Make Her, page 16
“You don’t understand what you’re holding, girl,” my father intoned, and then looked to the nearest archer. “Kill the creature, the mage, and the girl. ”
“You will have to kill the mages,” one of Rhaim’s friends said, stepping up, as a storm began crackling overhead.
The archer paused in fear, as Rhaim lunged forward to protect me—without having taken his collar off yet—then Jelena jumped out of the crowd.
“The unicorn queen saved your lives! Give her time to explain!” she shouted. She had a bag strapped across her shoulders, and I was sure that Finx was inside it.
I freed myself from Rhaim and held the stone up for all to see. “I think the Deathless follow this, though I don’t know why. And I think that Castillion the Spiked has been portaling around the continent with it, encouraging the Deathless to emerge. ”
“And when defenses weaken, or protective magic runs low. . . they would come for it here,” Rhaim said thoughtfully, looking at my father. Over his shoulder, the Deathless was reaching reached for the stone with one monstrous hand, pinning itself against the bars of its cage to get to it.
“It doesn’t matter what you think you know—you must give it back! You don’t understand!” my father said, grabbing the sword off of a nearby soldier to stalk forward.
“Then those of us who’ve been fighting for you would like answers,” said Rhaim’s tall, tree-like friend. Rhaim unfastened the bolt of his collar and tossed the black metal ring into the cage, so no other mage could get it.
“How do we stop them?” I demanded, shaking the Tear. I would have crushed it in my palm if I were sure that that would work. Silence fell around us as the storm above started up, everyone present awaiting answers. My father’s face was as stony as the gem itself, unchanging, showing neither shame nor hope for mercy. “My mother died, because of you,” I shouted at him. “Why?” I then realized that it didn’t matter. “No. I don’t care. Because there was nothing that was worth her death—or any of the other peoples’ who died or were displaced by these things,” I said, casting a look back at the Deathless behind me. “If you won’t apologize, Father, then I will! It is a horrible thing that has been done! And I will undo it, as best I am able!” Rhaim stood close behind me then, resting a hand at my hip. I placed my own hand atop it meaningfully. “It came from Drelleth—and back to Drelleth it goes!”
“Are you sure?” he asked quietly, for my ears alone.
I licked my lips. “Yes. Please. ”
“Anything for my beloved moth,” he whispered—and then pulled me through a portal.
Rhaim
I brought us as close as I could get to Drelleth’s castle, inside a gated pavilion, in front of a massive and ornate edifice, where all the former warriors and kings of Drelleth were celebrated in stone, and covered in bird shit. It was hauntingly empty, probably because most of Jaegar’s people were off at his war.
“This was as close as I could get—I’ve never been inside,” I told her, as she looked up at me.
“It’s okay,” she said, hitching up her skirt to tie, like when I’d seen her that one day in the river, beating laundry. She reached for my hand, and held the stone in the other, ready to drag us both up to the throne-room—but I held back.
If the stone summoned the Deathless, which I was sure it would—we’d be attacked, outside of the war camp’s magical protection.
The only question was how long it would take.
And how long I could hold them back for her.
I took her face in my hands, blistered from pulling the vines for the cage to meet her. “I love you,” I said simply.
I watched the knowledge of what I was going to do pass through me and into her and she gave me the look I had spent my entire life waiting for.
“Rhaim, no,” she whispered.
“I love you,” I repeated, and continued, “and my love for you has been my greatest triumph—next to teaching you magic,” I teased and tried to smile. But tears were already streaming down her cheeks, and it killed me that I didn’t have time to kiss them away. “This is how I die. ”
I felt the ground shake—we both did—the Deathless coming to claim the stone that was theirs, and inside of me my beast rose up, eager to meet the on coming challenge, knowing his time was near.
“I can’t,” she began, placing a fist to her stomach, as I shoved my beast down for the time I had left. “Rhaim—don’t leave me. You promised. ”
“All mages know how they die, Lisane. But because of you, I have been lucky enough to know what it means to be alive. ” My eyes searched her face, memorizing everything about her, one last time. “So kiss me, my lovely moth, that I may die content. ”
Lisane flung herself at me, wrapping her arms around my neck as mine bound her waist. Her lips met mine, parting instantly, and it would’ve been foolish to say that I would remember the taste of her, the feel of her, forever, when I knew I had such little time left—but we were both compressing all the memories we would never get to have into one sweet moment in time. Our love, our hunger, our strength—everything passed between us, just as it was meant to be.
I was hers, she was mine, and as long as I knew that, then fate could have me.
“I love you,” she said, when she was forced to pull away, because I was setting her down. The hackles on the back of my neck were rising up, soon the Deathless would be pouring toward the castle. “I will always love you,” she whispered.
I caught her hands and placed one of them atop my chest, above my mage-mark. “I know you will, little moth,” I told her calmly, even as I began to hear horrendous groans. “But if you see my beast again Lisane. . . do not give him a second chance to bite you. Kill him on sight. Promise it. ”
“Rhaim!” she protested, stricken.
