Darkness and Beauty (The Fated Series, #1)

Chapter 52 - Fauna - Song of Flesh and Blood

While Darius and Thea have a rather awkward, but flattering conversation, I scan the crowd again. People smile and dance, not a single one of them looking like they are going to make a move against the royals.
When you can't find anything but know that something's coming, you find yourself looking twice at everyone. Lance managed to pull me aside before I went back to the tower to change, and he told me everything. About Eleanor and Charles's dreams and what their sleep talking may imply. I honestly wasn't surprised, I mean I was the one to say that they'd be aiming for some time during the festival.
Still, I don't like silence.
When our world goes quiet, it means a storm is brewing on the horizon.
My father's voice rings in my head, and I swear I can feel his hand on my shoulder telling me to look closer. To see with more than with my eyes. Listen in between the noise. Feel the shift in the universe. Smell through the lies of the deceiver. Taste the blood before it's spilled. If you can't trust your senses, then trust your instincts. But everything comes back the same with nothing to show for my tension but the fighting children beside me. I turn to accept Thea's proposal if only to see what Darius will do when the hairs on my arm stand up.
In seconds every nerve in my body starts firing signals. I hunt through every inch of the room, stopping when I look into the shadows of the ceiling. Above the balconies of the third floor, a golden lion's head is mounted on the wall, but it's not the detail of the carving that I'm interested in. It's the shadows that move behind it, followed by a brief flash of light before it stills.
By the Gods and their Saints, they're going to shoot from across the room. It's within easy hitting distance, but if that's Will in the shadows, then it's no ordinary arrow he has knocked on the bow. Terror strikes my heart with the image of my father's body impaled by a thick, large arrow trades to the image of Darius's body broken by another.
Keeping my face carefully neutral, I frantically flash my fingers behind Darius's back in hopes that Lance will see it. We created our own codes with our hands and fingers when I was twelve, and we haven't told anyone about them. Not even my father.
They weren't supposed to be here for another hour.
I keep flashing my fingers as I turn my head slightly toward Garrison still standing guard on the first step of the dais, and whisper, "Mountain Mallow."
He doesn't acknowledge me at all as he counts to ten before walking up beside Mal and repeating the words. In no alarming way, they all tighten their ranks and move so that with a quick whistle from me, they'll fall back into the arrowhead formation around Darius. Small movements toward a bigger goal. Slow movements that have me eyeing the shadows above, praying to every listening ear that their bowstring snaps and they'll have to mend it before firing.
"What?"
Shit. I forgot Thea was still here.
"It blooms after a fire in the woods," I explain distantly, letting my eyes roam where they want to feign disinterest.
"O-Oh."
"She's family," Darius whispers tightly as he casually adjusts his own position and puts his arms around me from behind. No more than the Prince enjoying his lover. I hold my breath as I take the risk of looking away from the lion's head and turning to him. Though our eyes meet I know his are focused on the Bhaltayr while mine focus on the Queen's throne, thankful to find it empty and Lance and Kat gone. All but two of the Queen's guards have gone with them, tricking the crowd to think that she'll only be gone for a few minutes. Nothing more than a woman still recovering from her labor. "Clare."
"Alright," I fold. I step closer to Thea and keep one eye on the lion's head as I speak. "I need you to do exactly what I say in the order I say it."
"What-"
"Trust her, Thea. Please," Darius begs her.
I don't wait for her to agree. A clock has started ticking in my mind, and it's getting louder. "You're going to walk back to Derek acting like nothing is wrong and you're perfectly happy. Give him a drink, kiss his neck, whisper sweet things in his ear – I don't care, just get him seduced and then take him to your normal chambers in Darius's tower. Make sure you two look like you're nothing but two people going off to find pleasure in your bed. If someone stops you, tell them your name and that Darius personally requested you enjoy yourself. When you get to the room, lock the doors and windows, close the curtains, don't light a single candle, and hide in the bedroom. I'll send someone to retrieve you. Don't scream if the bookcase opens, and if the person who walks through says salutem, then you're safe. If they don't, then you scream as loud as you can. There are eight guards in the hall that will hear you. Do you understand?"
