Gold, page 2
Just before I land, I feel something flow behind me. As if I really did stop falling. As if I really did learn to fly.
It wraps around my body like threads of the sun.
Like bands of steel.
Like rays of warmth.
Like streams of light.
Like…
I land the way a skipping rock grazes over the water. There is no crash, no pain. I simply glide into the landing, sinking into a blanket of a glowing, blue-blossomed field.
When my body stops, I lie there on my back, staring up at the soft sky dotted with dandelion clouds. My ears are ringing like I breached the surface after diving too deep.
Where am I?
It feels as if there’s a gentle tide buoying my body, but instead of water, there are plush blossoms holding me up. When I turn my head, I see my gold-touch has kissed the blooms nearby, creating a perfect circle of gilt flowers all around me, gleaming daintily in the light and sinking into the soil.
The blossom tide ebbs, my heartbeat flows, and with quickened breaths pulling in the perfumed air, I push myself up to a sitting position, the golden flowers grazing my arms.
But that’s not all that’s brushing up against me.
At first, I don’t really register it. I don’t connect the layers of gold wrapped around my arms with reality. It’s not until the breeze shifts one of them that my mind confirms what my eyes are seeing.
My breath catches.
My heart does too.
I sit here amidst the incandescent flowers, beneath a lavender sky, and all I can think is, am I dreaming, or am I dead?
My trembling hands lift the ribbons beside me, and I feel them. Not just with my fingertips, but through the lengths themselves. When I slip my hand between a few, my eyes instantly well with tears, relishing in the silky feel.
Great Divine…
I count them, like a new mother counts a babe’s fingers and toes. I curl all two dozen strips into my fists like I’m holding the hands of a friend. I pull lightly, feeling the answering tug coming from my back, all up and down either side of my spine. They feel satiny and sun-kissed.
A sob breaks through my mouth. Tears slip past my lids.
My ribbons are real.
They aren’t in tatters at my feet. They aren’t shredded from my skin. They aren’t plucked from me like feathers off a bird, lying in deadened heaps on the floor.
They’re back.
The pain and trauma of what I felt when they were taken from me comes rushing up, and I tremble all over. They’re here, given back to me like some divine gift, and I feel their loss, their absence, and their return all at once.
“They’re back,” I whisper to myself, as more tears glide down my face, landing in gilt dots on their silky soft strips. “They’re back.”
I’m back.
Because without them, I wasn’t fully me.
I feel like I could cry forever, that I could weep out my soul’s wrenching relief. But I simply tug them again. Just to keep feeling. And they’re still here. Still real.
A smile—a true, heart-deep smile—treads up my face even as my tears keep tracking down because they’re back.
But that smile suddenly freezes when I realize something else.
They aren’t moving.
I try to strain the muscles in my back, try to get them to move, but nothing happens. My smile morphs into a frown as I tug at them again, as if I can wake them up, shaking them back and forth to stir them. Pulling each length, flexing the muscles along my spine.
Nothing works.
They’re here, they’re real, but they don’t stir. Not even an inch. Like the hair on my head, they simply hang down, immobile, instead of me being able to shift them at will. Instead of them seeming to move with a mind of their own.
They’re just…still.
My heart jolts, and I let out a shaky breath. More tears pool in my eyes, but I don’t let them fall. Don’t let myself get caught into panic.
My ribbons are back. That’s what matters, and that’s what I need to focus on now. By some miracle, they’ve returned to me. Even if I can never move them again, I’ll be thankful, because it’s like a missing piece of myself being returned.
Maybe, after some time, they’ll move again. Maybe they just need time.
I wipe my eyes as I gather the ribbons and hold them in my lap to admire them. They’re so…bright. A new, shiny sheen to them that wasn’t there before. They feel just as soft as they used to, but they also feel stronger. As if beneath their satiny exterior, they’ve come back reinforced to their very core.
