Oria never returned.
Lonen lay awake all night, every scrape of a tree limb and crunching movement in the snow tricking his optimistic heart with the agonizing hope that it might be her.
It never was.
He told himself he was wakeful because he’d slept at midday, during that long nap to kill time while waiting outside of that cursed cavern. A lie, of course. But he lay there, wide awake, going back over the course of events, picking out all the decision points where he could have—should have—chosen a different path. He rehashed every conversation with Oria, coming up with better, more compelling arguments. With sick regret, he relived watching her walk into that yawning mouth without him.
He’d made so many mistakes, but nothing matched letting Oria go in there alone. He should’ve insisted on going with her. Hell, he should’ve tied her up and tossed her over Buttercup’s back and not stopped until they reached Arill City. With a vicious, self-recriminating anger, he bitterly identified with his ancestors who’d kept their captive sorceresses close at hand. At least their women hadn’t disappeared forever.
He lay there until the light shifted from black of night to pre-dawn dark, then forced himself to rise as the others did. If Alyx and her soldiers hadn’t been with him, he might’ve gone back to the cavern. Fuck his promises, his vows, his duty.
And fuck the throne.
Though Alyx said nothing, he felt the weight of her gaze, the burden of her expectation. She and her women supported his claim to the throne because of what he could do for them. Oria expected him to follow through because of what he needed to do for both their peoples.
So he’d go without argument. Even though none of it meant anything without Oria.
It should. Once upon a time, long ago, before he ever laid eyes on the copper-haired sorceress, he’d cared about nothing more than Dru and the Destrye. He’d planned to sacrifice himself any number of times for the cause of saving them. Though he’d never wanted the crown or his father’s sword, he’d taken them up because it had fallen to him to do so. He’d easily accepted that his duty outweighed his desires.
His life had never been about what he wanted. He could do this just as he’d ridden into battle and as he’d taken the sword of kingship from his father’s freshly dead hand. So he packed up and mounted Buttercup and rode hard for Arill City and the palace, ignoring how every fiber of him insisted they went in the wrong direction. They had until sunset the next day to make it back. Nolan would, no doubt, be watching the sun decline, waiting to pounce and seal Lonen’s fate at the first possible moment.
He only wished he could face reclaiming the throne with wholehearted commitment. When had Oria become more important than anything else? With each league between him and his wife, he felt the distance strain the marriage bond. He’d become accustomed to it, that connection to her, where Oria burned like a bright spark in his soul. Now it dimmed, and he told himself the distance did it, not that her life force faded.
They rode too fast for conversation. Every hour saved now would allow everyone who supported him to breathe that much more easily. But that left him to the circle of his own thoughts, conversations from the night returning to play over and over.
“He thinks I enchanted you, enough that you’ll abandon your duty to your people for me.”
“Not because of magic. Out of love.”
“It’s the same in the end.”
“It’s not. Love is something good and pure, not some perversion of magic. If you’d enchanted me, it would be a kind of control, and you don’t do that.”
He didn’t know what he thought anymore. Oria affected him on deep levels—ones he was more aware of than ever, as they throbbed with the pain of leaving her behind—but she’d never tried to control him. She’d given advice, sure. She’d insisted on following her own destiny, fighting with all the obstinacy in her nature, but she’d never controlled him.
Had she?
There’d been that moment when he’d felt the urge to go into the woods and leave Oria there with Buttercup, Chuffta, and the mask ensconced in the saddlebags. One moment he’d been ready to mount up again, the next urgently needing privacy. It had felt much like when the derkesthai king leaned on his will. In the aftermath of how that ill-advised encounter with the mask had harmed Oria, he hadn’t thought about it.
Now it only mattered if he ever saw her again.
Oria fell to her knees, sobbing and unable to withstand the pressure of the derkesthai king’s mind.
“You’re fighting me,” he observed remorselessly, but thankfully also pulled back.
“I can’t help it,” she said aloud through her teeth, too exhausted to project with mind-voice alone, and the Great One seemed to be able to hear her regardless. Reflexively she cradled Chuffta in her arms, though the sling would prevent him from falling.
“You can help it,” he replied. “This is your mind. Who else controls it if not you?”
Him, at the moment, though she didn’t say that. “Some things are instinct. My heart is mine but I don’t control whether it beats.”