“Do it so that I may die in peace,” I said, urging her with my eyes.
I watched her close her eyes and swallow. “Yes,” she exhaled, when she opened them again.
I ran my hand up her jaw to stroke her cheek with my thumb one last time. “Then go catch the world on fire, Lisane the Flame,” I said, before releasing her, to run to the castle’s gates.
30
Lisane
I ran up to my castle’s door, sobbing, unable to bear looking back, knowing that if I did I would be pinned to the ground I stood on, and once I got there I beat against it with both hands, one empty, the other holding the Tear.
A curious guard looked out. “It is me! Princess Lisane!” I announced.
It took far too long for recognition to spark in his eyes. “Princess?” he asked, in disbelief, opening the door.
“The Deathless are here! You have to evacuate anyone left behind in the castle—now!”
He looked past me. “Where’s Castillion? Or your father? How are you alone?”
“Never mind that,” I said, pushing my way inside. “Do as I tell you,” I commanded him. “Or you will all die like my mother,” I shouted, running past him.
I ran through empty hall after empty hall, my boots echoing on the stone, through rooms I’d barely ever gotten to see, because they had tall windows. There was the banquet hall where I’d gotten to make rare “appearances” as a child, and the room where my father did official things, where statues of warriors with golden weapons were meant to look imposing, but none of which were as ominous as the throne room, which lived at the top of the castle, so that anyone looking out its windows could see Drelleth’s lands on one side, and the Sorrowful Sea on the other.
I reached the throne room and drew up short. It took up the castle’s entire upper floor, and I instantly felt small. I had been here least of all as a child, but it had left the greatest impression on me, because of the way my father looked sitting on the throne, so imperious and commanding, and because of the statue that loomed behind him, a woman’s face, symbolizing our country, with the emerald tear on it that I now held.
Now, she was still crying, but there was a gap on her cheek, where Love’s Lost Tear should be. I crossed the room to her, mesmerized by her presence, and steeled by my love, knowing Rhaim was fighting the Deathless outside. I prayed I had a chance to save him.
I ran past the throne to reach up. I put my fingers on her face, and paused because I could see there were words carved inside the stone’s setting:
* * *
If you can see me, cry.
* * *
I stopped to contemplate that—and it was a moment too long.
Incredible pain shot through me, from back to front. I looked down, and saw red spurting out of myself, from where I’d been pierced with a metal spear.
The spear retracted, and I clasped my hand to where it’d been, trying to hold my blood and guts in, and I turned, without thinking, my current goal lost in the pain, to see my father standing beside his throne with Castillion, who looked like he’d crawled out of a shallow grave.
“I told you that wasn’t how I died,” he sneered, sending out another metal spear. I felt it catch on ribs, as it also pierced me through.
This indignity seemed to have some effect on my father, at least. “Lisane,” he said wearily, slowly walking up. I still held the stone in one hand, its shining facets dimmed by my blood’s darker red. “I would have rather this never happened to you,” he said, coming up to me like I was a wounded animal, with one of his hands out, and the other on his sword.
“Why?” I asked him, meaning not just why was he killing me now, but why had he taken everything from me?
And because I needed to know how the stone worked, if I were to ever have a chance at fixing things.
“The stone you hold is ancient magic. It grants wishes, but at great cost. ”
I clutched it tighter for a second, willing it then to answer me, to bring back Rhaim, and my mother, and my very own life, which I could see spilling around me on the floor.
But none of that happened, and I saw my father’s sad smile as he took the stone from my hand. “You have to put it into the setting to reset it. So I’ll do that now, and wish that no one remembers what you discovered or said, and then things will be back to the way they were. ”
“But. . . why?” I asked again, feeling like a child.
“Because the last king of Drelleth who used it was shallow-minded. He asked to be prosperous, for a mere millennia—and our time was coming up. But with the help of the Deathless, sowing chaos and destruction and making our star rise, I will see us prosperous, forever. ” He settled a hand upon my shoulder. “I wanted this future for you, too, Lisane—not just for Helkin. I was going to make you a Queen of Rabel, the First country, and I would have made Vorsha suffer if he had dared to put his hands on you, before I killed him. ”
Another spear pierced me through, making me stagger.
“Castillion, that’s enough!” my father snapped.
“She heals like a mage does!” Castillion snapped back. “Lucky for me, you haven’t Ascended yet though, girl—or you would’ve already seen your death, by my magic, right here. ”
I stared at him blankly. There was a flicker in my vision, but I didn’t trust it, because everything was going gray—gray like the clouds I saw through the windows, rushing across the sky outside—and then I saw it again, a tendril snaking across the window’s glass, crazing it like it was stained instead of clear.
There were other mages outside. Helping Rhaim.
Helping me.
“She’s clearly the price of my next wish,” my father growled.
“Yes,” I agreed, finally letting myself feel all the magic Castillion had filled me with. “My life has been the coin you’ve spent, all along. ”
31
Rhaim
I pulled myself up the castle’s closed gate then leapt over it, rather than kick it open—all the better to give Lisane more time.
