hands over his lips and silence those infernal words that were already flowing through her.
But if she did that… then what? Taavin would likely perish anyway, as fodder to bring about a dark god. She would likely die fighting that same god. The world would end. Her family would be forever lost.
Perhaps Taavin was the one to have it right all along—death comes for us all—and Vi was the one to have her worries tied around the wrong priorities.
Vi took a slow step forward. She knew her role. She’d do it just like she had in the vision she was given back in Soricium.
Her hands settled slowly on Taavin’s shoulders. Light was already peeling off of him, merging with the halo of brightness surrounding the flame. Barely-formed glyphs seemed to wrap, collapse, and form anew in comple
x patterns Vi couldn’t follow.
His magic, shimmering and bright, pulled hers forth as well. Together, it looked almost like a white-hot fire, but with a cool pale blue at the edges. Vi gave into the flow like a ship to a current. She shut off her mind and let him pull her along.
If she thought too much about what was about to happen next, she may not be able to do it. Her will might fail her.
She spoke.
Vi didn’t know the words she was saying, she didn’t know the meanings, but she echoed him anyway. She allowed the magic to be pulled from her. It felt almost like an invisible hand plunged into her chest, pulling forth all she was with a violence that seemed appropriate for an unnatural act.
They were two mortals, playing at godhood.
Taavin’s head tipped back and he let out a scream as his magic exploded in a burst of flame, mingling with the fire of Yargen. In the distance, voices. Ulvarth or the Swords were coming to investigate. They must have discovered her absence.
But it was too late.
The Voice was immolating under her hands, with the help of her magic. The fire before them blazed brightly, brighter than anything Vi had ever seen before—so bright, she was certain to be blind when it faded.
The whole world was consumed…
And Vi was falling into the void it left behind.
Chapter Thirty-Five
There was nothing but light, so bright she squinted and her head ached. Vi tried closing her eyes, but she couldn’t even do that to block it out. The light was in her mind, in her flesh. It seared through her from the inside out.
She felt every layer of skin boiling. Red lightning finally broke through, flesh disappearing into the void above her as she continued to fall. She felt her tongue crisp and her hair singe. She felt the burn down to the clean white of her bones.
There was nothing left of her. At least, Vi couldn’t feel anything. All sensation had vanished from head to toe. She was a spirit, her body gone.
Tick.
Tock.