But then, maybe that makes perfect sense. After all, I’m stronger too. I’m not the same woman I was before I lost them, so it makes sense that they wouldn’t be the same ribbons they were before they were severed.
I wrap one strip around my hand and then lift my eyes to look around. Tall flowers surround me. Still reeling, I push myself to my feet so I can get a better look. But as soon as I do, I cry out in pain. I look down at my burnt, mottled feet, trembling as I try to stay upright.
Ouch.
At least I know now that I can’t be dead. I’m certain death would be kind enough to take pain away. Which means everything that happened at the Conflux is still imprinted on me.
The Conflux…
Reality and memories make my adrenaline surge, sending my body into a heavy shock. It crushes me with the weight of its landing, all of my joy and disbelief replaced with pain and exhaustion. The forced drain of my power that I endured makes itself known, tearing into my body with snapping teeth. My breath wobbles, shaken like a bottle of liquid, and I sway on my feet as a wave of dizziness rams itself into me headfirst.
But then I hear a collection of whispers and gasps ring through the air.
I whirl in surprise, ribbons tangling around my waist. About thirty feet away, there’s a group of two dozen people staring at me. The field of flowers stretches around us further than I can see, the blooms giving off a soft blue glow as they gape at me with pure awe in their eyes.
Awe…and fear.
My mouth opens, but instead of managing to say something, all that comes out is a gulp of pain. My legs tremble beneath me. Voices tremble in front of me.
“She’s…gold.”
“Did you see the sky? Did you see how she fell from it?”
“Just like the broken-winged bird!”
“Look at her back!”
“Come away! We can’t be here!”
“But look! She’s gold! How can she be gold, unless—”
My gaze swings like a pendulum, while dizziness makes my focus sway and twist. “I…”
Words fail my mouth, but I see one person come forward. While I try to keep my feet under me, she eats up half the distance between us, only stopping when I try to step back and nearly collapse from the agony coursing up my burnt heels.
She has wisps for hair, like strings of silken spiderwebs have grown from her scalp, gathered into a puff that sits atop her head. She halts in front of me, aged gray eyes wide and searching as she stares at me like she’s seeing a ghost.
“Lyäri Ulvêre,” she utters, a hand flying up to cover her lined, pinched mouth as her watery gaze falls to my ribbons trailing down from my back.
“What?” My voice feels far away, barely able to be heard by my own ears.
Behind her, the murmurs get louder, the same words being repeated. I can feel the palpable wonder resonating through the small crowd.
“You’ve come, just as she came—the broken-winged bird.”
I don’t know about a bird, but I certainly feel a bit broken right now.
“You’re the Lyäri Ulvêre,” she says again, her voice choking up.
My own voice pants out, my temples throbbing as my dizziness begins to tunnel through my spiraling mind. “I don’t understand…”
A tear falls down her cheek, even as a smile tugs at her thin lips. “It means it’s alright, Lady Auren. Because you’re home.”
The shock of her answer is the last straw to take me tumbling down.
I hit the ground, knees buckled, feet fuming.
My mouth is unable to work. Mind far too shaken to process. I’m drained. So, so drained. Not just my power, but me. From what happened at the Conflux to the long, lonely fall to the shock of her words. Crippling debility creeps in, while my vision sputters out.
But her voice circles my mind like a spool of thread constricting around my chest.
Because she said I’m home.
Because she said my name.
Her words ring loudly, loudly into the unconscious dark.
I go silently.
The wind whips with thunderous noise, my blood pounds in my ears, and beneath my ribs, a rage roars, deafening and endless.
But I am silent.
Silent as I grip the reins of the timberwing. Silent as the roots of rot pulse beneath my skin, trying to split through me in angry tremors. Silent, even, as right there at the center of my heart, something beats with agony. With wrongness. Like an artery was ripped right out of my chest, leaving poison free to leak through my body. Because she was ripped away from me.
Silence is the only way to contain it.