"I..." She looks partly convinced that this is some sort of prank Darius is trying to pull on her.
I grasp her hand slowly, planting a sweet smile on my face to ease the nosey ladies in the corner. "Look, you can trust me. I swear on my parent's graves that this is no trick and you'll be perfectly safe so long as you do as I say, and go with a smile on your face and act like nothing is wrong."
"Please, Thea," Darius pleas again.
Something must've shown in his eyes because she slips a convincing smile on her face, and then turns and walks down the dais. Darius pulls back my hood just enough to start kissing my neck, but I know that the only reason why we haven't moved yet is to make sure that she gets to Derek. Eleanor doesn't look happy to see her and politely excuses herself. Taking the gold circle necklace in my hands, I reflect the light from the chandeliers off of it and right into Blight's face. She's been standing beside a few clueless servants and immediately heads over to the dais when the glare hits her. I could send Julyan, but I need him to go with the King when he retreats and having a woman rather than a man go to get Thea and Derek won't frighten them as much.
"Thank you," Darius whispers on my neck. I look to Thea one more time, finding her tugging Derek toward the garden rather insistently. At least she's good at acting, otherwise, without the wide smile and flirtatious gaze through her lashes, she'd look rather panicked and crazy.
I pull Darius back to his throne, making sure to keep my body between his and the edge of an arrow. We stand beside it and Blaise is already pushed up against the back of the chair when we get there. "You blinded me, your loveliness?"
"Mountain Mallow."
"Shit."
"Change of plans. I need you to go to Darius's tower and take the secret door to my bedroom. There will be a woman and a man in pale green clothing waiting. Say salutem, and then take them to Layara."
"What about-"
"We'll be fine. Now go." She hesitates but I second later I hear the faintest scuff of her foot as slips back against the wall and into the servant's entrance in the corner of the room.
I go to call over Aillard when the hairs on my arms stand up again and instinct has me shoving Darius behind the throne. There's a flash in the corner of my eye and then the whoosh of the arrow as it flies past me. I turn, one of the long Ebony blades already in my hand, and whistle. The Bhaltayr easily back-peddle up the steps and into the formation. Another arrow flies as I take my place at the tip of the arrowhead, and with a flash of my blade, it ricochets helplessly to the ground.
No one saw the first arrow, but the second the Bhaltayr moved so did the King's guard, and that threw everyone into a quiet panic, but it wasn't because of the arrow now clattering on the marble floor. When someone shoots an arrow at the royals, people turn and bolt for the doors. When the arrow flew at me and Darius, the first thing they noticed was the all-black blade in my hand. If they hadn't believed it before from the mere handles, then they most definitely all just now pieced together who, exactly, the Prince has been involved with. Sadly, I don't have time to make a snarky comment.
I'm in the motion of taking a step toward the King when every torch, lantern, and flame goes out, casting the entirety of the room in darkness. I didn't feel a single breeze blow into the room, and based on the way that the thin white curtains hung beside the garden doors weren't moving, I'd say there was no wind at all.
I don't like this.
"What in ten hells is going on?" Ethan whispers somewhere over my right shoulder.
"If I knew, I'd-" There's a high-pitched scream, followed by a small chorus of others. Terrified screams. My hand tightens around my blade.
"He's here," Darius announces.
The flames burst to life, scaring a few people who rush to move out of the spark's path, only to get shoved back against the walls at the sight of seven cloaked figures standing in the middle of the room, each with a woman held against their chests by a blade aimed to slit their throat and another into their hearts. Two dozen more cloaked figures stand behind them, another twelve on the second-floor balconies, ten above that.
Fewer than I expected.
The crowd, I note, cowers as far away as possible from the cloaks, yet they don't leave. They all stay, damned gossip-crazed idiots.
There's no mistaking the one closest to us as Xaxias. For one, his hood isn't pulled up, and he's got one of those faces that haunt your nightmares. Raised scars turn his expression outright frightening, his already matted dark hair falls down to his sunken black eyes only distinguished from the blood-red iris constricted directly back at us. He looks like a demon of Helias's making. Elemental power or not, I can feel the entire room hold its breath as it waits for him to speak, but the elements do shiver with both anticipation and slight fear.