“Ah, but you could, if you trained to do it. Some sorcerers have.”
“I bet it took all their lives to learn that,” she replied bitterly. The sharp stones bit into her knees through the layers of skirts, and she dripped with sweat, though she’d long ago doffed the fur cloak and other outer layers. The derkesthai wouldn’t care if she stripped naked, but the king hadn’t let her pause long enough to do so. She’d love to take off the fur-lined stockings at least, but didn’t dare remove her boots, lest she burn her feet or cut them to ribbons.
“It may have,” the king mused. “But what else is a life for?”
“I don’t have time for that,” she gritted out.
“Everyone has the same amount of time, more or less. Granted, humans have shorter lives than derkesthai, but if you measure yourself against the sorcerers I mean, you are young yet.”
“All right,” she conceded. Arguing would waste even more time. She shifted to the least pointy spot she could find, hearing her skirts rip with weary resignation. At least the holes would vent some of the heat. She’d never thought, after leaving Bára’s deserts, that she’d be too hot again. “Time presses on me because I need to heal Chuffta. I’m in this place with only the food and water I brought in, and I can’t live long once that runs out. I’ve made promises to help Lonen. I can’t spend years here.”
“Human concerns.”
“Well, yes. Because I’m human.”
“Yes and no. You are no ordinary human. You aren’t even an ordinary sorceress. You are Ponen. To realize your potential, you must rise above human concerns.”
“I won’t be doing much rising if I die from lack of water.”
“There are many kinds of death. You cannot remain how you’ve been. To become a new version of yourself, the old you will have die.”
Oh, that didn’t sound ominous or anything. Since they seemed to be taking something of a break, she got out her flask and drank, salving her savage thirst. She also grabbed a handful of the nut, seed, and dried fruit mixture. “Metaphorical death is not the same as physical death,” she pointed out.
“I see in your mind a woman telling you that she’d seen people in better condition than you who’d starved to death.”
He drew that scene forward in her mind, a strange sensation that she tried to accept without resistance. “Yes, the healer Baeltya treated me—and arranged for me to have better food, the kind my body was used to.”
“But why didn’t you die?”
“Because I got the right food in time.”
“Incorrect. Look with my eyes.”
An even more odd sensation, skewing her internal vision to see her own memories as the derkesthai king saw them, like looking at a reflection of herself in a mirror, reflected by another mirror behind that. Through his eyes she perceived different colors, reminding her of seeing through Chuffta’s eyes, only magnified greatly.
“Your Familiar will also refine his senses over time. Concentrate. What do you see?”
Strings of energy flowing in and around her, and layers of glowing light, of shades no human eye could perceive. “Is that how magic looks to you?”
“Yes. And how it could look to you, if you will only open your eyes.”
She sighed. Always back to this. “If I knew how, I would.” She took a judicious sip of water. Already more than half empty. She had no way of knowing how much time had passed, if it might be still daylight. If Lonen had left.
Who was she kidding? It had been ages. They’d all left.
“Let me open them for you,” the king suggested, not for the first time.
Lowering her physical lids, she nodded, letting him push around in her thoughts without resisting. Much. It felt like allowing someone to dig around in her gut while she nodded and smiled, only not painful—just impossible to do without flinching. This time the exhaustion worked in her favor. Each time he invaded her mind, she had less strength.
Vaguely it occurred to her that this might be incredibly foolish. She had no reason to trust this dragon, to believe any of his claims. What if he worked with the Trom and this was part of a scheme to destroy her? With an involuntary mental kick, she thrust the derkesthai king out of her mind.
“Ouch!” he scolded. “If you don’t trust me, why are we even bothering with this?”
“I apologize, Great One,” she said, weariness substituting for humility. “It’s a reflex.”
“You are strong,” he replied grudgingly. “Perhaps too strong.”
“Too strong for what?”
“If you cannot let go of your fears and paranoia, then you will become like the Trom. I cannot save you. Or your Familiar.”
Despite the stab of fear they incited, those words gave her an insight, something she likely should’ve realized earlier, but hadn’t, as if a light had illuminated a room. “The Trom seek power to be strong. So they can’t be harmed.”
“Yes, the human animal drive to kill or be killed. You must rise above that, want something more.”
“Wanting to live tops most everything else,” she pointed out, adjusting Chuffta, who slept as ever.
