A Hand Weaving Chaos (Book 2 of The Fallen Gods Trilogy)

CHAPTER NINE

Kydel is rising. He looks down at her, touches her cheeks with fleeting hands, smiles. She says nothing, feels her face set in lines of stone as she watches him move away. This is how she knew it would be. He would go, leaving her cold and empty. It has always been his way. Hopes. Regrets. Such are the twin feelings he has roused in her this time. She can say nothing, do nothing other than watch him depart.

"You will bear my son and he will be named Coric," he says, softly.

"It seems you give me no choice." Her voice sounds hard and bitter and she does not like the sour taste it leaves in her mouth.

"There is always a choice. We all must choose."

"No, not all. Do not demean me more by claiming otherwise." She forces herself to press on. "You gave me none. You called me your beloved and said you would ask for no more of me than that. You lied."

"Not to you. Never to you. I need you to understand this. Please."

He has never said please to her before and it causes the stone he has made of her heart to crack, almost break. Yet still, he moves away so that it becomes impossible to see him.

"Then tell me! What am I to understand? I see Coric in all this. I even see Kachine though she has yet to be conceived. I want to understand yet you force this gulf between us that I cannot cross!"

"There is a price because of this love that I did not foresee. It holds us fast to unimaginable rules and binds us with what we deem most sacred. I am tied to you and you, to the land."

"Do not talk to me in riddles! It cheapens everything that passed between us!"

But he is gone from sight and all she has left is his voice. She rises. The sacred grove is gone. Trees vanish to leave her in a cavern so deep and wide that she wonders if she will ever see the sun again. Yet she still has his voice. She follows to its source, runs after it. Struggles over rocks and debris. Falls endlessly as she tries to achieve what is unattainable. Until finally, she finds Kydel.

He is naked, chained to an enormous rock. Draped and helpless. His face wears an expression of acceptance touched by regret. It is a look to tear out her heart as she once tore out his. To see him thus shapes a moment in her existence unlike any other. Gods are not to be brought so low. Are not to be such fallible pawns. She will not let this pass. She cannot.

"This is the price. Only this."

*

Jill woke with a start, clutching blankets. Her heart beat so rapidly, she thought it might explode from her chest. Only the sunlight filtering through the curtains kept her from screaming. Its light showed a bedroom, not a cavernous void and a man chained to the side of a mountain. Still, she caught her breath and concentrated on the curtains and dappled sunlight. If she distracted herself with their ordinariness, then the dream could not... Would not... Its momentum threatened to sweep over her and carry her away. It had been so vivid, so real, like the one of Pydia—

"Good, you're finally awake. I wasn't sure when the sedative would wear off," said a pleasant looking young woman. She sat by the fireplace, looking up from the book she read. Setting it aside, she approached Jill and felt her forehead. Jill glanced quickly at the fresh crescent moon tattoo around her eye. "Much cooler now. Good. Your color is better as well and the cut on your cheek has nearly healed. Your hands will have improved too, I should think. How do you feel?"

"I'm all right," Jill answered, her voice cracking from lack of use. Oddly enough, she did feel healthier. The constant pain she'd endured with since ruining her hands had nearly receded. She looked at her hands wrapped in clean white strips of linen. "Why am I so much better?"