Annoyed by his dramatic pause, I glance at his shadows again, catching not the details. If it weren't for the yellow gown peeking out through the black cloak of the second, I wouldn't know that it was Eleanor with a girl my age beneath her blade. One look at Xaxias's other shoulder and I spot Charles's blue jacket. Little shits deserve the knife I'm going to put right between their eyes.
I can't see who the others might be, but not knowing will make them easier to kill.
"King Neven," Xaxias calls loudly. Dear Gods his voice sounds like there are glass shards in his throat. "I regret to inform you that it's not your life we seek."
Neven steps forward, only going as far as Aillard stands a few feet away from the edge of the dais. "And what is it you seek?" he demands. He's all too calm about this right now, and it's enough to make me slide out my other Ebony.
"I seek my King and Queen."
"Are you not currently speaking to him?"
"Don't play coy with me," Xaxias slithers. Something in my veins thrums with a low warning as if telling me that his tone is a dangerous one in itself. He's angry, that much is true, but at the King's deflective response, his lip curled back and his brow lowered. "I know they're here."
"Every other ruler is in their own kingdom-"
"The elementals, you idiot!" The crowd gasps at his insolence. "Where are they? Where are the heirs to the Spirits of the Living? Those prophesied to either kill us all or save your pathetic lives."
"Your judgment is foul. There are no elementals in my kingdom, and even if there were, I'm afraid you're outnumbered." Just as my father wrote out, a hundred guards walk through the grand archway and onto the balconies, all lining up between Xaxias and the people. A line being drawn.
Xaxias laughs. From beneath his cloak, the shadows stir and slither around his feet. Like snakes being summoned and readied to strike. I let the elements rise a bit, my hand twitching at the pain that shoots down my nerves. They go a foot away from me and then stop, both warning and caution echoing back from them.
Not yet. Got it.
The elements retreat with more haste. I readjust my stance slightly, the balls of my feet digging into the marble floor, ready to react to the frenzied look in Xaxias's eyes.
"My dear King, I need no army to win." Eleanor and Charles drive their blades into their victim's chest. People scream and cry out, finally moving, banging on the glass pane doors or those leading further into the castle while most take the stairs two at a time, stampeding over one another to survive.
I can barely hear it over the ringing in my own ears as I watch the two women begin to choke on their own blood, only held up by the traitors. Another second and then they slit their throats.
They did it on purpose - the heart and then the throat. Final as a knife to the heart is, with the blade left within the muscle the victim has minutes to live. Left in, you can keep the victim alive, and they're left to feel all of the pain until they die. A slit throat takes time too, but slit while the blade is pulled free from the heart and they only last seconds. They kept their blades in to ensure the last thing they felt was pain and fear, and now they're dead, and they have four more victims.
Xaxias watches the panic with contentment. "Enough!" The fleeing stop mid-stride. With the tense silence returned his voice carries like a swinging axe. "Shall we try this again? Where. Are. The elementals."
"I...I told you-" Neven doesn't get to finish before Xaxias sends his own knife into the woman's heart at a deliberate angle. Rather than slit her throat, he just pulls out his blade and lets her fall to the ground. I count the seconds until her last breath falls.
Eleven.
Another woman cries out from the crowd, and the world falls from my hands as those in the balconies start executing innocents.
This is madness. This is what I've been sworn to protect, and yet I see no way to do so. There's blood puddling at their feet – innocent blood. Pureblood that didn't deserve to run cold. Not like this. Xaxias was supposed to be our problem, not theirs. He was supposed to take us, not them. I was supposed to be the one with the knife in my heart, and now I have to live with that for the rest of my life.
As I watch the blood spill past the rails and down onto the heads of others below, I close my eyes to keep the tears from spilling. Lives - innocent lives lost because of what now runs in my veins, and I will mourn those who now lie dead for the meaningless reason, but that's not why I hold back tears.
I wanted so badly to be wrong. I wanted my plans to go unused. To find out what this new fate meant and see the happiness it'd bring so that I could live, but what I was wrong about was how hard it'd be to make the final choice. With everything that's happened and the worth of what I now have, a decision has never been easier.