All around the castle’s grounds, in a moat of meadowed parkland before the confines of Drelleth’s largest city, the ground was opening, letting hoards of Deathless drag themselves up, and I was beset by a clarity of purpose, such as I had never known.
This was what it felt like when fate interceded. When decisions were made and there was no going back again.
I knew I was going to die, but I would make sure that my death had such a cost.
I ripped my leather shirt off, and howled back at the foul things that were beginning to come, then I fell to all fours and slammed my hands to the earth.
I, too, could pull things out of the ground.
I summoned a herd of rhinos, rising and kicking themselves free of the dirt to charge, bowling the Deathless down, slamming back and forth with their massive bodies and horns—and once they were set loose, I summoned tribe of gorillas, the same size as I was, but with arms twice as strong, willing them into the fray to pull the things apart.
“Rhaim!” I heard someone say, but I didn’t dare turn, I couldn’t let my concentration break.
“We’re here!” a sonorous voice announced. “And we brought the spider!”
“And the girl carrying the spider,” I heard Lisane’s little dark-haired friend complain.
Sibyi and Wyrval. I knew it—because above the field of animals wrestling creatures, I could see the beginnings of a storm, and greenery lash out of the ground to begin pulling Deathless apart.
Finx ran up to accost me from below. “Where is the princess?” he demanded, flailing several sets of legs up.
“Inside!” I shouted out through gritted teeth, loud enough for all of them. Finx ran off at once. “Go help her! I’ll manage here!”
I could already feel my beast scratching at my insides. Stampeding bulls would be next. I concentrated and willed it to be so, making the earth unveil them in an arc around me, sending them in to replace the rhinos that the sheer numbers of Deathless had downed.
“You’ll—” Sibyi began in disbelief. “Come on now,” he complained, running up to me, sending his lightning bolts surging, as rain began to pelt.
“I mean it, Cloudmaker,” I growled without looking up.
There was a close thunderclap, and then I heard Sibyi say, “Oh,” in a knowing tone.
“Yes,” I told him, confirming everything.
I felt him put his hand on my back, while I concentrated on keeping my animals intact and the Deathless at bay. “Fighting with you was a joy and a pleasure. ”
“I feel the same,” I grunted. “Now—GO!”
Alone on the field of battle, I was fractured into as many facets as Drelleth’s gemstone. I could feel my hands ripping, my horns piercing, my hooves stomping—I could taste the ichor of the Deathless across what seemed like an infinite amount of tongues, I could feel the grease of their decomposition slicking hide and fur, and I could hear the sounds of battles engaged in all around, from a thousand different ears.
But it didn’t matter how many of them I killed.
They wouldn’t stop coming.
There were already some behind me, shaking the castle’s gates, climbing up on top of one another, and soon they would clear them entirely.
I once thought of my magic as a fuse that I burned through, knowing once it was gone, I would only be my beast.
Now I realized it was my life that was a fuse, instead. Lisane had sparked it the moment I’d first met her, and it’d been steadily burning, ever since.
And. . . now?
It was almost gone. My jaw ached to birth fangs, my hair freely sprouted, and each of my fingers were tipping with claws. My beast howled, wanting to join the field of battle, ecstatic his time had come.
These were going to be my last human moments, until the darkest embers of what I truly was finished burning away my life.
I closed my eyes and saw Lisane’s face one last time. Terrified—not of me, but that she was losing me.
But I wasn’t dying by accident.
This was a sacrifice made freely, with willing intent.
I loved her.
I loved her.
I.
Loved.
Her.
I clawed my hands into the earth, summoned another wave of creatures to fight, and then let go.
32
Lisane
Before my father could step past me to slam the stone into its setting once more, covering up the warning carved inside, the entire castle shook.
I’d thought the growing shadows on the ground were due to my own blood loss, or the oncoming storm, but in actuality the vines across the windows had grown wilder, thickening until the glass broke and came crashing in, setting loose a rockfall of stones from the ceiling above, exposing the whole throne room to the cloud-filled sky.
Castillion shouted in surprise and then agony, as massive stones from the ceiling pinned him, but that didn’t stop my father. He was lunging past me to slam the Tear into place when—something stopped him.
He stared at his hand, fighting something I couldn’t see.
“Stop that!” he ordered.
I stumbled sideways—and realized his hand had been trussed by silk—from Finx, who was crouching atop the throne.
“Give it to me!” I commanded him instead, yanking it out of his palm.
I turned back to the statue. All I had to do was replace the Tear—then be willing to pull it out again and wish to change things.
“You don’t know what you’re doing!” my father shouted as Finx lassoed him again and again, tacking down all his limbs with his toughest webs to the throne’s rough stone.
“I know all I need to!” I shouted back at him, turning back to the statue, while the storm raged above through the hole in the ceiling, spattering all of us with rain like cold tears.
And then a metal spear pierced me again, from back to front, taking a different path than prior, and I knew Castillion the Spiked had wriggled one of his hands out from beneath the masonry.
