Renouncing the Emperor's Heart

A Blinding Glow (Part I)

A breathless gasp caught in the base of her throat.

"I knew it," she whispered, her eyes trained on the twirling leaves and broken grass blades swept up in a current of clouded air.

"H-how?" she asked, meeting his unsteady gaze with parted lips.

A muscle twitched in his jaw as his fingers spasmed into a curled fist. The haze of erratic wind calmed until the mountains came into view again and only a gentle touch of air remained around her ear.

"It's new to me too," Amon murmured. He watched the way her hair coiled at her neck from the remnant breeze. "I can't explain it to you if I don't know much about it myself."

Jovine shook her head, refusing to accept such an obscure answer as explanation. She urged him to find the words with her eyes.

Bringing his hand up, he cupped his palm until the air around her nape departed her skin and entered into an invisible vapor that she could only feel from his extended fingers. A faint, white glow emanated from the center of his palm until she saw the wispy, smoky movements of the wind dancing in his hand. Jovine's eyes widened, her pulse quickening to the remarkable, fearsome fact that something unnaturally exquisite was true and emerging.

"A trembling came to Mallory a handful of months ago."

Jovine stilled, startled tension brewing under her skin from his admission. A trembling...just as the one that had shaken the Capital on the fearsome night when Richard had returned. Afraid to break the calm facade with her torrent of questions, she never looked away from the whirling wind still flickering in his palm. She let him continue.

"We are made of ice up in the North, a structure easily shattered by something as forceful as a quaking tremble," he continued in a soft voice. "Our borders were cracked, leaving cities in fear of dark creatures beyond the Northern Woods that olden families would tell ghost stories about. Most likely tall tales people would mutter by the fireplace to entertain, but one can never be too careful."

This time, she couldn't help but look up into his golden eyes.

"Perhaps something did come to visit," he muttered. "How else can I explain why the earth trembled? Why the ice cracked?"

Her brows bent in bafflement.

"A blinding glow came over me, Jovine, and it was done." Amon looked down into his glowing palm, and a blink later, the wind died down. "I was different. That's all I can recall."

Her heart pounded fiercely. "Just you?"

"Just me."

She shook her head, unable to believe it. His version of how was barely an explanation, but she wasn't any different. Could she explain how she had come back? The rumors in the streets, the trembling that had come to her own city. Nothing could be explained.

Something he had said, however, struck her cold. "The trembling... Tensions in your Northern Borders," she repeated to herself.

Was this why the late Emperor and her husband had departed for Mallory?

Jovine asked him.

Amon nodded with a dark gleam in his eyes.

Two tremblings. One death.

How much of this unfathomable world did they all know nothing about?