The muffling feeling of the killing calm honing in settles the thrumming of my muscles. It's cold and empty and the red of the blood spreads further to the edge of my vision as I look at the once more still room still full of plenty of other victims. Locking my eyes onto the left side of his chest, I take in a single breath that feels so thin it barely fills my lungs.
I used to hate feeling so much at the same time, and I used to love the numbness that overwhelmed me and snuffed it all out like water to a flame. Things hurt, others felt too good to be true, and doubt was like a plague. The killing calm was a blessing, but as the days passed on here with Darius and his family and his confusing friends and their stupid jokes and grins and annoying determination that often came as stubbornness, I came to not want the killing calm so near. Now it's all I want to do as it once did before. To numb it all and shut off what is so preciously overwhelming before I drown. To let it fuel me and my purpose so that I can feel it all again later and let myself bathe in it.
I will see the golden sunlight again. I'll make sure it survives.
"Clarice-" I silence Garrison with a raise of my hand. He wants to leave and get Darius out - and he will, but I have my promise to uphold.
I leave the Bhaltayr to guard Darius and walk to the King. Reynald is likely already taking my place amongst them, Julyan still standing by the door behind the dais, waiting.
"I thought I told you to protect my family," Neven seethes as I reach his side. I can feel Xaxias's eyes locking in on me. He'll get his chance.
"And I shall do as I promised," I vow with a voice I know to be full of that emptiness. A voice that's not my own, but that of the Ebony. "I shall protect you and your family. That was the promise I made a month ago, was it not?"
I don't wait for him to catch it and look to Aillard who already knows what's coming and straightens his shoulders.
It wasn't hard to figure out that Aillard was Thralian. His facial features weren't of any known kingdoms and he's learned to speak Vandarian well enough, but his accent slips here and there. At first, I couldn't place it, but then Ella showed up and started talking, and I held onto the little fact just long enough until I could take advantage of it.
Thralia may have been forgotten, but I loved the many mysteries of the world and luckily read up on it a few years back. One of the many bogus things that I thought was ridiculous, was that every Thralian citizen, whether living on the island or not, is to obey the orders of their rulers. If they ask you to bring them a pastry from whatever land you're currently venturing, then you have no choice but to obey them. It was laughable until now, but after talking to the Thralian in disguise last night, I found out that it's all true.
"Vos have vestri ordinis. Non deficient."
You have your orders. Don't fail.
He does what everyone least expects the Vandarian Captian of the Guard to do before his own King. He bows to me, two fingers going to his brow. "Ut vis, Mea Regina."
Once I pieced his lineage together, I figured that Sibella knew. She has, after all, been ruling Thralia for the past few decades. So I thought that she might have been in contact with possible Thralians here. I sent a letter to Rykiel last cycle telling him to trail her and find out if she was. He wrote back a day later saying that she was in contact with someone in the castle. He didn't know who it was or what she wrote because it was all in a different language, but he did copy it.
Lithian. It turns out that Lithian is actually Thralian. It was kind of ironic to know that I had learned the language of my mother's homeland without knowing it. I knew the topic would come in handy one day, I just didn't think it'd be used to rule a kingdom.
"What is this?" Neven demands, his face an off contortion of fury. I look to Julyan over the King's shoulder and wait until he nods before turning back to a fuming Neven.
"This is me keeping my promise. Go. Aillard will get you to safety, and Darius will be right behind you." He opens his mouth to argue, but Aillard puts a stiff hand on his shoulder, and he closes it.
His eyes snap back to mine and I know the second he sees what they hold. "He may come to forgive you, but he'll never forget it."
"I know. Now go."
He doesn't resist when Aillard pulls him toward the door. One nod from the Captain of the Guard and the King's Guards move into their own formation. More whispers and quiet protest lash out when it's not their King the men move to align with, but me. Xaxias knows very well that Darius and I are the elementals, hence why he's letting the King go. He just wanted to show the people of Vandaria that their King was willing to let his people be slaughtered to keep two people hidden. To keep the Ebony Nightingale hidden. He wants them to turn on Neven, but little does he know that the people have long since lost faith in him. Now it's just a matter of giving the people someone else to look to.