“You could have lived and not come here. Why are you here? Why haven’t you left?”
“I couldn’t just let Chuffta die.”
“Exactly. This is the only reason I’ve agreed to help you. If you had come here for any other reason, I would have simply had you put down.”
“You’re not helping because Chuffta is one of you, but because I’m doing this out of love, not for power.”
“There. Concentrate on the love. Give up protecting yourself, your human concerns.”
She didn’t have to trust, or even not flinch. She need only think about Chuffta, and how she loved him. How she loved Lonen, a different love, equally as powerful and selfless. And beyond that, a larger circle of love, for family, for the people who’d been kind to her, for the Destrye and Bárans, the deserts and forests crying for water, and even for the moons that waxed and waned, pushing and pulling.
It didn’t matter if it hurt, or if it killed her—because all them were worth her sacrifice.
“Ah,” the derkesthai king said in satisfaction, and pulled.
Oria shattered, her mind splintered, and her body fell like the victims of the Trom had, crumpling into piles of boneless goo. Her flask rolled away, clattering as it tumbled down the rocks.
Lonen felt a slicing, deep inside, like a knife cutting something a blade should never touch. He gasped aloud, and Buttercup, exquisitely sensitive to his rider’s signals, wheeled in place and ran at top speed in the opposite direction. The bite inside him eased and Lonen found himself smiling, ever so relieved to be going back for Oria.
This was right. At last he was going in the correct direction.
If they hadn’t been riding so long and hard, if Buttercup hadn’t been so recently injured and healed, if the forest path weren’t so narrow and twisting, Alyx on her inferior steed would never have been able to catch up with them. He could’ve ignored her cries, her calls for him to halt, to wait, but when she crowded them on a tight curve, he couldn’t allow Buttercup to crush them into a tree with his bulk.
Biting back his frustration, he pulled Buttercup up and Alyx—the warrior woman taking impressive initiative—pushed her horse past them and turned the mare to squarely block the path. The others thundered up behind them, fencing him in. No concerns there. That wasn’t the direction he intended to go.
“Your Highness,” she panted, out of breath from yelling during the breakneck chase. “How may I assist?”
“By getting out of my way,” he replied, only snarling a little at having to state the obvious. Buttercup took a step forward, but Alyx’s mare held firm, obeying though her nostrils quivered in agitation.
“Your Highness, we cannot afford to backtrack at all or we won’t make it to Arill City in time.”
“That’s fine. Let Nolan have the throne. He was meant to be king anyway. I won’t fight him for it.”
Several of the women murmured to each other behind him, and Alyx flicked a glance at them and then to him. The raw betrayal in her eyes might’ve gutted him, if feeling Oria’s pain hadn’t done that already. “If you’d treated Prince Nolan as he’s treated you, Your Highness, he’d have been officially declared dead when he disappeared on the battlefield. Would you have challenged him for the throne, were your positions reversed?”
“Of course not.” He nudged Buttercup another step, closing enough to see the strain in Alyx’s throat as she defied him. She didn’t give way, however, full of the resolve in her cause that he lacked. Abruptly weariness flooded him. He was so tired of fighting—the Bárans, the golems, his own brother—and of the doubts about Oria, the sun of his life. Oria loved him for himself. If he went to her and said he’d given up being king and wanted only to be a man, with her, she’d still love him.
But she’d be disappointed. She’d look at him with that same expression as Alyx, the sour taste of his failure to measure up in her eyes. Inside him, the knife turned, Oria’s pain throbbing like a living wound. “Oria…” he said, only realizing he said her name aloud when he heard the broken sound.
Alyx’s face crumpled with compassion, though she didn’t yield. “Her Highness is a strong woman. As strong—or stronger—as any I’ve met. She wouldn’t thank you for turning your back on your mutual cause, on both your peoples, by coming back for her.”
She’d overheard a great deal, which should be no surprise. He gave one last look at the path beyond Alyx, knowing he could take it if he chose, then closed his heart to it. “You’re right,” he told her. “I apologize.”
“Take a fast break while we’re stopped,” Alyx called to the others. “We’ll continue to Arill City shortly.” She lowered her voice again, shaking her head. “Don’t apologize, Your Highness. You have a great heart, which will make you a great king. When there’s love like you and Her Highness have, it’s difficult to put duty over it. That you will speaks more highly of you than anything.”