So when there’s a break in the clouds, when I see Third Kingdom laid below me, I direct the drop without making a single sound.
The air whistles with our descent, the beast beneath me brays, and I watch with mute focus as Gallenreef Castle comes into view. It’s standing proudly atop a rocky cliffside a hundred feet up from the water. There’s a tall sea wall at its back, the stone stained from decades of protecting the castle against the invasion of high tide and perilous waves.
The ocean is calm right now though, where ships bob gently, teal crystalline water sparkling brightly in contrast to the castle’s sandy-white walls and its coral roofs pitched sharply toward the sky. The shore at its feet leads up in a steady slope that feeds into the capital city. It’s spread out far and wide amongst the chaparral of greenery. Buildings two and three stories tall mixed in with the lush plants.
It looks scenic. The epitome of an opulent, picturesque kingdom, bustling in its peace. A peace I want to obliterate.
The quiet rage inside of me bides its time. A cut-off ribbon in my pocket lies lifeless and still.
It’s been two weeks since the Conflux. Many of those days were lost in my race to reach Deadwell. But Drollard Village, my secret haven in the mountains within Fifth Kingdom, now lies empty, caught in a frozen tomb. The rip in the cave is gone without a trace, right along with everyone there.
Including my mother.
Ryatt erupted in panic. Went out into a blizzard to search for her and the other villagers. But we both knew he wouldn’t find them. We both knew deep down where they went.
Back through the rip. Back into Annwyn…or dead.
I’ve been trying every day to open another rip.
And every day, I have failed.
Ryatt’s desperation is almost as intense as mine. I saw the panicked disappointment in his face every time I couldn’t do it, though he never said a thing. He didn’t have to, because his own emotions were mirrored in my chest.
No matter how many times I attempt to tear a hole through the world and find the villagers and my mother, to get to Auren, I can’t do it.
My rot has come back full force, but the raw power it takes to create a rip in the world hasn’t returned.
I poured everything I could into the rip at the Conflux. It was the first time I’d ever made a rip on my own, without the clash of my father’s power against mine. And when that happened, when all of my magic went into tearing that cleft in the air to save Auren, it must’ve done something to the rip in Drollard. It must’ve made it implode, absorbing everything that came with it. One rip opened, one rip closed.
Now, I’m helpless to open another. Helpless to find my mother or follow Auren.
And it’s Queen Kaila’s fault.
My hands tighten on the reins.
All of this—Auren propagated into a villain and dubbed Lady Cheat who stole powers and seduced kings—it was all Queen Kaila’s words spinning a narrative. It was she who alerted the other monarchs, she who instigated the Conflux. It was she who sent her brother and soldiers to kidnap Auren from my own damn castle.
If she hadn’t done all of this, Auren would still be here, safe. Instead, she’s now a world away, and I can’t fucking get to her.
Every day, every minute, my rage grows.
Into a fathomless, sinister thing. It’s poisoned the already fetid rot within my veins. It’s made everything else go eerily quiet. Made the fae instincts inside of me sharpen into the edge of a silently slicing blade.
And I will use it.
Because they tried to punish Auren. Tried to execute her.
Queen Kaila went against me—all of the other monarchs did. It’s time I remind her and everyone else exactly why you don’t fuck with me and mine.
My borrowed timberwing descends. Crest, I call him, since the youngling has a spot on his chest that looks like the crest of a noble house. Despite these beasts being naturally aggressive and distrustful, they’ve always seemed to have a sort of kinship with me—just like messenger hawks. I found Crest in Drollard’s timberwing Perch, and although I’ve never ridden him before, he has no problem with me. He’s even learned to anticipate my moves and pick up on my moods. Right now, his head feathers ruffle up with an intimidating flare as we fly further down.
The front of Third’s castle casts a shadow over the sandy courtyard below. There’s a pair of turret towers on either side of its giant front doors that are trimmed in bright coral, and the front steps leading to those doors rise up out of drifts of soft sand, as if they were simply swept into existence.