Ignoring Darius's desperate call of my middle name, I turn around and face Xaxias. He chuckles deeply as I descend the steps of the dais, pulling my blades back out of their sheaths.
"At last. Someone with some common sense. I do hope you'll be smarter with your words, My Queen." He spits the title like it's molded bread.
I don't break his stare, not as I wave off the guard and leave them as another line of defense in front of Darius and the Bhaltayr. Nor as I stop at the bottom of the dais, and definitely not as one of his seven followers shoves his victim into Charles's chest, rushes to Xaxias's side, and pulls off his hood.
Of all people, I'm not at all surprised to see Willdred Maron. I learned a while ago that Will would always betray me. Again. It doesn't hurt this time. I expected it. It's no coincidence that he resurfaced and brought about enough chaos to have my father meet the Queen. It's no coincidence that all those tiny pokes and prods led to me being in a shared space with the very person who had the twin to my mother's pendant. It wasn't fate, it was just carefully calculated moves planned a whole damn year in advance leading up to this. To Xaxias eyeing me like rare gold.
My steps don't falter, my breath doesn't catch, nor do my hands shake. Instead, the killing calm takes over everything. Revenge. Justice. They're all the same jumbled mess now.
"Clarice-" My eyes snap to Will and I know he sees the lethal storm raging because he goes to talk in that annoying ′let's be friends′ voice. "Put the blades away." I slowly stalk toward him instead, target temporarily altered. Xaxias laughs. "Clarice. Please."
Please. Please. Did he stop when Rose said 'please?′ Did he put his blades down when she pleaded for her life? Did he bite down on that stupid rage of his when he entered that bakery?
Please.
He deserves to beg. He deserves to be broken from the inside without knowing it. Cutting into him isn't enough for what I am owed – letting Lance make him scream for days on end isn't enough for him. He deserves to feel the heartbreak I felt, to feel every piece of him shatter – and he'll get that. He'll get that and more. That's a promise.
He took a vow to protect the innocent, and here he is, standing in defiance of the own blood he spilled on that codex. It's about time someone reminded him of that.
About time that I finish that scar over his eye.
"With this blade in my hand..." I croon, beginning the spoken vow that every Jade Assassin takes the day they've been allowed to join us.
"With the strength of my heart..." Rykiel continues as he walks from the crowd and past the lined-up guards, the Jade's Promise being spoken to the world for the first time.
"By my love of the innocent..." recite five more Jades, all blue-cloaked and hooded and stepping forward from the shadows no one had even bothered to check after Xaxias arrived.
Ten more emerge. "And mastery of my training..."
"I will drop my blood," Twenty of us shout in unison.
"My flesh." Forty.
"My soul." Sixty.
"To defend those lay waste,"
"By the hands of the broken." A hundred.
"I take this vow and spill my blood on these words, sealing my promise." One-third of the force our father left me and Lance with now stands within the Fernweh ballroom. A hundred and seventy strong.
A hundred are spread throughout the castle and its walls, another  guarding the House of Jade while the last two hundred watch the full town, readying to hold true to that promise.
My brother sent orders this morning, but they had mine two days prior as an original backup. One message to Rykiel and the plans took precedent. Lance may be the Jade King and have their vows and loyalty, but it is for that reason - the reason I manipulated to overrun his orders - that they now follow the ones I gave them instead. They just lost one King, they'll do anything to keep the same fate from my brother, and so will I.
I stop a few feet from Will, looking him dead in the eye. The words hit home, they've done their job, but it's not enough.
"The hands of the broken have laid waste."
Will goes pale, scanning the faces of the gathered Jades now all staring right at him. They all know who he is and what he did. They all remember. "We are bound by blood to defend them and your blood will be taken for theirs."
"Dear child," Xaxias sings to try and get my attention, but I'm honed in on Will, and nothing will break it. "Have you not yet learned-" There are four loud thuds that cut him off, and I don't bother to look at his four followers that are now dead with arrows in their heads as I drag my blade across Will's ribs and thighs.