“With the occasional pointed reminder,” he replied wryly, fishing water out of the bags, trying not to think about whether Oria had enough, whether she’d even survive.
“I’m happy to serve as your conscience, Your Highness.” Alyx handed him some jerky. “I’m aware my investment is self-serving. I want you as my king, and I’m willing to be ruthless to make sure of it. Though I’m sorry to see you suffer her absence.”
“You don’t think I’m enchanted?” he asked, before he meant to. Emotional exhaustion getting to him, to ask her such a thing. Though… who else could he ask? Everyone had an opinion about Oria. Alyx seemed to be one of the few who didn’t loathe the sorceress on principle.
Alyx chewed her jerky thoughtfully, giving the question such due consideration—and with no surprise that he’d asked—that he knew she’d heard discussions of the possibility. She swallowed, shaking her head decisively. “I don’t know much about enchantment, but it seems to me that if the sorceress had magicked you, Your Highness, you’d be a lot happier. Only love, hopeless and impossible, makes anyone this miserable.”
“That’s… unusual logic.”
She shrugged. “Seems to me, Your Highness, that if you wanted an easy way of it, you wouldn’t have married a Báran sorceress. You wouldn’t be determined to marry her again under Arill’s hand either. I’ve seen how she looks at you—she’d give you the last drop of blood in her body if you asked, whether you made her Queen of Dru or not. I don’t know, but if I had the kind of power she does, I’d be making you dance a merry tune, not sending you away.”
It made sense. So much that he wondered how he’d let himself get confused. “Once I claim the throne, if Oria hasn’t returned, I’m coming back for her.”
Alyx nodded as if she expected as much. “We’ll come with you.”
Neither of them mentioned the possibility that there would be nothing left of her to retrieve.
In the beginning, there was only the formless void, containing everything and nothing, only potential, nothing yet realized.
The old temple words rolled through Oria’s mind, comforting as those early childhood sayings can be. Like nursery songs and the feeling of being loved. Odd to feel that sense of safety as she wandered the void. Formless in a place of nothingness. Alone and yet not lonely.
“Because I’m here with you. I promised I’d always be with you.”
She looked, but had no eyes. No ears, either. Still, the voice resonated in her being, requiring no physical senses. Emotion existed in this void, because hope, impossibly keen-edged, stabbed at her. “Chuffta?”
“Of course. Who else?”
“You’re alive!”
He tutted at her. “You knew that.”
“Yes and no. Your body…” Memory returned in vivid clarity. “Are you alive?”
“The part of me that is eternal is here with you, yes, silly.”
Oh no. That didn’t sound good. She’d died. She failed that final lesson and her body had died, along with Chuffta’s. They were together in the afterlife, which wasn’t at all the solace it should’ve been.
“Not yet, but we will be soon if you don’t act. I’m a young derkesthai. I’d like my body back, please.”
As did she. “I don’t know what to do.”
He shrugged. “You’re the sorceress. You are Ponen. Take the potential and make form from the void.”
“Oh, is that all?”
“Yes.” He mentally flicked his tail.
“But how?”
“Magic,” he replied, with crisp certainty, as if the answer had been obvious all along. “You have all the tools within you, the ability and the knowledge. Use it. And when you give me a body again, make it a big one.”
No, it wasn’t enough to use it. She remembered now. She must use it with balance, and out of love. What had the Destrye said about their goddess? Arill made the world from the void out of love and loneliness. She manifested reality to share the delight of being.
Oria tried to be like that, like a pure and perfect goddess, full of love for all creation. She reached for her sgath…
“Not like that,” the derkesthai king inserted into her mind. “Not the way you did before. You’ve shed your former body, now let go of the old you.”
She tried, letting it all fall away. A kind of saying goodbye.
“Now: touch the magic. Take it into yourself. Without reservation or defense.”
Touch it? Let it flood her? She’d lived her whole life not touching or being touched, living atop her isolated tower, protected from exactly this. Alive but not living. So afraid of dying that she’d walled out all of life.
Of course that had to change, so that she could. She opened her portals, ruthlessly dropping all caution and reserve.
“Be careful, Oria,” Chuffta warned. “Don’t—”
Too late. The wave crashed over her, severing her from everything.