Elio kneels beneath the fullness of the moon, staring up at its face and wondering if the stars can see him. He wonders if Ode can see him, wherever she is.
"She's with the stars, joon-am," Ryu had cradled the exhausted Emperor's head in his lap, "she sees all. She will come back. In time, you will see all too."
Elio lifts his bronzed arms to the skies, feeling the coolness of the breeze. The desert sand digging into his knees from where his bare legs beneath golden robes trail off the zardozi prayer mat.
"Ode, you have visited Ryu and General Ibrahim. Ratu and Kane. But me, Ode. Why do you abandon only me?"
The Emperor whispers, near despair as he stares over the endless waves of sand, at the inkblot in the distance. The faint outline of clay houses and earth dwellings. The village of Raja, the village of the King. It is the training hotspot for the Empire's soldiers, chosen as young boys amongst a crop of feverishly patriotic youth. The Empire, in turn, is good to the village. The best of grain. The best of the liquor. Trinkets from the East and wool from the North.
Raja. The gravesite of all those young men who died in the Divine War. Dead beneath Elio's cursed sword. All to satiate Cato's blood-thirst. Now, Elio must make amends.
I'm sorry for killing all your sons who wielded the swords. The daughters who healed them. The daughters with magic in their veins.
How hollow, those words. Elio thinks to himself, kneeling on a prayer mat as he begs the possibly dead Ode for guidance. As hollow as the mothers' eyes who lost their precious children...
Uneasily, he rolls up the prayer mat and goes to sleep behind the tent of his guards. Riyad, General Serkan's physician, serves as translator for the local Raja village dialect.
Ryu stayed behind, watching over their nephew, Boaz at the palace. Ratu tends Serkan while Riyad helps Elio navigate a potentially messy political situation.
"Good night, Riyad. Good fortune, Iwan and Iris."
Iwan takes a swig from his drink. "Good night, Emperor."
Iris simply nods and smiles.
The brother-sister twin pair also hail from the village of Raja. They're members of the elite Rahasia guards, the finest General Ibrahim has ever trained in the royal yards.
Unlike the innocent youths Elio indirectly killed from Raja, however, Elio actually managed to save Iris and Iwan from early graves. Their parents were drunkards from the village. They attempted to sell the young twins into slavery in the brothels for extra coin.
If Elio hadn't stepped in, an impetuous young prince of six years old, and demanded that they be saved to become his royal training yard buddies... well, who knows where they'd be.
Elio lifts his tent flap back. Riyad snores softly in a smaller tent at the side. Iris and Iwan take turns for the watch, lethal curved staves and scimitars in their belts and hands. Piercing eyes and shorn-to-the-scalp hair for the both of them, dark clothing that causes them to blend in with the night.
Before Elio closes the tent behind him, he swivels around. "Will the villagers hate me, Iris?"
Iris hesitates a moment. "They will appreciate the resources you bring them, Sacred One."
Elio sighs. That hesitation was all he needed to hear.
Iwan, seeing his sadness, offers a flask of liquor. "For courage."
Elio smiles and takes a gentle sip. "Maybe it will keep the nightmares at bay."
"Maybe." Iris says. Her dark eyes seem to see the trouble in his heart.
YOU ARE READING
A Priestess for the Blind God (Legends of Rahasia Book 1)
Fantasy"The Blind God walks around me, and I feel my mind prodded again like it was in the cavern, a spider weaving a tangled web. "Would you do anything to be remembered, Ode, even play a villain, the one who rises against the Chosen One?" In answer, I dr...