Chaos truly erupts this time. And he's mine.
I swipe my leg out at his. He jumps, pulling out two of his own blades from his boots in mid-air. I don't wait for him to land before moving on the offensive. The sound of Jades fighting around me and the castle guards ushering everyone else out is a distant echo, driving me faster and harder.
"You slaughtered Rose," I scream as I slice into his wrist, catching his knife that he drops and sliding it into my boot as I duck under his swing. "You murdered my father." I kick him in the stomach and swing for his throat.
He catches my forearm and pulls me against his chest so that we're inches apart. "I love you, Clary."
"That's not my name, traitor."
I shove him back, hitting his inner thigh before once again kicking his chest. I don't give him a second to recover and hook my foot around his ankle, sending him falling to the ground. My blades are angled at his throat and heart, ready to move.
"You're a practiced liar who keeps stabbing me in the back. Did you really think I'd let the gesture go unpaid?"
I flick my wrist to cut his throat, but just as we were taught he gets his hand under the blade. He uses a move I should've seen coming, hitting me in the diaphragm hard enough to make my eyes water and breath hard to come by for a few seconds. It's enough of a delay for him to roll and pin my arms down beside my head.
"Do you remember that night?" he whispers in my ear. His knees slide down, making his hips fall between mine. The memories cloud my vision, and then I'm shoving them aside and turning my head so that our lips are a hair's length apart.
"Yes. Do you remember the day I first bested you?"
I bring my lips in a hard crash against his, keeping my lips tightly sealed shut. I feel the shift in him, and before he can remember exactly how I won that sparring match, I shove the blade that I flipped in my hand before he pinned me into his arm. His grip loosens, and I twist out of his grasp quickly enough to get the blade into the back of his shoulder. He lets out a cry but I barely hear it. Using my strength, I roll him onto his back, take the arm of the shoulder I didn't stab, and put my body beneath it. An all too easy lift of my hips and his shoulder pops out of his socket.
I wish Lance were here to listen to his pain.
Taking a moment to assess the rest of the fighting around us, I find too many black cloaks on the ground to know if they're Jades or followers. Saints guide them to the next life if they're Jades. If not...well they're already meeting the death god.
Will shifts beneath me and I dig my heel into the empty socket of his shoulder bone. He screams again, louder this time as he tries to bring up his legs. I make the mistake of using my own leg to knock down his. He doesn't hesitate to grit his teeth and pull my heel from his shoulder and somehow kicking me right in the boob.
Little bastard knows that hurts.
I get on my feet and hit him hard enough in the jaw to make my wrist bark in pain at the contact, damn if it isn't fucking glorious.
"Clarice!"
I whirl, ignoring the pain in my hand, and find the Bhaltayr all still standing but slowly crumbling with the force of the cloaks. "I'm going to regret this."
I grab Will's blade from my boot and throw it into his thigh, another of mine flying into the opposite side of his abdomen, a third slicing his opposite lats. I'm already spinning by the time he cries out again, knowing that Lance will likely want to strangle me because I didn't finish the job when he hears about it, but he can't suffer if he's dead.
I ram myself into Winston's opponent, digging my blades deep into his lungs. Another blade leaves my hand the next second, straight for the cloak about to hit Alex's weak spot. With another slice of a throat, I take my place at the tip of the arrowhead, letting Reynald drop back behind Garrison and at Darius's side. Amel and Benny take out two more, and when Vlad, Winston, and I go to raise our weapons for oncoming swings.
They don't come. No one's coming toward us, and I'm about to run back down to finish off Will when a voice comes from the other side of the dais.
"There wasn't supposed to be so much spilled blood," Xaxias calls.
We all easily turn, adjusting the aim of our arrow. "And yet you didn't hesitate to be the one to start it," I retort.
"Dear child, you're the one who sent the King to safety while his son stays here. I know who you are – who you both are." His eyes drift to Darius, but only for a second. I want to tell myself that that's good, but it just makes what decision I've already made harder to carry out. "Did you think I'd leave here without you?"
The calm fractures. "No, I didn't."