On either side of the front doors are matching statues of their kingdom’s sigil—a carving of rolling waves, with the fin of a predatory shark jutting up between them. Guards are gathered in a show of force at the outer steps, double-ended spears strapped to their backs. They were no doubt alerted by the watchers who must’ve spotted me as soon as I broke through the clouds in their sky.
Gaze snatched upward, I count five more guards up in the towers at the protective outer wall, though not a single one of them makes a move to descend the stairs. Their silver armor gleams, sigils bared on their chests, bows in their hands, tunics almost as bright blue as the sea. Their wariness reveals itself in the way they shift on their feet and back up closer to the towers, watching me from above but refusing to move toward the stairs as guards should do when someone approaches a castle.
Especially when it’s someone like me.
Movement in the front windows catches my eye, and I see even more guards watching me, grim faces bared behind the glass.
Crest lands inside the defensive wall with a screech, beach sand spraying up around his taloned feet. I jump down, ignoring the guards standing at attention as I stare down the front doors of the castle. My hands curl around my mouth before I let out a roaring call.
“QUEEN KAILA!”
It’s the first crack in my silence. The first splintering line leading from all that roiling, raucous rage I’d contained during the entire flight from Deadwell. I want Kaila to come to me. I want her to have to walk out of her pretty castle and meet my ugly fury face-to-face.
My gait is determined as I cross the sandy courtyard and step onto the first slate step that leads up to the doors. Just as I do, I hear the telltale noise of arrows being nocked in their bows from the towers above me, and more from the defensive wall behind me. It’s good to know that even with filthy clothes and an absent crown, I’m easily recognized.
“Halt, King Ravinger! State your business!”
I turn, my eyes lifting to the one brave enough to call down, landing on an older soldier at the right tower. There are two other guards standing behind him, their arrows pointed in my direction.
“You pull back those bowstrings, and I’ll rot you all before you can release.” Though I didn’t shout, I know they’ve heard me based on the nervous glances they exchange.
Just give me a reason.
No one moves. No one makes a single sound. In fact, they stay very, very still. I turn away. Let out another roar.
“QUEEN KAILA!”
My voice rings out against the castle’s outer walls, reverberating through the open air. The hate, the violence, and the need for retribution burns through me. Rot starts to bleed into the sand beneath my feet. Thick, black limbs that spread a sour stench into the oceanic air.
Tension thickens, killing roots coiling through the ground, twisting sinisterly. I can sense the strain in the guards, the anxiousness pouring off their rigid stances. Still, the castle’s front doors don’t open. The guards don’t move.
My call is even louder the third time, and behind me, Crest rumbles like thunder.
The guards inside who watch from the windows stare out at me with wide eyes, hands on the hilt of their weapons. They think, by not coming out, that they’re safe? The ones in the towers think the height keeps them secure?
Wrong.
They could cower behind the thickest steel at the bottom of their precious sea, and I would still be able to rot their muscles from their bones and let their skin peel from their corpses.
Just as I start to call for Kaila again, the massive doors open. The shadowed entryway reveals a silhouette, and then out comes a round man with spectacles balanced on the tip of his bulbous nose, sigil pinned to his vest.
“King Ravinger.” He gives me a low bow, though the customary greeting of respect is subverted by the line of guards that file out to stand behind him, spears in hand.
“Sonnil,” I reply coolly, watching as a flash of surprise crosses his face. If he doesn’t think I’m aware of who every advisor is in every kingdom, then he’s sorely mistaken.
“We weren’t expecting you.”
I arch a brow. “Weren’t you?”
Hesitation spreads out like a heavy rug for him to trip on. I watch him squirm on it, watch the drip of nervous sweat that gets stuck against his graying mustache. I have to hand it to him, at least he’s got the balls to stand here in front of me, even if he does have a dozen guards at his back.