His arms slacken at his sides, no weapons gripped in them. You don't necessarily need them when you were forged into one. He's waiting for me to attack, waiting for the Bhaltayr to follow. I want to take him on. I want to see his blood run for the blood that stains his hands, but he's right. He's not leaving here without me, but I need time.
I pinch my lips and whistle the quick, high pitched whistle of a Nightingale. Rykiel and five of our strongest Jades climb the steps to stand between us, those now unoccupied by the cloaks on the floor running up the steps alongside them. Rykiel looks over at me once, chin dipping. They're not meant to defeat Xaxias, and I'm not even sure they could, all they have to do is buy me time, and Xaxias seems cocky enough to let the ten men and women try.
I don't wait to see the fight start before whirling.
"Don't you dare," Gabe quickly says when I open my mouth. "Don't say it."
The calm fractures more but I hold it together. "Gabe-"
"No! You are not going to say those words because if you do, I'll torture you myself." It hits me like a blow to my chest, and just like that, the killing calm falls and I burst into tears. "You are not doing this to us – to him."
"Gabe," I plead, choking on his name.
"No." I force myself to turn to Alex and find the same defiant look on his face. "We stand together."
"What in ten hell are you all talking about?" Darius tries to push past Garrison. We all ignore him.
"Don't say it, Clare," Al begs with glossy eyes of his own.
I look to every single one of them, skipping over Darius who keeps demanding that someone tells him what's going on. They all agree - even Garrison who has done nothing but hate me for the past two months. We stand together, not alone. I want to...but...
Family comes first.
That's what my father taught me. Family comes first and it's never just the people you share blood with - that's not what family means. Family is those who your heart chooses even when they hurt you. It's who you'll never be able to not choose if a choice was forced upon you, and it's who you choose to fight for even when they don't deserve it. That's what love does to you. It makes the decision for you, even when it's one that's so hard you try to convince yourself that there is a contender for it, but there's not. Family will always be the winning choice, and that's why it's dangerous. Because you'll choose it every time. Even over yourself.
That's why caring brings chaos. That's why I've guarded my heart for so long because I didn't want to ever have to make the choice and have it already made for me. I knew what my decision would be years ago and I feared it then, and I fear it now. Not the part where I have to make it and set it into action, I fear where I may end up because of it.
I've been trained to endure a lot, and despite all the preparation and the long nights in a dark room with nothing but my thoughts, the one thing you can never out-train is uncertainty. No matter how much you plan or how many times you practice one thing over and over, there will always be an uncertainty you cannot prepare for or predict. You can't be certain that someone won't move at the last second, plunging your blade into another's flesh rather than the aimed target's. You can't predict what tomorrow will hold with complete and utter certainty. You can't predict your death.
Somewhere behind me a body falls. I dig my nails into my palm.
"Saorsa." It comes out as nothing but a strangled sob and whines, so I close my eyes, not being able to look at them as I say it louder. "Saorsa."
I hate this. I hated it two days ago when I made them promise that if I said the word, they'd take Darius and leave - leave me to buy them time. I said that I'd meet them in Layara, but we all knew the likelihood of me getting out if Xaxias was involved. They yelled and screamed and raged within the walls of Darius's sitting room that I had lined in a thick layer of water to mute our voices, but I made them do it. I pulled the Queen card, and when they tried saying that I wasn't their Queen, I just watched as they broke down, finding it a lie they hadn't realized they'd accepted. I hadn't realized it either, and I wish it was a lie. I wish they still hated me as they did the first day I walked into the castle. I wish they kept me away from Darius, guarding both him and his heart from me and mine from his. I should've let them. I should've upheld the mask of the Ebony Nightingale and let them think their worst and keep me to the title of his personal guard rather than slip into the alias of his fake lover.
I wish it were fake. I wish...Gods I wish it had all gone wrong than wonderfully, perfectly right.
From the moment we all found out that Darius and I have been practically crowned King and Queen, you could just see it in their eyes that they'd be there to protect us. They'd be there to smile when we were coronated and every day we put those silly crowns on our heads. They'd fight and bleed for us, and they'd do anything if we asked. I had shut that memory out of my mind because I didn't want it to be true. I didn't want to care, and it hurt so much to see them all numbly nod and murmur the words, "we promise." It hurt to the point that I cried myself to sleep after making Melody and a few others make the same promise.
Leave me.
It hurt then, and it's killing me now, twisting the knife still lodged in my chest.
"I don't give a shit what we said," Henry persists. "We're not going-"
"You can't make us," Benny states over his friend.
"What the fuck is Saorsa?"
"We stand until we fall, Clarice." I force myself to look at Garrison, to remember all the things he's said and done since I've infiltrated his life because it's easier than remembering everything else. I look at the rest of them, committing them all to memory, memorizing the sound of their voices and smiles that drew the darkness within me further back without any of us knowing it. I feel the pain, feel it thrashing as the sound of another body falling echoes behind us. Rykiel can only hold on for so long.
"No," I whisper. Voices no one else can hear sing in my ears, and as they each rise at my attention, so does the thrumming in my veins and the pain in my wrists. "You swim..." I choke on my sobs, avoiding their eyes as I make direct eye contact with Reynald still at Darius's side. "Or you drown."
I lift my hands in front of my chest, hands forming a cylinder, and bite back my wince as the water element bursts open into a choir of hailing storms. Pools from the fifty purposefully placed buckets behind the dais in the shadows spring out of them and encase the men before me in a sphere of water. Waves rush by my face, blurring the faces of The Bhaltayr. I ignore their screams and pounding fists as I watch Reynald pull the white cloth from his pocket and place it over Darius's mouth. Darius struggles, clawing at Reynald's arms like a scared child. The Bhaltayr take notice, all moving to help Darius. A flip of my hands and the water shifts, causing them all to fall.
Darius goes limp, the sleeping elixir that was poured onto the cloth doing its job. I made Reynald, Blaise, and Julyan swear to carry the cloths dipped in a powerful, but harmless, sleeping elixir on them tonight. I told them why and they swore their secrecy, even from Lance. Gods know that if he found out he'd put one of the cloths over my mouth and drag me out. I couldn't have that. I can live with them ignoring me and being mad at me for the rest of my life, but I couldn't live with myself if they died.
Caring brings chaos.
Reynald finds my gaze once more, and with a nod of understanding, he bows at the waist, his fist going over his heart.
Garrison's face appears before my own, the image shifting as the water keeps circling them.
Please, he mouths. Please.
Before I can change my mind, I pull my hands further apart, the water rising to hover over the ground. Another movement of my arms and the water churns further, moving them toward the rammed through doors leading to the garden. I follow them out, Jades clearing a path, and I try to keep my shaking knees from giving out.
Whenever Darius's power surged to bring up a wall of flames or feel when his father came into the castle, he did so unknowingly but with an amount of control that we have yet come nowhere near to mastering. I didn't want to ask Ella about it as I still don't trust her, so I did my own digging. Every time he used his power in those controlled times, he did so with one thought on his mind. The elements thought he was in danger, so they quickly rose to protect him and obey his order on how to do so, as they couldn't very well see what the danger was. The power yielded to him, and so he could sustain it.
For the entirety of last night as I lay with Darius, I quietly practiced doing the same. No one noticed the buckets of water I slid beneath the bed, and no one heard when I brought a wall of water around the room. I did it until I was sure I had it down, and then I fell asleep. All it took was tricking the power into thinking I was in danger by asking it for protection, but little did it know it was not for my protection, but for the protection of Darius and the Bhaltayr. They can hate me later. They can curse my name and forget me for the rest of their lives so long as they get a life to live.
"Clarice! Clarice!" Their voices start bleeding through the water's walls as they begin to thin.
"Don't do this!"
"Wait!"
"Amo te." I call up the entire force of both elements. The grass starts to grow, each blade weaving in and out around the layers of water. Tree roots sprout upward, encasing them in a shell that will hold them. One after the other I add onto it, keeping only a sliver open right in front of me. Everyone else is still begging, but Reynald moves, laying down and pulling Darius on top of him, covering them both in his coat. I wait for his nod.
Sealing them inside entirely, I scream against the pain and command the elements to do one thing, and one thing alone.
Save them.